Monty moves his eyes a lot I've noticed. That man is telepathically operating the cameras by the sheer power of his mind alone.

The cult needs the Rod of Seven Parts in order to summon the Evil Overlord who brings about the Age of Darkness, and when that succeeds it becomes a Post-Apocalypse run by an Anti-Magic Inquisition

I love the comparison between X-Men and the Anti-Magic culture. Got me thinking about upcoming campaigns. Personally, my favorite trope is the extinct ancient power. A civilization long past that had magic or technology way beyond what now exists, and these artifacts and knowledge are there to be discovered from ruins and what have you.

1. Every one of these videos have me smiling, stating "Oh, like ____ in Dungeons of Drakenheim!" 2. Clichés help 2 other ways: a) Simplicity. You don't have to spend exposition on concepts people are already familiar with. b) A chance to right wrongs. Like Monty said, they might be aware, but if they don't enjoy that premise, as long as the DM is aware of their hang-ups, the premise can be used for the player to write the wrongs. (Ex, saving a princess locked in a dungeon might turn around that she is a badass who had herself captured to find where the Chancellor has been taking her people)

I love how you both critically assess the clichés and offer creative tweaks and alternatives to them. Also, thanks for not making me feel so bad about using them, lol.

Man, these dudes sure know a lot about dungeons. As someone who is running a "Rod of 7 Parts" style campaign right now, I 100% agree on your take. I've personally made it so every item is located in its own unique area/comes up in its own unique way. On top of that, I have a different villain NPC chasing that item who has their own unique set of abilities AND even have the player's backstories linked in some way to a particular item that they themselves don't even know about. It's helped the party (and myself, the DM) stay interested in how the party achieves their goals since how that's accomplished is usually widely different each and every time. Awesome video, my Canadian brethren!

You guys honestly have some of the best D&D content on KZfaq. There are channels with more dense information/recommendations or more wildly creative entertainment value, but nobody quite strikes that balance of being informative and personable you guys have found playing off each other. Thanks, Dudes!

for somebody who is still putting together her first campaign, this is both extremely helpful and reassuring at the same time. and big compliments to the editor: the cuts are very well done!

I love the "rod of 7 parts" trope, and I probably would have no issue playing a linear game like that. That said, I think one of the best changes to that trope I've seen is in Matthew Reillys '7 Ancient Wonders'. The party knows they are starting out at a disadvantage, and all they want is one piece of the artefact to have a say in the potential apocalypse. Almost every piece is a race, a battle, or impossible. But there is hope that the next one they might get, and they have to keep trying.

The whole anti-magic Inquisition thing where you mentioned "a 10% chance of summoning a demon" as being an argument against magic made me think... Maybe 40K would disagree 😂

23:00 to 24:00 Some additional ideas: One piece is secured by a denizen of a swamp, say a Troll shaman. The piece powers its foul magic to some how alter the behaviour and physical attributes of nearby Treants, Axebeaks, etc. Another piece is locked inside a formidable citadel. The PC’s are encouraged (by an NPC) to employ a heist style strategy to retrieve it. Another could be held by a powerful curse. The curse needs to be broken in order to access it. As always great content dudes!

The "Age of Darkness" cliche reminds me of the observation someone made about Final Fantasy: "None of this shit would have happened if you just stayed in bed."

Am I the only one who misses the old "sword swipe scene changes"?

The advice of using one cliche premise to transfer to another cliche premise for an interesting combo. I'm going to use it for the camp I'm writing for my upcoming sessions.

Doing a campaign now where the "rod of 7 parts" is a series of portals unlocked by various arcane keys. It's helping keep the structure of the campaign flexible because it allows many combinations of unlocked gateways to eventually reach the BBEG.

I was affraid my anti-magic organisation was cliché but i'm reassured now. Thank you for the content you share with us. Cheers !

I kinda like the idea of mixing the evil overlord and age of darkness campaigns but in another way - what if the evil overlord was actually amassing all this power and creating authoritarian regime to stop the coming of another age of darkness, so when the PCs finally defeat him/get close to defeating him it turns out now there's a greater threat out there, so they need to step in and finish, what the evil overlord was trying to do, if using bad and unmoral methods? I'd play a campaign like this.

"Is magic bad or good?" Is exactly the campaign I'm running right now! This video was a garden of ideas, thank you!

