How to Turn Candlekeep Mysteries Into an Epic Campaign! - D&D Beyond
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- Опубликовано: 10 сен 2024
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Joe Starr & Jeremy Blum discuss turning Candlekeep Mysteries from a collection of one-shot adventures into a long-running epic campaign.
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Joe Starr is the head of content for D&D Beyond and Fandom Tabletop. He’s a stand-up comedian, writer, and Emmy-nominated producer known for his work on Honest Trailers and Screen Junkies. Follow him on Twitter: / joestarr187
Jeremy Blum is a video game and tabletop RPG blogger. Follow him on Twitter: / pixelgrotto
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#DungeonsAndDragons #DnD #CandlekeepMysteries
Have you had a chance to run any of the adventures from Candlekeep Mysteries yet? Which is your favorite?
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Playing D&D with my girlfriend has been an incredible experience. I did the the first adventure from Candlekeep Mysteries as a way to save a long lost friend. So I changed the person who was locked inside and created a hook for her to save her friend and get into candlekeep. We had a blast! As we both love cats a lot I also let her keep one of the cats from the mansion as a familiar.
Dear WotC, please make a second volume for Candlekeep Mysteries, fleshing out a cohesive campaign integrating both books; taking characters from the humble beginnings of Level 1 all the way to becoming Heroic Champions at Level 20...!?!
The Time Dragons of Chronepsis - Level 17
The Gaping Maw of Dendar the Night Serpent - Level 18
The Vortex of Ineffable Damnation - Level 19
The Skull of Alaundo the Seer - Level 20
I am planing to mix Candlekeep Misterys with the Golden Vault, using the first Candlekeep Adventure to get the players a base and hide Secret Society of the Golden Vault deep in Candlekeep itself. Not sure, if it works. We will see.
My recommendation would be to make the PCs employees of Candlekeep who get assigned odd and dangerous while they work on their Avowed application or whatever. Keeps them centered at Candlekeep (without needing a new entry book every time) and gives them a reason to get assigned quests they might otherwise not have interest in.
Some possible connections between the adventures:
Have the PCs run into various janitors from Kandlekeep Dekonstruktion beforehand, giving them some sense of the characters and how Candlekeep admin treats them. Perhaps use them in place of the random Avowed in earlier stories. If the players take a liking to a particular Avowed, put them in the Livestock.
Make the tiefling knight the PCs question in Mazfroth's Mighty Digressions be the tiefling knight at the spa in The Price of Beauty, or otherwise put an earlier NPC at the spa.
Make the dead lamia in Mazfroth's Mighty Digressions a yuan-ti. If the players help bring her back, she and her gang are a part of the good yuan-ti in The Book of Cylinders.
The meenlocks from A Deep and Creeping Darkness and Shemshine from Shemshine's Bedtime Rhyme can easily be given connections to the Princess of Shadow Glass from Scriviner's Tale, or Gaernoo from Sarah of Yellowcrest Manor, both of which make good candidates for overarching villains. The Lore of Lurue could easily be modified to introduce elements of the Princess of Shadow Glass (or her archenemy, the Queen of Air and Darkness), perhaps in place of Malar. Gaernoo could be a patron of Bak Mei in The Book of Inner Alchemy or Valin in The Canopic Being, or even Xanthoria. As a being of forbidden occult knowledge, it could provide excellent thematic contrast, as he offers knowledge without the effort Candlekeep demands, for a price. The Orcus figure in The Book of the Raven could be swapped out with a Gaernoo totem to introduce him early on. He could even be responsible for the corruption of Arrant Quill in The Curious Tale of Wisteria Vale. (Princess of Shadow Glass could do that as well.)
Valin of The Canopic Being would actually be my choice for a main overarching villain, perhaps in competition with Gaernoo. Her divinations mean that she can know everything about the PCs, have mysterious agents do things in earlier adventures, and have contingencies to screw the party over even if they destroy her heart and permakill her. As an easy example, she could have put The Scriviner's Tale in her treasure pile, knowing that even if the PCs defeated her, they'd read the book and curse themselves.
