I am preparing to run DCCRPG for a group that's never played it before, starting with the module Hole in the Sky, a funnel 0 level adventure. If they like it, Ill continue running it as a campaign (I have Peril on the Purple Planet but I am not in a hurry to run that). I have some ideas of a post apocalyptic Earth style campaign but Id like to hear community ideas about what made DCCRPG fun for you, in terms of whipping together your own campaign / setting / etc. Yeah, very open ended question.
Hi again...like I said in response to your comment on the The One Who Watches From Below review thread, I just ran this adventure for my group, and it was great. We're actually in a very similar position - I'm only one session ahead of you, and I've been thinking about ways to gonzo-up the campaign world.
Not that DCC adventures need much gonzo added. For this campaign, I'm planning to run a lot of official DCC adventures, maybe with some other things thrown in. These aren't all experienced players, so I'm going to get things started with a suggested framework: they start an adventuring guild on the outskirts of Punjar using a former brothel that one of them inherits, and the stories of the Hole In the Sky get them their first leads. Very simple.
I happen to benefit from having a lot of the published DCC material, so I was able to survey almost all the first-level adventures, and come up with some reasonable hooks for most of them. Each character will be given a couple of leads (those with more Personality will get more) appropriate to their background and goals. I'll let them take it from there, and seed more leads through my adventures in the forms of maps, rumors, etc. I'm thinking the first adventure they may play as classed-PCs would be Elzemon and the Blood-Drinking Box; that's one of the few DCC adventures with a "wizard hires you" hook.
DCC has a few other settings that are post-apocalyptic or sword-and-planet...Against the Atomic Overlord and Dread God Al-Khazadar both have mini-settings of that sort. If you weave some of that stuff into your campaign earlier, it could give you a bit of what you want AND foreshadow higher-level adventures. Frozen In Time implies that the DCC world takes place in the far future of modern Earth. Weave all that stuff together with Purple Planet into your campaign, and you could come up with all kinds of gonzo techno-magic trappings.
But of course they may stray from the path. I hope they do, eventually. I have been thinking about Purple Planet, and it occurs to me that I can just put different settings on different planets. I definitely want to give my players a chance to visit the world of ASE. I'd add as a different region/continent of their own planet, but I like the idea of satellite-gods, and that seems like more of a global thing. I've been wondering how they could get to other worlds like that, and I'm thinking that the party actually lives in a backwater, and they later find out that they are one planet among many in a broader sword-and-planet setting. If you like post-apocalyptic gonzo, you really need to look at ASE. Even if you don't run it, there are so many wonderful ideas there that you might want to steal.
Those are just some of my thoughts. Like you, I haven't yet put them into motion, so everything should be accompanied with a few grains of salt. I'd be interested to hear if you have any ideas, because I'm in the same situation.
Here's my take on Gonzo for any setting or system.
Gonzo is a wonderful spice, but like spices, it comes in many flavors, intensities and not all spices will enhance all meals. I love sriracha and I (over) use it a lot, but it doesn't mix with everything, everyone has own different "too much" level, and often its best to add the sriracha after you've had a few bites of the meal on its own so you can really taste the difference.
I have run Gamma World 1e since 1982, and I've upped/downed the gonzo level many times for various campaigns. I've only played DCC so I can't be specific to how I would gonzo it, but my GW games have often been sword & planet as my two main GW on-going(ish) campaigns are my magical post-apoc Gamma Mars and my far future space civil war alien invasion game where genomes have stabilized into Techno-Man, Beastmen and Psi-Humans.
My core gonzo rule is the gonzo must always make sense in the context of the setting. AKA, if the PCs hunt down the WHY behind the WHAT, it should be possible to be found, even if the answer itself is absurd. In my Gamma Mars game, the PCs found the famous Neuschwanstein Castle on Mars. The PCs were WTF? until they explored the place, discovered datapads describing how it was rescued from Earth by an eccentric trillionaire, but then accidentally set on the site of an ancient Martian burial ground.
If the players trust there is a Method to the Madness, they will not treat gonzo as silly, but weird, wild and serious.
