So, I'm working on a new campaign world, and I came up with a really cool idea, but it has a few problems that I'd like some help with. I'll start by explaining the concept.
Priests of Indrek and Belen (my gods of knowledge, fate, history, and the future) built their great temple with 6 towers, 5 of which still stand in their temple. The towers hold the records of the past present and future, and all events are cataloged into them. The towers are: What might be, What will be, What is, What was, and What could have been. This temple is in a very remote place (its actually on a cloud in the middle of nowhere).
The sixth tower used to be in the temple, and it was called What should have been, or What should be, and it contains all the times the universe went wrong. The power of that wrongness was warping the other towers, and so the priests expelled it from their temple. It landed in the middle of nowhere, and because the knowledge of what should be is dangerous the priests cast many protections on it, for instance when you look at it your eye shifts away, as if the eye does not want to know its there.
My problems and needs for advice are this:
1. I need something to stop the players from just going to the 5 towers to find BBEG's plans as soon as they meet him.
2. I need other protections from going into the Lost Tower.
3. Ideas about where a universe could have gone wrong would be interesting, ideas to start my brain rolling.
4. Any other problems that you might see, or ideas about how to make this cooler.
Thanks in advance!
Callin gthe tower where the universe could have gone wrong doesn't sound quite right. How about making this a tower of time travel/multiverses which can take adventures to nexus points in time where an alteration in an event will change the present reality.
To the initiated the tower gives those with the right powers to go back and change things in the past which will effect the future.
For example the tower will allow an assassin to go back in time to the eve of an enormous battle and assassinate the general that lead the winning army to victory.
Members of the Royal Family die in hunting accidents that would have previously only wounded them and messengers delivering last minute reprieves get delayed.
Actually this sounds like the Tower of Fate if that makes sense - where people get to play with fate, but without any guarantee that they will get the result they wanted. Assassinating the old General might change the outcome of the battle, but it might not - the General's younger replacement could be far more effective and ruthless than the old general resulting in a more crushing defeat for the opposition from which they would never recover. Maybe the people who created it realised that they could not control the outcomes or got into serious trouble so they hid the tower.
Nexus points where the Universe could changed by an outsider would include - the birth/death of an important leader, the day a council elects/passes a new law by a narrow majority, any battle, the execution of an uber villain, new discoveries/inventions, natural disasters and anything done by a God -imagine the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo if Napoleon was fit and able to get out of his tent to direct his armies, or of Thanksgiving when instead of giving out turkey, the natives planted axes into the heads of the settlers. Relatively small events in time which could have profound effects upon the future.
Of course a good campaign point would be to have the players visit the five towers and have a big fight with the BBEG in the fifth tower which they lose. Just as it seems inevitable that the BBEG will get to execute his nefarious plans the players discover the existence of the sixth tower which will allow them to go back in time to change things.
To stop players form just wandering into the five towers you just need to hide them - basically the players need to complete quests to find the location of each tower. Maybe they need a Key or a Dragon to take them to each tower - so a Gold Dragon would take them to one, A Silver Dragon to another and a crazy green dragon to the Tower of Fate. Each dragon has to be found and bartered with or defeated to take the players to the tower. The lost tower would be the hardest because the Green Dragon is unique and being crazy has no lair of its own so it is harder to find.
The keys are also a good idea, they can KNOW about the towers but they have to go kill 5 epic monsters, knock yourselves out.
My original idea about the Lost Tower came about because I am putting two pantheons of gods into my world. The first, the 'old gods' is pantheon presented in core books, and the second is a homebrew one. The old gods had faded hundreds of years ago, and ever since the new gods had risen. Now, at the time when players enter a few have gone back to their old roots of worship. I never decided whether the new or the old gods were real, or perhaps they both are, I thought I'd base it off of the players. (if 5 divine characters of the old gods want to play then I decide that the new gods are not gods and the players get to kill them, the universe warped when the old gods stopped being worshipped, they were supposed to be the only gods, but the universe had to fix the hole in the hearts and minds of the people.)