Another possibility for some connective tissue would be to use the Nether Scrolls. The Nether Scroll of Azumar in Alkazaar's Appendix is quite powerful, but weaker Nether Scrolls could appear earlier, as the target of the evil yuan-ti in The Book of Cylinders, in Lord Yellowcrest's possession in Sarah of Yellowcrest Manor, or in the possession of the hags in Price of Beauty, Bak Mei in Inner Alchemy or Valin in Canopic Being. Once the PCs get the Nether Scroll of Azumar in Alkazaar's Appendix, the set is complete, and something attacks Candlekeep to get it. Perhaps Gaernoo cultists? Xanthoria? (Settingn up a final showdown.) Evil yuan-ti? Do the PCs come to realize that Valin planned all along for them to remove the scroll from it's safe hiding spot?
Did you see the disclaimer in the book? The entire campaign could be solving the mystery of Alaundo's warning:
"DISCLAIMER: THIS BOOK HAS BEEN COMPILED BY THE AVOWED OF CANDLEKEEP, IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE WISHES OF THE LATE ALAUNDO THE SEER, WHOSE PROPHECIES FORESHADOW ALL EVENTS OF CONSEQUENCE IN THE FORGOTTEN REALMS. ALAUNDO WARNED THAT ANYONE WHO UNRAVELS ALL THE MYSTERIES OF THIS TOME WILL BE HUNTED DOWN BY THE TIME DRAGONS OF CHRONEPSIS, TOSSED INTO THE GAPING MAW OF DENDAR THE NIGHT SERPENT, AND CAST INTO THE VORTEX OF INEFFABLE DAMNATION. HA HA. WHAT A SENSE OF HUMOR, THAT ALAUNDO!"
Our group just finished CoS.
We started the campaign with the sole surviving PC (now NPC) exciting the woods and try to ditch a forgery of the Tome of Strahd.
Our new party uses this to gain entrance to Candlekeep in which we then get ahold of the book of the raven.
So far so fun.
Anything after CoS is fun though
That's a fantastic thread to link the two!
I'd like to see ideas of how to insert them and/or string them together outside of Candle Keep. I've got my daughters in a new game, and one of them started with a scholar's pack, which includes a book of lore. That happened to be The Joy of Extradimensional Spaces, which won't unlock until they draw near to the two trees in the forest that serve as the permanent doorway to the mansion.
Without having looked at the Candlekeep book or related lore, just wondering if it could be played as something like Warehouse 13, a place to lock away dangerous artifacts.
I'm planning on running the campaign just like that. Kind of a monster of the week thing with a group of "specialists" who deal with issues over the scholars paygrade. Some adventures require more work than others to make them linked, of course.
My interpretation of Candlekeep was a mix of the SCP Foundation and a crushingly apathetic and slow bureaucracy. The PCs are Candlekeep employees/contractors paid to do odd jobs and fix "unusual problems." They have a jerk boss who gives them missions like "One of the Avowed has been missing for three days. Find him." and "Books keep turning into monsters and attacking people. Get to the bottom of it." and "This book has a ghost in it that keeps annoying people reading more important things. Make her go away."
I'm prepping to run the campaign, and it's one part that, one part monestary, one part library.
Certainly! I'm planning on setting up the extradimentional space as a sort of doctor who TARDIS. Something that they will slowly be able to travel through space, dimensions and even time. As they unlock teleportation, dimension and time travel, they'll find themselves stuck places while events unfold. I can weave in any adventure I want for the players in-between the adventures in the book and it will fit and make sense when otherwise they would be extremely different settings. Can do a western one week and Sci fi the next.
I plan on trying to connect the book together in my upcoming campaign. I plan on having them learn that writing about each of thier adventures will qualify as a work that permits entry again.
I'm having a big trouble making a campaign out of candlekeep, my mistake was to make the PCs have unique and separated. Now I have a bunch a heavy roleplay players that would leave candlekeep as soon as they characters don't have any reason to stay there...
How did you solve this? I’ve ran into this issue too.
