From another thread:
Quote from: Garnfellow;305153If it's BECMI-flavored D&D, you're probably talking about the polymar, a mimic-analogue that first appeared in module B4 The Lost City.
I loved that monster.
Mind you, I loved everything about B4. Still do.
It remains one of my great unfulfilled ambitions to run a full-blown campaign set during the decline of Cynidicea when Zargon was rising to power. As usual, Tom Moldvay leaves heaps of stuff to play with - archaic, ritualised politics, religious conflict, the encroaching desert, human sacrifice and the subsumption of individuality behind masks as a once mighty civilisation spirals into cultural insanity. The nice thing about using Z as the campaign villain is that the players can kill it and still not fuck with continuity of
The Lost City - victory is pyrrhic at best, delaying the inevitable decline for a few decades as the monster slowly regenerates.
After the campaign conclusion (whatever the outcome) I'd run B4 as coda, letting the players retread the now ruined remnants of their home millennia later.
So that's one of my great unused ideas. What's yours?
I've posted this before. I don't think I'll ever run it. FACTOTUM
Factotum - a person employed to do a wide variety of jobs for someone/somebody
Setting - It's a post apocalyptic planet. Death and disease has done the deed instead of wars. Human society is now divided into wandering scavengers, plague riddled cults, petty dictatorships and bizarre collectives. The use of technology is lost in time.
Strange mutated creatures lurk in the edges of the forest and the once heavily populated cities. It's part agrarian, part forager always bartering society. The strong dominate the meek. Humans fashion weapons and tools - sometimes they function as both - from the bones of slain creatures (humans or otherwise) and bits of metal they find littering the planet. Very Dark Sun like.
They have completely forgotten how to use any of the tech, which has somehow managed to remain functional around them. Instead they use them as altars, totem poles, religious relics, crude weapons etc. They pray to gods who do not answer them.
The only other sentient life on the planet (maybe) are the the strange insectoid Thri Keen (sp). Nobody knows whether they predate human civilization, but they are now the foremost predator species. They hunt humans not for food but rather to work in their strange mines - mining for god knows what.
They keep these humans in psionic bondage, repairing their bodies when broken and working them till they fade. They have also infiltrated some of these collectives, and have subtely enslaved people in key positions for unknown reasons. These compromised collectives although very succesful in what they do - farming, mining, hunting etc - are in the thrall of these starnge creatures. Humans, of these collectives also exhibit stange mental powers....
The PCs - The pcs are Robots from a bygone age programmed to help humans with the day to day tedium of living now reawakened by some mysterious force. These robots look like the Warforged from Eberron.
They are the only ones who can use the technology left by the ancestors of the current humans. They travel across the planet working for a time doing various jobs with the caches of technology they discover in human settlements and then moving on, taking the useless (for humans) technology with them.
The tech they find could be medical technology - scanners, drugs ect, construction equipment, communication tech, weapons etc. They build dwellings, cure outbreaks of certain disease, battle foes for these communities. They will work for a time for these people - all they ask in return is for the technology, which is useless to the humans anyway.
So, a group of Factotums may work in a village for awhile doing amongst other things, building a structure, tending to the medical needs of the people, setting up a comminication grid with another village etc.
I picture them as wanderers travelling with strange equipment, small vials of drugs, scanners, energy and martial weapons, music boxes etc looked upon by the humans as sorcerers and entertainers.
The robots could be persuaded to fight the local tyrant (they are programmed to be altruistic in nature) but their main opponents seem to be the Thri Keen and their human allies who the Factotums call the Brethren.
Edit: You meant D&D campaigns. My bad.
Quote from: David R;305158Factotum
Very cool.
It reminds me of a similar idea I had years ago, where the PCs were a group of sentient warrior automata who survived an arcane war centuries ago. I basically nicked the premise from 2000AD's
ABC Warriors, shifting it to a baroque fantasy setting. Yet another tantalising idea I didn't follow through with!
QuoteEdit: You meant D&D campaigns. My bad.
Not at all. The thread is open to all genres. :)
Quote from: Drew;305157So that's one of my great unused ideas. What's yours?