Once again, the Dungeon Dudes release a video that is *scarily* apt for where I'm at with running my homebrew game- seriously this is like the 6th time, it's like you guys know what's going on in my brain and provide the perfect source of help haha

Instead of a rod of 7 parts I'm inclined to use 7 rods, each independently useful. Just like the infinity stones they can be used separately and as long as the party can keep some of them out of the hands of the enemy they still have a chance in a fight but obviously getting more of them stacks the odds in their favor.

I am so in sync with Monty's Walking Dead mini rant/tangent. :)

You can attach to most of these tropes the trope of the BBEG turns out being a tool of secret BBEG who is actually an NPC that the party has met or even considered an ally.

Someone sounds a little upset about The Walking Dead ;)

The way I did the "Summoned Evil God" was I made it a prophesy that kept reoccurring. The cult and the PCs were racing to thwart or fulfill the inevitable fight, until the absolute last fight.

I’d love to run a high level short campaign specifically based around destroying the Wand of Orcus. I don’t think you could do it in a one-shot, but I’d still like to keep the campaign short, based solely around this one quest.

"Players accidentally helping out the evil being come to life then the next quest being to undo the damage they did." So much fun. My players were trying to steal stuff from a rich artifact collector and accidentally re-esembled a demi-lich's phylactery unleashing it into the world.

I’m writing a campaign where the Evil Overlord is an eco-terrorist.

I'm starting up an antimagic campaign where an organization, lead by a very charismatic and convincing leader, has been attempting to rid the world of most of its spellcasters, except those who use their powers for healing. They believe that magic is a dangerous weapon that, if left unchecked, could destroy the world. However, they are attempting to achieve this by slaughtering every spellcaster they can find. I'm also thinking of making the leader use the organization as a front for gathering power for a patron that grants him power in return; haven't decided yet. But seeing this video not only gave me more ideas for how NPC's may think, but also confidence that maybe this isn't a bad idea. Lot of good quality content coming from this channel!

You guys are cranking out so much content these days! Thanks so much :)

On the Rod of 7 Parts style game, if you've got an idea that necessitates the players having all 7 parts, there is an interesting failsafe you can build into the campaign: just have other people looking for the parts as well. If the players fail to get some of the parts (or perhaps show a lack of interest and go somewhere else) then npc's who have some of the parts can show up trying to collect the pieces the players have, or be willing to trade them for a favor. It's an easy enough contingency to design, and lets the players decide what they want to do without derailing too far from your central plan for the campaign. This also has the added benefit of making the world feel more organic. It makes sense that others would be looking for the same objects of power the players are. They can have their own motivations and be either allies or enemies. It does a lot of the worldbuilding for you by just fleshing out how your central plot would impact everything around it.

So what you are saying is that I need to run a campaign whose story is set in a post apocalyptic world caused by reckless magic, with an Overlord who use his anti-mage paladin order to suppress the people and magic, while they are searching in old ruins for artifacts in order to summon a dark entity that can reverse the world back to when it was whole at the price of 10,000 souls? Does that about cover it?

Your description of Evil Overlord x Age of Darkness is basically the central core of something that I just started writing out earlier today. What a coincidence!

So I'm running an "Age of Darkness" mixed with "The Rod of Seven Parts". In the campaign I created the nations of the world are separated by a very powerful magical barrier created by the Archdemon before being sealed away by a young Holy Maiden and the united army of each nations. Only the Goddess's Champion can destroy the Archdemon but before the Champion was able to do so, he was defeated in the final battle so the Goddess chose a young and pure maiden and showed her a way to defeat the Archdemon without destroying it. But something that powerful cannot be sealed away in one place. So 10 powerful guardians each took a fragment of the Archdemon to safeguard it from those who might want to get their hands on it. The campaign starts 20 years later, the Holy Maiden has become a mediator to the neighboring kingdoms and things took a turn for the worst as war is inevitable. She hired a group of adventurers to check on an underground sanctuary which she informs the party that she has lost contact with and she even sent knights to investigate but they never returned. With the other kingdoms hellbent on total war, she cannot send anymore men to investigate the sanctuary as she plans to mobilize her army to the borders. She sent her personal knight to guide them. The party reached the sanctuary, found our the knights she sent has all been killed and turned into minions of a Lich which was easily disposed of by the knight that's guiding them. After figuring out a puzzle room, and getting access to the main room, they realized that the sanctuary was used to hold a fragment of the Archdemon in which the Knight took it and used its powers in hopes to easily subdue the warring nations. But immediately gets taken over by it's dark and evil magic having the party fight him off. When the party got back to the Maiden they informed her of the situation and now she tasked them of looking for the 9 remaining fragments and their guardians in order to protect the fragments and prevent them from being taken to unleash the Archdemon and it's army back to the world.

