So! I'm a third of the way through my current 1-30 campaign, which means it's time to start the next campaign simmering on the back-burner of my mind. I had an idea the other day, and it goes very generally like this;
Starting-level group of adventurers ends up chasing an eldritch foe through a portal and find themselves in the prehistory of our world. They'll begin on a barren, lifeless rock beside the sea, just to make them wonder what's going on. Then, after a random interval of time has passed, they'll watch the world suddenly change around them, time drawing them forward millions of years. Now there are dinosaurs, and the terrain has become lush. Another time shift, and they witness the infancy of the human race. This continues on through all of history, the party not only bearing witness to the great ages of our past, but participating in them, through the present and beyond.
Think D&D meets Bill & Ted meets Quantum Leap meets Army of Darkness meets Time After Time. (I'd throw Dr. Who in there, but I've never gotten into the show.) A sort of D&D Forrest Gump campaign, where the party meddles in/ensures the just outcome of the greatest moments of history. They could be inside the Trojan Horse, storm the Bastille, duke it out at the O.K. Corral, and of course beat seven kinds of hell out of all the baddest history has had to offer.
Of course, there'll be more than just the natural dangers of history to face; the eldritch threat, be it an evil wizard (played by David Warner) or a Quori mastermind, will be using dark powers to twist elements of each era to its own ends in a very D&D way (like transforming a mob of klansmen into raging orcs or siccing a battalion of Nazi zombies on the Allied troops). I see the advancing technology and organization of the world making a trip through history a great way to keep challenges escalating as the party climbs in level. Around epic I see them crossing over into our future, with everything from space stations to laser guns (I envision their departure from modern-day into the future era culminating in the hijacking of a space shuttle :D).
So, what do you think? I'm glad for any input you might have, be it historical fodder I could make good use of (ideas for historically-significant encounters, little-known facts about a certain time period, etc.), ideas for the exact nature of the effect that takes the party to our world, or a great villain to tie the whole thing together. Heck, even if you just want to mention a cool bit of time-travel from a movie/show/story that I should totally rip off. Anything at all.
Thanks for your time!
battle of waterloo
Revolt of Boudicca (Boadicea) against the Romans
English victory at Agincourt.
William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet is first performed
Joan of Arc attempting to expel the English, and was later burned in Rouen, in 1431, for heresy.
the assination of archduke ferdinand
Archduke of Austria Franz Ferdinand, and therefore heir to the Austrian throne is largely considered to be the catalyst for the beginning of World War I. On June 28th 1914 he was on a visit to Sarajevo, which was at that time a territory of Austria. While riding in an open-top car, he and his wife Sophie were shot by members of The Black Hand which was a Serbian group attempting to gain independence for all the states annexed by Austria-Hungary. World War I began two months after the assassination, with Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia. This declaration of war started a domino effect across Europe in which all the allies of Serbia declared war on Austria-Hungary and all of its allies. At the time of his murder, Ferdinand had been 50 years old.
the battle of the little bighorn
In late 1875, Sioux and Cheyenne Indians defiantly left their reservations, outraged over the continued intrusions of whites into their sacred lands in the Black Hills. They gathered in Montana with the great warrior Sitting Bull to fight for their lands. The following spring, two victories over the US Cavalry emboldened them to fight on in the summer of 1876.
- The Anubis Gates (by Tim Powers)
- Where Chaos reigns (basic D&D module about correcting the timeline)
- the Twin trilogy from Dragonlance
- Back to the Future (movie trilogy)
Events in history:
- the murder of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, stopping the sailing of the english fleet to help the besieged protestants in France (as described in The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas)
- the murder of Caesar in Rome by his peers
- the discovery of the nature of mass and volume by Archimedes (the eureka! event)
- the building of Stonehenge and witnessing the true purpose of the druids
- the setting of the sword into the stone by Merlin
- the battle in the valley of Roncevalle, where the paladins of Charles the Great were betrayed by one of their number to the enemy (Ganelon)
- the meeting between Montezuma and the spanish conquistadores under Hernando Cortez
- the first flight of the brothers Wright
- the appearance of the black monolith (as in Odyssee 2001...the mysterious object which is present when humanity makes a jump ahead in the evolution)
-the awakening of Skynet (as in the movie Terminator)
So, what do you think?
It sounds like a lot of fun, but unless you're a history buff I'd probably just cast it in a similar world with similar events. Just change names and don't try to make it seem like its based too much on Earth as we know it.
In any event let us know how it goes.
It sounds like a lot of fun, but unless you're a history buff I'd probably just cast it in a similar world with similar events. Just change names and don't try to make it seem like its based too much on Earth as we know it.
