So, I'm working on a campaign set in the twilight age of the world. Im not really talking about a world overrun with evil or undead, persay, but more a world that is just... spent. My idea is that the Primordials need to be released in order to replenish the world, but the Gods want nothing to do with this, of course. So the PCs are sort of heroic anti-heroes.
Anyways, I'm looking for good ideas and locations for a world breathing its last breaths. Here are some ideas I've had so far:
-the ore mines have long since been tapped out. Most mountains are riddled with mines (adventure idea: the classic 'they delved too deep').
-the best source of metal are the old battlefields, and mining has become a strange mix of research into the location of old battles, quick, mobile smelters carried in carts, and secrecy, as whoever can find a new site will be rich. (adventure ideas: finder or bodyguard for a mining company, ghosts of the dead soldiers dont want their swords disturbed)
-The world's population has fallen dramatically as the soil is too poor to sustain larger towns and cities. Famine is rampant, both among the 'good' and 'bad' races. (adventure ideas: food raiders)
-Magic items are not very rare. In fact, most people have some form of magical item taken from an old ruin or the like to try and make their lives better.
-It is cold, and the sun is failing (in fact, I plan to have the sun fail entirely during the epic tier and spend a few adventures dealing with a world without light.)
And thats what I have so far. My general plot for the campaign will involve the players discovering the need for the primordials to return and eventually freeing them or at least paroling them to fix the soil/mountains/sun/etc... Depending on how the characters go, I'll either end with the players helping the gods to seal the primordials up for another long sleep or determining some other way (powerful artifact?) to keep the primordials from swallowing the world up into the chaos.
I'd love any ideas of other things I could include in this campaign. What does the feywild look like? what has happened to the different races? (I'm loathe to actually kill any player races off, but something about 'the last dragon' might be interesting...) Basically, I'm looking for any ideas people have on how to make a world seem really OLD. Thanks so much!
- More planar wise, the world given its time in existence has begun to drift from its position in the cosmology. For a time gates, astraljammers, etc. were able to recalibrate this change but now besides for lucky circumstance the world is cut off.
- Whole cities of people now roam the world in huge refugee caravans. They go from place to place reusing what they have and scrounging for goods. They are seen as a plague by most towns and cities that still remain.
- The Feywild has gone into overdrive, like a creature caught in a corner it has lashed out, but only doing itself harm. Great forests choke and die under the grasp of rapidly growing vines (think massive sized kudzu vine). The races and creatures have tried to toil and communicate with the natural energy of the Feywild to stop this but to no avail. Rifts between the two worlds continue to spread causing overflow of the Feywild into the world.
- The Primal Spirits as the essence of the World have slowly begun to drift off, leaving their protective duties of the World. Forces from beyond such as the Far Realm have begun to encroach.
- The worse threat in warfare is that of Scorched Earth warfare.
- The Shadowfell has become to link and combine with the World, as the World's life has been sucked away it draws nearer to the Shadowfell.
- Because of the thousands upon thousands of years of existence this World has been through the cities that have been forged on its surface are massive, but empty. They cover huge swaths of land but only few areas are inhabited.
Decadent cultures are a good way to make the world seem old. The major cities and empires are riddled with byzantine plots, truly ancient noble families, and decadent, drugged up pleasure loving nobles. Outside the cities, the tombs of kings and emperors might stretch for miles, making the point that the same families have ruled for thousands of years, their cultures slowly becoming less vibrant as the years go on.
Other races might be in an even worse state than humanity, clinging on in a few enclaves, overtaken with hopelessness and waiting to die - some might not be able to breed any more, and any children might be stillborn. A bit grim, but hey.
The main character's home city of Nessus is on a river, and the lower-class citizens live downriver, where they have to deal with the waste and trash from upper class, further upriver citizens. The furth downriver you go, the more ruinous the city becomes, until you reach the earliest parts of the city, fallen in and overgrown with vegetation centuries earlier. Keep this sort of thing in mind - people tend to stay where they feel their home is, even under extreme circumstances (I'm reminded of the city in Pennsylvania that has a raging coal fire underground, but a couple dozen people refuse to leave). Any city of a reasonable size will likely have been around for centuries, possibly millenia. As natural resources collapse, central governments will lose a vast majority of their power, leading to most cities being isolated and self-governed (if governed at all).
If you want to get some good ideas for your setting, try reading this book. Hell, try reading it anyway. It's some pretty dense stuff, and about a thousand pages, but worth the read. I still read it once or twice a year.
Fertility rates should definately have dropped off sharply if children are ever born at all. Children are symbolic of renewal, so you should keep them to a minimum and use them only to foreshadow the primordials. (adventure idea: protect a child or pregnant woman)
It would be cool to have magic failing, but you'd have to come up with a reason it doesn't hamper the PCs. Perhaps they're like defilers in Dark Sun, and their magic saps the remaining vitality of the world for its power.
There has been no sun for so long that it is nothing more than a myth and all that remains is one one massive pyramidal city built over the last remaining source of magical energy.