@@user-wi4zt9ij5g well... I didn't, the campaign ended. But there a few tips I can share: 1°: If you just want to play all campaigns separately, tell the players and don't care to much with their characters backstorys, if they want to leave candle keep, let them leave and make the player choose a new character. 2°: If you really want to play a start to end campaign, read the entire book (at least a bit of all missions) before DMing, it will help you see the story as a whole. 3°: Make the characters backstorys towards the candle keep itself, not a particular mission. 4°: Keep in mind that not all NPC's in candle keep are really strong (actually only a few), and make the characters feel included inside the fort, treat them well. 5°: And the most important: if the players do not want to help create a start to end campaign if you want, change the player. It should be a job of everyone to help create the adventure, not only the DM.
I am doing a campaign with the candlekeep mysteries books. The PCs are investigators that discover and tries to understand the books of the library. This is set in my own setting and the Library is a really old one. The city of which this library exists is a city formerly run by a gold dragon that was taken down by humans and other races to create a new empire.
It is a episodic campaign in which each adventure is run like a semi connected oneshots. Just started so doesn't know exactly how it will go, but seems to work pretty good. Between each adventure we use downtime from Xanathars.
Players characters as detectives!!
@@DnDBeyond I feels like a fun idea. Also making use of the Academy patron from Tasha. 😎
I feel like alot of this video is ideas for campaigns using candlekeep as a setting and not so much ideas for how to string the adventures in candlekeep mysteries together.
Yeah... aside from the league of villains things there's not much.
Here are a few possible connections:
Combine the tiefling knight NPC the players question in Mazfroth's Mighty Digressions with the tiefling knight PC at the spa in The Price of Beauty. (Or put another NPC the players will remember at the spa.)
If the PCs help (or least don't stop) the resurrection of the lamia in Mazfroth's Mighty Digressions, make her and her jackalweres a part of the good yuan-ti in The Book of Cylinders.
Alter the plot of The Lore of Lurue to involve either the Princess of Shadow Glass from The Scriviner's Tale, or her archrival the Queen of Air and Darkness. Perhaps even replace the cult of Malar with one of them.
Make the Scarlet Sash from The Book of the Raven be Arrant Quill's former employers in The Curious Tale of Wisteria Vale, not the Harpers.
Use earlier Candlekeep stories like Shemshine's Bedtime Rhyme and PC downtime to introduce some of the characters from Kandlekeep Dekonstruktion, giving the players a better sense of their motivations when the time comes.
If the PCs ever get stuck, have an NPC arrive with a mysterious letter with some hints that they were paid by unknown parties to give to the PCs. This letter is from Valin in The Canopic Being, who has substantial knowledge and wishes for the PCs to succeed at all their tasks until they reach her.
The meenlocks in A Deep and Creeping Darkness and Shemshine from Shemshine's Bedtime Rhyme have the potential to connect to several later villains. The meenlocks are fey and Shemshine is a vindictive spirit, so they could easily have a relationship to the Princess of Shadow Glass or the Queen of Air and Darkness. (Hags like those in The Price of Beauty also often have relationships with fey.) Alternatively, they could be connected to the Great Old One Gaernoo from Sarah of Yellowcrest Manor, if you change meenlocks from fey to aberrations.
Gaernoo in general can make a good connective tissue, as an entity that gives out dangerous knowledge for little work but a high price (in contrast to Candlekeep, where research takes hard work). Change the Orcus figurine in The Book of the Raven to a Gaernoo one to introduce him. Numerous later villains could have consulted or served Gaernoo in one way or another - Zikran, Bak Mei, Valin, Arrant Quill, Zikzokrishka the dracolich in Alkazaar's Appendix, or even Xanthoria. (Similar things can be done with the Princess of Shadow Glass or the Queen of Air and Darkness). They should not ALL have this connection, but several of them certainly can.
Since Valin has seen many timelines, consider putting The Scriviner's Tale among her treasures. The PCs will undoubtedly open it and get cursed, changing the curse plotline from an out-of-nowhere accident the GM forced on the players to an act of cruel revenge by a defeated villain.