Quote from: Spinachcat;920254If the players trust there is a Method to the Madness, they will not treat gonzo as silly, but weird, wild and serious.
I agree with everything you said, with the sole exception that I don't mind a bit of silliness, and it's a bit inevitable when you deal with gonzo. I think it makes sense that the
characters shouldn't find it to be silly, but I think it's almost part of the point for things to be a bit ridiculous from our point of view.
The DCC setting I run is based in a city from another, relatively straight, homebrew setting. Because of a magical disaster it was sucked into a Sargasso Sea of different shadowlands... ala Ravenloft without the overt gothic horror elements. This includes a couple of the satellite gods from that older homebrew (literally AIs who resided on orbital satellites), who are now stranded as well.
The city derives from bits of City State of the Invincible Overlord, Vornheim, and Cadwallon... and a good sized chunk of surrounding wilderness.
Only a handful of sessions have involved leaving the city and none have gone very far from it.
Other shadowlands come and go around it, usually with some degree of friction between the inhabitants.
It's meant to be 'gonzo' and kitchen-sink and plenty of odd/weird/silly stuff has gone down... but there is a larger cosmology at work behind it all... reasons that might not be readily apparent but I think they add some degree of verisimilitude to the nonsense, if that makes sense.
So far it's been run in a very episodic, open-table sort of way and is primarily a dumping ground for ideas we have that don't fit into other games I'll run... but as Spinachcat says, I always try to work out a reason for things and not just toss them in with no regard to the consequences or the why/how behind them.
Roll 1d24
1) Fantasy battlemechs.
2) Giants and dragons as kaiju. Just absurdly big.
3) A mobile castle on tank treads.
4) Ring around the planet made up of billions of derelict spaceships.
5) Fantasy aircraft carrier: Massive city-ship of pegasus-mounted knights.
6) Dinosaurs (Nearly) wiped out by a dead god that fell to earth a zillion years ago. His miles-tall corpse slowly rots in the center of a wasteland.
7) Captured cloud giant city turned into fantasy Death Star.
8) A massive storm that never ends, like Jupiter's red spot. A lost city, dungeon, or dinosaur isle is in the eye.
9) Mobile city of necromancers slowly approaches, carried on the backs of thousands of zombies.
10) Crystal swords.
11) Zardoz head.
12) Mullets and afros on fantasy heroes. Elf chicks with 70's feathered Farrah Fawcett hair.
13) Cities or forts built in or around bones and/or armor of massive dead gods or monsters.
14) Gwar.
15) 80's cheapo Masters of the Universe knock-off toy lines.
16) Crystal androids with chrome heads that look like those 70's see-through Micronauts figures.
17) Wise talking apes.
18) The sun is alive & semi-sentient and has a big face on it like in Teletubbies. World will die when it someday hatches into Hyper-God.
19) John Holmes. Vintage porn. Swagger
20) Elves are survivors of alien universe from before Big Bang and are goth and Elric as fuck. Use demon everything.
21) In forgotten ancient times a massive city covered entire world. Dungeons are what's left of it's basements & sewers.
22) Ridiculous giant blades like in anime.
23) Gor.
24) The VHS tape cover art to cheapo 80's Italian Conan rip-offs.
Like Spinachcat alludes, coherency doesn't need to be banal, just internally consistent. Dreams often ride the line, and contemplating them is a good way to suss out the fine line between gonzo from incoherent madness. Functional seems to be a good touchstone word...
Just grab a pile of stuff you like or think would be cool and chuck it in without regard for genre conventions or tropes. Then get out your duct tape and stick it all together somehow.
Im embarrassed to admit I had to look up what "Gonzo" was. Having read the definition Im not surprised I didnt know, its about as far from my style of gaming as you can get! Laugh! Good luck with yours though, you guys have a blast!
Quote from: Edgewise;920249But of course they may stray from the path. I hope they do, eventually. I have been thinking about Purple Planet, and it occurs to me that I can just put different settings on different planets. I definitely want to give my players a chance to visit the world of ASE.
I have Peril on the Purple Planet and it sort of fits into the world cosmology I have in mind. Since like so many OSR games DCCRPG includes Cthulhu Mythos elements, Ive been thinking about re-engineering the 'future' of Lovecraft into a post-apocalypse world.
