The year is 1890, the world: driven by steam. In the last campaign, our heroes mounted an expedition to Mars in a Jules Verne-inspired spacecraft. Their mission was to beat the villainous Dr. Cane to Mars, since Cane planned on claiming the planet as his own. Upon arriving on Mars, narrowly beating Cane to their destination, the party discovered that a martian race exists and is significantly more technologically advanced than the human race. The players warned the martians of the impending threat of Cane's space fleet and the martians helped defeat Cane in a big Star Wars-style space battle. The party returned to earth and went their seperate ways.
The sequel campaign is set one year later. My plan is to have it open with a martian ambassador being assassinated by an assassin who manages to get away. An early incarnation of the Secret Service Bureau recruits our heroes to essentially become spies in a bid to investigate the assassination. Because the heroes aren't on the military roster, they won't attract as much attention as one of the SSB's own agents, and because thus far the heroes are the only people to have been to Mars, they have much more experience with martian culture and politics. The martian ambassador's first advisor joins the party.
My ideas for the meat of the campaign include the following:
- I want to make the campaign episodic, with some stand-alone adventures and others that are concerned with the overarcing story.
- The overarcing story is that some evil faction of martians wants to colonize earth. Having seen what happens when humans encounter other cultures (genocide, usually), this martian faction wants to preemptively claim earth as its own.
- Humans are, of course, terrified of the martians. Lots of political unrest surrounding the idea of opening up trade routes with Mars. Also a lot of concern surrounding martian tech getting into the wrong hands.
- Political turmoil, violent racial clashes, and an unseen villain threatening the entire world!
Where I'm getting stuck is in plotting the adventures themselves. I have the opening one, where the players are enlisted, pretty well down, but after that I'm not sure where to go or how to direct the party to investigate the "invasion". One idea I had was to have the SSB just send the players to different places around the world where strange things are being reported to investigate them and determine if they are martian in origin.
I'm also unsure as to how to treat an unseen villain. Having the actual villain be mysterious through most of the campaign will be a good way to create some intrigue and lead up to a big final reveal, but how do I pull this off? I want this to be like Watchmen, not like The Phantom Menace.
Any help would be great!
Start the players off with small clues that alone mean vary little but added all together can solve the mystery. You can even send them on a wild goose chase to investigate things that have nothing to do with the actual martian invasion, but the bureau doesn't know that. Or do they? I threw this together in about ten minutes so sorry if it has any holes in it.
For the players second adventure Maybe they should head out to western America where cows and people are being mutilated, fearing that this may be a martian scout party the bureau wants the heroes to investigate further. When the players get there they find crazy “rancher A” who claims to have been taken aboard a strange flying craft and experimented on. Now the local authority doesn't like the idea of some fancy pants government group stepping on their toes, so they will face opposition there. The local sheriff even goes so far as to send some local boys to rough up the heroes, They aren't armed so lethal force would be ill advised. How the heroes deal with this first encounter may even put them on the wrong side of the local law, because one of the attackers is the sheriff's brother.
As the heroes investigate they learn that the local bank owner is making quite a killing off of something that doesn't seem to be on the official books. He's obviously making a lot of money off the fact that a lot of ranchers can't pay their bills so they loose their land to his bank, but is that all. He owns a mine that isn't to far from town so the heroes may want to check into that. At the mine they are attacked by armed thugs who work for the banker. At the end of this fight a light appears in the sky near “rancher A”s home.
Rushing over there they find the rancher talking to two strange creatures, they seem to be arguing about something. The creatures keep pointing at the cows in the field and the rancher keeps waving his shotgun in their faces. The rancher is zapped with some kind of beam weapon and goes down, this should provoke the players to attack the creatures, if not then the creatures should spot the players and attack. These creatures are tall and dark with blank faces and large dark eyes, their weapons are attached to the ship with long cables, and they seem to be quite tough. During the battle the players find out that these creatures are actually humans in scary costumes, and the ship is a classifies government project. It is actually a giant blimp with experimental energy weapons being tested by another government agency. The mine was used to store materials and as a staging point for operations, and the banker is getting payed off to look the other way. The Players can't do anything about this entire situation because of the top secret nature of the project and the immunity given to this other government organization.
