Campaign Details
This will be a campaign set in the world of Eberron, an alternative campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. We will be using an adapted version of the Acquisitions, Inc sourcebook, which gives us rules for running your business, company positions, and new value-add spells.
Franchisees of Acquisitions Incorporated want to thrive. They want to dominate. They want to pillage lairs and loot the treasure that makes all their dreams come true. Whether it’s unlocking the secrets of the multiverse, living in the soft and supple lap of luxury, holding sway over hordes of adoring followers, or maybe even helping people and saving lives, Acq Inc franchisees do everything grandly, epically, and with panache.
This campaign will place you into a gritty, dog-eats-dog world where vast magical cartels have dominated the market for hundreds of years. You'll be fighting against the cartels, other franchises, small family-owned farms, eldrich horrors, and sometimes your own boss using all the legal, violent, and/or accounting tricks in the employee handbook.
But you won't be alone: the Head Office will (mostly) be there to support you. Your vast hordes of wealth (once acquired) will let you hire all the bat-wielding redcaps you need to keep the competition in line. You may even be able to bring local politicians and community leaders under your sway -- imagine what you can do with control of the zoning board!
The World of Eberron
Eberron is a world where magic is a science. With enough theory and the right materials, anyone can produce an effect with magic. Following this through to its logical conclusion: why does anyone need to invent a gun if a wooden stick and a few words can pop off a Fireball?
There's R&D cost, tons of metal, specialized machining techniques, finicky mechanisms, upkeep, and consumables to consider. While the guaranteed return business for ammo sales would be nice, it would be a costly item that is strictly inferor to the Wand of Fireball. That's just bad business.
Magic is an integral part of everything in Eberron: the economy is built around the trading of magical services. Instead of telephones, the Speakers Guild sends messages. If you need to travel, your options are a magebred horse, the Lightning Rail, or an airship powered by bound elementals.
The Dragonmarked Houses play a huge role in this: family lines who carry magical Dragonmarks have formed cartels and monopolized parts of the magical economy. Their legacy wealth makes it easy for them to hold their monopolies against all comers; buying off politicians, hiring thugs, or simply deciding your operation does not meet their standards and burning it down.
All of this magic needs fuel, and that fuel supply takes the form of dragonshard crystals. Finding a cache of dragonshards will make you rich; developing a supply line to sell them to the Dragonmarked houses & other magical businesses will make you a captain of industry.
Eberron campaigns begin two years after the Last War. One hundred years of a bitter civil war ended in terror as the nation of Cyre was inexplicably consumed by a magical explosion on the Day of Mourning. No explanation has been found, and it remains a toxic wasteland. If any nation unlocks the mystery of the Mourning, the war would begin anew.
Depending on what products or services you offer, this could be a very good thing: the military-industrial complex will need fresh materiel.
Beyond Khorvaire, the mysterious continent of Xen'drik holds exceptionally-valuable, one-of-a-kind magical artifacts, and a ready supply of dragonshards falling from the sky. Expeditions to Xen'drik are dangerous, but the potential payoff from looting a Giant ruin makes every occultant's mouth water.
There are stranger lands still: Arenal is home to the elves, who possess a more advanced civlization than can be found on Khorvaire. Their magical technologies are far more commonplace (and thus, less likely to be missed). Sarlona hosts another human civilization dominated by other-worldly beings. Argonnessen is home to the dragons, and no mortals are suffered there.
Everything in the DnD 5E source books has a place in Eberron. Goblins, orcs, and other traditionally "evil" races have civilizations and may be played. Morality is shades of grey instead of black-and-white; one hundred years of atrocities have made sure of that. A lot of your favorite races are wildly different from your bog-standard Tolkien fantasy setting.
Acquisitions, Incorporated
Established in Sharn during the closing years of the Last War, Acquisitions Inc. has found nothing but opportunity.
Throughout history, some people have had things and other people have wanted those things. But where most would gaze upon that arrangement and see an inescapable life of unfulfillment, Ominifis Hereward “Omin” Dran saw a business opportunity. Thus was Acquisitions Incorporated born. In the years since, Omin and longtime employee (though less-longtime friend) James Winifred “Jim” Darkmagic III have turned a talent for redistribution of property into a reputation as the multiverse’s premier adventurers for hire.
Refugees fleeing Cyre after its negative growth are willing to trade everything they own (and sometimes things they don't) to recover lost items, locate missing loved ones, or simply be saved from a ravening horror that has been hunting them for days. Acq hopes that these refugees will be early adopters for their newest customer-centric approach to delivering value. They have been the trojan horse that allowed Acq to thrive in marketplace normally dominated by established cartels.
Legal filings suggest that the Head Office is preparing to take things to the next level. According to the grapevine, Acq is preparing to open the kimono (so to speak) and scale the business out by selling franchise licenses to adventurers who share their corporate values.
They've sent up the flag and are taking on a big crop of interns for a mysterious job, and it is believed that some of these lucky adventurers will be the next generation of Acquisitions, Incorporated.
No, you don’t understand. My magic exists outside of any known reality. I wield the power of an entity that dwells beyond space and time. Clearly, none of the profits created by that magic are taxable in this realm.
— unknown warlock