Torg (and hence "Storm Knights") is about our Earth (or something much like it) being invaded by other worlds, other cosms. One is the High Fantasy reality of Aysle. Another the Cyber-Religious reality of the Cyberpapacy, and so forth.

They conquer parts of our planet, transforming our planet into theirs. In Aysle, Dragons and spells are real, but our guns and cars fail to function. In the Cyberpapacy, priests can call upon miracles and cyber-augmentations are common, but psychology and democracy are alien to their mindset.

PC's are Storm Knights, who can make their gear function in alien realities. In Aysle, a Core Earth Cop can make his gun shoot, sometimes.

This is a War. The aliens are here to conquer and plunder. The entire game is named after this War: "Torg, Roleplaying the Possibility Wars." It's the point of the setting. And its wholly, completely unwinnable.

Cannot be done. The rules of the game utterly prevent this. So I decided to change it. I designed a campaign framework where people can fight, and win the War.

Stages of a Torg Campaign

These stages are a campaign frame—they're a structure GM's can use to plan long-term events in their campaign, to write and run modules that each run together towards the climax of the campaign.

There are specific inflection points, events that players achieve which moves them from one stage to another. As much as possible, these are the climax of the themes and events of the current stage, and introduce the themes of the next stage.

Stage 1: The Storm Breaks
Chaos in the wake of the invasion. Confusion over what is happening. Nobody knows why magic works or why guns don't. Players adventure, slowly learning some basic facts about P-Wars. Mundane concerns (money, language differences, travel) are a severe constraint.

Inflection point: 1st stelae torn up, with Glories so ords are saved. This marks the beginning of them affecting the war: changing the map of occupied territories.

Stage 2: Stemming the Tide
Using knowledge gained in Stage 1, players begin fighting back by planting glories and scouting out stelae. A faction recognizes their accomplishments and hires the SK's, giving them access to more resources. Mundane concerns (money, et. al.) become much less of a problem.

Small scale P-War concerns are a severe challenge (glories, finding stelae, ripping them up). Players learn that factional differences are severe, and crippling the war effort. (Ideally, this should take the form of a long-running feud between CE factions that leads to a dramatic confrontation.)

Inflection Point: Ripping up a critical stelae, collapsing 6 zones at once, freeing a landmark city (Paris, Tokyo, Washington DC), while saving ords. This is a victory so dramatic that other SK’s begin turning to the players for advice and, eventually, orders.

Stage 3- Leading the Way
Because of their great achievements, players gain independence, either forming their own organization, taking over another, or becoming "advisers" who actually call the shots. Mundane restrictions are no longer a problem (but getting exotic equipment still requires an adventure).

In the role of the head of an organization, they compete with other factions for resources. The HL's are too powerful to fight directly, and trying so results in grievous losses. Instead the players build their organization and either ally with, co-opt, take over, or destroy all the other factions.

In Stage 2, they got equipment from an organization, in Stage 3 they are the organization that recruits and funds SK groups. Small-scale P-Wars concerns (glories, et. al.) are much less problematic, but actually defeating a whole reality is nearly impossible.

[This is a potentially a very satisfying stage. The Delphi Council have been the group's opponents for years, and in this stage they can expose their lies and topple the Council. It's a chance for some well-deserved payback.]

Inflection Point: The first reality falls, a High Lord retreats off Earth.

Stage 4: Fighting the Wars
Having united Earth, they are now powerful enough to fight back against the High Lords. They do so, and in a series of bitter confrontations the High Lords are turned back and Earth is saved. Small-scale P-Wars concerns are inconsequential, but fighting an entire reality is extremely difficult (but possible).

Inflection Point: Most invaders flee. The Wars seem won. Disaster strikes.

Stage 5: The Darkest Night
At the moment of victory, an unexpected opponent arises who threatens the whole Earth: the Torg. The PC's scramble to get allies and information, to defeat him before Earth dies. Fighting individual realities isn't necessary, instead they have to ally with others to defeat the Torg.

Analysis

That's it. A gradually escalating campaign scope, matched with gradually escalating PC powers and prominence, leading up to winning the Wars and fighting the Torg (who is, after all, the game's namesake). It satisfies the assumptions (below), matches the game world facts (belower), and is (I think) a good basis for a Torg campaign.

This frame assumes:
A.) GM's and PC's want a campaign where the eventual goal is to save Earth and defeat the High Lords.
B.) The PC's should be instrumental or central to that victory.
C.) The PC's can't do it alone, but shouldn't need a deus ex machina to win the Wars for them.
D.) As in oTorg, the players start out as fairly weak and powerless.
E.) As the campaign goes on, the players should become more and more powerful and influential, and should face new challenges commensurate with their greater prominence and capabilities.

Game-World Facts

The following facts are true in the Official Campaign, seem plausible or even likely, and they directly bear on why the Earth needs leadership (i.e. the PC's.)

1.) Core Earth has a lot of individual organizations opposing the High Lords, some big, some small.
2.) All (or nearly all) are sincere in their desire to fight.
3.) None of them actually know how to do this, and they each have a solution they think is right, which isn't.
4.) They spend as much time interfering with each other, trying to halt activities they see as wrong, as they do fighting the High Lords.
5.) No individual organization can win alone, Earth can only win if her resources are marshaled and deployed in a coordinated, effective manner.

Taking assumption B (PC's should be instrumental) together with the above 5 facts, this leads us to:

The Storm Knights need to be instrumental in uniting Earth to fight the High Lords. Once achieved, they can lead the fight and Earth can win.

My original Torg campaign, "Glory's Warriors", actually followed this arc, up through Stage 3. After a while, the Knights became their own faction—even recruiting other Storm Knights—and became quite prominent and powerful.

Because this frame didn't exist, and the concept of Stage 4 hadn't occur to me, it didn't go further than that and the campaign kind of sputtered out. I've always regretted that.

The game sputtered out because it got boring—there were no challenges appropriate for the PC's power level, they just breezed through all but the toughest opponents. Had I instead given them greater challenges, and allowed them to take the lead in fighting the Wars, the tougher challenges would have kept the campaign alive much longer and lead to a more satisfying conclusion.

(This 5-Stage campaign frame is one specific example of the 5 Stages of all Destiny campaigns, which I talked about here.)

I don't care for this "As in oTorg, the players start out as fairly weak and powerless."

Many of the archetypes were experienced adventurers, they just weren't experienced Storm Knights--and I think the former should impact the latter somewhat.

Quote from: Silverlion;500373I don't care for this "As in oTorg, the players start out as fairly weak and powerless."

Compared to the High Lords, or the necessities of fighting the War (planting glories and ripping up stelae), they all were.

oTorg allowed for a great many unbalanced, and utterly unbalanced, characters. Technodemons were the favorite whipping boy, but just as munchkin were the "I get +3 bonus to every single skill" Akira-alikes of the Star Sphere, and the Elf dragonrider (equipment: Draconis Aysle).

Balance was a problem. It needs to be addressed.

But... it's easy enough for gamers to ignore the limits on character power. Just ignore the balance rules for equipment, skill levels, and advantages. Allow players to create any kind of character they wish.

You can still use the 5-Stage Torg campaign frame, modified of course. Such characters should start in Stage-2, IMHO, but it can be done.

Quote from: Silverlion;500373Many of the archetypes were experienced adventurers, they just weren't experienced Storm Knights--and I think the former should impact the latter somewhat.

Your game, your rules, your fun.

If you wish to create a situation where (to use a D&D analogy) some characters are level 1 and others level 5 or 6, feel free. I'm not stopping you. In fact, I wouldn't even try.

My tastes differ, and that's okay.