There you go adventure two out of the way, the players didn't get any real information about the martian invasion, and the bureau may be a bit sore that this information was kept from them due to clearance issues. But the truth is any investigation is going to have it's dead ends, not adventure needs to give up a valuable clue.
This Dr. Cane seems to be quite a character. Nothing beats the true evil genius, they always have a backup plan. I hope he will make some kind of return in your game. Perhaps he is behind this attack, selling out the rest of the human race for some personal power.
Keep us posted on how the game is going, and if you ever need more ideas you can always come to me, I'll be happy to help you. Truth is I love writing up adventures for people, I can give just the right amount of direction with out boxing it in with to many derails. Mostely because I can't think of a lot of little details on the fly like many good gamer masters can.
Brain duping, that's a scary thought. I've been reading this comic book biography of H.H Holmes, also known as the beast of Chicago and I came up with another adventure to throw at you.
It's nearing the turn of the century and the World's Columbian Exposition is coming to Chicago. People from all over the world are coming to Chicago, but something strange is happening as well. People are going missing, and strange things are happening to peoples minds. Much of the evidence points to a strange building on 63rd and Wallace in Englewood, called the castle by the locals.
The building is owned by a vary polite ladies man by the Name of Henry Howard Holmes, physician and apothecary (pharmacist). His building, like many of that area has businesses on the ground floor, and living space on the third, the second floor is some thing of a mystery, and Mr. Holmes will only say it is used for storage. Mr Holmes is vary friendly to the ladies and will hit on any female heroes, he is looking to employ the heroes to find an individual who has on several occasions tried to burn his building down, this man is a former business partner who feels that he has been wronged. Mr Holmes admits to owing him some money and hands the players an envelope with the mans payment in it hoping that they can find him and with it convince him to leave Mr Holmes alone.
The former business partner of Mr Holmes is a easy man to find, he spends his days drinking in a bar less then a mile away. When the heroes try to give him his payment and request that he leave Mr Holmes alone He refuses saying, “I won't have any more of that devils blood money,” and runs from the players. Chasing after him the players find him being killed in the back alley by several strange men in fancy black suits and bowler hats with vary sharp knives(+1 masterwork). These “men” (half-fraal, Menace Manual) will attempt to kill the players as well. None of these men will allow them selves to be captured escaping if the fight isn't going well, or biting down on poison capsules killing themselves if need be.
The players should return Mr Holmes money and since there are no other lodgings available anywhere near town Mr Holmes insists that they stay for the night in one of his many rooms. If he is connected to the killings then this is a good way to keep an eye on him. When the players go to sleep they wake up with a massive headache, trapped in a small room on the second floor.(natural gas was released into their bed room, at this time natural gas had no smell so the players couldn't tell they were being suffocated until they blacked out and could be moved) The entire second floor is maze of traps and strange mental experiments, think the movie “Saw,” there are a lot of traps and dead ends in here. Mr Holmes is preforming experiments in people collecting information on the physical and mental limits of humans for the aliens. If the players manage to escape the maze they find that Mr Holmes has escaped, but he left a lot of research material behind including a lot of information about a group of alien hybrids that are running around the globe killing people in horrific ways, there are quite a few notes about some one murdering ladies in London dubbed Jack the ripper by the news papers. Should the players go to investigate these strange murders in London, or should they continue looking for more of these strange men here in Chicago. That is a hard choice, the players can almost hear Mr Holmes laughing as they make their minds.
I'm loving this 1890 era, there are so many strange events that could make great adventures weather or not you give them a supernatural twist. Part "Dark City", part real life story. Enjoy.