My party discovered we are part of the "predestined/chosen one" trope last week, after like half a year of play. Suddenly tons of things clicked together, we discovered who the real (we think) bbeg is, and how we are representatives of powers of our world. It was awesome, trope approved.

My bbeg I'm running is a black dragon mafia fammily.

When you guys got done with explaining the 1st cliche (Evil Overlord), I couldn't help but think that what you guys described, was Ainz Ooal Gown / Momonga from the anime & light novel "Overlord" to a T.

Amazing video as usual! Oh, and the thing you mentioned about having this big massive end goal plot, but trying not to reveal the big drive at level 1, instead trying to build up the information along the story.... It's a great advice, and I agree completely! And... a great way to succeed with that is to do what I did in the current game I dm. Eh.. basically.. I started dm'ing last year, and while I'm an experienced player for many yearsm I was new to dming, so.... I grabbed some friends. They happened to also be new to d&d or in the case of two players, just a little bit, and a while ago. So.... we started with a simple pre-written oneshot adventure. (Temple of the Nightbringers, by M.T. Black), and that was all I had planned. After we finished that oneshot (took 3 sessions because we were all new, plus player shenanigans)...... weeeeee decided to keep going on... But not like, new characters, new story, new everything, nah.. we just kept going from where we were. So.... I literally can't accidentally tell them the whole big endgame BBEG plot line.. because.... I'm making stuff up as we go. x) The two current BBEG's I have are currently unknown to the players, but have spawned from other stuff... like.... one of the goblins in the oneshot adventures was... for some reason captured by the players, and is now kept as a pet by them..... yeah he's vowing for escape, and revenge, but hey don't know it yet, and are hoping for Stockholm Syndrome... The other one... was just a traveling merchant I whipped up in 10 minutes as a random encounter along the road, and.... has now been a recurring NPC showing up here and there.... and... eventually... things have been added to that NPC's,,, ultimately being tied as a major person in a worldwide criminal network, playing the public facade... But in the beginning,, that was just a traveling merchant.... So.... making stuff up on the go without any particular plan is a great way to not accidentally spoil too much of the story too fast, aaaand it also makes stuff WAY less linear, because you kinda adapt to what he players do and where they go. And when you come up with ideas, you write them up as potential notes instead of fleshing it out superbly, because... if you do, I can guarantee you that they will go somewhere else and all that work you just did... won't even come up. :P

What a nice video! I have been pondering over a new campaign to DM for some friends of mine and so far I have constructed a very basic story so far, with the inclusion of some things that you mention here. But your explanation and analysis of these concepts is so nicely put that sets a great perspective for those ideas and helps make the expansion upon them much simple! Thank you!!!

OK, raise your hand if you want a Wall-E D&D splat book. Just me? OK fair.

I'm running a campaign with a couple of these layered on top of each other, drawing inspirations from various sources and its gone well. 29th session is next week and the party is close to level 8.

My first d&d group refused to use tropes or even common monsters because "everyone has fought a goblin"... I played for 3 years before i fought my first goblin, it was a magical experience

You guys are great. Thanks for all the campaign ideas and tips.

You guys really hit some great ideas and showed understanding of the cliches and how to make it fun for a campaign....really amazing

Combine their nicknames for this video, and get a Kobold BBEG! I'm gonna put it in my campaign.

