I'm contemplating starting a campaign that is focused around the otherworldly elements in Golarion. The Realm of Dreams, The First World, Leng, the Dark Lands, and perhaps other planes.
Who should the party be? Natives to these realms or people from the prime material who happened upon them? A combination? I'm thinking mostly people from the prime material.
Power level/whatnot is not an issue. I'm adept enough at either scaling monsters and designing encounters that it's a non-issue.
What I'm really looking for is suggestions and thoughts about:
- Adding colour to get the feel of the strange locations right
- What adventure hooks and goals might be appropriate for the group
- How to deal with the lack of mundane people to protect or whatnot.
- How to avoid it being an "escape from X" campaign.
I'd also love to hear about what elements of the otherworldy in Golarion you think are great and worth highlighting or including in play.
I'm going to be revisiting the fiction of Lovecraft and Arhur Machen. Any other suggestions for a reading list?
As always, read the old Planescape books. Sure, Golarion's planes aren't those detailed in Planescape. But Planescape captured the feel of other worlds in ways no other RPG quite has.
Finding a unifying element for your players to bond around is a good thing, and helps with party unity in the beginning. Perhaps they were all born when a red star rose in the east and was framed by the moon's shadow, thus granting them minor abilities. (I'd use Unearthed Arcana as a guide, or check out the OGC content from it, posted here.) Said abilities come to the fore when closer or on the plane of their origin. Though it's hard to find, the Advanced Bestiary is chock-full of useful templates for characters of a planar bent.
You might want to check out the City of Brass details in one of the Legacy of Fire APs. That might serve as an inspiration, and kind of a reverse AP, if you were so inclined.
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Maybe your party members are unwitting pawns of a greater power. They could have been summoned from their home planes to work together towards some goal of their "benefactor". Or maybe each PC has a different "benefactor" with a Geas on them until they complete whatever that goal is. (A little railroady, but could be a fun game if presented the right way).
OR: What if all of your PCs are dead and they are in the afterlife - only they don't know it. The campaign could revolve around the clues they slowly find to discover their true fate...
OR: Maybe your PCs are half-breeds. Spawns of an extraplanar being and a race of the Prime Material Plane (ala Greek Heroes of Myth). They may only know about their Prime Material heritage, and have been summoned (without their knowledge or permission) to perform some task. The campaign could center on discovering their true heritage. You could slowly apply characteristics of a Celestial/Fiendish/Other template to the PCs as they advance in level to help support their discovery of their true heritage.
As for fiction that may help:
* Check out Clark Ashton Smith. His Mu and Atlantis stuff could be good source material for you.
* Neil Gaiman's run on Sandman comics could give you some inspiration.
* Steven R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever series could be helpful if you go with one of the "unwilling helper" scenarios I suggested above.
Hope this helps!
Planescape books
I've already started pulling them off my shelf.
Not all the planes will work as I'm primarily interested in the ones that defy our way of perceiving rather than ones that are just interesting. Despite being very fantastical, not all planes would qualify as what I would call "otherworldly." In fact, I'd say many of them are pretty much a cross section of regular experience separated out and amped up like mad.
Finding a unifying element for your players to bond around is a good thing, and helps with party unity in the beginning. Perhaps they were all born when a red star rose in the east and was framed by the moon's shadow,
Thanks, I think this is great advice. I may use your suggestion exactly. Every character might end up having flash-back scenes where they remember how continually throughout their whole life, the red star in the shadow of a crescent moon was present. Their parents or a relative talk about it at their birth. They remember it being in the sky the first time they were in mortal danger. And at the moment when they left where ever they were from to come to the otherworldy planes.
Sooner or later they'll find a mentioning of those born under the red star. Maybe inscribed on a tablet or mentioned off hand by a mystic. Something.
Maybe your party members are unwitting pawns of a greater power. They could have been summoned from their home planes to work together towards some goal of their "benefactor". Or maybe each PC has a different "benefactor" with a Geas on them until they complete whatever that goal is. (A little railroady, but could be a fun game if presented the right way).
I wouldn't use a Geas type thing. If I go this route, it'll be because their "benefactor" uses fate to bring them under thrall. If he/she/it caused the sign of the red star to shine on their lives, it wasn't to bring them to directly command but simply to put things in motion to achieve a certain end or avoid an eventuality known by augury.
OR: What if all of your PCs are dead and they are in the afterlife - only they don't know it. The campaign could revolve around the clues they slowly find to discover their true fate...
I really, really like this idea. I wouldn't necessarily make it *the* afterlife though. It could be that they were supposed to go somewhere else when they died. Like entering the line up of souls at Pharasma's Spire. Certainly not finding themselves adrift in the Realm of Dreams or in a mushroom circle in the First World. But being born under the red star changed their fate.
Clark Ashton Smith, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Steven R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever
I'll add them to my list.
This is probably a dumb question, but you've looked through The Great Beyond, right?
This is probably a dumb question, but you've looked through The Great Beyond, right?
Absolutely. It's my favorite of the Pathfinder: Chronicles books.
Unfortunately, the planes I am interested in are the ones in the "Other Dimensions" chapter, so while there's some info, it's less than a page per plane.
After reading The Great God Pan, I'm definitely going to steal the "marriage" process. I can definitely see the PC stumbling across a marble pillar that proclaims the witnessing of such a marriage.