Quote from: Spinachcat;920254My core gonzo rule is the gonzo must always make sense in the context of the setting. AKA, if the PCs hunt down the WHY behind the WHAT, it should be possible to be found, even if the answer itself is absurd. In my Gamma Mars game, the PCs found the famous Neuschwanstein Castle on Mars. The PCs were WTF? until they explored the place, discovered datapads describing how it was rescued from Earth by an eccentric trillionaire, but then accidentally set on the site of an ancient Martian burial ground.
Yes, that's how I look at campaign building as well. It has to make sense.
What was the one thing you always wanted to do in D&D but never could?
Do that.
Quote from: Lynn;920528I have Peril on the Purple Planet and it sort of fits into the world cosmology I have in mind. Since like so many OSR games DCCRPG includes Cthulhu Mythos elements, Ive been thinking about re-engineering the 'future' of Lovecraft into a post-apocalypse world.
There's a setting book for Call of Cthulhu 'The Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan' that depicts a very dark aftermath of Cthulhu awakening and the world falling into madness. It focuses on a enclave of hold-out sorcerers who have allied with some of the lesser races, such as the serpent men. It's got some crazy high-powered stuff in it, I'm not sure you could use in straight up CoC much... but it might be good inspiration for a DCC game, and IIRC it's got barely any rules mechanics to it, so pretty much system agnostic.
Quote from: Simlasa;920559There's a setting book for Call of Cthulhu 'The Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan' that depicts a very dark aftermath of Cthulhu awakening and the world falling into madness. It focuses on a enclave of hold-out sorcerers who have allied with some of the lesser races, such as the serpent men. It's got some crazy high-powered stuff in it, I'm not sure you could use in straight up CoC much... but it might be good inspiration for a DCC game, and IIRC it's got barely any rules mechanics to it, so pretty much system agnostic.
How good is it? I have been playing with the idea of a future 'time war' of the Tsan Chan vs the later Dark Conquerors. They pretty much wipe each other out but the result being a polluted Earth. Something that's about 80% Fantasy and 20% Gamma World.
Quote from: Edgewise;920282I agree with everything you said, with the sole exception that I don't mind a bit of silliness, and it's a bit inevitable when you deal with gonzo. I think it makes sense that the characters shouldn't find it to be silly, but I think it's almost part of the point for things to be a bit ridiculous from our point of view.
Are you familiar with Hoops from Gamma World?
http://www.headinjurytheater.com/gammaworld.htm
They are giant mutant bunnies...who breed quickly and have nasty mutations, including turning metal into rubber. In appearance, they are a joke. In actual play, they are a nightmare.
So definitely, there is an aspect of what is silly from our perspective vs. the character perspective.
Quote from: Lynn;920753How good is it? I have been playing with the idea of a future 'time war' of the Tsan Chan vs the later Dark Conquerors. They pretty much wipe each other out but the result being a polluted Earth. Something that's about 80% Fantasy and 20% Gamma World.
It's good by my tastes.
It's dark and horrific and humans are... well, I'm not even sure you could play a human in the setting. Not for long, unless you had some powerful mentor/patron at your back.
Most surviving/sane humans in the setting are slaves to the sorcerers and other entities stomping around.
It's also dense. There's barely any art in it at all. It's just one guy's ideas of a Lovecraftian future. I like it because it's not like any of the other CoC future stuff... End Times, Cthulhu Rising... and it's not uplifting at all. Humanity is pretty much over.
In my games it's a possible future that can be visited, referenced... maybe some day set a Carcosa-esque campaign there.
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;920314Roll 1d24
1) Fantasy battlemechs.
2) Giants and dragons as kaiju. Just absurdly big.
3) A mobile castle on tank treads.
4) Ring around the planet made up of billions of derelict spaceships.
5) Fantasy aircraft carrier: Massive city-ship of pegasus-mounted knights.
6) Dinosaurs (Nearly) wiped out by a dead god that fell to earth a zillion years ago. His miles-tall corpse slowly rots in the center of a wasteland.
