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I think this could be a genuinely good idea. It'd be a great way to demonstrate how different your campaign is and provide your players with a paradigm shift.

What if you did this:

Several years ago, back in 3rd edition there was a forgotten campaign book about playing as ghosts called Ghostwalk. You could make a whole mini-campaign for your players called TPK (Total Party Kill). Basically, it's what happens when all the players die and there's no hope. Generally you'd have the players roll up new characters, but what if they awoke in the afterlife and went on a Dante's Inferno type adventure where they are wandering through the afterlife, caught in a centuries long conflict, and go on adventure with the promise of coming back to life.

I would let the players continue as their characters, but instead of elf, dwarf, etc. They are dead spirits. If their characters die again then they are done for. They carry with them similar tools and weapons that they carried in life.

It'd be kind of like what happens in Bioshock Infinite every time you die and have to walk through the door but there is more involved.

Regions

The Haunted Forest- Mankind had long ago cut away all the trees and built a city here, now, all that remains is broken stones and a thick forest. It took less than a century for the trees to find their way back, and to fill the streets, alleys, and eventually the shattered foundations of buildings with their roots. There is almost nothing to suggest that humans once lived here.

The Undercity- guarded from the devastation on the surface, the Undercity stretches forth in a series of expertly carved tunnels deep underground. The work of Dwarven craftsmanship, it hasn't been touched by their mithril picks and hammers since the End. Now it is a refuge for Ratfolk who have filled it with billions of skittering paws. The Ratfolk warrens rest in what now remains of these once great halls.

The Golden City- After the end, a group of Axiomite explorers from the Plane of Law discovered the devastation of this world and wept to see such chaos. Now a small group of workers have slaved for centuries repairing the golden capital city of Rathlon. Everything is just like it once was during Rathlon's golden age. It is a place for refugees as well as a testament to a long forgotten people. Although the city is big enough to hold a million people, it is mostly empty. Superstition abounds among the outsiders looking in about what lies in that city.

So this is a little bit about my Post-Apocalyptic Campaign called After the Fall.

This campaign takes place in the year 800,000. It is a very strange and different world then the one any of the players may be used to. Bronze, stone, and obsidian weapons are very common. Meanwhile, occasionally, a rare magic item from a long forgotten past may be discovered (for example, steel weapons, mithril weapons, etc)

The classes I allow are Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue, Druid, Witch, Oracle, Sorcerer, Cleric (maybe you discovered the holy symbol of a long forgotten deity, awakening him from a thousand year slumber after being the first mortal to pray to him in ages) and I allow a lot of the Psionic classes, as that is more common than magic.

A major theme of the campaign is what has been left behind, but also what has grown from the cataclysm. So you may be apart of a struggling human culture trying to survive, or the last remaining Elf who has seen so much pain. Or you may be one of the new races, in the time since the end, I based a lot of my races on classic monsters that have evolved in a sense. Trolls that became more civilized, ratfolk, mutants, morlocks, basilisks that learned to stand upright, etc. etc.

There's lots of ways of introducing this world to players, they could time travel, they could be frozen for millennia, they could be a part of the world discovering it and forging their own kingdom. An ancient cabal of liches have just awoken and have decided to conquer this new world and bring everything beneath their control.

Eh, I can't judge whether hengeyokai cross the furry/silly line for you, but Rite Publishing has In the Company of Henge, which includes: dog, badger, cat, rat, monkey, raccoon-dog, hare with differences. This supplement was designed for use in Kaidan (Japanese horror) so it wasn't intended to fall into silly - it is a horror setting afterall, but again don't know where you cross the line.

Henge are shapechangers, though, and can appear in one human form. I don't know if that fits your campaign idea. I think it could. It might even alleviate any possible silliness acquired with multiple animal forms (for the various cursed houses) in a permanent animal headed form. Henge are susceptable to cold iron damage which forces them into their true form (animal humanoid form.) Requiring trigger damage like cold iron could work to reveal the cursed from those seeking them.

