The Hanging Garden

Because it feels like every single D&D campaign seems to start with the PC's meeting a tavern, I decided to do something different. Something unique.

That's right, I decided to begin this campaign in a beer garden. Talk about originality!

The Hanging Garden is located on the fringe of Tamalin, and is known to be friendly to newcomers to the city. Compared to the dirty, crowded and bustling merchant filled streets outside its gates, The Hanging Garden is a calm oasis. Large trees grow freely, with tables clustered between them. Smaller plants hang in pots from sturdy branches, making The Hanging Garden feel like an eden of greenery at the outskirts of the city.

The proprietor and main barkeep is La'al, half Human half Shifter. He was born in the city, and left as a teenager to try and reconnect with his Shifter heritage. Finding their settlement too rural for his tastes, he returned to Tamalin and established The Hanging Garden. He is still trying to find the balance between the beauty of the untamed wild, and the civilization of the city.

Here is a (very) rough floor plan, drawn up in paint. In the future I will try to scan in my sketches, but I hilariously misplaced this one.

The beer garden is located close to the main entrance to the city. I've circled it on the map below:

I absolutely love the idea of having trees that grow freely "inside" a building. Obviously that isn't quite the case here, because the trees are growing in an open area that is merely walled off from the rest of the city. Still, I can't help thinking of the fish shop that I went to with my grandmother in Salzburg, Austria, which has two massive trees growing straight through the roof!

Tamalin

I decided to start the players out in Tamalin, a bustling port trade city located on the eastern shores of the Dragon Sea. The city is actually based on Tarmalune, a setting published by Wizards, but I changed the name to one that rolls off my tongue more easily. I kept most of the details the same though - Tamalin is fiercely independent, governed by a council, and is dedicated to commerce. All races are welcome here, as long as they have coin to spend, goods to trade, or services to render. I view it as a sort of D&D-ised Ankh-Morpork.

This melting pot idea is particularly important to the players of my campaign as they are all non-human races. In fact, not a single one of them is even one of the more "mundane" races, like elves or dwarves. So by setting up a city which simply want as much commerce as possible from its citizens, I set up a city where the players would be welcome with open arms. I thought this would be an easier beginning to a campaign than throwing my poor inexperienced players into a city where they are reviled by all for their otherness and unable to find help or information simply.

I don't have a specific "world" that I'm setting this campaign in, like Faerun or Eberron. Instead, I'm just setting it in a generic D&D world. I toyed with using an established setting, as I could give the players a map and allow them to go anywhere their hearts desired, and have some sort of area information no matter their choice. Ultimately, however, I decided I preferred the flexibility that creating my own world allows. This way I can pick and choose bits from all types of published adventures, and modify them only slightly to make them fit my campaign. Also, while I have told the players that Tamalin is located on the eastern seaboard of the Dragon Sea, I haven't given them much information yet about what else there is around, giving myself more flexibility in the future.

Some Background Information

So let me give you a bit of background, before we get into the gritty events of the current campaign.

Two years ago I attempted to DM my first ever campaign. I came up with a world for the PC's to explore, an overarching quest and mystery for them to solve, encouraged unique and elaborate back stories, and attempted to cater to the whims of each player.

The game failed spectacularly. Partly because my father got sick and I just didn't have time to coordinate a game, partly because there were too many players with conflicting timetables, but mainly because I just didn't have a good enough grasp on the rules of D&D. It took me much too long to prepare each encounter from scratch, trying as I was to fit monsters into my own kooky world, and I found myself dreading each session and the preparation work that would accompany it.

Things have stabilized in my life a bit, and I found myself wanting to have another crack at being a DM. I decided to make it easier on myself this time, and rely on material from published adventures. I signed up to D&D Insider, which has given me access to all the back issues of the Wizards magazines, and gone through and picked out a couple of encounters that I think my players might be interested in. I've also used these back issues as a database of information, printing out issues that pertain to the classes or races that have been chosen. For instance, one of my players has decided to play a Shadar'Kai, of whom not a lot of is written about in the Players Handbooks. Luckily there is an issue which deals almost exclusively with the Shadow Realm and its denizens.

I also found the character building software to be immensely helpful! It does all the calculations FOR you, which is great when you're starting a game with players who have never played D&D and when you yourself are a bit fuzzy on all the individual modifiers. You also get a nicely organised couple of pages with your powers described and calculated for you, which my players found very handy when trying to decide what to do each round.