Everything outside that is pitch black wilderness filled with strange monsters and who knows what. Rarely people venture outside for whatever reason but doing so is quite dangerous. There may or may not be other remote outposts that still survive, and ancient records indicate that at one time messages and even trade went back and forth between the them, but nobody has heard from any of them in 1000's of years.
One society, in my vision they are dwarves, still have large stockpiles of precious ore. Its always fun when the whole world is starving and the rich say let them eat cake.
This also works well if one group or society has access to the last remaining mine.
The dead city
No not a city of the dead but a massive archetectual city built at the height of the world is falling into ruin. No society has the power to keep the massive structures in check any longer. I can just see a city the size of like Greyhawk or Sharn just abandonned due to insufficient food. Eventually the magical words stop working.
Lost of magic
In a world where the sun is starting to burn out, it would work well that planar magic is starting to fade. This is similar to the astraljammers and gates needing to be recalibrated. Spells that conjure of summon would be more difficult to cast and may have a percentage chance of failing completely.
Try again
Some groups may be actively trying to return the world to a more replenished state without thinking of consequences. This ties into the forests choking out life. Think of it this way, a cabal of mages might be trying to raise groups of undead in order to work in new fields to make more food. Maybe creating permanent areas of magic that wildly affect the world, perhaps making it worse - ref. Dark Sun
Second: In a hopeless world like the one you're trying to create, one good idea might be to make the heroes very special, chosen, prophetic of some sort. Sons of promise from the many tribes, come together to spite the gods and release the primordials to reshape and replenish the world. My players are always generally apathetic, so putting them somewhere where hopeless apathy would be the norm would put the brakes on adventuring. I'd have to make it clear from the start that all of existence needs them to stop putzing around, finish their shopping quickly and go kick some butt.
First, consider this hook stolen.
Second: In a hopeless world like the one you're trying to create, one good idea might be to make the heroes very special, chosen, prophetic of some sort. Sons of promise from the many tribes, come together to spite the gods and release the primordials to reshape and replenish the world. My players are always generally apathetic, so putting them somewhere where hopeless apathy would be the norm would put the brakes on adventuring. I'd have to make it clear from the start that all of existence needs them to stop putzing around, finish their shopping quickly and go kick some butt.
Yeah, I have thought about doing a campaign set in this sort of world from time to time as well, but the main issue does seem to be one of character motivation. The world is winding down and everything worth doing has been done already. It doesn't seem like it would be very conducive to a heroic atmosphere. I think the idea of some sort of ancient prophesy of renewal would be almost a necessity. The heroes could just be decadent and cynical people taking what little is left for themselves, but I think it would get a lot more exciting when at some point they gradually learn that they actually can make a difference, that the world needs them to renew hope and light and life.
As for magic failing... I could definitely see working that in... might need to take some of the rules for other planes from 3.5 and work it in somehow (your spells might not do exactly what they want you to, etc, etc...) and have that build for a few adventures before giving the PCs some sort of 'magic battery' or the like to let them not have to worry about their spells fizzling.
*bustles off to the library to get some books and writes down all of these great ideas in his notebook*
Thanks everyone for some great ideas! (and new books to read, which I am always in search for).
If you like the concept, the book I recommended falls under the "dying earth" subgenre of fiction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Earth_subgenre
You might be able to find some neat ideas in some of the books they list.
...He won.
He grabbed the prize of ultimate cosmic power and the very continents literally moved and deformed because of hit. The second half of the game resumes one year after his rise to power, and the entirety of that half is spent in his world. A world of grey and brown, where the all of the land, the seas, the plants, the animals, nature itself lies dead or dying due solely to his very presence in the world. Where the few remaining pockets of civilizations are subject to being death-beamed at his whim from an unscalable tower on high. Such is the workings of his divine judgment.
And just to complete the package, when you do face in him in final combat, you don't face a mortal man armed with the power of the mighty relics that made his rise possible. No. What you fight is the many incarnations of an ascended, six-winged god...complete with ominous latin chanting.
Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
-- Dark Knight (2008)
As good of a dying earth plot as any, I think.
Hi Everyone!
So, I'm working on a campaign set in the twilight age of the world. Im not really talking about a world overrun with evil or undead, persay, but more a world that is just... spent. My idea is that the Primordials need to be released in order to replenish the world, but the Gods want nothing to do with this, of course. So the PCs are sort of heroic anti-heroes.
Anyways, I'm looking for good ideas and locations for a world breathing its last breaths. Here are some ideas I've had so far:
-the ore mines have long since been tapped out. Most mountains are riddled with mines (adventure idea: the classic 'they delved too deep').
-the best source of metal are the old battlefields, and mining has become a strange mix of research into the location of old battles, quick, mobile smelters carried in carts, and secrecy, as whoever can find a new site will be rich. (adventure ideas: finder or bodyguard for a mining company, ghosts of the dead soldiers dont want their swords disturbed)
-The world's population has fallen dramatically as the soil is too poor to sustain larger towns and cities. Famine is rampant, both among the 'good' and 'bad' races. (adventure ideas: food raiders)
-Magic items are not very rare. In fact, most people have some form of magical item taken from an old ruin or the like to try and make their lives better.
-It is cold, and the sun is failing (in fact, I plan to have the sun fail entirely during the epic tier and spend a few adventures dealing with a world without light.)