Thanks, this is a good source, especially since I love Oriental Adventures. Hengeyokai, Shifters, and all the beastmen type races were the ones who really got me going.

My plan is to set up a world similar to Game of Thrones with all these Noble Families tied around the different Races. Each with their own flavor and cultures in these mini-kingdoms.

Reaper has a lot of werewolf wearcreature minis I plan on making use of. I like the Fox, what I've decided is that it's best to allow for every type of animal. With the Racebuilder, I could cook a stat listing for a player based on what they want to be. Whether they want to be a Fox or a Catalina Island Fox. They can be as generic or specific as anyone wants.

I'm breaking up the landscape into ecosystems (regions) and I'm going to go from there. So the main one is a temperate wooded area (think Europe/England) then there's a jungle, desert, plains, mountains, frozen north, and even aquatic regions.

One key element for helping me to decide is what miniatures I can get my hands on. So you'll be able to play as a Rat (skaven models from Warhammer Fantasy) or a Boar (farrow models from Warmachine/Hordes) for all intents and purposes, you're race is just the name of the animal. I plan on using the Advanced Race Guide to build some of these. The good news is that there are already a lot of these in Pathfinder (Raven are Kenkus essentially)

I haven't decided yet if they have been recently cursed, or if these people have always been cursed

So I've been cooking up an idea for a while, so you have these different clans/noble houses (think game of thrones) with their heraldry and symbolic animals. Then the world is cursed by a trickster god, turning everyone into beastly humanoid creatures, like Worgen from WoW or the humanoid/animal people from the Advanced Race Guide.

So what animal/humanoid selections should I make available to my players? I want to try to stay just on this side of furryness without it getting silly. So more like the catfolk from Skyrim less like the Pandarens from WoW. Is this a viable idea or is this lame? Any suggestions on what I should be focusing on?

My plan for battles was to make something like the Dradis machine from Battlestar Galactica. Planets, asteroids, ships etc. were going to have cool looking symbols, probably on some old miniature bases. So the players aren't actually looking at space, but a machine that shows them the battle. Just like the crew of the Battlestar Galactica on board the ship. Just looking at a screen and hoping.

So for the longest time I've had the idea to make a campaign called Cosmos. It is a universe where wizards use their sorcerous ways to craft marvelous works, massive ships capable of traveling the stars. All those pesky worries of space travel are solved via magic. Terraforming is just a matter of the right kinds of spells. Think of it like Eberron +500 years.

The Adventures were going to be high class space opera, my plan was something akin to Star Wars minus the Jedi. Really zeroing in on the freelancers, scoundrels, and smugglers of the setting.

Due to the massive resources needed to control an interstellar empire, what is more common is a small state that encompasses a single planet or solar system with something similar to NATO or the European Union being the controlling force in the universe.

As for races? I was going to allow the players to use rules similar to the ones that will be found in the Advanced Race Guide to make their own alien races and homeworlds, then incorporate those races/homeworlds into the campaign.

I got snagged on a few sticking points, what would alien magic look like? things like that.

So here's a question: Would anyone buy a campaign setting designed around e6 games? My friend and I have been plotting something like this before I even knew e6 was a thing. Is this fairly widespread? I had never heard of such a thing until I stumbled upon this thread and saw there were 3 threads on this board talking about e6.

What do you find works well in e6 games?

I suggest being Very Clear on the source material for your game, to the point of having a group reading/watching session with your players. War, as a genre, has many, many subgenres, and highly subjective ones at that. I suggest this from (unfortunate) personal experience. I also suggest this because phrases like "fantasy A-Team" are subject to misinterpretation.

Another note is that a lot of the material still remains geared around blood and trumpets large scale combat - another genre awareness consideration you should consider, especially if you have an old school playerbase. You may want to think about starting closer to there, rather than a walk-up, because you may find that the players aren't game for the shift.

I think that over the course of a long campaign one can turn to a lot of different war subgenres. I know one of the adventures is going to be a defend the keep style game like the movie Zulu where the enemy will be coming in waves and they will have try to keep the fortress defended and such.

