[Campaign]: Call of the Necromancer (CON)

By Brutalien, in Descent Quest Vault Open Beta

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Greetings everyone,

Finally after a long time I have fulfilled the Call of the Necromancer campaign.
You can find it on the Quest Vault under my nickname or filtering by "CON -".
I would be grateful for any feedback. Enjoy! :)

The campaign is played as follows:

1. Introduction

2. Act I - Prologue

3. Choose 2 out of 4 Act I elective quests (winner of previous quest decides)

4. i) Interlude A or B. If heroes won most quests in Act I (electives plus prologue) A is played. Otherwise play B.
ii) Interlude C or D. If heroes won the Introduction, play C. Otherwise play D.

5. Act II - Prologue

6. Choose 2 out of 4 (x2) Act II elective quests. Winner of previous quest decides. There are 8 quests, but according to the outcomes in Act I, the available are 4.

7. i) Finale A or B. If heroes won most quests in Act II (electives plus prologue) A is played. Otherwise play B.
ii) Finale C or D. If heroes won the Prologue in Act II, play C. Otherwise play D.

campaign_zps27ydswuf.png

UPDATE!
The Act I quests have been reviewed and changed a bit, mostly towards the heroes' favor.

Here are the links to the Quest Vault:

Introduction : Escaping Treason

~~~ ACT I: A Shadow Rising ~~~

Prologue I : The Postman's Creed

Elective 1 : The Goblinator

Elective 2 : The Scion Hybrid

Elective 3 : Secrets of the Swamp

Elective 4 : The Undeath Pact

Interludes A&B : The Man in the Obsidian Mask / Betrayal is a Symptom

Interludes C&D : On Fluxing Grounds / Casting Shadows