And thats what I have so far. My general plot for the campaign will involve the players discovering the need for the primordials to return and eventually freeing them or at least paroling them to fix the soil/mountains/sun/etc... Depending on how the characters go, I'll either end with the players helping the gods to seal the primordials up for another long sleep or determining some other way (powerful artifact?) to keep the primordials from swallowing the world up into the chaos.
I'd love any ideas of other things I could include in this campaign. What does the feywild look like? what has happened to the different races? (I'm loathe to actually kill any player races off, but something about 'the last dragon' might be interesting...) Basically, I'm looking for any ideas people have on how to make a world seem really OLD. Thanks so much!
You almost described Dark Sun to a tee, with minor modifications.
And yes, Kefka is awesome.As for magic failing... I could definitely see working that in... might need to take some of the rules for other planes from 3.5 and work it in somehow (your spells might not do exactly what they want you to, etc, etc...) and have that build for a few adventures before giving the PCs some sort of 'magic battery' or the like to let them not have to worry about their spells fizzling.
If you have access to them there are a couple more DnD books I suggest you look at. Specifically find Wild Magic found in many source books. Also take a look at Elder Evils for the Signs presented there. There are faint through overwhelming signs of evil, they would work quite well I think.
Yeah, I have thought about doing a campaign set in this sort of world from time to time as well, but the main issue does seem to be one of character motivation. The world is winding down and everything worth doing has been done already. It doesn't seem like it would be very conducive to a heroic atmosphere. I think the idea of some sort of ancient prophesy of renewal would be almost a necessity. The heroes could just be decadent and cynical people taking what little is left for themselves, but I think it would get a lot more exciting when at some point they gradually learn that they actually can make a difference, that the world needs them to renew hope and light and life.
I don't know - look at Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. I kind of like the idea that the fight the players are fighting is ultimately hopeless - it's almost more heroic for all that, that they struggle against Chaos even though they know that Chaos will inevitably win in the end. It's a different atmosphere to a more stereotypically heroic game, but it can have a great feel if you do it right.
Doing a prophecy is all well and good but if you are doing a longer game (several months to a year +) then I would avoid doing this at the early stages of the game. If you are planning on a campaign being no longer than say 6 months then knock yourself out and ignore what I'm about to say.
In the case you are running a longer game, don't push the prophecy too early on as (at least in my experience) this tends to tunnel vision the players and just make it too dramatic. Its excellent after the party has been well established or defeated some grand evil (a minor BBEG) that was foretold and therefore identify themselves as the heroes of legend.
In the beginning have the party just try and save a town of importance, or rescue the princess or join up and raid a dungeon. Have them bond and identify their role and what the want to accomplish. It helps if you start putting strong ties for the players in a specific homebase-town. Ie. girlfriends, wives or children of the characters located in their primary city. Then once those relationships grow stronger have that town attacked. Then have the family either killed or kidnapped, giving the party a larger reason to hate [insert BBEG]. Later (again after they kill minor BBEG) have it be revealed they are heroes of legend meant to turn the twilight around. At which point you can layout how they do it.
Let me know if this helps or if I'm off base.
Scavengers would likely be the predominant sort of lifeform (and those great predators that still remain will likely be forced to scavenge) and as such traders might be rag men as much as anything, trying to con people into buying junk that is "surely magic of the strongest sort!" (Fun adventure idea, ala Fable 2-a junk merchant trades away a bauble that he thinks is a worthless piece of garbage but is actually an artifact).
Going off of the "sun going out" theme that you were thinking about, one thing you could decide to do is sort of a majoraesque puzzle. The PCs aquire a mcguffin that they think is relatively useless...the Sun slowly fades, and then they all die. As the PC carrying the item falls to the ground, the item activates...and it sends them back in time 1 week before the Sun fails totally in the location where they fell. The catch? The trinket has a limited number of uses, and each time it's used something bad happens (a good idea is some sort of aberrant creature being let loose elsewhere in the world as a result of a twisted time stream). This not only puts the PCs in a race against the clock, but creates a moral dilemma-how many things are they willing to sacrifice to save the multiverse?
So the PCs have to find an alternative - some way to tap into the primordials' power without actually unleashing them in the process. This puts them at odds with both sides of the release them/don't release them divide.
You might go further than this. Maybe the whole 'primordial energy is needed' is actually a red herring - the problem isn't actually that the primordials are trapped, it's that the slow expansion of the abyss is leeching away at the strength of the elemental tempest - and it's the weakening of the tempest that's actually causing the world to lose its vitality, since the world is essentially the intermingling of the tempest and the astral sea.
This might even cause the manifestations of the world's problems to shift over time. It isn't just losing its vitality (that's only the first problem), but ultimately, as the tempest weakens further, the astral sea half of the world's nature becomes more and more predominant; things start to get more and more strange, without necessarily being a dying off. The astral sea is, as much as anything, a place of concept made reality - the world would start to reflect that more and more.
Hence, the ultimate goal (at high epic) is to find some way to force the abyss to retreat, thereby allowing the tempest to regain its strength and the world to return to normalcy.