Starborn Forests: Campaign ideas

Building a campaign:

There are three questions any GM needs to answer about a campaign involving starseeds:  How recently, how many, and how big.

How Recently:

The assumption is that Starfall was long enough ago that the situation has more or less stabilized, so at the very least several decades, but a century or more is the better assumption. Because of this, the political and social structures surrounding the seedlands have had a chance to stabilize. People, more or less know what the Song is. Governments have policies and the era of open warfare is now more or less ended in favor of more covert and small scale operations.

This has the advantage of giving the campaign a defined “ground game.”  The PCs come from a neighboring city, or are growing up in the Borderlands, or have been sent from the seedlands out into the dangerous world, to locate something of importance… But whatever will happen, the setting isn’t that dynamic to start.

The closer you get to Starfall, the less that holds, as people know less and things are changing faster.  The biggest example of this is a campaign starting before Starfall.  The PC’s are doing their thing, and suddenly—death from the sky, and strange, alien forests springing up.  Maybe the capital of the kingdom is being overrun by the forest, as a seedland springs up and the PCs must save the heir to the throne—or for more morally flexible individuals, loot the kingdom’s treasury before it’s lost to the seedland. 

The negative bit, is that especially if the campaign is an ongoing one, the players may not be pleased to see their entire past campaign rendered obsolete, either because nobody cares about the evil wizard on the hill, or because he was vaporized by a magic rock. As a starting point for a new campaign, perhaps with new characters who have to learn as they fight to survive, it can be an exciting setting—but one that will be very fluid. Settlements and kingdoms that did exist last month may change or be destroyed by this month.

The other alternative may be to set a campaign several months or years after Starfall. The conflicts over the new lands are in full swing, and yet people don’t know a lot about them. The mystery of the Song is starting to worry a lot of people, many of whom fear it may keep expanding, while kingdoms are going to war over the treasures of Starfall—and triggering defensive reactions which see further expansions of the borderlands and outlands. In this, there is plenty of employment for clever groups, ranging from scouts into the unknown lands, escorts for sages trying to plumb the secrets of Starfall, and mercenaries to help local kingdoms, bandits and organizations lay claim to these amazing treasures. But in a time of open or covert conflict, the PCs will find that enemies and allies can switch places with unnerving regularity and worst of all, the seedlands are quite willing to defend themselves—as are those who have heard the Song.

This campaign has the advantage of while there is conflict and change, things have stabilized enough that the PCs likely have a “safe haven” that isn’t likely to vanish in a week. The negative bit is that said safe haven is probably up to its eyebrows in politics and conspiracies.

Sidebar: Far Away Campaigns:

A campaign doesn’t have to be next to a seedland to involve the seedlands. Players thousands of miles away, in nations that have never seen Starfall can also be involved—for the simple fact that so far away, items that might actually be relatively easy to get near a seedland are worth a king’s ransom… or murder. Being hired to escort a shipment of immensely valuable materials can be exciting as groups of every description seek them out—and the PCs may very well fall under suspicion as well if they fail to drive them off. After all, bribing the guards is an old, old trick…

How many and how big:

Starfall is left deliberately vague. But how many seedlands were created and how large they were is a vital part of any campaign. A single large seedland can change the politics of entire nations—but it will be restricted to one area.  However, a dozen or more big seedlands may change everything—while making possession or access to any single seedland less important.

Equally, large seedlands could see trade and transport networks disrupted, say if a seedland was established directly on a caravan route, or major waterway. This could see formerly prosperous realms that were dependent on a certain type of trade falling into decline—and as such willing to go to great lengths to restore their position.  As the time of starfall fades into the past, there will be new trade routes, of course, but it produces the possibility of cities or even kingdoms that have fallen into poverty or are even more or less abandoned (as has happened many times in RW history when trade routes shift). Such places can become lairs for monsters, cults, or for that matter, the PCs if it turns out they need a place to hide such as Goldthrone (XX).

Sidebar: Tiny seedlands:

A seedland, say that is only a few hundred meters in diameter, is likely to only influence a kilometer or so of land. These tiny seedlands are unlikely to have much in the way of inhabitants, no more than a small village and likely only a few dozen people, at most, living in the seedland itself. Unlike larger impacts, it is possible for a kingdom to both take over the region and exert effective control over who gets to enter.

Such lands are unlikely to have a major impact on the world, but they are very likely to be both heavily guarded—and greatly desired, which makes it quite likely that the PCs may find themselves hired to evade the guards, cross the fields of the borderlands and outlands, and then recover some of the treasure of the seedland…

And survive to bring it back, of course.

Another possibility is a seedland that has been taken over to become a wizards academy, such as Dalian Academy (xx), providing an explanation for the weirdness that commonly exists at such places…

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You know, I never have figured out how much to write. On the one hand, you have people saying you need to write more, on the other hand, I've seen rpgs that start talking about the glorious fill-in the blank and they go on, and on and on and Jesus it's reading like the CIA factbook and let me kill a dragon, okay?  So this is likely to go through some revisions, and if anyone wants to comment, feel free.