Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Raddu76 Oct 27, 2009 11:21:25	Have you had a campaign based on the undead?  What did it entail?   I'm thinking about writing one up.   I might run it as a PbP or I might wait and do it whenever I have time/get a real life group.  In prior games I've just used them occasionally, never the focus.  There are so many opportunities to use them.  So many different kinds of undead and reasons for beign undead and so many shades of grey, white, and black in their outlook.   I'm currently thinking about intelligent undead from the Deadlands being sent out to find items/knowledge.  The PC's run into them once on a parellel mission.  Then again...then maybe they get interested in why they keep running into them.  Then more mindless undead start popping up.  Then small oasis', merchant outposts, and slave tribes get attacked by hordes of mindless undead led by intelligent undead.  Then perhaps they find out that some great undead wants to take over the Tyr region...etc..etc..etc   Thoughts? Ideas?
#2 Pennarin Oct 27, 2009 12:48:47	An actual campaign? It might be stretching believability to do that anywhere outside the Deadlands. As for a small campaign arc, maybe beginning the paragon tier in 4e, you could go with the case of an undead army rising from the wastelands to ravage all in their path, as described in the first few pages of Dragon Kings. First players meet scouts, then undead raiding parties, then as they become more powerful face undead assassins, until finally they confront the actual undead army, a vast horde. Just don't include any living in the army or the scheme behind its existence, and it will be a short undead campaign. I'd use the zombie plague disease from 4e's Open Grave, and have entire villages turn and kill each other before joining the marching army. The challenge is making such a story non-linear, provide choices to PCs, provide a story and NPCs and roleplay opportunities without tying it all back - again - to the sorcerer-kings or a templar or Dregoth or the Deadlands.
#3 Raddu76 Oct 27, 2009 14:48:12	An actual campaign? It might be stretching believability to do that anywhere outside the Deadlands. As for a small campaign arc, maybe beginning the paragon tier in 4e, you could go with the case of an undead army rising from the wastelands to ravage all in their path, as described in the first few pages of Dragon Kings. First players meet scouts, then undead raiding parties, then as they become more powerful face undead assassins, until finally they confront the actual undead army, a vast horde. Just don't include any living in the army or the scheme behind its existence, and it will be a short undead campaign. I'd use the zombie plague disease from 4e's Open Grave, and have entire villages turn and kill each other before joining the marching army. The challenge is making such a story non-linear, provide choices to PCs, provide a story and NPCs and roleplay opportunities without tying it all back - again - to the sorcerer-kings or a templar or Dregoth or the Deadlands. Well that just depends on the story right?  I mean what if for the first few levels, as I mention the PC's come into contact with intelligent undead groups in conflict with their own missions for whatever reason.  Then later more undead start showing up in various forms from the south and the PC's find out that there was a huge undead war and for whatever reason the undead are fleeing the deadlands.  The intelligent undead want their own cities so they perhaps band together and think Balic or Tyr would be a nice city to take over...? Or maybe they go and set up shop in Kalidnay or some other ruin and uncover some of the secrets of those places and in turn make an even bigger problem for the Tyr region.   Perhaps the character's adventures would be based on other facets instead of the "war", and the war would be just a backdrop.   As for not including any living inthe army...I was thinking it'd be a good place for a reimagined Revenant from Dragon Mag.
#4 Pennarin Oct 27, 2009 15:13:01	The Kalidnay angle is very good. Instead of the army marching on nearby Balic, it comes from Kalidnay in waves. Like when Urik attacked Tyr. Beat back the waves, enter Kalidnay, kill the leader(s), disperse the intelligent undead lieutenants with their morale broken, clean up the non-intelligent undead that remains.   Revenant?
#5 Raddu76 Oct 27, 2009 15:18:17	Revenant?   D&D Insider brings you an exclusive new feature! "Playing Revenants" introduces a new race for your D&D game. Created by the Raven Queen to further her own ambiguous ends, revenants wander the world seeking to find their unfulfilled purpose. With a revenant character, you can bring one of your dead characters back to life, reborn with destiny to find! A revenant arises not as an aimless corpse of a life lost but as the embodiment of a lost soul given new purpose. Such a creature walks in two worlds. Though the revenant moves among the throngs of the living, it has a phantom life -- a puppet mockery of the existence its soul once knew. The revenant is an echo haunted by the memory of itself. ________ Perhaps instead of created by the Raven Queen...they're humans that were captured by the undead in The Deadlands and had an evil incorporeal undead bound to their soul...or something....
#6 Pennarin Oct 27, 2009 17:26:41	I got overwhelmed by all the content a couple of issues back. Does not compute, you know? ;)
#7 Raddu76 Oct 27, 2009 19:59:02	Yeah..I do know.  I resisted 4e for a long time...played it a couple of times, but didn't like it.  Then I tried it again at the DMG2 game day and really liked the higher level char (all I had played before was 1st).  Since then I've been amazed at how much is out there in books and DDI.  There's too much to read right now.  Thank the gods for D&D podcasts that have reviews of books so I at least know what's in them, even if I haven't read them.