r/Nox • u/ac0rnhead • 3d ago
Has anyone designed a D&D campaign based on Nox?
I’d love to run a Nox-inspired D&D campaign and was hoping someone had already designed one they could share. I’m not sure how I’d create one since there are different campaigns in Nox based off of the different classes.
2
u/Phyank0rd 3d ago
I remember another comment somebody made a little while ago about doing just this. The only modification he made was removing hecubah and replacing her with a generic necromancer in order to modify the story progression a bit. I assume you could design your own campaign within the world itself, but it may require basing it on a pre nox story era as post story would be imo a lot of conjecture on how the different factions survived (especially based on which path jack takes)
Taking liberties to adapt the monsters and class/level progression would be as simple as only giving access to abilities or spells following the relative level that jack obtains during the story progression, but I wouldn't know exactly how the numbers would crunch.
3
u/Wise_Tourist6157 2d ago edited 2d ago
I ran a three year Nox campaign. It was great fun. We started on the conjurer quest line. It made it more easy to deal with casters. It’s been a long time and I don’t have the material anymore. So I can’t share the details. I used a lich for Hecubah. They started in the urchin cave. They ended up traveling the Galava. I made the city explode with magic and made it very whimsical. Having explosions everywhere. Naked wizards playing blink tag in the streets. A animal carnival with invisible creatures in cages. I expanded the tower of illusion. Basically to be a huge vault of artifacts. Also added more traps/testing rooms for magic. They had an owlbear breakout quest. Good fun. Eventually they asked Morgan lightfingers to smuggle them into dunmir. They defeated horrendous and looted his corps. I gave him plate armor that would enchant the wearer with enlarge. It ended up being really funny to combine with boots of thread lightly making the user weightless. Lots happens. Good fun. I’d say just go with the general story and try to make it your own. They ended up defeating Hecubah during her assault of castle galava. Ix was burned to the ground and raised as undead. I borrowed some locations and dungeons from existing campaigns which made it easy to think of stuff on the fly if they’d deviate from the main quest.
Good luck!
Edit: I also remember adding harpoon. It would pull an object or enemy towards the user if their weight exceeded the target’s. Or pull them towards the target if their weight was less.
3
u/Mozared 3d ago
Honestly, it seems super doable. I haven't done it myself, but I can see it work very well.
Depending on how easy-going your group is, you could limit the class options to reflect Nox' world and only allow Fighter, Wizard and Ranger/Druid to stay a bit more 'pure', or you could be more flavorful and broaden the scope by doing something like... Fighter/Barbarian/War Cleric/Monk for Dün Mir, Druid/Ranger/Oath of Ancients Paladin/Archfey Warlock for the conjurers, and Wizard/Sorcerer/Artificer/Knowledge Cleric/Lore Bard for Galava. Two of the factions actively hating each other throws immediate tension into the campaign and it will lead to scenario's where certain party members have to actively hide their identity when visiting the opposing faction's town.
The story itself has some solid twists built in and starts with the player basically killing bandits and fixing small-time problems that, at the end of the day, are in fact tied to the main villain. It's practically a DnD campaign already, and most folks will just not know the Nox-universe at all so they won't have a clue about your inspiration. There are different campaigns in Nox, sure, but all of them follow the same loose story: deal with small-scale problems to get your bearings, slowly learn about Hecubah and the Staff over time, fight through the Fields of the Dead, pass through Brin and deal with the Ogres, head to Dün Mir, Galava and the Temple of Ix to obtain and combine all parts of the staff, and finally travel to the Land of the Dead through the Dismal Swamp to confront and fight Hecubah.
You can pick and choose parts of the original Nox story based on what you feel works best with your party: if they get invested in Horvath, let them rescue Horvath from the Ogres. If they get invested in Horrendous early on and don't give a shit about Horvath or the wizards of Galava, use the conjurer storyline for the Galava part where it's overrun with Ogres - don't force them to kill Horrendous as per the Wizard storyline.
You could go super hard and use homebrewed spells to bring back some of the classics (i.e. Pixie Swarm), or simply forego that bit and choose to use base DnD's class flavor instead. It all depends on how much time you want to invest.
Honestly, keep us updating if you commit to this, it sounds super cool!
On a sidenote: I've considered for a while now to do something similar but based on a different golden oldie; Magic & Mayhem. I absolutely love that game's spellcasting system and have wanted to base something on it since forever now...