One adventure will require them to sneak into an enemy camp like the wargame in The Dirty Dozen.

One adventure will require them to attack a well defended set of trenches to destroy a set of artillery guns like the trench episode of Band of Brothers.

There will be a couple of full scale really big battles, but generally I'm going to focus in to show that they are a small section of a much bigger war. The player's might have a task to complete that allows for victory of the over all battle. By allowing for several different types of war scenarios it allows me to cater to the desires of all my players. One of the tricks my DM showed me is having the Players write down on a sheet of paper what they want to accomplish which allows for source material for me.

What was your unfortunate personal experience J.S?

I see you mentioned it's a high magic game. What level range is your target?

Having run a couple of high level, long term games where wars were fought the "math" totally changes with a Wish Spell, or similar reality altering magic. Make sure that factor that into the over-all story unless the palyers are just going to suspend belief..

In my campaign, it is the Mysterium that is the limiting factor to using a lot of high level magic, rather than having a lot of low level magic and not a lot of high level magic. When it comes to wish spells, they require at least a 17th level wizard or an 18th level sorcerer, which would be some of the very most powerful NPCs, the Top Generals. From what I understand of the Wish spell while it can produce greater effects than what's listed, they are fairly restrictive. So I wouldn't necessarily allow a player to use a Wish spell to completely change the entire outcome of the war because the war is so broad being fought on so many outcomes.

Now then there is the Treaty of Remesia, a signed agreement between the Savage Legions and the Allied Kingdoms (mostly the Allied Kingdoms) which essentially outlines the Rules of War in the conflict. Things like attacking civilians, genocide, rape as a weapon, messing with the time stream, biological weapons, etc. The idea between the Treaty of Remesia is that both sides agree, no matter how the war goes, they still want to have a world left afterwards. What enforces the Treaty of Remesia? The coalition of Devils and Angels who oversee the Long War.

It's a magical treaty bound in the very natural laws that bound the world itself.

The Law vs. Chaos line

To me, Law represents a more civilized way of doing things. On the law side we have a country founded and still ruled by a Gold Dragon (the oldest dragon on the planet, he is worshiped as a god by his peoples) a magogracy (What I like about this idea is that they utilize magic in all its forms, including necromancy and other types of magic most would find unsavory) Their country fields a lot of zombies and magically engineered clones. In the more civilized nations its very common to see a lot of magic. Your average person is going to have Wizard, Sorcerer class levels and magic is everywhere.

What powers this magic is a substance called Mysterium, it is essentially liquid magic. It is devoured as fuel by the machines of the civilized world, it makes spells more permanent, and has many other uses that sees it used all over the world in all manner of functions. The Allied Kingdoms are the number one consumer of Mysterium. But they have since depleted any sources of the substance within their borders.

But the nations of the Savage Legions are sitting on top of the largest reservoirs of Mysterium, making this war of bringing order and civilization to third world countries a war of resources.

I'd be a bit worried about your player's confusing the alignment of your respective sides. If you really don't want the good/evil axis to be a factor, make sure there are PC races on both sides, as well as "evil" races on both. Throw some devils, hellknights, and inevitables in on the lawful side and put the gnomes, elves, and proteans on the chaotic side. If you keep the factions as they are, it will become near-impossible to sympathize with the chaotic side.

That's kind of the point. As a history student, I find that there is rarely an evil empire fighting against goodly rebels like in star wars. Rather it is the conflicts between the civilized and non civilized. Part of the conflict in this campaign is more than just that between countries, this campaign should also strike at the hearts of my players and make them question what they are doing. If it doesn't I'm not doing it right.

It makes me think about the miniseries The Pacific. Where Band of Brothers was very much about heroism and goodness (I would argue) the Pacific makes you walk away really questioning the pains that mankind inflicts upon itself.

So I am going to stick with the Law and Chaos divisions. There will be PC races on both sides like you suggested, but I definitely want to make the enemy a little sympathetic.

You might consider giving the PCs a small amount of fatigue, maybe 1/2 of their current HP in fatigue when they get into a fight. Being able to shrug off a few hits before going into hit points would give them the impression of being the sort of awesome A-team type force you're going for.