Dungeon Dudes, I had watch a lo t of your videos lately and I think this is your best. It is so Inspiring me as a DM and it's give a lot of ideas not just for how make a really good advanture it also help me understand how to do an adventure that put the players in the spotlight. Thank you and please do more things in this style

For the advice on having the Inquisitors only in major cities, you can also invert that if you know your campaign needs magic in cities- imagine the "federal" government dislikes magic, but the enforcement is left up to local governments within the cities (and the city governments refuse to enforce that law). Think about marijuana laws or Sanctuary Cities for IRL examples of this trope

16:20 One way to mitigate this is make the players too late before they even begin in Age Of Darkness campaigns. If a cult is trying to summon some creature of destruction make it so it happened a month before the campaign and make it take 6 months to get to the setting, in that time the cult could be setting up rituals to boost the creature, or to try to make it arrive faster. On the flip side this also opens opportunities to allow the PC side to make or modify their own ritual to weaken or slow the coming doom. Mechanically you could give or take Legendary actions for instance. If the cult succeeds then the creature could go from having 3 LAs per round to 4, if the PC are able to stop the cult and modify the ritual (either the PCs themselves or a companion) then instead of 3 LAs the creature would be reduced to 2. This would also allow the players to prepare for a sabotage the arrival of the creature. Perhaps the PCs could change the summoning point so instead of the creature being greeted by a feast of cultists it's greeted in the center of a fort being surrounded by 2 floors of cannons aimed at its head while sitting on a platform over acid all under a spiked, droppable ceiling. Basically instead of making the campaign about stopping the creature from arriving at all, make the campaign about preparation and sabotage for its inevitable arrival.

I really like the direction you took on this video about cliches, great job!

I’m a first time DM but a lifelong writer and fantasy fan. This campaign I’m writing has a dark overlord spin that I’m having a ton of fun with. I went with an evil god who was cast down and humiliated, sealed away. To make a long story short, to take revenge on the gods who defeated him he aims to create a world of undead to dominate and pervert the world of mortals that the gods love. My party has just stumbled into his slow bod to return to the world and we’re gonna see if they can stop his return, if they’ll have to battle him as he’s revived, or perhaps they’ll even help him

Thank you dudes! My favorites on KZfaq right now

hehehe. The campaign I'm running right now has elements of each one of these cliches....and it is AWESOME

I love the noticable increase in their production over time keep up the good work Dudes

Together again good to see the dungeon dudes back in the same room

This critique on these tropes are very useful for anyone and a good way of helping build up someone that is just starting out as a storywriter of any genre, or even a vetern

Great to see you both together again and not the isolated videos.

So good to see you two together again!

concise and compact bite of useful info as per usual. ty so much dudes

On the age of darkness bit, one thing you could do is that if the players make enough right actions, the final boss that's getting summoned is significantly weaker than it would be otherwise. As for the Inquistion, instead of "is magic right/wrong" it could be the Inquistion is hunting magic users, it's so that they and whoever they serve are the only ones with magic.

I feel stupid commenting twice but this video was really useful to me, it's helped me overcome my current writer's block a bit, so thank you so much guys! Your insight into narrative is very helpful.

Great, fun, informative video. Really, enjoy you two. Stay safe. Thank you.

Love the Morgoth reference... great mace swinging, flinging elves left right and center. Or maybe you meant it as a Sauron reference. I choose to believe it was Morgoth though.

Wow. AMAZING video guys. You should be very proud. I will be referring to this again later to take notes and sharing with ALL my DM friends. Stellar work.

Thank you guys for sharing the common campaign cliches. This really helps organize my thoughts on what I want to do in my campaign. Appreciate your vids!

As someone who didn’t necessarily look out for story, tropes, but happen to notice them across the wide variety of mediums I enjoy it’s hard not to put things into categories at times. I can only imagine being at the center of a story trove that is unfamiliar to you can feel grandiose and amazing and since it’s unlike anything else you’ve ever seen, Joe probably have so many opportunities to subvert it.

Always love your content. Was working on a campaign and now have a better idea for its structure. Kind of post apocalyptic but the players would have a chance to rebuild and influence this city.

2023 was the year I got into D&D, I'm brand new to the scene. You guys have been the best guides I could have hoped for, thank you so much

Good to see you guys back on the same screen. I imagine you both feel more comfortable and happy this way

I was thinking of combining the overlord and the 7 parts. A very simplified version of my idea is that there is some bbeg that wants to unlock a seal that is keeping demons, devils, or some other monstrosity sealed away. The bbeg or one of his lackies manages to unlock the seal, and the PCs, after defeating the bbeg, must find the now shattered and broken shards of the seal to reseal whatever was released. I might also add some of the cult idea as well

7:00 Yeah, the current rights holders to the Fallout series really dropped the ball. Fallout 1, 2 and NV were all about new societies springing up, moving beyond the apocalypse and trying to start something new. 3, 4 and '76 all want to stay within a timeframe where the bombs fell like... ten to forty years ago. 3 and 4 really make it look like the East Coast can't get its act together, while the West Coast is rebuilding civilization.

