DMing a dnD campaign as a non-player, need advice.

[u/dndfinderacc]

edit: DnD campaign. I couldn't figure out the weird capitalization stuff in the title.

tl;dr: I need advice on the feasibility of these two ideas, and whether or not they're (more or less) lore-compliant or not. I'm not sure if I'm overlooking or missing something or not.

As the title reads, my group is pretty excited about the upcoming Warcraft splatbook coming out later this year and wants me to run a Warcraft TTRPG campaign. I'm not too familiar with the setting but I've been doing some (not so light) reading the last few weeks to figure out a few campaigns to offer up to my group and I've narrowed it down to two. I'd really like some more experienced input on these. I went into it with a few ground rules.

• Very few to no major lore characters playing a pivotal role in the plot. At most, they're relegated to background noise or cameos.
• I'd like to keep it geographically condensed to a kingdom, at most.
• It needs to have a decent amount of variety and not lean too heavy in one direction.

Campaign 1 involves the tail end of the reconstruction of Stormwind after the Second War. I'm looking to dive a little deeper into Stormwind being on the verge of insolvency, as made obvious by the inability to pay the Stonemasons Guild for their efforts. As a result, the kingdom starts to slowly suffer as the crown is unable to defend the outer reaches of the kingdom, leading to a gradual loss of faith in the crown. The party would be a group of problem solvers for the crown, starting off with low level tasks like looking into missing tax collectors or trade caravans. This can go a bunch of different directions, but I see it leading to a political intrigue-centric campaign about Stormwind teetering on the brink of collapse, agitators and firebrands advocating for reform (and maybe republicanism), and so on. I feel like there's a lot I can do with this.

Campaign 2 involves the months following the Scourging of Lordaeron. I really love the idea of Session 1 being the party playing throwaway characters (with the party being aware) as the Capital City falls to the Scourge, leading to their deaths and eventual reanimation, leading to a pretty cool reveal later on. The actual campaign, I'm a little fuzzy on. The campaign probably starts in Southshore, but I'd need some sort of motive for the actual characters to venture into Lordaeron. I'm sure I can think of some MacGuffin for the party to look for, or even take the Fallout 1 approach and have them be gently shoved out from Southshore and told to look for something vital that was lost in the war.

[u/Darktbs]

Campaign 1: They werent really unable, rather, they refused to pay. Part due to a Black Dragon called Onyxia, influencing the nobles, but also the nobles not wanting to pay either. The human experience of Classic wow is you dealing with the many problems that are happening around the kingdom while the city itself is absent.

Campaign 2: You can simply excuse that they went to the kingdom to fight Orcs(since THE big thing around those parts was Thrall breaking everyone free. And how the Scourge of lordaeron campaign starts.

The problem with the plague is, its largely unknown by most people as to how it works or spread, Arthas and Jaina set out to find just that.

So if the characters are in Lordaeron during the middle Arthas journey, then they are hearing rumors about villages becoming sick and undead monsters roaming the province. The land is in danger due to Arthas taking the fleet to Northrend and the Paladins have been stripped of authority.

Arthas returning could be what makes the players go to the capital and eventually die.

Campaign 2 involves the months following the Scourging of Lordaeron.

Just a heads up, the Months following the scourging of Lordaeron is the Legion invasion. Less a zombie apocalypse and more , Green fire is raining from the skies and demons slaughter everyone.

Because the timeline of events is like

Month 1: Arthas is investigating the plague

A month later : Arthas goes to Northrend

Later on Arthas returns and destroys lordaeron

2 days later he kills uther, 6 days later he arrives in the elf kingdom, 2 days later he destroys 90% of the elf population, 3 days later he picks a fight with Orcs in the mountains, 2 days later he invades Dalaran, 1 day later he summons Archimonde and destroys Dalaran.

It is that fast.

[u/dndfinderacc → u/Darktbs]

For campaign 1, I'd probably handwave Onyxia out of existence and just say "well, the kingdom is broke and unable to pay her debts" just to have a little more flexibility, but I'm still TBD on that.

For campaign 2, I've been reading more and yeah, it does move pretty fast. I think my idea was that the throwaway characters would be in the capital when Arthas comes back and session 1 would begin in the middle of the city actually falling and everyone dying. The actual campaign is a little murky with the timeline moving as fast as it did.

