Good News: I beat Witcher 3! I'm free of its glorious immersive world! Hooray!
Holy crap did I enjoy Witcher 3. It's one of my favorite games ever, top 5 for sure. While it's a gorgeous game and the battle system felt great, the real draw for me that will last for years to come is its fantastic, immersive world, filled with people that have fleshed out personalities and motivations. The people have culture, depth of character, flaws, agendas, hopes, fears; it's all so wonderful.
Though I wasted a lot of time playing it, I did walk away with lots of pointers for future writing. Even jotted down particularly cool character developments, themes, and quests for future reference.
As for the Zendikar adventure, I have a good idea on the main parts to it but none of the details yet. Still need to read more of the lore to figure stuff out, like where to stick the adventure in the first place!
I can share my current musings, however:
- the adventure will start at level 1. A lot of feedback from my Innistrad adventure indicates people are using this as a stepping stone into D&D, so it's best to keep these crossover adventures at the introductory levels. I will keep it shorter than Army of the Damned, so maybe levels 1-3
- the timeline of the story will start in Zendikar but quickly progress into the events happening in Worldwake, when the roil gets especially rowdy, and finally end during the beginnings of Rise of the Eldrazi
- tone is action, adventure, suspense, with a wee bit of horror from the eldrazi/vampires
- I'm going for a more sandbox adventure this time around: the PCs will reach a home base early on, and from there they are free to explore the surrounding areas/dungeons as they see fit
- the home base this time around is an explorer's settlement built upon a floating hedron piece: it's the bottom half a hedron, cut in half horizontally right through the middle so it's basically a floating inverted pyramid. It's a popular meeting place for explorers from all parts of the world to meet and form expeditions for riches: all races and walks of life are here.
- the home base will be similar to Shadowgrange in that it will be the place to stock up on equipment and quests, but I want to flesh out the NPCs there further -- add relationships, motivations, recruitment opportunities for hirelings, etc. (may need to make a sort of NPC sheet for the DM) -- so that it feels more like a living breathing place that (hopefully) the PCs get more attached to
- One hook I really want to do is winning a treasure map off an NPC. If the PCs don't win it, they can blackmail to get it, or other diplomacy, or steal it
- Haven't worked out dungeons yet, but they can be literally anywhere... in the swamps of Malakir, an underwater cavern that is an ancient temple to Ula, jungle dungeon guarded viciously by the Joraga, real easy to come up with. The only snag is I get the impression that Zendikar is BIG: their diverse regions are continents, which is kind of lame -- Akoum is the place of mountains / volcanoes / red stuff and it's a CONTINENT of just that, so exploring it would be tedious amounts of travel
- I like the idea of an expedition going wrong and loosening the bonds of the Eldrazi, causing them to shift in their prison and release some brood. Either the PCs do it, or they're sent to check up on a missing expedition that did it. They have their first taste of the eldrazi brood underground.
- My idea is home base acquire quests ---> dungeons, resolve faction conflits ---> bump into the Eldrazi. End the adventure there, then continue the adventure in BfZ with recurring NPCs
Alright, that's enough rambling for now!
