The Swamps of Zostra
The Swamps of Zostra is a zone in an ongoing Dungeons and Dragons 5E campaign. It is a constantly growing jungle of twisted trees and mad creatures.
I wanted to create feelings of dread and claustrophobia in the players. So, I designed custom rules for this adventure that I have added to the normal rules of Dungeons and Dragons. The rules are summarized below.
Backstory
70 years ago, the Zostra was a small swamp at the foot of the Clipped Mountains. But, one day, it started to grow in size. Its trees became gnarled and twisted and any who ventured inside came back mad, if they came back at all. Today, the swamps are so large that they cover the territory from the mountains to the ocean, blocking the northern kingdom from the rest of the continent.
When the party first enters the swamps, their mission is simple, escort a young noble across while surviving the nightmares hidden inside. But pretty quickly, our adventurers will discover the cause of the corruption here, the opening of a portal to the Abyss, and it will be their duty to close the portal to stop a demonic invasion on the material world.
Features
Escort Mission
The young noble the party meets starts of as an aspiring wizard having never lived through anything. They are smart but naïve. And it will be the party’s job to make them a brave ally or to let them die a horrible death.
Every day, the party can teach what they know to the young noble. It could be learning new spells, raising their hit point maximum or gaining morale points.
In fact, every time the young noble goes unconscious, they lose a morale point. If they lose all of their morale points, they could try to flee or act irrationally or even betray the party.
For the full Design Document, click here.
Nightmares
The Swamps of Zostra are a place of madness. Just sleeping there can bring someone to insanity.
Every night, the members of the party must succeed on a Wisdom Saving Throw or become victim of a random long-term madness.
If someone who is already mad fails their saving throw, instead of gaining a second madness, they gain a point of exhaustion. Which means, if the insanity isn’t treated with a Lesser Restoration or Calm Emotions spell, the individual could die within a week from losing their sense of self.
For the full Design Document, click here.
Encounter Balancing
The way the Dungeon Master’s Guide balances its encounters lacks precision. A fifth level combat could be very easy for a party but mortally dangerous for another. So I have created a new way to balance encounters.
With a simple algorithm, I can approximate how many rounds it would take for the party to win a particular encounter and how many rounds it would take for the encounter to kill the party. By dividing the first number by the second, it gives a difficulty ratio that estimates the amount of daily resources the party will have to lose to win the encounter.
Then, I can understand how an encounter fits within a day of adventuring.
Random Encounters
Every day in the Swamps can be the last for anybody who ventures in them because of the dangerous creatures that live there. But it is possible to avoid them for those who are stealthy enough or know how to track them.
Every day, every member of the party must succeed on a Stealth or Survival check or roll a d4. The sum of the d4s rolled indicates an encounter on an encounter table. The higher the number the higher the encounter’s difficulty ratio will be.
For the full Design Document, click here.
Attacking villages
During the last 70 years, the demonic forces that passed through the portal started to inhabit certain regions of the Swamps. Which means that attacking those settlements would stagger the invasion. The thing is, attacking those villages head on would be suicide. The party would have to make small, lightning strikes on unsuspecting groups to hinder the defending demons without being noticed. That way, the party could make their way to the leader of the settlement, topple them and make the rest flee.
For the full Design Document, click here.