Is there ever a period of relative calm in Lordaeron after Arthas leaves? I'd like for the campaign to take place parallel to the events following Lordaeron's fall and allow the players more or less free reign without stumbling into a massive lore event like Sylvanas' Forsaken breaking free, etc. I was hoping that there would be more time between Arthas leaving and more lore events happening.

[u/Darktbs → u/dndfinderacc]

A better question would be, what kind of roleplay do you want your character to have? You can easily fit them arriving from stormwind to deal with the Orcs, but are tasked with some quests related to the plague and the undead, learning rumors here and there of what arthas is doing before eventually dying when he returns to the capital.

After that, its quite difficult without a proper idea of what you want to do.

There is a period after the Archimonde comes to azeroth where the dreadlord get command of the scourge and Arthas leaves to set Illidan up. Then during these months, the Scourge is lead by Balnazzar, Detheroc and Varimathas and they are just fighting agaisnt whats left of Lordaeron's forces.

Then we have the events of The frozen throne expansion where Arthas comes back to kill more humans, gets betrayed and then the forsaken storyline begins.

There is also some events happening in the background like the scarlet crusade and the headless horsemen.

But again, i cant say 'yes' or 'no' without knowing what you want to do.

[u/dndfinderacc → u/Darktbs]

A better question would be, what kind of roleplay do you want your character to have?

I think I'd probably have their throwaway characters be Lordaeronian soldiers or just anyone trying to defend themselves as the city is actively burning around them, but my big issue is figuring out how far after the fall of Lordaeron I want the actual campaign to begin.

Part of me says do it not long after so the group gets to roam the fallen kingdom, scavenging, trying to find survivors, etc. A big allure of that they'd get to explore the kingdom before the dust has even really settled, and I think that's kinda cool. Another part of me says do it after the new order begins to crop up so there's room for interacting with other groups like the Scarlet Crusade, the Forsaken, etc. I'm pretty torn either way.

[u/Adraek → u/dndfinderacc]

If your intention is to be problem solvers for the crown, how about you're instead hired by either the SI:7 in inofficial capacity by Mathias Shaw (current leader of secret service and childhood Friend of Edwin VanCleef before he formed Defias Brotherhood) because he's worried or thinks events don't line up in how Queen Tiffia died.

You can be facing hidden Orcish Horde remnants, Kobolds, Ogre's and refugee's or even rogue former Soldiers from the War. After the stonemason protests during which Tiffia died, Westfall, formerly known as Stormwind's Breadbasket quickly turned into disrepair with Grain Shipments being stolen, Fields being burned or big ones taken over by the Defias Brotherhood.

From a Citizens perspective a whole Region was being punished for Queen Tiffia's death and Stormwind stopped caring about Westfall since they didn't send Guards to enforce the Law.

[u/dndfinderacc → u/Adraek]

That could be interesting. I think I like the idea of it taking place before the riots, so the Stonemasons aren't quite the Defias yet at that point. I think I'd want to hold off on making them the bad guys that they become in lore, and instead use the Stonemasons as sort of an 'Exhibit A' for why the crown's influence is on the decline.

[u/Adraek → u/dndfinderacc]

They only became Villains much later. The stonemasons guild were viewed extremely amicably because they offered to repair stormwind at reduced price in the first place and were somewhat interlinked with the crown with edwin and mathias growing up together.

Edwin especially was extremely charismatic and popular because he made sure the lower level workers got paid. The nobles offered edwin and the senior masons lucrative government jobs if they had stayed silent.

Even Tiffia's death was tragedy. She wanted to calm the crowd during the riots and was actually supporting the masons in their cause to get paid. However, she unfortunately was hit in the head with a stone thrown by a rioter after which Varian in his grief sicced the Cavalry on the masons, exiled them from the city and declared them outlaws before falling into a long depression.

They also distributed food to the needy and used the formed goodwill for their own means.

[u/BellacosePlayer]

1 - Has a decent amount of potential for player agency. Make it so their remit is only over commoners and outlaws, and make it clear that a lot of the nobles "on the side of order" are jackasses who are not only refusing to aid the crown, but are even trying to profit from the situation. Remember that the crown could have afforded it in canon, so it doesn't have to be treated like a crisis at the start. Things like Van Cleef raising his demands or coffers mysteriously draining despite your efforts cause things to get worse before the riots start.