You guys are the first I've seen mention that if you're going to have a McGuffin Treasure Hunt, give your players options on what the McGuffins are. And I appreciate that you did. I threw one at my players several campaigns ago- when they got to higher levels, a faction of gods who were dealing with their own celestial drama tasked them with restoring one of the other goddesses to power after a treacherous plot incapacitated her, and she was needed to help put to rest the celestial battles going on. They were given a vague idea of what key aspects they needed for the ritual to bring the goddess back to her old self, but I left it up to them to use their knowledge of the world, and their personal skills and talents, to make each artifact out of various materials and spells they had at their disposal. The next section of the campaign was them saying ahead of time, "this is what we think will work for X artifact, and what we need to build it", and me crafting the encounters for them to try getting what they wanted. If they failed in one aspect somehow, it wasn't the end of the world, they just needed to figure out an alternate material to collect. After each scavenger hunt, I had them make crafting checks to complete each project, with modifiers to aid or hinder success based on the quality of the stuff they hunted down. In the end, they made all the needed artifacts, and pulled off restoring the goddess with a final ritual. To show her gratitude for their aid, they were granted some spell-like abilities and a special homebrew feline companion, who was the size of a lion and had a few special powers of its own to help protect them in their end stage adventures as the divine war was reaching its climax (the goddess they aided was basically Bast).

I feel like you guys have taught me everything about D&D... I've seen some of your videos multiple times ... I just got into D&D last August lol

Thank you so much for this content. I've usually avoid cliches and try to be original. Then, one of my players have a character that is trying to live all the stories that he heard while he was a slave. And in my head, I've got into an internal conflict about including those classic problems and adventures when I'm usually against them. This helped me alot with the creation process. Thank you!

This is very helpful. I am running a “Rod of 7 parts” campaign and I take a lot of inspiration from Legend of Zelda. What I do to create a more dynamic environment is that the setting is currently expiring a civil war (the PC are part of the army for one of the factions), and the opposing factions compete to complete the “Rod of 7 parts”. The PCs also get sent of combat missions in-between dungeons. I have not yet revealed the BBEG so the PCs are kept in a bit of suspense.

7:45 "Game Theory" has an episode that answers this question for fallout: some known side effects of nuclear fallout are distrust and paranoia (as clearly demonstrated by faction leaders down to the everyday people throughout the series). Couple that with the cumulative, persistent PTSD from the many dangers of the waste (New Vegas DLC even has a questline directly connected to PTSD, and helping a doctor retrieve books to help him better understand and treat PTSD), and it isn't surprising at all that society has been limited to smaller groups and hasn't truly rebuilt itself, even after hundreds of years...

My campaign using the post-apocalyptic setting. My idea is "what if the real world, right now, merged with D&D?" and is about what current day would look like if worlds collide. For me, to get over the hump of "why hasn't your world recovered after 200 years?" --- well... dragons just got teleported to a new world, so they are fighting over territory! It's a fun game and I like those kinds of games and players are diggin it.

nice to see the dudes back in the same room! props to canada for being solid on the virus front. here's to more shadows of drakenheim!

Bravo! Good vid gents! Thanks for doing what u do!!!

My second campaign, they started in a town with an anti magic organization, ruled by a red dragon, where the whole land had been in 1000 years of darkness and had no contact with the outside world which was ruled by a half god evil emperor, and the whole objective was to gather the shards of a sword and reforge it so they could defeat the evil emperor once and for all so he couldn't cast the world back into darkness. Every single trope in one.

This video came just in time! I'm starting to design campaign 2 for my new group.

9:53 I love the extra half second before the cut that makes it feel like the answer is "no. no it won't"

The summoned God trope a GREAT example of an epic battle / ritual stoppage can be seen in World of Warcraft vs Kil’Jaeden as he’s rising from the portal into the world the players beat him back into the hole as he’s halfway out fighting them, fighting the ritual process, and the ritual summoners from TBC.

