Hi folks,
My Legacy of the Crystal Shard campaign ended prematurely, and my players have expressed an interest in a sort of plane-hopping campaign. We've come up with a premise that's sort of a mash-up between Sliders and Quantum Leap, with elements of Marathon 2 and Half-Life 2 thrown in for good measure.
The idea is this: While on their very first dungeon delve, the PCs come across an ancient artifact. While trying to figure out what it does, they are suddenly whisked away to some unknown location, where they quickly find themselves embroiled in a new adventure. As this happens over and over again, the PCs come to realize that someone - or something - is using the artifact to send them on quests throughout the multiverse (though primarily on various prime worlds in the campaign's early stages).
As the PCs grow in power, they gain more freedom to go where they want and do as they please (thanks to magic spells like fly, teleport, plane shift, and so on). This may lead them to come into conflict with whatever mysterious entity has been controlling their lives so far, as it may not like losing control of such useful tools.
At first, I thought this entity might be some sort of overseer akin to the rampant AI Durandal from Marathon 2 or the enigmatic G-Man from Half-Life 2, but then I got to thinking that maybe it's the artifact itself that's controlling the PCs. I haven't made up my mind yet, but whatever the case, because most of the quests I have in mind (for the early levels at least) involve heroic deeds and good triumphing over evil, I reckon the mysterious entity ultimately needs to be "good" too. However, to keep things interesting, perhaps it is overbearingly good. In a way, it cares more about the greater good than an individual's right to personal freedom, though it respects the PCs' autonomy while they are on a mission - so it 'railroads' them into going on particular quests but doesn't interfere with how they go about accomplishing those quests.
I was also thinking maybe the artifact could take the form of a book like Tom Riddle's diary. The artifact - or the being controlling it - could thus communicate with the PCs by writing clues and such on its pages (similar to how Durandal communicates with your space marine who's possibly a cyborg via computer terminals - and just like how the shard of Voldemort's soul communicates with people who look in his diary). In that case, I could make the entity something more sinister, like a lich (with the book being its horcrux phylactery), but then I'd probably need to put a sinister twist on all of the quests the PCs go on ... maybe the lich is trapped in its phylactery - or in a demiplane of its own devising - and it is using the PCs to collect magical items it can try and use to escape ... or maybe it's getting them to eliminate its rivals (or the adventurers who trapped it in its present state). Perhaps it doesn't mind if the PCs do a few good deeds in the pursuit of the greater evil ...
Or maybe its goals and motivations are completely inscrutable, like that of the G-Man. He seems to be a good guy, insofar as he sends Freeman to oppose the obviously evil Combine, and yet he comes across as such a creepy Big Brother-style bureaucrat, putting Freeman into stasis when he's not "needed" and watching over him from afar whenever he's out on the job.
In metagame terms, what all this means is that, at low levels, I can keep things simple and structured by running published adventures with clear boundaries and goals (and the planeshifting theme means I can pretty much run them all as-is, without having to shoehorn them all into a single setting). As the PCs level up and gain access to abilities that enable them to easily bypass many obstacles (such as the aforementioned spells), I can ease my players into more freeform adventuring and open up more of the multiverse for them to explore. It's the whole "start small and let the campaign world grow as the PCs level up" idea.
I've opened up most of this for discussion with my players but obviously I want to keep some of it secret so they don't know the full story ahead of time, especially if I opt for a sinister patron like a lich or something.
Whadda ya reckon? What would you go with - an actual being as the overseer or the artifact itself? Would you go for an overbearingly good entity or a more sinister one that is either genuinely evil or just unfathomable?
As an addendum: My original thought was to make the artifact a cross between an amulet of the planes and a cubic gate. However, I'm now wondering if, as a book, maybe it should start out as something more like a Magic 8-Ball - that is, they can use it to cast augury once a day and maybe divination and/or commune once a week or something. If I make it like a 4e style artifact, if they continue to act according to its wishes, thereby making it "happy", then maybe it'll start giving them more powers, like access to the plane shift or gate spells.
The artifact is a sentient being trapped in its current shape. It ardently desires its old body back (not having opposable thumbs is really frustrating). It needs somebody - the PCs - to reassemble a magic mirror (sorta) to allow access to the place where its real body last was. In each mission, the PCs must pick up a colored glass pane; which will eventually assemble into a man-sized stained-glass window that can be made into a mirror. This is the object he needs to get started with the REAL search. Of course a set of Goggles of Detect Magic comes with the assignment.