Alkazaar's Appendix may end with the PCs acquiring the Nether Scroll of Azumar. (Though the story encourages the ending where the scroll is taken into the afterlife, I dislike that ending because it seems odd they couldn't have done that earlier.) Consider having a whole set of Nether Scrolls appear throughout the campaign, in the hands of the Scarlet Sash, Bak Mei, Valin or Lord Yellowcrest. With the last and greatest one secured, the PCs have gotten Candlekeep a complete set... which means you can have a final showdown as the phylactery-reconstituted Zikzokrishka (or some other faction like Gaernoo cultists or the Queen of Air and Shadow) attack Candlekeep in full force to seize them.
Yeah I'm about to run this and was hoping a lengthy video would have something to it. I like the throwing out of ideas like the players are avowed or Dan brown (or hopefully much better) type novel, but I'd have like a run through on these key elements from each adventure: what the book is, what the suggested hooks are and even the villains (which they mention) and then riff on ways to make common threads. This is what I've been doing but I hoped to find some new ideas here. I did see that there's some good ideas with the working for the Avowed or the idea of the illuminati, but the meat of this video could've really been done in four minutes.
Hey, you can't find a "better face" than Joe Starr! Just saying.. Perfect host!
We try to keep his ego in check, so please keep compliments to a minimum.
The dream is to be a nerd for a living
I am creating a patron Don Meepo for the pcs who has/will pay their entrance fee. Of course being members of crime boss family comes with problems.
Love it!
Building off of the Candlekeep as Hogwarts idea, the permanent Mansion spell from 'Joy of Extradimensional Spaces' is totally the Room of Requirement. Would make a great base for your party of Avowed rabble-rousers within the keep itself, especially since it's the first level adventure.
Yes! We were thinking the same thing! Great idea.
Nice! I like it. Which of the adventures have you played/run so far? Which was the best?
@@d20play Haven't run any yet (thinking about putting together a campaign based around it though, which is why I jumped on this video as soon as I saw it.)
I have gotten to play Zikran's Zephyrean Tome, though it was somewhat modified to fit into an already running campaign. Was quite happy with it, even when the confrontation in the adventure proved rather more challenging than I initially expected.
@@timothyhebert4792 I have just run the first so far. The Joy of Extradimensional Spaces. It was very cool.
Really good one. Lots of brain food, thank you.
I hadn't read this yet. But can you have them find the next book at the end of the first one. Which would easily connect them all together. Or if nothing else if you have to use the library. It tells them what book to find. Find letters or something with names from future stories thru out the books. .
would be funny that you find out the entire campaign was in the equivalent of an elder scroll, and every thing you did was to prepare you for a great threat that never came or came and passed but you never made it out of the scroll until now centuries or millennia later.
Looks cool😃
We think so, too!
All great ideas!
Any chance to mix up the guests now that you're done with Candlekeep stuff? I love to watch people like Maude Garrett, Trisha Hershberger, and TJ Storm play but rarely hear them talk about D&D.
What is this about dongs?
Panzercut
Imagine linking Candlekeep and Van Richten’s as a campaign after running CoS. Can you spell EPIC?
It's definitely doable! Imagine, your players travel to Candlekeep in search of knowledge on dealing with whatever they've carried on from their nightmares in the mists...only to find more problems in Candlekeep!
Call me petty but I find it odd that Jeremy can pronounce grimoire correctly but not tome. lol
I don't think it's a good idea. It's a series of one-shots which I just parachute into larger adventures and campaigns. I've seen attempts at knitting them together as a campaign and it's pretty desperate stuff IMO
There's some great stuff in there for linking them. But you'd have to actually try to do the work.
I'm waiting for the missing alignments from stat blocks to be added in grrr
Also the books layout is atrocious. Very disappointing book.
You're supposed to determine the alignment and gender of the characters when not listed.
I don't really like the idea since it's another thing I need to keep track of but it's an idea I suppose.
I agree somewhat on the arrangement of info. You can see where fitting to the page has been done. That said, I like how they describe the books and hooks at the beginning. I'd have liked to have seen tables like Candlekeep organizational structure and the villain intentions. There's one table about the adventures but it doesn't do a good job of making the synopsis for each. It's merely the broadest of strokes and reading the adventures you see those strokes are so generalized that your playing something entirely different.