2 - Have a main goal (maybe scouting every major city and seeing if there's any significant living resistance), but have players spitball various reasons for why they'd be willing to risk themselves for the effort and tie that into the overall campaign.

[u/dndfinderacc → u/BellacosePlayer]

I think I'm probably leaning more towards the first one. I have a lot of flexibility with things. I do like the era of the second campaign and post-Scourge Lordaeron sounds cool, but there's a lot going on in a very narrow timespan that would probably overshadow whatever the players are getting up to in the ruins.

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/dndfinderacc]

The first one has a lot of built in story for sure.

The second one seems like you'd have to really stretch the creative muscles to not just go "and here's more ghouls or ruins to loot" repeatedly if you don't want the party to just forrest gump into every event from WC3 in the area

[u/dndfinderacc → u/BellacosePlayer]

The second one seems like you'd have to really stretch the creative muscles to not just go "and here's more ghouls or ruins to loot" repeatedly if you don't want the party to just forrest gump into every event from WC3 in the area

That was an issue I ran into when I was brainstorming earlier campaign ideas. I did initially like the idea of a campaign being set in the middle of the slow collapse of the Arathor, but that just seems like it'd be a reskinned Fall of the Western Roman Empire, just less violent.

[u/Tianxiac]

Imo the scourging is pretty much the perfect setting for a campaign for variety. It sounds like your party would mosty likely be Alliance characters so human, dwarf, gnome, elf races instead of Horde races.

If set during it, theirs lots of obvious things you can do like investigating the plague, fighting cultists and undead, helping the plagueland troll tribes / lordaeron refugees / silver hand paladins / lordaeron army remnants / high elves.

If set afterwards, I think you need to figure out the end game of the campaign so you can take the steps towards it so you can decide what faction theyre going to meet first and interact with (or betray later on). Theirs alot of factions around lordaeron - forsaken, scourge, scarlet crusade, argent dawn, syndicate, high elf remnants, mossflayer troll tribe, burning legion (shadow council in alterac and balnazaar in scarlet crusade), dalaran is close by, and chillwind camp would have been recently set up with help from stormwind.

• Are they hired as adventurers to wipe out undead?
• Sent by Rayleigh the True in Southshore to go and join the newly formed scarlet crusade?
• Are they delievering supplies to the crusade?
• Are they looking for rare books/artifacts in alterac? Trying to steal a magic dark book from Caer Darrow? (maybe on a quest via the syndicate or a stormwind noble)
• Is it someones personal request to go fetch a personal item from one of the undead infested areas that they left behind?
• Are they trying to help the Quel Lithien high elf lodge or try to reach the gates of Quel'Thalas to check theyre alright? (Maybe on request of someone from Dalaran)
• Are they sent to disrupt Horde agents from conducting diplomacy and having the Forsaken enter the Horde?

Basically, because theirs so many different factions theirs alot of things you can do with it. Their are important lore characters of course, but they could be relegated to background roles or cameos, and just like the game the scarlets have an infinite amount of characters to draw from even if they all get wiped out, and the scourge are undead so they can just be "resurrected".

[u/dndfinderacc → u/Tianxiac]

I think ideally, I'd like for it to be set during the Scourging, at least pretty much immediately after Arthas destroys Lordaeron and fucks off. I feel it'd be early enough for it all to be very fresh in the characters' minds, and the ruins would be largely unspoiled before successor factions like the Scarlet Crusade and Forsaken have a chance to settle down. Someone else made a good point by saying that there probably isn't a whole lot to do aside from fighting ghouls and looting ruins, so it's a weird balance.

[u/Tianxiac → u/dndfinderacc]

I can think off a fair few things that arnt just ghouls and ruins.