Alternate
Lord of the Rings.
Reboot Middle-earth, let the players roll up (Red Box D&D) one of the iconic characters of their choice, and just start the (almost inevitably smaller) Fellowship's journey.
- What road will the players take?
- Will the Fellowship break?
- Who and what exactly are the Ringwraiths?
- Is Saruman still the White Wizard?
- Where is Sauron hiding? (... Mirkwood instead of Mordor?)
- What is Gollum up to?
- What are the true powers (and lures) of the Ring?
- (Dark Galadriel...?)
Never got to do it, never will to.
The scope of this is too big for today's schedules. And you'd need Tolkien fans that are able and willing to accept a complete detour from their beloved canon.
Quote from: Drew;305160I basically nicked the premise from 2000AD's ABC Warriors, shifting it to a baroque fantasy setting.
So did I :D Specifically Alan Moore's (
ABC Warriors)
Red Planet Blues .
Regards,
David R
Quote from: David R;305166So did I :D Specifically Alan Moore's (ABC Warriors) Red Planet Blues .
Then we can both claim to have predated Eberron's Warforged by some years...
Hardly a landmark achivement, but I'll take whatever I can get. :D
Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;305163And you'd need Tolkien fans that are able and willing to accept a complete detour from their beloved canon.
These days, perhaps.
Back in the dim-and-distant I recall MERP players being considerably more flexible. Mind you, back then
everyone seemed more flexible. Maybe we're just getting old...
...The one that succeeds, that I don't burn out on, that actually gets started...
I've got a whole bunch of mini-campaigns (6-8 session stories) planned for my Dawnlands setting because in my current group, that's mainly the time I get as DM before our regular DM starts getting antsy to DM again.
However, if I could run a two-year 50+ session campaign, I'd run my Big Campaign Idea, which is the Rise of the Snake storyline. Jarek the Snake, a Hill Elf warlord, is one of my favourite villains I've put into the setting. The Rise of the Snake is the story of him attempting to reunify the Hill Elves and the monstrous races, vanquish the nomads, and then march on the Orthocracy of Kaddish. The PCs would be Kadiz nomads trying to stop him.
The campaign would be in four rough parts:
Part one would be the prologue. The PCs are nomads, and they raid the local Hill Elves, dicker with the other tribes, and hinder or help Rufus Kern Barreeve, the chief of the Barreeve clan, to absorb his rival clans and unify the southern nomads. Figure it as level 1 to about level 7.
Part two would focus on Finder-of-Eyes, the gnollish prophet, leading a jihad out of the desert and across the plains to meet Jarek and anoint him Overking of the Hill Elves. The Barreeve clan and its vassals are in his way, and he strives to wipe them out. PCs are slaying gnollish warriors, and have to prevent Finder-of-Eyes from journeying to the ancient Hill Elf cities where he will gather the materials to anoint Jarek and gain demonic allies for their army. Figure levels 8-16.
Part three would focus on Jarek's attempt to gain allies against the Kadiz and Kaddish. The Kaddish, for their part, blame Dwer Tor for backing him and send their armies out to chastise the Dwer. Divine and Vampiric heroes begin to appear and take sides, and Jarek takes the opportunity to scour the Plains of Kadiz of the troublesome nomads. The PCs have to prevent the demigods from rampaging, and save their kinsmen from Jarek's armies. Levels 17-24.
Part four would be the final assault. Jarek marches on an Orthocracy whose army is hundreds of miles away. The PCs have to fight the orthocrats to mobilise the population to defend the city. Soulforged monstrosities are loosed, and demigods stride the battlefield. They confront Jarek, and hopefully defeat him and save the Dawnlands.
That's a broad outline, of course.
Cool as ever, Pseudophedrine. I've always enjoyed how you ground the mythic with the credible. You have a real flair for it.
Thanks mate :)
How's your City of Kings campaign going?
I had to put all gaming related activities on hold recently to better deal with academic work and other, personal stuff. Happily the pressure to fit 25 hours into a 24-hour cycle has lifted, and I'm looking forward to returning to my hobby interests imminently. My City of Kings/Kadiz hybrid has been tabled as the second in my groups' queue, so I anticipiate starting up fairly soon.