~~~ ACT II: Elements of Demise ~~~

Prologue II : A Glimpse of Evil

Elective 1A : Cavernous Blaze

Elective 1B : Playing with Fire

Elective 2A : Ethereal Chains

Elective 2B : Run like the Wind

Elective 3A : A Lily among Thorns

Elective 3B : Draining the Waterheart

Elective 4A : The Sword in the Stone

Elective 4B : Earthbound

~~~ FINALE: The Three Halves ~~~

Finales A&B : Ride the Lightning / Claws of the Beast

Finales C&D : Ghost of Perdition / Final Resistance

- PS: As a small play on words, you will notice a lot of titles and sub-titles in quests to be references to a few names in music or other pop-culture. Can you find them all? ;)

Edited by Brutalien
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Great work! I look forward to trying it!

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Hi, would you have any problem if i translate your campaign to spanish? of course, always telling you're the creator and i'm simply translating it.

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Hello Soyharo,

thanks for the interest. I wouldn't mind, you should also talk to Crog (member here). He also asked me to translate to Spanish, maybe together you can finish the translation faster :)
BUT!

Bear in mind, there will most probably be rules' updates with changes for the quests on the Quest Vault. I will try to keep these announcements to a minimum, because it is a bit of a fuss to post a new update for each change.
So, if I have gathered enough changes I will also post an update here.

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Yeah, thanks for the advice. I'm new to this community, but i'll try to contact him. Thanks for all :)

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To be deleted

Edited by Soyharo
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Update Bump!

The Act I quests have been reviewed and various changes were made.

I hope they balance things more.

Enjoy!

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Thank you for this. Its obvious you put a lot of effort into it. I will run them soon!

What backstory are you using? I'm unfamiliar with treason and explosions.

Edited by tekkamansoul
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Thanks for your comment. You're right, I did not mention in the first post the background story.

Well, basically, the storyline is more of a prequel of the Shadow Rune campaign.
Since I had to use the core set's contents, the story involves the same characters some years earlier to the main campaign of the game.

The Introductory quest puts the players in the middle of the action. Then a small flashback ensues that follows the events that happened that put the heroes in this mess. As you play on the story unfolds, until the second half of the Interlude which sets the players back to the present. Act II follows with different quests related to what happened in Act I. Finales bring down the curtain with two encounters, similar to the Interludes, but larger in time play.

In this campaign you find out:

- how Baron Zachareth came to acquire the first half of the Shadow Rune
- Lord Merick's descent into evil and his brother's resurrection
- Belthir's forced involvement
- Heinrich's role (prior servant to Zachareth)

Posted at

Thanks for your comment. You're right, I did not mention in the first post the background story.

Well, basically, the storyline is more of a prequel of the Shadow Rune campaign.

Since I had to use the core set's contents, the story involves the same characters some years earlier to the main campaign of the game.

The Introductory quest puts the players in the middle of the action. Then a small flashback ensues that follows the events that happened that put the heroes in this mess. As you play on the story unfolds, until the second half of the Interlude which sets the players back to the present. Act II follows with different quests related to what happened in Act I. Finales bring down the curtain with two encounters, similar to the Interludes, but larger in time play.

In this campaign you find out:

- how Baron Zachareth came to acquire the first half of the Shadow Rune

- Lord Merick's descent into evil and his brother's resurrection

- Belthir's forced involvement

- Heinrich's role (prior servant to Zachareth)

Sounds awesome. I have only read through the first couple, and only played the Intro quest, but I like the storytelling and design so far.

Mind if I give some focused feedback with a group of 2 heroes?

The Intro I quest was actually... very balanced. The OL won, but if the heroes were slightly more coordinated they would have made it through. (They got stuck in the goblin room since they were going for the key and I blocked the way back around with the elemental). I like the objective, went pretty quickly, but I think the unique Elemental's Aura ability *might* be a bit too much. Combined with Fire, you can easily wipe out a group of heroes with a couple clever moves.

Will post more when I get a chance to play again.

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Thanks for this, I've just had a quick read though and it looks very good. I've not long since bought the core set and am just starting on the campaign. I will play this one next.

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Just a couple of points regarding the pdf guide -

There doesn't appear to be anything saying which Act II encounters to play depending on who won the Act I encounters. This really needs to be added.

You need to make a front sheet for it so that when you print it off double sided the quest map is on the right of the setup guide and you can see both without having to flip pages. This could include the quest path/victory condition info. I just took your first post and inserted that as a front page and it keeps my OCD happy :) . I might go back and do a new cover sheet with the encounter choice by victory path included.

Also, if you did a cover sheet as an index of encounters or named the encounters on a quest map, it would be nice to see the encounter names rather than con-ele1-act1, etc. on the page headers. Not having looked at how the quest builder works, don't know if that's possible.

Just me being picky, sorry. Otherwise it still looks brilliant. :)

Edited by AnimalMkIV
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Thank you for your interest and recommendations! They are gladly accepted. :)

I guess you found the .pdf from the related thread on BBG. :)


The rationale behind the "cryptic" names of "CON-STH.x" is so that they create a relation to the overall campaign on the Quest Vault.

Unfortunately, there is no way to link the quests there, so I had to come up with something that is easily recognizable.

I wanted these quests to belong on the same collection - if I only had the names of the quests, they would get lost in the huge number of existing ones on the vault.


That was the initial solution. Now that the campaign is finished and (almost) finalized, yes, the names should be added at the top of the page instead.

Unfortunately, this is not available since the title is automatically generated by the Quest Vault.


I had in mind to correct the "booklet" once I have finished with the rules. I am still in the process of going through the Act II quests a third time, fixing some rules and other miswordings.

Recently, I got contacted by OneOgre who is kind (and skillful!) enough to make a nicer-looking booklet.

He even plans to incorporate a map, which is great! I really like this collaborative approach of the community to create something nice for a game we all love.


So, in the end, thank you for your input, it is a very good solution for people already planning to run the campaign, whatever its minor flaws are now.

Expect an update, with fixes or rules (and/or) a pretty booklet!

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Yeah, I got the PDF from the Geek.

I'm glad you appreciate my comments, I was tired when I wrote them and on reading them back today thought they might come across a bit harsh.

Good to know you are still tweaking and updating things and getting help from other members. It does seem like a good, helpful community.

Cheers

Paul

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Update bump!


This time around, the Act II quests have been reviewed and tweaked to reach a better balance.


This concludes the playtesting.

Unless the campaign is played wildly and comments for changes are made, the rules will remain as they are now.

The focus now lies in creating a booklet that would "dress" nicely the quests and will additionally provide a map.


Happy questing! ;)

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Update bump!
This time around, the Act II quests have been reviewed and tweaked to reach a better balance.
This concludes the playtesting.
Unless the campaign is played wildly and comments for changes are made, the rules will remain as they are now.
The focus now lies in creating a booklet that would "dress" nicely the quests and will additionally provide a map.
Happy questing! ;)

Playing it right now. Hopefully, you guys come up with the booklet soon! We're very excited about this campaign.

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mmm when I click on any of the links it just takes me back to sign on page?

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Hmm, not sure, but it might be that you need to log on via

http://tools.fantasyflightgames.com/

So, log out, go to that page, click on "Remember me" and sign in.

If it doesn't work, you can still go to the "Browse" page of the Quest Vault and search the quests by Author ("Brutalien").

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I feel like I can never have enough campaigns on hand. Thanks very much for posting! :D

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I don't know about anyone else, but that link is broken to me.

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yes, that link is broken