Campaign Environments

In the standard adventure campaign characters are drawn from a wide range of classes and races. The heroes travel through a variety of lands, meeting different races and cultures. Your knowledge of dwarves may now be used to good effect to develop strongholds, and to provide additional background information for player characters.

The All-Dwarf Party

In this campaign all of the characters are dwarves. There are no wizards in the party. Warriors, priests, thieves, warrior/priests, and warrior/thieves may be present, but there are no dwarf wizards. There may be reasons for human wizards or gnome illusionists to join the party to alleviate the deficiency in magic. You may decide to retain the true dwarven flavor by allowing wizards only as opponents.

This type of campaign works well when the dwarves are beset by an outside threat. Perhaps the stronghold is under attack by hordes of monsters and no other assistance can be secured.

The Outcasts' Party

In the outcast, party the player characters are principally or exclusively dwarves, but are outcasts from their own society. Perhaps they befriended an elven wizard or warrior/wizard. They may have been falsely accused of some heinous crime, murdering their lord or betraying their own stronghold to orcs. They would wander the world, above or below ground, seeking to clear their good names and to become wealthy and famous heroes.

The Single Class Party

Here, all the characters have the same class. They are all warriors, priests, thieves, or multi-classed. They may be part of the same military force, temple, or guild, and may have been given a mission to perform. This campaign can be very exciting while the group has a clear and common goal. If there is no goal, however, the campaign can quickly fall apart. For this reason it works best as a limited-duration adventure, with everyone understanding that the group of characters will disband when their quest is completed and a new group will be created.

The Vendetta Party

This campaign is similar to the standard adventuring party except that it emphasizes interracial animosity. The characters are members of different races (or subraces) and each has a grudge against the others. There may have been fierce wars and broken alliances in the recent past, so that there is no trust among them. This type of party needs to have clear adventuring goals that depend upon the cooperation of the whole party, in order to achieve a final purpose. Otherwise, its members will fall to squabbling endlessly, and it would probably end in them killing each other. Ideally, by the end of the mission, they will have learned enough about each other to overcome their prejudices.

The Vendetta Campaign

This campaign involves one of the traditional enemies of dwarves: orcs, goblins, elves, or humans. Perhaps the elves are trying to discredit the dwarves or shut down their trading operations, or the dwarves have decided that they don't want humans expanding into their mountains. The dwarves may have explained to the humans that they are not welcome and the humans responded by murdering the dwarves' ambassadors. If the humans are a young race, they may have been tricked into an evil alliance by crafty giants or vengeful elves.

The Wide World Campaign

In the wide world campaign the dwarves travel around the globe, often in the company of other races. Dwarves in this campaign may visit strongholds, but they travel primarily through human lands. This is closest in tone to what many players would consider a "typical" AD&D® game.

The Deep Earth Campaign

In this campaign the dwarves can be members of any subrace and the entire campaign is set underground. It may be deep within the earth where deep dwarves and duergar live. It may be a stronghold of hill or mountain dwarves who have either turned their backs on the world above or have had little contact with the outside.

A big advantage in this campaign is that you don't need to design any of the world's surface and you can effectively dispense with the histories of humans and elves. You will need maps of the extensive caverns and dungeons where the campaign is to take place. The deep earth campaign can take place within caverns or a hollow earth. It may involve an epic journey to the center of the globe.

While some people consider this setting limiting, it really is no different from a surface campaign. The biggest difference is that characters never see the sky. Anything that is possible on the surface is possible beneath the surface (this is a fantasy game, after all). And the unusual setting can make even familiar and worn-out plots seem fresh and exciting!

Dwarf Wars

Interdwarven warfare can involve wars between subraces or between different strongholds of the same subrace. It will work best if one side is clearly the bad guys and the other side (preferably the one the PCs are on) is clearly the good guys. The player characters may be able to resolve the dispute through clever diplomacy or intervention before the war escalates out of control. It could be a blood feud between two clans that has been raging for years and will only end when one side has been destroyed or driven away.

The Lost Clan

Considering the way dwarves move, expand, and relocate, it is not unreasonable to assume that occasionally an entire clan could drop from sight. The PCs may be an expedition sent out from the central stronghold to track down and reestablish contact with a lost clan of dwarves that disappeared generations before. Or they could be from that lost clan, trying to work their way back to the surface of the world to once again link up with other dwarves.

The Siege Campaign

A siege campaign is set within a stronghold or a series of strongholds. The dwarves are under constant attack by bands of evil monsters in a fight to the death. The evil creatures are probably under the sway of a powerful and charismatic tyrant who is leading them on a rampage across the dwarves' territory. For added tension, the dwarves may possess a powerful artifact that this tyrant needs to guarantee his conquests, and now he will stop at nothing to get it. The evil forces may have already captured the upper or lower levels of the dwarves' stronghold, along with hundreds of captives, and cut the dwarves off from the outside world.

For a different twist, the PCs may be a returning party of adventurers who find themselves unable to get back into their stronghold because it is ringed by besieging enemies. Or this scenario could be combined with the lost clan concept, and the characters must escape through the enemy camp, find the fabled lost clan, and return at its head to drive the monsters from the gates and save the stronghold.

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