Whoever put the being into artifact form did so to prevent him from being active in the world/multiverse. When enough of the scattered glass pieces "disappear", he is alerted to the fact, and sends minions out to guard the others / interfere with the PCs. (He has a 'gyroscope' attuned to the pieces, which stays in balance as long as the pieces remain scattered across the planes. When the pieces are collected on one plane, the gyroscope begins to tilt towards where they are.) Somewhere along the line, the PCs should get a chance to steal this object and reverse-engineer it to find more, better-hidden, glass panes.
If you want to torment your players, the true body is an aboleth or mind flayer.
If not, have it be a top-end Celestial whose influence has been sorely missed by its ex-allies (like Malkizid before his fall?). They think it died a True Death at the hands of their enemies.
If this campaign lasts until Epic, the being in the Artifact could even be a long-lost god (somebody from the Netherese pantheon comes to mind).
A lot of cultural references there I don't understand 
, but I do like the concept of interjecting a "Tom Riddle's Diary" into a campaign as you described.
DMs love to try to take control of players. If you can do so subtlly, with clues, red herrings, lures, talking books and what-not, that's awesome.
The only thing to be afraid of is a party who says "Intelligent book? Kill it with fire!" So many campaigns that rely on parties keeping items fall apart when the item is destroyed by suspicious players. Find a way to make it so valuable they don't want to destroy it. Maybe it leads them to great rewards a few times before dropping the hammer or something. Or have the controlling spirit "item hop" from one thing to another.
Those are some cool ideas. Thanks.
The players have bought into the idea of a magic macguffin artifact thingy, so I don't think they'll be wanting to kill it with fire, unless it turns evil on them. I was thinking about giving it that detrimental artifact property that requires the user to draw blood (dealing 1d4 points of damage in the process) in order to operate it. If the artifact is "good", this could be explained as being a heroic self-sacrifice sort of thing.
Speaking of cultural references, the idea of the PCs having to collect little glass shards goes along with my wife's suggestion of throwing some Warehouse 13 into the mix.
EDIT: I've hyperlinked all the cultural references.
Sounds like a D&D version of Marvel comics Exiles which had a similar theme; main difference being that they were all plucked from different realities in the marvel multiverse. Unless you want all your players to be from the same realm you could perhaps have them all from different campaign settings. Maybe they all put on a magical ring at the same time bringing them to a fortress floating in a pocket dimension where they get sent out to hot spots of trouble. It could be quite fun, a player might be from a realm where the dominant race are the Dragonborn and humans are uncivilised barbarians living on the outskirts of civilisation who now has a team mate who is an educated human Red Wizard from Krynn.
I'd probably do it in the flavor of Planescape with the PCs starting off a clueless berks and gradually becoming famous cutters who make a difference on the planes.
The artifact is a perfect golden cube with a quartz cube hovering within it marked by circuit-like runes, a trinket crafted by the modron god Primus in an effort to study the nature of good as a force in the multiverse. It was stolen during the last Great Modron March and turned up on a prime world where the PCs find it. It has decided after exhaustive contemplation that its creator is an imperfect being whose destruction will ultimately help the cause of good. (It's right, but...)
In order to gain the power it needs to get back to its creator, it brings good-leaning mortals unknowingly into its plot, taking them to places where it calculates they can affect the most good in the world. When the characters successfully complete an adventure and performed great acts of goodness, the cube rewards them with a level and Hero Points (see DMG page 264). Aim for one level per session, possibly even doing levels 1 through 3 in one session. First to 4th level is on the Prime. Fifth to 10th level is in Sigil, Outlands, Astral, or Etheral Planes. Eleventh to 16th level in some challenging Inner or Outer Planes. Seventeeth to 20th level in the nasty Inner of Outer Planes, plus a final confrontation with the modron god (maybe).
Run it like a good TV show - new location, new premise each session. Recurring NPCs here and there. Start with action, end with the cold open of the next session. One huge setpiece is the order of the day, plus other scenes you can introduce on the fly to build up to that and challenge the PCs along the way. Build in trapdoors by introducing backup PCs early on so that they can be swapped out if a PC dies very easily.
A level per session?! 
Hey, good TV shows sometimes run multi-episode story arcs. I was just going to do that for the longer adventures. I like the idea of them being sent to places where they can do the most good. That's kind of what I was thinking.