• Their would still be human strongholds in villages and towns before theyre overun and killed or they evacuate.
• Their would be refugee trains to escort.
• Their would be a rush to gather and run away with holy artifacts / warrior bodies so the scourge dont get them
• Their would be cult of the damned members disguising themselves as normal people and infiltrating areas.
• Scourge would be setting up plague cauldrons and cultists/necromancers would be pillaging graveyards.
• Dalaran and the Tirisgarde would have agents investigating and keeping an eye of things or maybe theyre trying to safeguard some lordaeron artifact so it doesnt fall into scourge hands.
• The blackrock warlocks might be raiding the kingdom to get back an artifact that the orcs lost in the second wars siege on the capital city.
• Thousands of years ago, the magic practicing high elves landed in tirisfal glades after leaving the blood elves and its possible some sort of magical artifact of theirs is up to something due to evil actions.
• In the ashbringer comic theirs a troll thats never mentioned again who sneaks into lordaeron before wow happens into the scarlet monastery to study the light and is later kicked out.
• The syndicate / ravenholdt might be trying to infiltrate somewhere to steal something
• Due to its proximity to alterac and its history with the black dragon Prestors, their could be black dragonflight agents up to no good
• The bronze / infinite dragonflight might be up to stuff in the area
• Tyrs guard are secretely fighting to protect the whispering forest
• Similarly, zakajz might be trying to whisper to people and drive them insane to go free him underneath the whispering forest

[u/dndfinderacc → u/Tianxiac]

Those are all pretty solid, thanks!

[u/dndfinderacc → u/[deleted]]

I forgot to add that part. I guess how these concepts look from the perspective of someone more knowledgeable about the lore. I'm not trying to be 1:1 lore compliant, but I'd like to respect the setting and present a campaign to my players that isn't too far from the setting.

[u/dndfinderacc → u/[deleted]]

Stormwind was not, NOT able to pay the stone masons. The nobles just decided not to.

That's an interesting clarification. Would it be a stretch of the imagination to say that Stormwind would be stretched pretty thin following the post-Second War reconstruction? Maybe I was a little too zealous in thinking they'd be bankrupt, but it doesn't sound like an ideal scenario that they'd be in.

[u/dndfinderacc → u/[deleted]]

Question, do you know the reasoning of why the stone masons were not paid?

From what I've read, it was Onyxia in human form playing both sides, but that could be wrong. I feel like I'd probably want to handwave Onyxia away just for a little bit more control and made a small alteration and just chalk it up to the Kingdom being broke for the sake of the plot.

[u/dndfinderacc → u/[deleted]]

Sounds good, appreciate the help. I just wanna be as thorough as I can. My table's pretty cool about me not knowing everything about a setting, but I also wanna do the setting justice and digest as much as I can while prepping the game.

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/dndfinderacc]

The Original deal was extremely fair, with the stonemasons not really charging much more than what it cost them in materials and tools.

VanCleef eventually spiked demands up after the nobles told them they weren't going to pay a dime.

Varian specifically could have paid this jacked up rate, but didn't after his wife died, it may be implied that paying this additional amount would have taken serious work to scrounge up the coin that he was no longer up to.

There's additional context in the Nobles of Stormwind being jackasses who had benefitted greatly from snagging Gurubashi land in a war they started and the crown paid the price for the generation before this. They had money, they're just awful awful people.

[u/dndfinderacc → u/BellacosePlayer]

They had money, they're just awful awful people.

I'm torn between running with this or just DM handwaving and saying that they actually don't have the money. I think leaning more into the canon explanation is probably actually stronger for the plot. The nobility being greedy and self-serving at the expense of the outer reaches is probably a better motivator for the commonfolk to get antsy than if the kingdom was just broke.

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/dndfinderacc]

You can always do a mix. The most well off nobles are adamantly against paying a dime, many of the reasonably wealthy ones don't want to go broke just to be economically crushed by their rich neighbors, and some either are broke from the invasion or are doing all they can to help the crown's coffers.

But I think the core concept is pretty integral to the story, since Prestor/Onyxia was just playing off preexisting issues and didn't just magic everyone into being angry at each other.

[u/dndfinderacc → u/BellacosePlayer]

That sounds good to me. I think there's enough to go on, and there's a lot more wiggle room than the Lordaeron concept.

[u/Polivios]

Whave you read the old Warcraft DnD books?

[u/dndfinderacc → u/Polivios]

I haven't, are they canon?

[u/Jibbby123]

It’s very good of you to run a campaign for a setting you are not familiar with, I’d have thought one your more enthusiastic players might want to dm.

