Campaign Prep [Offices and Bosses]

This will be my first campaign prep post for the Offices and Bosses campaign. This post is intended to show what I do as a DM before each adventure session. As such, it will have SPOILERS for the campaign. If you plan to follow the campaign as a story, you might want to skip these posts.

Learning the setting

Right now my focus is on getting familiar with the Eberron campaign setting. To start, I bought the 3E Eberron campaign setting on DMs Guild.

We’re playing 5E in my campaign, so I won’t be able to use any of the specific details, but I prefer this. No matter how much you prepare for an adventure ahead of time, there’s always going to be a lot of improv. Having a detailed adventure with tons of specifics that I’m not intimately familiar with, makes it harder for me to feel comfortable improvising.

What I’m looking for in the campaign setting is high level things:

• Tone and theme of the world
• Major countries, religions, secret orders, etc.
• The high level tensions driving events
• A few major villains and heroes

Basically, I read the Introduction and then skimmed chapters 7 and 8, which detail countries and major organizations. Knowing these things gives me inspiration and constraints to build NPCs and adventure arcs. It also gives me a general sense of what exists in the world, so I know where to look in depth if I ever need it.

Based on this reading, I picked out a few major countries and organizations that seemed interesting to me. The other areas will be less developed unless the adventuring party ends up interacting with any of them.

The countries I picked were:

• Darguun
• Thrane
• Karrnath
• Aundair
• Breland

The organizations were:

• The Blood of Vol / The Emerald Claw
• The Silver Flame

Clarifying motivations

For each of the major players I chose, I spent a couple minutes outlining what they want and what they’re currently trying to do to achieve those goals. Knowing these things will help me figure out how the world would respond to the players’ actions.

Darguun

Darguun is a newly formed country of goblinoids. The campaign setting describes a charismatic leader – Haruuc who is trying desperately to keep the goblinoid citizens in check and make Darguun a real nation, which I think is an interesting twist on goblins.

There will be two main forces in Darguun:

The Peace Seekers, led by Haruuc. This faction wants to stabilize Darguun, subduing any violent factions within the country and strengthening ties with neighboring countries. They will be mostly reactionary, investigating threats as they arise.

The Warmongers, led by Warlord Striok. This faction believes that goblins interacting with society is unnatural and futile. They want to return goblins to a state of nomadic tribes, preying on the “weaker” civilized races.

Striok aims to accomplish her goal by backing Darguun into a corner and causing the fragile peace to collapse. She has war bands along Darguun’s borders that attack travelers from neighboring kingdoms. Striok hopes that the distrust other nations hold towards goblinoids will cause them to think the attacks are sponsored by Darguun, causing the kingdoms to declare war. At the same time, Striok gathers followers with the promise of loot and slaves from the raids.

Striok is probably receiving aid/funding from the Emerald Claw.

Thrane

Thrane’s motivations are simple. Now that they’ve become a theocracy ruled by the Silver Flame, they just want to destroy evil. They will throw their weight behind any investigations into reports of evil in the Demon Wastes, Droaam, or Xen’drik. They’re also more disposed to distrust the motivations of Darguun.

If it ever comes to light that the ruler of Karrnath is a vampire, then Thrane will go to war against them no matter how good the Karrnathian ruler’s motivations seem to be.

Karrnath

The leader of Karrnath is Kaius III. He is secretly Kaius I, who was turned into a vampire by the Blood of Vol.

Early in the Last War, Karrnath was weakened and desperately partnered with the Blood of Vol to bolster their military strength. The Blood of Vol augmented the Karrnathian armies with undead legions and created the Emerald Claw, and order of spies and assassins. King Kaius soon realized that the Blood of Vol was using Karrnath to further the ambitions of the half elf, half dragon lich named Vol.

Now, Kaius wants to solidify the peace of the Treaty of Thronehold. He believes that doing so will reduce his country’s reliance on the powers offered by the Blood of Vol. This will allow him to eradicate their presence and begin rebuilding the country proper.

Karrnath aims to support it’s neighbors to build stronger alliances. It also will hunt down any leads on the leaders of the Blood of Vol or the Emerald Claw.

Aundair

Queen Aurala ir’Wynarn remains the most ambitious country leader. She wants to conquer all of Khorvaire. To do this, she plans to destabilize the other countries by funding covert actions to destroy supply lines, assassinate key leaders, or sow distrust between nations.

Queen Aurala uses the current peace as a shield while she strengthens Aundair’s position. Her immediate goal is to incite an invasion from the Demon Wastes into the Eldeen Reaches. She plans to use such an event as a pretense to reclaim the Eldeen Reaches without declaring open war.

Breland

The closest thing to “the good guys”. Breland faired better than most in the Last War, and just seeks to stabilize their country and way of life. This kingdom will be largely reactive, responding to attacks from other countries and investigating strange occurrences.

Breland won’t hesitate to declare war on any country if it gains proof that they’ve been working against Breland.

The Blood of Vol / The Emerald Claw

There’s a good chance these will be the main villains. Their primary goal is to revive the bloodline of the 13th dragon mark – the mark of Death. Doing so will allow their leader, Vol, to be resurrected so that she can become a god.

Right now, the Order simply tries to grow its power and weaken any potential adversaries. They will hunt down powerful artifacts and will seek to exarcebate any conflicts between other powerful entities. They are always searching for elves who might manifest the Mark of Death. They are also seeking out ancient lore and relics related to the dragon marks, with the hope of finding a way to recreate the 13th mark.

Getting started

That’s pretty much all I’ve prepared at this point. I don’t want to go too far down any particular path until the adventurers have a chance to find themselves and figure out what kind of campaign they’re going to build. Until then, these forces will be mostly static. I’ll try to prepare a tasting menu of adventures that give the players some sense of each of these conflicts without moving any of them forward dramatically. Then, around level 4 or 5, I think events will begin to snowball towards one of these more than the others.

Based on this prep, I made a campaign intro for the players.

Next week, I’ll talk about how I work with players to develop their backstories and how I use zero-sessions to help players establish themselves before the adventures begin.