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World from nothing session crafting.

Started by jeckyllgeek, February 09, 2018, 12:43:06 PM

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jeckyllgeek

So I have this idea for a campaign, the fabric of reality has been torn asunder and the world is in chaos. My thought was multiple timelines crashing into each other. As a last ditch effort great heroes of the past have been summoned to set the world right however something went wrong and somehow an earlier version of them were called (these are the pcs).

My problem is what should I do for a first session since my previous attempt amounted to just giving the players a short explanation of what was happening from the priest who summoned them and then sending the players into a castle-dungeon where they make some choices after some combat to stabilize the first area of the campaign.

I think my idea for a campaign is good but I need some ideas on how to make my first session better.

I am new here I am hoping that this is the right forum for this question, I didn't see any ones that looked better.

Omega

Welcome to theRPGsite.

If you can find it look up the playtest packet End Times for Call of Cthulhu.

This takes the players through a series of one adventures that build towards the actual campaign.

I DMed it and played it such that each success or failure had some slight impact on the final Mars colony. This created a connection between the players and the setting.

Madprofessor

Hi and welcome to the rpgsite,

I think it is hard to answer your question.  However the first thing that came to mind was the set-up for DCC #80, Intrigue at the Court of Chaos. Basically, the Gods of Chaos need mortal intervention to get what they want (the world set to "right") and summon the PCs for some cosmic quest (in the module it is stealing from the gods of law).  Each chaos god has his own agenda and tries to influence one or more PCs to do it their way so that they can dominate in the new cosmic order, so while they all want the PCs to succeed, they are still working against each other and trying to subvert eachuther, and perhaps so are the PCs.  The real quest is for the party to realize that they are in control, and hold all of leverage, even though they could not possibly hope to defeat the terrifying chaos gods in combat.  The players will determine the new cosmic order with the choices that they make.  It's just a thought, but you might check out the module as food for thought.

Bren

Welcome. I think multiple timelines are a lot more interesting if there are already people/characters in the past (or future) who the players know and care about.

  • A campaign set in some version of earth (real or fantastic) might be interesting because the players could meet (or play) famous people from different eras and have them run together.

  • A campaign set in a known fictional setting like Tolkien's Middle Earth, Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Full Metal Alchemist etc. might be interesting since different well known characters from different periods or the same well known character from different periods of a known setting might be encountered.

  • A long running, already existing RPG setting might be interesting since PCs from different periods or of different ages that are already well known to the players could be encountered. A young PC might encounter his own grandfather as a young man in the dungeoneering days of grandad's youth. Which might be interesting if both grandkid PC and young-granddad PC are already known people.

  • Creating a brand new setting with all new characters but some of those characters are from different timelines from the same brand new fictional setting doesn't sound very interesting to me since there is no known, lived history associated with those characters.
Currently running: Runequest in Glorantha + Call of Cthulhu   Currently playing: D&D 5E + RQ
My Blog: For Honor...and Intrigue
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