Author Topic: Your best idea.  (Read 3621 times)

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Ikeren

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Re: Your best idea.
« Reply #20 on: December 12, 2010, 09:22:13 PM »
A. Setting: Home Brew///D&D3.5e

B. Basic Premise or Idea you wanted to experiment with.
I wanted to have magic suddenly appear in a world that had been at war for a long time. One kingdom decides magic is evil, the other decide that it's good. How does the world change? How does the war change?

C. Things you had to implement to make it work.
I gave the PC's partial gestalt: A gestalted caster level at 4/8/12/16/20 --- arcane casting only, no healing, conjuration. New magic is powerful, but it is still minor in comparison a standard D&D3.5E game

D. have you actually managed to run this campaign? Results?
Twice, both ongoing. The first one is PBP, and the players started at level 1, and are now close to level 6 (over nearly 4 years, admittedly slow). They were the ones to trigger magic returning to the world, and have since  completed a few more plots.

The other is IRL. It started a few days after magic returned, with the players being rounded up for having magic. Since then, they've discovered the 3 main enemies (Negaters, mage chasers/slayers from the kingdom that hates magic, an invading force of barbarians from the northern sea, and the dopplegangers which are trying to throw the entire world into chaos for their own reasons).

One challenge I've had is providing magical rewards. At first, I provided slews of items that were impossible to identify. Eventually I started to allow identify spells to work slowly (requires 3 castings). One of the things that the group does is discovers and hunts down ancient magics for the mages power.

Should be an interesting campaign. It's neat how players interact with their relatively weak magics, and thinking about how a world responds; some people not trusting mages, some hating them, and some desperately wanting that power. There are other houserules in place, such as Augment classes (Taking "bard" levels at 1, 6, and 12 gets you bardic music with no other bard class abilities).

Psithief

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Re: Your best idea.
« Reply #21 on: December 17, 2010, 12:09:23 PM »
B. Due to a high energy particle experiment gone horribly wrong, our reality "fused" with one that previously overlapped with it partially. This other reality had completely different laws of physics.

Yeah, my campaign setting is based on this idea too. Isn't it fun to blame impossible science?

PhaedrusXY

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Re: Your best idea.
« Reply #22 on: December 17, 2010, 06:41:08 PM »
B. Due to a high energy particle experiment gone horribly wrong, our reality "fused" with one that previously overlapped with it partially. This other reality had completely different laws of physics.

Yeah, my campaign setting is based on this idea too. Isn't it fun to blame impossible science?
Well there were some fears about the Large Hadron Collider being able to create "micro" black holes which would then grow at an exponential rate and swallow the Earth... I wrote this before I'd ever heard of the LHC, though. So maybe I started those fears? (I kid, I kid. I doubt anyone ever read that damned splatbook outside my circle of friends. :P )
[spoiler]
A couple of water benders, a dike, a flaming arrow, and a few barrels of blasting jelly?

Sounds like the makings of a gay porn film.
...thanks
[/spoiler]

Midnight_v

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Re: Your best idea.
« Reply #23 on: December 18, 2010, 03:31:29 AM »
Quote
I wrote this before I'd ever heard of the LHC, though. So maybe I started those fears?

DAMN UUUUUU!  :shakefist


 :lol
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bihlbo

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Re: Your best idea.
« Reply #24 on: December 27, 2010, 12:47:08 PM »
A. Mostly homebrew. The world used to be largely ocean-less and an early iron age fantasy setting. It has recently undergone a great cataclysm, resulting in oceans suddenly errupting and all societies being greatly disrupted. The gods are strangely silent for the first time and survival has become tenuous. All races are basically reduced to the stone age with tiny pockets of people trying desperately to retain the technology, culture, and knowledge of the past.

B. The setting is secretly the prehistory of Midnight by FF Games. What will eventually be called the Shadow has arrived in the world and has not yet gained enough strength to have its presence felt in any way except the aftermath of the impact (which caused the cataclysm). Through the course of the game the players will learn things about the spiritual state of the world (all gods have been cut off) and what caused the cataclysm. Starting off all the players are of the same tribe of people and dealing with the basics of survival. As the game progresses they gain exposure to other races of people and more options for character control (reincarnate, but you choose your destination race) and the game shifts from survival level to mythological level.

C. Crunchy bits about the system are intended to be mostly d20-based. 4e would work well with the setting, except that magic users and items should be rare and I'd have to come up with a way to represent stone-age technology. A 3.5-like system would work better, but would require more work because of the inherant problems. I originally wanted to rework some aspects of a couple of my favorite d20 revisions into something that fits the setting well. A major part of the setting is the lack of gods and the de-emphasis on alignment, so the divine classes would have a major change in how they access magic. Basically, the thought is that all magic is learned the same way, mostly similar to how wizards or channelers from Midnight learn spells.

D. I'm not good at DMing and even worse at organizing people, so I haven't started this yet.

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Midnight_v

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Re: Your best idea.
« Reply #25 on: January 05, 2011, 10:56:36 AM »
I see... that midnight campaign. I actually own that book, interesting stuff it was a little to diverged but interesting to be in those worlds where evil has already won. I wanted to ask if there was antyhing they'd be able to do from the thousand years of darkness from occuring or is it just going all around them. Just curious.

Also I'm in the final stages of prep for my  UnRokugan: Divine Right campaign Irl. Now I've got the world how I want it and am choosing players and designing backgrounds. The crunchy bits for me are mostly the tome rules but I'm allowing anyclass with the knowledge that yes you are the only person using Wizard magic in all the campaign etc and it really fits the overal theme very well.
The last step will be to come up with balanced enconters, combat, and interesting encounters "Non-combat"
I'll be glad finally do it.
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Hallack

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Re: Your best idea.
« Reply #26 on: January 05, 2011, 11:51:11 AM »


A. Homebrew Drow City, lots of detail including houses, flavorful npcs and more.

B. Basic premise was the character(s) trying to survive/get along in the social structure within which they just didn't quite belong.  They were not evil.  The game started with one good friend but grew.  Each player was from various houses of power, all noble born.  As the game progressed with it's social intrigue and moral quandries it gave a great sense of being trapped by circumstances and dancing on the knife's edge.  Of course, there got to be plenty of butt kicking too.  

C. Things you had to implement to make it work:  We were playing 2nd edition at the time so things were pretty simple.  What wasn't available I made up or modified from the books.  The most important thing for the campaign was the combination of players and their ability to really get into their characters.  That gave me as the DM plenty of hooks and ways to mess with them, often more emotionally/socially than with outright head smashing danger.   Some of the more flavorful NPC were Lucy the Mindflayer masseuse, Helga the fire giant mistress that ran the tavern where, a mysterious castertype that was largely based on Shade (Dragonrealm novels) and Orko (yes, that one).

D. The campaign was run many years ago before I up and ran off with the army.  It was very fun and even talked about today some by players that were not even playing it back then.  The "why didn't I get to play in that awesome game I heard so much about" type thing.  I believe the game ran to around 8th level before life brought it to an end and it could have easily went much higher.  It was a very high magic game.  Hell, I had first level characters with +3 to +5 gear being nobles as they were.  It wasn't a problem and just added to the "drow have a reputation for being badasses" for a reason, particularly with characters were able to tackle some pretty challenging things while on patrol in the underdark.
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