Love how your shirts change guys!

maybe if everyone was simping Strahd this wouldn't happen smh

Rod of 7 parts meets overlord/dark god seems like a common coupling. I’m running a game that has a dark god skin but is really a masked overlord that they are unknowingly working for.

Thank you so much, Dudes!!! This is going to be so helpful when I am running my first campaign, which is basically going to be Diablo 1 lol

I have been working on a campaign villain for some time now on the idea of him being this mass conqueror much like the evil conquest villain. Only instead of being seen as a bad thing it's a good thing. He's a warforged with this mechanical army who basically protect towns and help the people live simple happy lives with a lot less stress. He views them as less than him but in his mind what better way to take over the world then let the people be unaware they are even being taken over, or even if they are aware they are so comfortable and complacent they are fine with it. The robots who watch the cities and towns keep the people safe and are not mad tyrants or brutal monsters they give people directions, protect them from bandits, offer safe walks in the night, help get cats out of trees. I like to think this adds an interesting dynamic for the party to face as this warforged would be the BBEG of the entire campaign.

About magical Inquisitions. I had this character who was an outcast from this island city-state based on a combination of medieval Milan/Venice that, as a result of a world-altering magical calamity, outlawed all magic and instead embraced technology and was in the middle of a steampunk renaissance with factories producing automatic crossbows and knights swearing clockwork power armor. And before anyone asks, they are very isolationist and are content to act as a trade hub for the rest of the world while protecting their own borders from ’outsiders’.

Whelp... that feeling when you're running Tyranny of Dragons and get 15:26 mins into this video xD At least the players were level 8 when they found out about the end goal but only have small clues on how it'll happen

Great job on approaching cliches and tropes from a positive, constructive point of view. Too many people react negatively to the power of familiar symbols and themes.

So far mine have several villains 1) Vecna trapped in the Shadowfell trying to seize control of an ancient artefact the Crown of Rulership that he is very much vulnerable too needing help to return to the Prime Material Plane hoping this weakens its power letting him seize control. 2) Endemon the Guildmaster is trying to help free Vecna in return for lichdom his first attempt narrowly failed and now he's on the run looking to restore his fortunes. 3) Torag the Patriach a former Dawnfather Cleric now follower of the Strife Emperor his effort to seize power was overturned when a surviving Dawnfather Cleric aided by the Lantern Archon Kestra alerted Pelor to Torag's treachery forcing him to flee the city and underground but far from beaten. 4) The Grinner a former Royal Guard Commander and Paladin of the Strife Emperor he was recently forced to flee the city to assist in a pick up at the fishing port of Wrenn where his forces ran afoul of a Cult of the Cloaked Serpent that has taken over the Church of the Wildmother. He's a recurring nemesis intended as the big bad for one of the PCs whose yet to notice this fact! 5) Rhys Lythandor, Gith Warlock creator of the Regalia of Chaos and artefact that plays a major part in the campaign and his presence casts a very strong shadow over events in the game only time will tell before his legacy becomes more than a mere legend... Not sure if thats either enough or planned out well enough but it is a start!

One DND group I watch, Nat19, had a good example of an ancient evil being called upon in the form of a powerful demon, but they didn't find out about it until close to the end of the Campaign. And even then, there were several other factions who all had potential to be the big bad at the end of the game. It just depended on which group was taken out first via player agency. There were hints about what each faction was up to through random encounters and info gathering like stumbling upon a slaughtered church that had been sacrificed to demons, or a group of thieves and gangsters taking over a town to use as a stronghold while another faction had turned an entire forest into a Shadowfell-esque environment filled with monsters.

I've been chipping away at a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting for the past while myself, and your suggestions on how to approach that particular trope got me thinking about just my ideas for my campaign setting. For example, the question of how society hasn't rebuilt in so long reminded me of how originally the setting's present day was set nearly 900 years after the magical apocalypse, but then I realised that would have made basically everything in this world unrecognisable to whatever came before, so I've since condensed the timeline down to just roughly a century; long enough that the current world is all that a lot of people know, but still recent enough that one can still see vestiges of what this world once was. Also, it's less of a Mad Max/Fallout style apocalypse and more akin to Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind or Breath of the Wild, where society has slowly but surely started to rebuild and adapt to the dangers of this new world. Some societies attempt to rebuild the nations and kingdoms of the old world, while others have started fresh from scratch to build entirely new nations. I've also tried to avoid the "everything is a barren desert" model of apocalypse for my setting, since worlds that only allow for one kind of biome are super boring to me. While the world's different environments have been warped by the storms of wild magic that plague the land, there are still plenty of forests, jungles, mountains, swamps, oceans to explore (although there are still deserts).