So here's what I've come up with:
All the character have indeed died. They don't know anything about it. They will just be in the edge of where the Dreamlands, Leng and the First World all come near to one another. In the b'tween places.
Clues:
The characters will have been from slightly different places in the timeline. I can actually be a bit overt with this because the tendency of a typical session is to focus on what's infront of them rather than what's in the past. For example, one character may have lived in Osirion during the rule of Pharoah Ostramenes. That might come up in play some time. In another instance another character might remember from his lessons as a boy that Ostramenes was a pharoah several hundred years ago.
Raise Dead:
If the characters die, perhaps their souls will finally make the journey to Pharasma's Spire. And when Raise Dead is cast, a character find themselves waking up in the darkness. Feeling about, he feels stone right above him. And to the side. The other side is brick work. if he can bust out, he'll find himself in one of the centuries old mausoleums that Ostramenes built. Long sealed and forgotten. Can he get out alive? If he dies, he wakes up back with the rest of the characters. If he lives, he finds himself with them only while he sleeps.
Their patron:
The Crimson King puts his red star to watch over those he has chosen. As a great fey power, his Blood Red Majesty does not approach things in terms of direct cause or effect. He lives with his mind as much in the future and the past as in the present. Always experiencing the results of auguries he casts as he attempts to master fate and prophecy for his own purpose.
But it is the Age of Lost Omens. Who can say what will come of his efforts. Did he mark them with the red star because they are special or do they become special because of his mark?
The PCs will awake near one another in a mushroom grove. They will have equipment with them that they would expect to have for going on a great journey or campaign.
They'll find themselves in this area where Leng, the Dreamlands and First World intersects to be very, very dangerous. They might have encounters with dangerous creatures, talk with deceptive fey or witness the effects of a great terror passing from beyond Leng. I'll try to include tons of colour items here. To establish that this place they are in is not like their homelands. And to put in facts and trivia that they can follow up on. Whichever they pick to investigate will be the important ones. It's a great GMing technique to have what players choose to matter actually matter and it fits well with their proximity to the Dreamlands for their choices to have an impact on reality.
So they'll pick something. Perhaps they'll want to find out more about this Fey King they have heard about. They might get answers that way. Perhaps they'll want to try to stop the thing from beyond Leng from continuing with what it is doing. Perhaps they'll want to find "civilization".
Another thing that they'll find is a reference or two to the things that mattered in their backgrounds. Perhaps even an impossible reference. A note from a wife or an old teacher asking for their help.
Gods and demons loom large in the dreams of many, so there will definitley be some familiar signs of Golarion's gods and magic. Perhaps they will find a stone circle where The Crimson King challenged Lamashtu to send through terrible beasts to test the skill of his Blood Riders in a great hunt.
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Get your hands on chaosiums Dreamlands. It may have been written for another game, but the amount of usable information is pretty impressive (no wonder, since our, aka chaosiums dreamlands and golarions dreamlands are more or less the same)
Get your hands on chaosiums Dreamlands. It may have been written for another game, but the amount of usable information is pretty impressive (no wonder, since our, aka chaosiums dreamlands and golarions dreamlands are more or less the same)
I can't believe I didn't think of pulling this out of storage. Thanks for reminding me of it.
Frozenwastes, I'm glad I was able to help.
Keep us updated on how the campaign goes. I love the concept!
In my reading of various inspiration material, I've started the practice of grabbing one evocative item.
The White Ship. From Lovecraft's short story of the same name. It's just a strange sailing vessel of white wood and white sails that sails from the south during a full moon. It's captained by a bearded man in a robe. If you walk out to it, you can walk on the moonlight on the water. The White Ship sails on and takes you to a new locale in the dreamlands. The bearded man will give very short pieces of advice, but will go where the person wants, including to everyone's destruction.
Polaris. Also Lovecraft, story of the same name. A foul force from the star attempts to capture/paralyze the person so that their duty on a watch tower fails.
I've also started reading Lord Dunsany. Lots of good stuff in his works.
If you can find it, Paizo way, way, back when they published Dragon magazine had an issue where they relaunched Spelljammer for 3.5.
Spelljammer was "D&D in space". It had ships called spelljammers that moved through space magically complete with air and artificial gravity.
The characters would all be part of a crew of a ship that some powerful wizard (who won't be on board) built to explore the multiverse.
The PC's are crewmembers..probably the officers..and you can have some good cohorts as crewmembers to fill in party gaps.
Next, if you are going to steal ideas, steal from the best:
for example==
Battlestar Galactica (new one of course): they are scouts for a fleet of survivors--a rag-tag fugitive fleet- from a deadly war who seek a promised land on another plane. They seek allies on the way, and the baddies could be chasing them. Heck, you could throw in doppelganger 5th columnists on the crew who don't know they are bad guys until activated by telepathy.
Firefly: they are smugglers bringing in illicit goods from other planes. They can deal with the criminal underworld of planes that defy common sense making items not availible anywhere on your plane. They can even be good guys--maybe they smuggle stuff to good characters on evil planes or lawful stuff on chaotic ones.
Babylon 5: They are a way station between the planes and act as go betweens between universes. Imagine taking a city, putting on an island floating between the planes with portals to other planes. Your island and allied planes are slowly coming under a hidden threat from a plane known only from legends.
Fantasy in space certainly works and would qualify as otherworldly play. Some good ideas there.