Wasn't Primus killed by Orcus (who in turn wound up temporarily dead) at one point? I was thinking of getting the Great Modron March and Dead Gods Planescape modules, but damn! Hardcopies of those things are expensive!
I've been reading through my old 2e Planescape box set. There are some things I like about it but some things I'm not so sure about. I'm not sure I want to use the Great Wheel cosmology, for one thing.
For the first part of the campaign at least, I was thinking of running a smattering of short Dungeon adventures (eg. The Crypt of Istaris, Them Apples, The Lady of the Mists, Melody, Lear the Giant-King) with the occasional longer module thrown in (eg. The Forge of Fury, The Standing Stone, Quest for the Heartstone, The Demon God's Fane).
The thing is, I think at least one of my players is hoping that there'll be a random planeshifting factor in the campaign. When I read him the description of the amulet of the planes, he loved the idea of having to make an Intelligence check to use it, with a failure resulting in you and everyone around you getting teleported to a random location. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with how much ad-libbing and aimless wandering that would involve, and some of the planes seem a little bit boring, while others are pretty deadly ... plus I've got this big stack of modules and an even bigger stack of Dungeon mags, and I'd really love to get some use out of them.
EDIT: There are four tiers. I could structure the campaign to be more like Avatar and Korra - one season (13 episodes) for each tier.
pukunui wrote:
Great idea, thanks for sharing it. I would love to play a campaign like that.
Its given me an idea to work on an adventure based around the magic item 'Well of Many Worlds' form the DMG.
When I ran 4e Pyramid of Shadows I opted to have each level to be a separate world (one a desert, one a giant sized forest, one a rocky shadow realm) with the exit/ entrance only opening once the BBG was defeated. It was cool but I had to limit the players desire to explore so I made each world very small on scope (1 days journey to encircle the entire world). It worked well given the context of that adventure.
I guess my point is make sure the players have some direction when plane-hopping or they may lose sight of the goal.
iserith wrote:
Occasional random plane shift can be a good challenge (how did we get HERE, where is it, how do we get back on track?) but if it keeps happening, why hang onto this broken Artifact? Especially if it kicks us over to someplace that is quickly deadly (Negative Energy Plane, most of the Abyss). Take control of the "random failure" table by writing up a list of places the PCs might be able to stay for a while, while they fix the Artifact or wait for it to recharge. Nothing says that there can't be a piece of stained glass somewhere near the mis-jump. 
One of the mis-jump results might be a trip through time, into the recent past or near future.
If they get in trouble over their head somewhere and did not achieve their objective, end up in the past and clear out some of the guardians / physical barriers "ahead of time". In a few more episodes, try the original challenge again - but see results of their efforts.
If they do not understand what they are supposed to be accomplishing, they land in the future and see some of the results of their labors. (Hopefully an inspiring scene, not Star Wars III. 
) Also provide a clue to the mystery, then send them "back to work."
Good thoughts. Thanks.
For the record, we've decided to give ourselves some more time to work this out, and I'm going to run Scourge of the Sword Coast in the meantime. Trying to sort this all out in two weeks was doing my head in.
The artifact doesn't have to be good. It could have been created, along with other artifacts, by an immensely powerful being to address balance in the multiverse, making it neutral and more of an "enemy" later on. The artifact would sense the nature of those it is using and give them projects that don't conflict with that nature, allowing for "good" adventures, even though it isn't itself good or specifically interested in promoting good. It could also try to stop travel spells that run contrary to the adventure it has set up, forcing the caster to roll against a DC in order to successfully cast the spell.
That sounds pretty good. Thanks Orethalion!
pukunui wrote:
Another option is that they need to assemble another great atrifact while they travel (like the rod of seven parts). Each time they jump they end up near the location of one of those parts and they need to collect that part before moving on. (They might need to do a quest to get it, steal it, rescue it before an invading army destroys it... etc.)Each part by itself might give them soem limited magic and as they assemble more of it more powers are unlocked.
While going up a level each session can sound cool if you are having a 2 week break between each session, and their characters are growing that fast they may not have time to get used to each level as they gain it . Suddenly they are level 6 but they never really got the hang of their lower level powers.
When I mentioned the idea of hunting pieces of an artifact, one of my players quite liked the idea. It's certainly something to consider.
grendel111111 wrote: