Making a campaign with a dark setting...


Homebrew and House Rules


I would like some suggestions for writing up a campaign, as i haven't done one before now. The setting I have in mind is that the world has been taken over by the greater forces of evil. Demons and other horrors vie for control of land and riches to extend their wealth.

races:

Undead are very common, with standard races being rare to an extent due to enslavement. Humans are the most sought after, being skilled at all sorts of tasks. Dwarves are put to work in mines and construction. Elves have been hunted to nigh extinction, with those remaining well hidden. Orcs are used as mercenaries while any offspring they share with humans are kept to fight for sport. Halflings are only a bit less tolerated, as slow halflings are now dead halflings. Gnomes have grown widespread for their fame in crafting amazing machines and torture devices alike. Races such as tieflings and drow are quite common, as are horrors and aberrations.

environment:

The red skies rain ash and fire, making the world seem to be more akin to hell. With minimal sunlight, vegetation has either died in most regions or mutated into something more suited for the underdark.

players:

Players will start at 10th or 12th level. Non standard races and templates are encouraged as a way to fit in to this change in society. I'll most likely use a 20 point buy system. Xp progression will be recommended at the standard pace. The general story will have two outcomes; the pc's take over much of the world (evil) or the pc's restore the balance of good and evil to the world (good)

Given this info or lack thereof, I would love any suggestions for this campaign, both in writing one for the first time as well as ideas for setting and story.


Midnight it's a campaign book cann't remember the publisher but there were a few spalts for it you could look for that to get ideas.

As for ideas you need to decide one way of the other where the game is going. A good game could lead a revolution uniting the fraction againist their dark masters.

An evil game could lead revolt only to be just as bad as the monster in charge now.

If you never written a campaign 10 level maybe difficult as the players have now ingame background. 10 level is a long way from home.

Either way, God help you. Mr. Fishy has a campaign world in progress for nearly 14 years revise, rewrite, evolve, destory, it's like my own creature.

Mr. Fishy named it Mike.


Although not completely what you're describing here, I'd suggest you take a look at the Midnight setting from Fantasy Flight Games.
It is, unfortunately, no longer in production, but you might still be able to pick up the book(s) and/or pdfs from various sellers (Amazon might still have some).
Here's the Wikipedia description of the setting.

There's also a fansite called Against the Shadow filled with loads of extra stuff.

EDIT:
Damn, sorta ninjaed by the stupid fish!


Mr. Fishy Blue Ninja

Ninja Vanish!! >cloud of bubbles<


I love Mr. Fishy...


Mr. Fishy love you too random poster.>point with fin at random poster<


I suggest you decide how the setting became such. Make up your back story. I did something similar with one of my settings with a bit of a time-travel riff---that is, I gave the PC's a glimpse of what would happen if they did not succeed.

Here are a few bits you might find useful. In the base campaign world I use, and, in fact in most worlds, the forces of Hell far and away outnumber and outpower those of Good. The only thing that keeps Good, in the game, so to speak, is that the overwhelming majority of the forces of Hell are arrayed against themselves in an endless, eternal Blood War for possession of something. In my campaign that something is the Heart of Darkness---think an immense ruby that has been shattered and cut into many fragments but which contains at least half of the evil power in the world. Flavor-wise you can liken it to the Illearth Stone from the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but despite containing a terrific amount of dark power it is in itself not intrinsically evil (it can, and has, manifested an avatar on occasion whenever a large fraction of it is present in one place, it is not controlled, and it is facing possible destruction).


Regarding NPCs I had a couple in an evil empire style campaign that I used quite a while ago, might be useful if you're going for the 3.5 books:

Venerable gnome wizard/cleric/true necromancer with craft feats for making constructs, undeads, and grafts of both. Basically incredibly old, sweet-sounding lady that spent her days making creatures of unspeakable evil. Problem with True Necromancer is at the higher levels you wind up with a ridiculous spell allotment/day for an NPC. Quickened truestrike + disintegrate is a nice goto, though.

You can also do some terrifying things by combining a gravetouched ghoul with 7 or 8 character levels with the spellstitched template. I had a ghoul assassin with up to 4th level spells usable as SLAs a number of times per day, which makes for a pretty vicious encounter if relations go south.

I know that isn't strictly world-building, but I generally start with a single character idea then flesh out their environment afterwards. In the case of your gameworld I'd start with thinking about who's running the show, what their underlings are like, and how a sustainable work has built up around these concepts.


A world such as you are describing is bound to be turbulent, perhaps too turbulent to get as much mileage as you might like out of Phneri's approach. Catering to the PCs decision to follow the path of good or evil (or some mixture) will also limit the scope of any planning on your part. And as Mr. Fishy points out, level 10 introduces a variety of headaches all its own.