7) Captured cloud giant city turned into fantasy Death Star.
8) A massive storm that never ends, like Jupiter's red spot. A lost city, dungeon, or dinosaur isle is in the eye.
9) Mobile city of necromancers slowly approaches, carried on the backs of thousands of zombies.
10) Crystal swords.
11) Zardoz head.
12) Mullets and afros on fantasy heroes. Elf chicks with 70's feathered Farrah Fawcett hair.
13) Cities or forts built in or around bones and/or armor of massive dead gods or monsters.
14) Gwar.
15) 80's cheapo Masters of the Universe knock-off toy lines.
16) Crystal androids with chrome heads that look like those 70's see-through Micronauts figures.
17) Wise talking apes.
18) The sun is alive & semi-sentient and has a big face on it like in Teletubbies. World will die when it someday hatches into Hyper-God.
19) John Holmes. Vintage porn. Swagger
20) Elves are survivors of alien universe from before Big Bang and are goth and Elric as fuck. Use demon everything.
21) In forgotten ancient times a massive city covered entire world. Dungeons are what's left of it's basements & sewers.
22) Ridiculous giant blades like in anime.
23) Gor.
24) The VHS tape cover art to cheapo 80's Italian Conan rip-offs.
No 1d24. All of the above. Plus Rick Sanchez.
Quote from: Simlasa;920559There's a setting book for Call of Cthulhu 'The Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan' that depicts a very dark aftermath of Cthulhu awakening and the world falling into madness.
Ohhh, that one's a gem. Good call.
Quote from: Lynn;919929I am preparing to run DCCRPG for a group that's never played it before, starting with the module Hole in the Sky, a funnel 0 level adventure. If they like it, Ill continue running it as a campaign (I have Peril on the Purple Planet but I am not in a hurry to run that). I have some ideas of a post apocalyptic Earth style campaign but Id like to hear community ideas about what made DCCRPG fun for you, in terms of whipping together your own campaign / setting / etc. Yeah, very open ended question.
My infamous setting was based on looking at all the basic elements of DCC, and trying to match a world to that level of gonzo. It's Gonzo up to 11. Post-apocalypse fantasy, total mix of tech-levels. Ridiculous societies. Talking animals who are often assholes. etc etc.
Anyways, if you haven't seen it yet, check out my archived log of the campaign (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?29376-DCC-Campaign-Log). It gets crazier and crazier as it goes along.
Quote from: RPGPundit;921966My infamous setting was based on looking at all the basic elements of DCC, and trying to match a world to that level of gonzo. It's Gonzo up to 11. Post-apocalypse fantasy, total mix of tech-levels. Ridiculous societies. Talking animals who are often assholes. etc etc.
Anyways, if you haven't seen it yet, check out my archived log of the campaign (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?29376-DCC-Campaign-Log). It gets crazier and crazier as it goes along.
Looks like a lot of fun stuff there - that's your next project, packaging it up?
I went ahead and ran the first session with a bit of interlude before they began playing the "Hole in the Sky" module. I kept 'the world' a bit small to begin with. I like the fact that character stuff isn't full on gonzo at 0 level, and the Purple Sorcerer generator apps are really quite good.
It begins in a post apocalyptic world in an area that mirrors the San Juan Islands, each of which is a small realm. All the humans begin in safe, no magic islands that have populations tightly controlled by a High King in the Warm Lands (who seems to have a mystical control over several hundred killer whales). On "Coming of Age Day" / Autumnal Equinox, if an island has become overpopulated by new births, it ejects a few who come of age if they can't kick out enough undesirables to make up the balance - which fits perfectly with the beginning of "Hole in the Sky". So they are all dumped in the farthest realm and told they need to prove their worth within three days or the local 'chief' will decide it for them. The coastal realms roughly mirror traditional Native American territories. The world outside of the islands is virtually unknown to the humans. I'm figuring to start them in a relatively "cleanly barbaric" land such that REH would like before they find out what a mutant cesspool Seattle has become.
Quote from: Lynn;921970Looks like a lot of fun stuff there - that's your next project, packaging it up?
It will be, as soon as I can find time to start on it.