Funny thing, I'm actually going to be starving a campaign this coming up weekend that actually combines a few of these ideas, I didn't expect it to have all of them on this video, but I'm confident that I've come up with a good campaign plot.

Thanks guys, I'm going to try to incorporate some of these ideas into my upcoming campaign centered around military and political conflict. Trying to go for a low magic world based around 3 major empires teetering on the brink of a global conflict but I think incorporating some of these ideas could give a more concrete direction my players can pursue in order to explore the narrative rather than just giving them a sandbox and trying to spitball the story. I deff don't want to railroad them but using some of these ideas I feel would be good ways to rope them back into the overarching story if it ever strays too far.

My favorite collect the pieces trope, is to have the characters and head houses already attaining items of such worth that are not recognizable. Until the villain of said story grows an understanding as the story progresses. Maybe they steal one heirloom from a player that starts the party’s search for the “villain” maybe that villain is a righteous NPC doing the deeds done for the greater good only for the party to group up on a hunt or to remain convinced that the hunt is a bad idea. Giving the artifacts low knowledge but high accessibility yet maintaining it as the big mystery and the mode of understanding as the moral dilemma is a personal favorite story path for my campaigns to follow.

Im doing a “rod of 7 parts” short campaign right now, but with fewer parts,, So far they dont yet know quite what theyre for,, just the simple “stop a great evil” and ideally the players will help me craft whatever this great evil may be as we go along

Well, thank you guys for this video. I am using the last two tropes together, actually for my very first campaign so these tips do help. Though I'm gonna talk about the plot just in case anyone wants to throw in any advice that be great? First off, it is what would be considered to be a glorified fetch quest. The item pieces they need to collect are shards of an orb that once assembled is basically The Weave in physical form. It's basically a "knot" of magical lines all coming together and forming into this crystal. If whole, it grants the user the use of a Wish spell, but has a 50% chance of shattering. It was how the Raven Queen came to be, she found it, wished for the death of the god of Death, then wished to take that God's place, and that second wish shattered the orb, sending pieces all across the PMP. Now, it's been hundreds of years, so how come no one else has found and restored it? Well, since the pieces are basically the Weave in physical form, and since the Weave is basically a layer that is underneath the physical layer of our world (as I see it), then when you try to find it by any magical means, you're basically looking for magic, in a magic world; it's hard to find something that is tied into the fabric of reality. You can only find it by physically searching for it, which you can hunt down by looking into folklore, etc. Now, a bit of my world: 80% of the drow population turned their backs on Lolth and joined with Eilistraee after a long uprising. It was bloody, and those drow left the Underdark and live within a settlement in a mountain range. Lolth, knowing of the Orb and it's pieces, is trying to find it to be allowed back into the PMP (the Gods are physically locked out). Tiamat has joined in to help because she wants the fuck out of Avernus. So, there are two cults trying to find the pieces, and when the campaign starts, they already have some pieces, so they know they can find the rest. The major problem is drawing this out so the players can reach higher levels, and also thinking of what the pieces can do when they start being put together, because obviously the more you have the stronger it is and more you can do with it.

Love your channel, I just sometimes wish there would be vliff notes version of some of the videos.

Follow-up to the Rod of Seven Parts - Thundercats (2011) leaned heavily into this trope with the power stones, one of which already resided in Liono's Sword of Omens. Could be cool to make an object(s) already in the PCs possession part of the MacGuffin. And the answer to how they came into the possession of the PCs could be side quests, or a whole other campaign.

Another way to spice up a campaign is to have a semi-friendly rival group of NPC adventurers in the background, especially if you're collecting items to beat the bad guy with. If your party messes up and doesn't get one or two, and feels like they might not make it, their rivals could show up in a clutch moment before the final battle with those items. Depending on the RP, they could join forces together, or try to one up each other during the battle and beat the baddies anyway, with a 'until we meet again' rematch promise and sequel bait at the end.