The Stormreach Campaign

[Deadlock]

Our Monday night static group, The Monday Marauders on Ghallanda, have just completed a year long tour of Eberron. To give our group an old school campaign feel, I set about writing a narrative that emphasised a lot of the rich lore that we have in the game. If you're someone who's taken the time to read NPC dialogue then you'll already know that there are a lot of really good story threads that we weave in and out of.

The idea was to create a number of illustrated chapters to our campaign that stitched together different storyarcs in a chronological order and set the scene for an evening's questing. This was expanded into a format that allowed us to record the XP that a group could achieve where every objective is attempted, maximum bonusses are achieved and all wilderness areas are explored. The result was a 324 page document including XP tables, maps and a history of Eberron collated in one place.



Now I'm not a professional writer so it's obviously a bit rough in places, but it was done purely for my own amusement. Along the way, I took a leaf from Dan Abnett and introduced a number of redshirts. And whenever I needed a character name who doesn't exist ingame, I've just name checked guildies, friends on Ghallanda and people from the DDO community.

After a bit of thought, I've decided to make the PDF available as a free download via dropbox. Hope you enjoy it, and if you spot any typos then feel free to PM me and I'll correct them.

The Stormreach Campaign free PDF download

A huge thanks to the Monday Marauders for playtesting the campaign and their patience while I took notes and screenshots, and an equally huge (if slightly sycophantic) thanks to the devs who have over the years enriched the world with such great lore and such great storylines.

[Deadlock]

I was asked about the XP tables and completion times.

Our static group were a team of dedicated flower sniffers, we also played on completely untwinked characters with a mix of first, second and third lifers. The way we chose to play was to limit ourselves to items we pulled from quests, with "bonus" items permitted from TR caches or the auction house/crafting halls whenever the storyline warranted it. So for example, where you complete a chapter including particularly wealthy patrons, I would make the call that bonus loot would be awarded.

If I was giving a recommendation to completely new players who wanted to experience as much content as possible, I'd happily suggest they play on Normal for their first life, Hard on their second life and Elite on their third life if they really want to. We calculated it at 5.1 million XP available on Elite without XP pots, XP events or running any challenges, so there is plenty of XP available that you really don't need to worry about it.

Also, when I started writing the document, the Monster Manual only went up to volume 3. I'll include the XP from the later volumes at some point in time, but not in any rush to do that. I don't see anyone getting the exact same XP as we did because you'll inevitably get different rares in wilderness areas and quests, and the size of your party will have an affect too. I've included the Monster Manual XP as we received it just to give an idea of what it's worth if you take a one-and-done approach.

EDIT: Oh yeah and we didn't have the mechanism to turn off your bravery bonus, so the advice in places to take someone in overlevel and maybe run on hard doesn't apply.

[Cordovan]

This is hugely ambitious, and really well done. Congratulations!

[Steve_Howe]

Big undertaking. Well done!

[JDCrowell]

This is incredible and absolutely amazing! As someone who actually likes the story lines and how they are all woven together, this is something I'll greatly enjoy. Thank you very much for this. Proud to see a fellow Ghallandian do something incredible.

I'm definitely looking forward to reading this!

[DagazUlf]

Nice! Seems like a lot of fun was had by all.

[Nascoe]

Thank you for posting, looks like a great idea. Just downloaded it for reading

[Captain_Wizbang]

very cool. Nice to see people enjoying this game instead of the power grinding craziness we see all too often.

+1 for sure.

[Ambitious]

This is hugely ambitious, and really well done. Congratulations!

No Jerry, you are wrong. This wasn't me. He did it all by himself, honestly!

[Rys]

Awesome

[Wizza]

I commented it from the phone but apparently my comment didn't go through so I'll say it once more:

Amazing work. Been reading it and I love it!

[cdbd3rd]

Just now downloading for reading later.

Sounds impressive, and I'm sure it'll live up to expectations.



(Seems I need to spread myself around a bit more before can throw ya some /props on this one.)

[Deadlock]

very cool. Nice to see people enjoying this game instead of the power grinding craziness we see all too often.

+1 for sure.

Nothing wrong with a bit of power grinding craziness But definitely it's good to take a step back sometimes to help avoid burnout.

I was the first triple completionist on our server. I enjoy some great zerg EE runs. But I still put up public LFMs and TR even though there's nothing to be gained for having 7 rogue lives ...

But despite all my time in the game, I still like the lore and I look forward to new content to advance the storylines.

We have some great stories in the game. I get that NPC dialogue boxes instead of voice narration maybe means that some people don't take the time to appreciate it.

There are so many potential threads that weave through a lot of the storylines that can be explored. I mean, to end the Daelkyr war, the Gatekeepers sealed the Plane of Xoriat. But through the quests we play through, we see stable portals to Xoriat appear and end up travelling there. This is immense but is the enormity of it fully explained? We made a lot of it during our campaign, so hopefully others will enjoy There's also a thread in last year's Player Council archives where I wrote up a Xorian Saga that starts from Xorian Cypher, touched on the Gate Chamber in Threnal, into Dreams of Insanity and continued into Delirium and the two Madness chains.

Happy to discuss any of the story elements raised and if there's any that can be improved then might be worth taking a note of for doing a second edition sometime

[Erdrique]

This definitely a great endeavor and looks really nice, look forward to reading it!! Congratulations on the final product!!

[Wizza]

I've been reading the pdf a lot today. It's actually so good, props to you.

[Deadlock]

Just a quick one. Just upgraded the Dropbox account. The number of downloads triggered a bandwidth alert at their side and they put a temporary suspension until they got confirmation that things were all okay ... which sounds like a good thing to me

So if you did experience a problem with the download during that 20 min period, should be fixed now.

Enjoy

[Ykt]

Great job, I'm downloading it now.

[Gedov]

My current character will be starting his final life within the next few weeks. I had already decided that his final life should be a methodical one focused on better understanding all the surrounding lore. This wealth of information makes me want to do this even more, and provides a great resource for me. Thanks so much for putting this together.

[Sianys]

This is great! It would probably also be an excellent tool to help new players, or to lure new players in. Or, as mentioned, for those of us who've been playing a while and just like to see it all coherently woven together into a great campaign story.

Spelling correction: page 32 (Archer Point story) - should be 'grisly', not 'grizzly'. The latter is a type of bear.

[Saekee]

Am really looking forward to this--is it kindle friendly-- Old ink version?