And if you want an encounter to be particularly memorable consider giving the bad guys fatigue if they warrant it. You'll relish the looks on their faces when the realization hits for a long time.

Are there any real good resources in the pathfinder books that I could utilize?

Invest in miniatures now, otherwise combats on the scale you're going to be running will become completely unmanageable.

Of course this is a good idea. In my DnD group we have a lot of miniatures, but for this game I will more than likely only be illustrating small portions of a much larger battle.

The plot of the game revolves around two competing factions:
The first is the Allied Kingdoms, which is a collection of countries that have combined their forces (like the Allies in WW II.) The players will be transported all over the face of the country to take care of all the hard jobs (they are basically the A-Team pulling off crazy plans and winning the day for the Allied Kingdoms) This alliance is composed of several countries that represent the player races found in the Player's Handbook.

The enemy is the Savage Legions (name might change) which is composed of a large Imperial Nation with plans to conquer the world and several smaller monstrous nations (like a kingdom of vampires, some orcs/trolls/giants, a collection of barbarians, etc. etc.)

The conflict is not going to be between Good and Evil, rather it will be between Chaos (savages) and Law (civilization) both sides are good and evil, but it is really more about the conflict between what we see in our world between the Western Civilization and Third World Countries that are less developed.

This morning I thought about a few more things I'm going to include.

Eventually the players will receive an attachment of soldiers who they are in command of. I figure I'll base this on the Leadership feat. Once they reach around 3rd level (and get promoted to sergeant) they are going to have an attachment of cohorts assigned to them (A squad of 4-5 2nd level NPCs)

My group is big on props in our games. So my plan is to develop medals to hand out. There's going to be a series of Wound Medals (think the purple heart) and valorous medals (think Bronze Star, Medal of Honor) and of course these bad boys are magical. But the best part will be that I'll bestow them on the players and the players will get to pin them on their shirts. I just need to think a little bit about how I'll do that. What sort of boons do the medals give?

Banners were a cool magic item added to the Heroes of Battle, and in these attached squads I hope that the players make one of the guys the Banner bearer. I'm not sure if I like all the banners in the Heroes of Battle book, I hope to come up with one that they utilize, and maybe it's power grows with them (like a legacy weapon) and as they gain honors for their country.

So with the new Ultimate Combat book coming out in the future, I want to start putting together a War Campaign. I've read through the Heroes of Battle book and mined it for some interesting ideas. I'm going to pitch you what I'm thinking, what I need are some neat ways of using stuff found in Pathfinder in a full blow World War scenario. The setting revolves around a massive war going on (trenches, island hopping, etc. etc.) Magic is very common. It wouldn't be too far-fetched to see most soldiers wielding +1 swords and the such (specifically because these countries have realized it's more effective to field a few soldiers who are well armed than a lot of soldiers poorly armed.

The players begin as a Strike Force. Each of them a Corporal (to begin with, they will gain ranks in the military structure as the game progresses) and they are essentially a fantasy A-Team. It's their job to tackle the hard jobs with unconventional weaponry.

Some of the things I've been thinking about are the morale checks from Heroes of Battle (the first adventure's going to start with the PCs bolstering the morale of a breaking squad then leading that squad to victory)

I hope to capture a big hero flair in this game, like The Pacific or Band of Brothers with elves and swords. Right now I'm merely mulling over potential missions or things I may include in the game (like tactical use of instant fortresses and the like) What are your thoughts? What books should I reference?

I really wish I could post images so I could share my map of the Cosmos. It is a series of circles overlapping each other, these circles are leylines, safe passageways through the dangerous Astral Plane. Deviating from them is suicide and only the craziest of planeswalkers would dare. On the circles are dots, which represent new and unique planes, each with their own peoples, histories, magics, and gods. To allow players of all classes to planeswalk I came up with a few feats that grant Planeswalking as a Spell-like ability. I like this approach because it allows the players to decide if everyone should take the feat or if only one person should. If one person takes it, then the party is forced to rely heavily on that person (WHAT IF THE DIE?) Meanwhile, if the party spreads out the burden then they can potentially travel further in a few days together than they could alone.