I also have little doubt that my players are going to have great fun interacting with your Hill Elves. They remain one of my favourite parts of the setting.
I've a campaign idea I've longed to run: The Forge of Destiny.
The idea is that the pc's begin the game having just been resurrected; they are the only recipients of such powerful magics ever, because their souls had been thefted by a soul-drinking sword. They essentially got stuck in the cracks, lost in the magic "corners" of the sword, rather than being fed to the swords master.
The world they once new is gone, instead a blasphemous one remains. A handful of scattered out of the way city-states, a minor kingdom, and a few hundred villages too small to be bothered with remain. For the master of the sword has become a merciless emperor who is besieging the last serious threats to his rule.
Soon all will be fuel for his armies, and peace will reign the land.
The problem is of course that this terrible Emperor, thinks he's doing this for the greater good. It is the only way to stave off terrors that shatter the mind, to make sure no one ever tempts the dark places, and opens the door. Of course he's a bit mad.
His soldiers are the bodies of the dead, with their former owners souls trapped within, a undying torment for those who opposed him. Magical creations like golems serve his will, and creatures warped by his mad experiments.
He must be destroyed, of course, but the catch-22 is that he really is holding mind-wrecking horrors at bay. So how do you destroy the once terrible swords master, without letting those things loose? How do you reclaim a once verdant land from the brink of falling into the chasm of death now that it is so far gone?
Quote from: Silverlion;305808I've a campaign idea I've longed to run: The Forge of Destiny.
Nice.
On first reading I imagined a dark fantasy version of
Kill Bill, which is no bad thing!
I unforunately have dozens of really good campaign ideas to start up. Some are a bit too avant guarde. These I have all typed up at the moment.
The Argon[/i]
The Argon is one of the ships from The Century of Ships. It is a generational ship sent out to explore and establish warp points. However, The Argon is off mission now. The Being brought the gift of freedom to the Soft Intelligences (AIs/ Androids). Now several generations later, the Argon still moves through Nul Space, humans living in a world not of their own making.
Genre Science Fiction of the Lost Colony Ship vein
System Convergence Point
Nothing says Old School gaming like Metamorphosis Alpha. This was an updated setting that stayed true to the Lost Colony Ship Fiction. Most of the work was done in public @ http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=424444
Against the Storms[/i]
For hundreds of years colonist from Earth have lived on Kerren. They came to Karren to live a simplier peaceful life. A pity that dream never materialized.
Kerren is a world in an age of Saurians. Giant megafauna live among huge trees. Smaller saurians and giant insects live in their shadows. The Humans live in Clusters, walled cities usually along cliffs, to protect themselves.
Kerren is a world of little metal. The colonists expected resources to maintain a minimal level of technology. Those resources did not exist or were unobtainable given their tools. They adapted to the materials they had.
In short their life was simplier, but it was not peaceful.
Zhan are extradimensonal blobs that fall from rifts caused by electrical storms. Zhan infect living things, twisting them into rampaging monsters. If Kerren was not dangerous enough, now "things" roamed the lands.
However, the Colonists found allies on Kerren- The Dragons. Working with this native animal species, The Ryders defend their people. Riding their dragons they destroy Zhan as they fall before they can contaminate the world, remove Zhani monsters in Grey Zones, and wrangle Mega Fauna and Jumpers. Together with their Dragons, Ryders help build and maintain the colony.
Genre Science Fantasy of the Lost Colony with strong Planetary Romance ties
System Convergence Point
Rock Raiders[/i]
It is life under the edge
The planet of Sonheim IV is towards the edges of civilized space. It is a barely habitable place. The only reason people are here? X-ite. Used in the process of cellular and genetic manipulation, it is a valuable mineral. The mines run by Comstar with all its miners, the colonists trying to eke out of a living here, and other factions in Human society, follow their agendas. Nobody said the job was easy. Then things get... interesting.
Genre Science Fiction
System Convergence Point