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| #1RzrBladeMontageJan 29, 2015 17:10:06 | So Friday nights a group of us get together at a friends house and he DMs for us for a few hours and on Saturdays we get together at my house and I DM for everyone. I'm fairly new to D&D and very new to DM'ing so I'm learning as I go. On Fridays that we aren't able to play like normal, or if someone isn't able to make it to Saturday night games, I've started to slowly put together an "Evil Campaign" for my players. This was a strictly a Back Up Game, just so we still had something to do. Basically, my players make new characters with an evil alignment and to put it bluntly, try to destroy all the good in the world. So far it's been a few basic sessions, one of them in which my players spent the first 75% of the session avoiding combat and traps simply by saying they're going to do something and I was just like "Sure, do it." It's a lot of fun for them, and it lets me think of other things to put in our Saturday night games. As of late, my players have taken quite an interest in the evil campaign, almost more than the Saturday night game we usually play (which is a shame because I have a really awesome story line for them.) So I decided to add some extra features to their Evil Campaign, which I'm going to introduce in the next gaming session. Basically, I want to add some "real time strategy" to the game, such as games like Warcraft or Red Alert. I had some time so I jotted some ideas down, and basically this is how I'm going to introduce it. The players have just taken over a stone quarry and on their return to their home base, Dread Keep, they find that everything has been destroyed and is in shambles. Their leader, the Dread Lord (yeah, I'm not creative, sue me), has been sealed away by radiant magic and my players are the only two warriors left. They come across a necromancer who tells that what happened (ambush, overrun, radiant magic, sealing ritual, etc). The players have to rebuild everything from the ground up and the necromancer is able to summon skeleton workers to gather the materials. Over the next few gaming sessions the players will be able to raid and capture sites for certain materials in order to rebuild their lost Dread Keep.
The materials are:
Stone Lumber Iron Soul Crests
The first three are pretty self explanitory, the fourth, Soul Crests is someting I came up with on the fly. The soldiers that may players have been facing have been radiant magic turned into humanoid creatures, dissolving the moment they are destroyed. Now that I've implimented Soul Crests into the game, the players will be able to obtain a certain number of them from enemies, depending on their size/difficulty.
Minions: 0 Soldiers: 1 Lieutenant: 3 Colonel: 6 General: 9 Angel: 1d20 (minimum of 10)
The necromancer will be able to use Soul Crests to summon more skeleton workers, to either work in the Dread Keep or to gather materials from the sites. The buildings they make and the sites they take over are all able to be upgraded as well, by using resources, or soul crests. I'll give a quick example of each below.
Stone Quarry:
Available upgrades: Workers, Transport (cart/speed) and Tools. The quarry starts off with two workers, each equipped with a modern pick axe. Each worker is able to mine 5 stone per real time hour, so starting off the max amount of stone you can get per hour is 10. The transport is a normal wooden cart with a skeletal horse. The starting cart can hold 10 stone, and takes until the end of the gaming session to reach the Dread Keep.
Workers: Basic: Two Level 2: Four <-- 5 Soul Crests Level 3: Six <-- 20 Soul Crests Level 4: Eight <-- 45 Soul Crests Level 5: Ten <-- 60 Soul Crests ~ Each level requires the previous level of payment first. So you can't just pay 20 to skip to level 3, a total of 25 must be paid to reach level 3.
This is the basic system for all of the components. The cart can be rebuilt with lumber to make it stronger and bigger, and eventually reenforced with iron for the maximum size and strength. The speed of the cart is determined by the skeletal horse, which can also be improved by using Soul Crests to give them extra strength/pull speed, and eventually more horses. Tools can be improved by using lumber and iron to make them stronger, sharper, etc in order to get more resources per hour.
Blacksmith:
A demonic blacksmith will be implimented into the story, and after obtaining him, a blacksmith can be built. This allows players to purchase weapons and armor.
The blacksmith costs 100 lumber, 50 stone and 20 iron to build and starts at level 1. Unlike the resouce sites, buildings only have 3 levels. At level 1 players can buy Simple Weapons and Light Armor. At level 2 (which costs the same material costs plus 5 soul crests per level) more skeleton workers will be available to help the blacksmith, in order to increase the quality of weapons and armor. Level 2 allows players to buy Military Weapons and Heavy Armor. Level 3 allows players to buy Superior Weapons and Special Armor.
Those are the basics. I have a Blacksmith, Alchemist, Barracks, Farm, and Enchanter planned for right now. Farms will allow more troops to be summoned with the help of the Barracks (Goblins at level 1, orcs at 2 and trolls at 3, each taking up a certain amount of food resource). Seeing as how upgrading everything will take my players some time, it gives me plenty of time to figure out the "final battle of good vs evil" that will take place far off into the future. While some people may say "that will take forever" or "this is getting way too complicated" please note that I've given my players a heads up and generic idea about it and everyone is interested and willing to try it out. As for the time, I've also implimented something else that I thought of thanks to a player. After smacking someone in the face with their own war hammer, and saying "multiple teeth explode from his mouth" one of my players has made it his duty to collect teeth. (weird, but whatever). I have a generic shop keeper that sells rations, sun rods, etc, but also has the "Demonic Bag of Hunger" in which you can pay X amount of teeth or X amount of soul crests for a random reward (i have yet to figure out what all I want to make available) Teeth can only be collected from humans of the Good alignment (or higher). Basically, anyone on the "Good side" of this war. Teeth will be collected by rolling 1d20+1d12-1d20. Humans have 32 teeth, hence the reason for the 1d20+1d12, but I realize that everyone might not have all of them, hence the -1d20. So for example: 1d20+1d12 rolls = 16. Now we take the -1d20 into account for how many teeth that person is already missing. -1d20 = 4. So total, the player only obtains 12 teeth.
Prize from the Demonic Bag of Hunger, would include building materials, items and player bonuses. Teeth would result in lower rewards, while Soul Crests would result in higher rewards.
So, that's pretty much it. That's what I've come up with. I've got it all scribbled down on paper, I just need to make up the graphs and stuff for the upgrades, etc. Let me know what you think, and if I should make any changes or additions.
Thanks! |
| #2BRJNJan 31, 2015 17:06:25 | Get a copy of the players' Team Hero PCs, and use them as some Wandering Adventurers who show up, get in Team Evil's way, mess up the Master Plan, and leave.
Unless you can automate / computerize the math, I think this simulation will go from cool to boring - not everybody likes number-crunching. When interest faders, just start narrating how much progress is made / upgrades achieved. Keep records, though, so Team Evil can build another fortress later on.
Offer an overview of the locations to the Team Hero DM, so he can run the players against a similar foul scheme to build a new fortress somewhere else, where Evil will lurk...
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| #3supreme_slayerJan 31, 2015 17:22:27 | Just wondering, but did you ask the pcs if they would be interested in a game like that? It seems like a huge leap to take. |
| #4RzrBladeMontageJan 31, 2015 20:42:03 |
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