NEW FEATS
Planar Sojourner
Prerequisites: none
Benefit: This feat allows a Planeswalker to cast Planejump 1/day

Planar Pilgrim
Prerequisites: Planar Sojourner, 5th level
Benefit: This feat allows a Planeswalker to cast Planejump a number of times per day equal to an ability modifier of their choice.

Planar Traveler
Prerequisites: Planar Sojourner, Planar Pilgrim, 10th level
Benefit: This feat allows a Planeswalker to cast Planeleap a number of times per day equal to an ability modifier of their choice.

Planar Master
Prerequisites: Planar Sojourner, Planar Pilgrim, Planar Traveler, 15th level
Benefit: This feat allows a Planeswalker to cast Planeshift a number of times per day equal to an ability modifier of their choice.

So, I have a few feats I want to share with you for my campaign. My campaign revolves around hopping around an infinite number of planes. These planes are more like alternate worlds (that we see in Magic the Gathering) than what we see in most DnD games (so no Elemental Plane of Fire) and I wanted to create a mechanic that would help to implement this in a way the flavor of Magic where you play a Planeswalker.

Currently in Pathfinder, (my favorite system) the best ways to hop around planes is to use Planeshift or Gate spells or to access a portal. Unfortunately, those spells are pretty high leveled, and I want to introduce the Planeswalking as early as possible. An adventure in this campaign is a lot like an Indiana Jones movie, but instead of going to different countries you are hopping around to different worlds.

This isn't like in regular DnD where you go the Abyss or the Elemental Plane of Fire etc. Rather it's like jumping from Krynn to Faerun to Eberron to Golarion.

The planes are organized in a web, just like how some planets are closer than others, some planes are closer. Planeswalkers travel along these webs (whether that is through teleporting or other means).

So came up with a few low level spells that would allow access to planeswalking at relatively low levels. Then I am going to present a few feats that would allow access to this by non-spellcasting classes to show that the truly exceptional become Planeswalkers.

Alternatively, I've thought about making it an an ability that all the players could have that makes them stand out from regular people (like Action Points from Eberron) So I'd like to get some feedback from you guys about your theories, or if this is too powerful of an ability.

NEW SPELLS
Planejump
School: Conjuration (teleportation) Level: Cleric 2, Sor/Wiz 2
Casting time: 10 minutes
Components: V,S
Range: Self
Target: Self and up to 8 other willing creatures
Duration: Instantaneous

You move yourself and your allies to another adjacent plane. You appear up to 5 to 500 miles from your intended destination. This plane must be an adjacent Plane or a Demiplane attached to your current plane.

Plane Leap
School: Conjuration (teleportation) Level: Cleric 2, Sor/Wiz 2
Casting time: 10 minutes
Components: V,S
Range: Self
Target: Self and up to 8 other willing creatures
Duration: Instantaneous

As Plane Jump except that you and your allies can travel to a plane up to 1d20 planes away from your current plane.

Thanks so much!

So I'm thinking about writing books for my campaign setting with Pathfinder rules (rather than 4e rules). My questions is this:

It says in the agreement that we can reference things in the Advanced Player's Handbook. Does that mean I can make new spells for the Witch class? I know we can't infringe on Paizo's IP, but what about the rules for drugs and addiction? can I make my own stats for drugs in my campaign?
Please help a new guy out.

Too Long; didn't read:
What can I use in my own publications from the Advanced Player's Guide?

So I'm thinking about writing books for my campaign setting with Pathfinder rules (rather than 4e rules). My questions is this:

It says in the agreement that we can reference things in the Advanced Player's Handbook. Does that mean I can make new spells for the Witch class? I know we can't infringe on Paizo's IP, but what about the rules for drugs and addiction? can I make my own stats for drugs in my campaign?
Please help a new guy out.

Too Long; didn't read:
What can I use in my own publications from the Advanced Player's Guide?