Idea for an intermediate campain goal: Interlocked magical rings

[odisseus_]

There is a legend about a set of magical rings which give their wearer great powers. They were forged in ancient times by a legendary dwarvish runesmith at the request of a demigod, but, for one reason or another, he never arrived to collect them. A party of heroes decides to find the rings and use them to defeat the Big Bad.

The heroes descend into the dwarvish tunnels. They have to gain the trust of the dwarves, locate the vault where the rings are supposed to be, fight the evil mages/trolls/undead who stole the artifacts etc. etc. etc. After finally getting hold of the rings, the heroes find to their great surprise that they are interlocked in the manner of Borromean rings. It is impossible to take them apart without destroying the magic.

The heroes travel to the isle of Alduin (on their way fighting nagas, pirates, more undead...) to consult the wise mages. They find out that the demigod who commissioned the rings is an extra-dimensional being, and only he knows how, if at all, the rings can be unlinked. The heroes travel to the demigod's abode (recruiting the help of mages to open the inter-dimensional portal, fighting demons and abominations etc. etc.)

The heroes find out that the demigod is perfectly capable of wearing the rings in their interlocked state. Moreover, their power will be greatly diminished if they are taken apart. The demigod offers the heroes a choice: either he splits the rings and lets the heroes use them to defeat the Big Bad, or he takes the rings right away but promises to arrive with help at their final battle.

If the heroes choose to take the rings, they find that each one offers a power boost which is somehow complementary to others. Say, one ring gives +1 physical attack, another one +1 magical attack, the third one grants levitation... However, the wearer must expend his attention and stamina to contain the magical forces, and will suffer, say, -10% max health and/or +10% XP threshold per ring. The heroes also have complementary skills: say, one is a fighter, another is a ranger, the third one a mage...

The player decides how to split the rings between the heroes. He can give all of them to one character and get a highly mobile universal soldier, who is nevertheless fragile and hard to advance. He can allot the rings to enhance the character's core skills, e.g. give the fighter +1 physical attack. Alternatively, he can distribute the rings to mitigate their weaknesses, e.g. give the mage +1 physical attack to make him less wimpy in melee.

You have the permission to use, modify and share these ideas however you please.

[Spannerbag]

Apologies for being dim but are you:

1. Asking for thoughts/comments on your narrative, or
2. Offering these ideas for someone else to develop into one or more campaigns?

If it's 1. above you'll get plenty of varied and creative responses however I frankly doubt you'll get many people interested in developing a campaign based on someone else's concepts (as an occasional campaign creator myself having ideas isn't the problem; time and energy are - at least for me anyway).

TBH if you want your ideas to become a playable reality you'll have to do much of the heavy lifting yourself.
That said, creating campaigns can be very rewarding and if you've never done this before there are plenty of people here who can advise.

Good luck!
Cheers,
-- Spannerbag

[odisseus_]

This is just a neat idea I had the other day. I will probably never have enough time to develop a whole campaign, and I certainly don't expect that other people will do so at my request, therefore I decided to share this idea so that it might inspire somebody else.

I believe that my idea is worthy of attention, because it justifies not just one, but two intermediate goals, and because it offers the player a number of choices which would affect subsequent gameplay.

[shevegen]

I think as start for a campaign this is a nice idea.

I'd make the rings more powerful though - one more melee attack sounds nice on paper, but
imagine the hero has 8-4; changing this to 8-5 is of course good, but not necessarily great.
But these are mostly minor things.

What is missing is a storyline that connects this, e. g "Fulgar forged the first ring on a cold winter
night in Castle Darkgaard. This was shortly after he had the first feverish vision." and then
progress into madness, with the last ring being more powerful but also tainting the hero
with insanity eventually. And build there with some key NPCs, key areas and what not. And
building scenarios that could fit.

Evidently this is a lot more work and I understand that you just provide an idea. This is by the
way why I think we need interactive tools for wesnoth, e. g. start building already, then you can
say, "here, I finished the power and description of these 5 rings, and first scenario, can someone
else design the follow-up map". And we could build progressively bit by bit; new folks could
take over and change things here or there, and so forth. All ideally within the wesnoth-tools
+ GUI as such. Some of this is already possible, but full campaign creation is, as far as I know,
not yet fully support, e. g. query for user input to add full dialogues and what not.

"I believe that my idea is worthy of attention, because it justifies not just one, but two intermediate goals,
and because it offers the player a number of choices which would affect subsequent gameplay."

That's fine. Anything not quite great can be improved. I think the biggest problem is that we don't have
easy work tools but also that this is just a sketch of an idea. Lots more details have to be added and
defined.