Perhaps I'll play with the multiverse idea, the players can travel through worlds where some things are slightly different. This could tie in to the second tower, What will be. There are some events that ALWAYS occur throughout the multiverse, in every parrallel world. I think there was a book like that, in every single world Guy Fawkes failed to blow up the parliment building, except the world where the book was based, and that was why their world had messed up...
Thanks again for the input, its got me thinking.
I like using this forum. If nothing else, writing for this thread has given me some ideas for a campaign of my own!
The God war is a cool idea, especially since the 2 pantheons came about because I liked the original dnd pantheon but i wanted to do my own too. (indecisiveness wins again!)
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And yeah, high level monsters and crumbling towers are a good plan, though knowing some of my players that might be motivation to go. Abominations would kind of make sense, they escaped from carceri when the gods left, some of them went to that tower to stop people from going back.
I think I'm also going to rule that you can only go back in time to any given point once, and for consistency you can't go back in to your own timeline, two of any one person causes instability in the universe. (maybe a portal to the Far Realm opens if they try it...)
So, I've been working on the campaign for a while, and I tentatively decided the old gods are the real ones. I added a new myth, I think that this will be the Dusk War. (I am also going to add prophecies of a midnight war of man against gods, where the universe will bend upon itself and all will die, but thats another campaign.)
The gods that we know are not gods. They are Betrayers, they deserve no worship. Yet we give it to them, for they are powerful. Though they are not gods, they have more power than any mere mortal could hope to control.
The Gods, who are now referred to as The Old Gods had been ruling over their creations for thousands of years. They had seen the rise and falls of empires, watched over death and destruction. A few angels had long lusted after the power the gods had commanded, and they sought ways to gain more power.
Eventually 26 angels, men, and women came together, each who desired the power of the gods. They searched long for a way to steal the gods power, traveling far and wide. Eventually they discovered a series of dark rituals that would make them able to strike down the gods, and to take their powers. Some say the gods were aware of this plot, though most think not. These angels were clever and strong, epic heroes in their own right. They hid their dark workings from the gods, until eventually they were ready.
In just 1 day the Great gods of the world were struck down, drained until only the barest vestiges of power remained. The angels invaded dominion after dominion, capturing the gods to harvest their power later. Once all the gods had been gathered, one by one they were put in the middle of the Silver Circle, and the angels gathered around them, chanting to perform the darkest of all rites. The gods were drained of their divinity, until all that remained were sparks. These sparks were then imprisoned in the only place a god can be so. They were placed inside the mind of one of the Angels. Last of all to be taken was the Raven Queen, who with her last breath proclaimed “Our disciples will save us…”
The New Gods must have feared just that, for they located Thought, one of the creators of the universe, and begged him to erase the memories of the Old Gods from the minds of the people. Thought abhorred what the Betrayers had done, but he could not undo it, and without gods the minds of the people were bending, the chaos that comes with primordials was seeping into the world. And so, for the first time in history, The Five intervened in the lives of the universe, and they removed the memory of the old gods. But Thought mourned for their children, and so he allowed the last remnants of memory to stay, which would eventually take fruit and allow the New Gods to be overthrown.
Those few moments of godlessness had taken their toll on the peoples of the world though. The old kingdoms fell, and madness reigned for a few short minutes. Thought also erased all memory of this, so people thought that the Humans had withdrawn their borders voluntarily, knowing they could not sustain the size of their kingdom. Since then the people have been rebuilding, and it has been three thousand years since the Dusk War. The angels set themselves up as the New Gods, and changed the world as they saw fit.
But the death of the gods took its toll on the New Gods. They had spent so much time ruled by the old gods, and now they were gone. The Chained Gods tried to ignore it, adhering to their ideas of goodness as to avoid thinking of it. The Watchers decided it was neccesary, the old gods had ruled badly and could no longer be trusted. The Screaming began hating themselves for what they had done, and the Elementals found solace in nature. The Givers alone have spent the last few thousand years trying to atone for their sins. The Angel who took the sparks into her mind went mad, and though she is the most powerful of the New Gods they had to imprison her, for she began destroying the universe, there were too many voices in her head.
If my players go for it they will have to travel back into time to that day, either just interferring directly, or perhaps adding a condition to the binding of the gods so they can save them, break the binding.
Now I've just got to decide on the lead up.