I'm definitely not going to be very a/null about the historical details; consider the world an 'earth variant'. Things will begin to diverge as the villain takes power, as well as when the players decide to start having fun with the timeline. I very much intend to keep the names as they are; it's not meant to be an exploration of historical scenarios (which we'd still have even if I changed the names), it's meant to be a 'YES! Normandy with Illithids!' :D
Instead of using real world history, I think this would be better as a campaign world history. After you have finished one campaign in the world, the next one(or further down the line) does the time travel bit visiting important moments in previous campaigns. I think it would be more interesting to players(as they get to enjoy their previous characters moments again).
That'd be fun, but what I really want is an expanded 'D20 Modern' experience. The joy of seeing our D&D characters in a radically different context, tear-assing through history and kicking ass as they do so.
In any event let us know how it goes.
Oh, I intend to post my thoughts here as I have them, both to keep my ideas all in one place and to invite inspiration or try to lend some to others.
The Quori have found a way to access/create a new universe, one with its own flow of time distinct from ours. If they could get the dreams of an entire other universe on their side, the Quori could claim all of Eberron with but a thought. (As-Yet Undetermined Eberron Agency) finds out and mounts a tremendous raid on the site where the device/artifact that allows creation of/access to the world is kept. Arcane explosion happens, and the party (little more than footsoldiers of the above agency) get pulled through along with one or a few Quori agents.
Eventually the above agency manages to project an ephemeral image to the party and explain what's going on, that they've set up a makeshift lab from which to sporadically monitor and guide the party. It turns out that the device/artifact used by the Quori was sundered into many fragments (or started that way), each of which ended up at a different time and place in the other world.
Now the party has to move forward through time in awkward jumps (since they can't just stand around and wait for the cretaceous to become the renaissance) while their immortal Quori foe has all of human history to build power, with only the unexpected appearances of the adventurers to slow that progress. The MacGuffin fragments/devices that the party is after distort the world to be more like Eberron (or the villain uses them to distort it), and destroying them both nullifies the effect and rewards the otherwise-resource-starved party with enough residuum for the party ritualist to fill the recommended treasure parcels for each level.
That's all I've got so far. I'd love to hear any ideas you might have for details or different directions in which to take things.
.The Science of the Discworld series might be an interesting read for you, as the story parts of those involve the creation of our Earth within a fantasy universe. Particularly the second book, The Globe, which has the wizards who "created"/discovered the Earth battling the evil faeries/elves in a slightly similar idea to your own, although on a smaller time-scale (mostly involves Shakespeare's time).
If you're players are that way inclined towards a slightly darker type story, have them be on the "wrong" side in some of these events: they are the cause for the Great Fire of London or for the introduction of the Bubonic Plague; or maybe the villains actually ally themselves with Allies in War World II forcing the players to work with Axis forces. You really should sound out your players before introducing something like this to your campaign, however, as not everyone will be comfortable with such situations that could leave a "bad taste", but some (such as my group) relish the potential in these murky, morally ambiguous type pieces.
The Eberron source book Forge of War has a nice bit with suggestions on a time travel campaign, along with a sample campaign arc, although it is admittedly more geared towards time travel in Eberron.
I shall have to take a look! FoW is one of the books I picked up cheap after 3e tanked and never got around to reading.
The Science of the Discworld series might be an interesting read for you, as the story parts of those involve the creation of our Earth within a fantasy universe. Particularly the second book, The Globe, which has the wizards who "created"/discovered the Earth battling the evil faeries/elves in a slightly similar idea to your own, although on a smaller time-scale (mostly involves Shakespeare's time).
Science of Discworld is actually what inspired the possibility of the Quori creating our world in an experiment, rather than simply discovering it through planar travel. It's an absolute gem of a book, and one of the few that I've ever read twice. I'll have to track down The Globe; hadn't heard of it!
If you're players are that way inclined towards a slightly darker type story, have them be on the "wrong" side in some of these events: they are the cause for the Great Fire of London or for the introduction of the Bubonic Plague; or maybe the villains actually ally themselves with Allies in War World II forcing the players to work with Axis forces. You really should sound out your players before introducing something like this to your campaign, however, as not everyone will be comfortable with such situations that could leave a "bad taste", but some (such as my group) relish the potential in these murky, morally ambiguous type pieces.
Yeah, that's definitely a sensitive area. I honestly can't think of any battles or schisms any of us would like to be on the 'wrong' side of. Not that it isn't great story, mind, it's just... yeah. Yuck. I'd love to read a story about a party stuck helping Hitler to deveat Dal'Quor, but I wouldn't want to live one. Good suggestion, though. Maybe someday when I'm/we're more mature.