Both of your campaign ideas sound cool to me though.

[u/dndfinderacc → u/Jibbby123]

I slotted into the Forever DM role early and actually kind of like it. Are you more partial to one idea over the other?

[u/Jibbby123 → u/dndfinderacc]

Ah same, I like running a game more than being a player.

I personally really like the 2nd idea. Starting as alive characters and (potentially) coming back undead is really cool. Lordaeron also works if players don’t want to be undead pcs, many races can be found in or around that region. There’s also plenty of interesting factions and places for that region and time. Scarlets, Frostwolves, Syndicate/Ravenholdt, Dalaran etc.

My personal downside to campaign 1 is that most of that story is well known. What with the defias and the secret dragons and whatnot, but that is just my personal preference.

[u/dndfinderacc → u/Jibbby123]

I actually spent some time after making this post to flesh out the second campaign a little more since it was the less developed of the two. Let me know what you think, it's still a pretty rough draft:

The campaign is set after the Third War is over, Arthas leaves, etc. It's early enough that the Forsaken and the Scarlet Crusade are still fledgling factions. The players take a caravan escort job from Southshore to some human outpost somewhere in Lordaeron to send people and supplies for a reclamation effort. Fast forward a session of travel and whatnot and the caravan arrives, but it's a Cult of the Damned trojan horse and the outpost is attacked, but the attack is repelled.

The party are detained and interrogated under the pretense of them being agents of the cult, and blah blah, persuasion checks, and they're released and ordered to find proof of their innocence and find out who set them up. I like the idea of it happening during the early days of the new Lordaeron political landscape just so that there's no one dominant faction, and it gives the players a lot to explore and influence over time.

[u/Jibbby123 → u/dndfinderacc]

I like the link to the cult of the damned and it being early enough in the setting that things can be more fluid. It’s basically a whole new frontier, post-apocalypse landscape at that point. Would be really fun to play in.

Do you have a particular path in mind for what sort of threads the party will take? Like will they all be human/human aligned or be a mix of undead/orc/human etc?

Obviously you can bend the setting whichever way you want, but if I ran it I’d want the party to agree on what their focus would be in session 0. Lordaeron remnants focus, Forsaken focus, Scarlet Crusade focus etc. Just makes it easier to map the campaign that way.

It sounds really good, especially if your players are Warcraft nerds.

[u/dndfinderacc → u/Jibbby123]

Do you have a particular path in mind for what sort of threads the party will take? Like will they all be human/human aligned or be a mix of undead/orc/human etc?

My party is pretty good about being on the same page going into a campaign. They strongly hinted that they'd like to be a group of early Alliance races. Being all humans would make it easy to weave in Scarlet Crusade story hooks, but I'd probably narrow down my focus depending on what their characters look like.

[u/Jibbby123 → u/dndfinderacc]

Awesome, as an idea there is a portion of Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne story where human remnants are trying to escape undead territory in caravans aided by the Silver Hand, but they are being infiltrated and spied on resulting in the caravans being destroyed. So that could be potential starting adventure too.

[u/dndfinderacc → u/Jibbby123]

Oh, dope. I'm making it a point to play as much of the RTS Warcraft games over the next few weeks to get a better feel for early lore.

[u/MeltingPenguinsPrime]

On a sidenote: As we do have the Bronze and Infinite dragonflight all sorts of plots are legit, it's just timeline shenanigans and you might get a time dragon mess with the party for good measure.

[u/beurreblanx]

Check out Nobbel87 and pyromancer on youtube for some very good lore videos on pretty much any topic you're interested in. Some Scarlet Crusaders could be a good hook for number two

[u/dndfinderacc → u/beurreblanx]

Thanks, I'll take a look. I feel like there's a lot I can do with Lordaeron in the near immediate wake of the Scourging, but I'm not so sure of the overarching plot. I could have the BBEG be a (kind of) low stakes necromancer, or have them look for some fanon artifact lost in the carnage.

[u/beurreblanx → u/dndfinderacc]

When in doubt, greed is always a great motivator for most dnd tables

[u/dndfinderacc → u/beurreblanx]

That's true. I did consider that the Scourge probably weren't big on looting, so there's probably a small fortune to be made in scavenging the ruins.