I suggest you begin by developing the narrative and visuals for some iconic locations and epic background events the PCs will likely be concerned with, whichever path they walk. It is often a bit easier to add an npc to a setting than the other way around, and if you make the locations sufficiently engrossing, it will encourage the players to constrain their travels (they'll have access to Teleport and eventually Plane Shift). This approach may also help keep the party aware of the consequences of actions, improving the roleplaying when it comes to the choice between good and evil.

It can be a bit daunting to approach a campaign from this direction, but there are some handy cheats that you can fall back on if you can arrange access to 3.5 material (I'm sure PF also has some, but these are the ones I'm most familiar with). Heroes of Battle does a serviceable job of showing how minor battlefield occurences can impact major events. DMG & DMG2 describes epic locations and events. Sandstorm and the Planar Handbook describe touchstones, which are uniquely exotic small locales pre-made for your consumption. The Fiendish Codexes describe a variety of locales that have grown out of the personality of their rulers (which by the sounds of it, might be happening even now in your game world). Pick a handful and use them to begin weaving together the events of your tale.

Ninja Vanish!! <cloud of bubbles... corpse rises to surface> Mr. Fishy I'm not.


Thanks everyone for your suggestions!

Currently, i thought to make this an adventure that goes from levels 1-20.
From levels 1-5, the players start taking up tasks from a king/baron/other high figure. Near the end of level 5, the characters unknowingly unleash the forces of hell at the end of a dungeon, which was the reason they were chosen to do the tasks that brought them here. The baron/other guy will be revealed to be an agent of hell that used the pc's to weaken any opposition to the denizens of the netherworld before 'unleashing hell on earth.' At this point in the adventure, the party is split as demons and other creatures pour through and begin taking over the world. At this point, adventuring stops for a period of time (5, 10, or 15 years). At the pc's discretion, they may kill off their character to make a new one, become enslaved/pushed to hiding (depending on races) and getting certain bonuses due to this, or apply a template to show their induction into this new society (become a werewolf, vampire, ghost). At the end of this period of time, the pc's will have an ecl of 7-9 to represent the time they have been apart, experiences they have gained, and to give a bit of a buffer for the characters that choose to add a template. The pc's will then inevitably be drawn together, and the adventure will continue from there.

Thoughts?


By following character progression through the early levels you should be able to significantly increase the players' level of engagement with their characters. That is also a pretty fair approach to building a game that will encourage the players to weigh the choice between good and evil as the story progresses.

However, you're breaking the cohesive story into two main chapters separated by a rebuilding phase. I hope you're not planning to gloss over the rebuilding. Spending a game session or two just on exposition should be very informative about what the players are setting themselves up to do and hopefully it will also let them interweave backgrounds more thoroughly. Then take a week or two off and develop the remainder of your campaign based upon what you heard there.

It sounds like you're expecting the party to make themselves monsters, so whatever moral path they set out on I suggest you incorporate both some group that is unambiguously more Good than the party and encounters meant to remind the party that in the hierarchy of monsters with the same templates they really aren't all that big or impressive initially.


Generally I try not to do the following, but...
*Casts raise thread*
I got the urge to continue writing again!

Takes place on a life-sustaining moon named Solaria, orbiting a large green gas giant. There are two suns in the system, 4 other planets, 2 other moons around Solaria. The map I plan to use is the map from margaret wies' sovereign stone trilogy. Its a HUGE map with varied terrain and lots of potential, as well as being from on of my favorite trilogies =D I'll end up having major areas controlled by 3-6 major demons, with other areas either remaining unclaimed (due to the geography, inability to mantain any sort of settlement, warring, etc) or belonging to lesser sects. I aim to have some cities be entirely denoted to lycanthropes, vampires, drow, and other major races. Eminating from the source of the main hell rift (that the pc's opened) will be a sort of weather effect that darkens the skies and kills the local vegitation, replacing with ecology more associated with hell. (think oblivion gates from the game with the same name) The outer areas of the map will remain mostly unaffected, with the major races driven into group hermitude. Elves will be highly distrustful and hidden in the northern forests, dwarves will be hidden in underground cities scattered through the continent by clan, orcs will be superstitous sea-farring pirates (as in sovereign stone, it's unique and awesome) and the other major races will integrate. Most humans will be enslaved and put to work.

Classes like summoners, alchemists, necromancers, rogues, assassins, and others with high potential to fit in will be prevalent. Other classes like paladins, (most) clerics, druids, rangers, and bards will be scarcely heard of.

Pacts with demons will, I hope, play a major role in the world. This will especially happen in the form of tempting the pc's into interesting pacts. Sorcerers power will primarily come from such pacts.

Some large area, suck as the southern island, will house the final vestige of good, a sort of holy focal point. The island will be well protected by divine and arcane magic targeted at keeping evil at bay.

The goal of the ap will be up to the players, either joining the forces of good to shut the gates of hell and seal away evil (good path), or to carve out a chunk of territory for themselves and have it grow (evil path, think kingmaker but demonic).

Now for points I'd like advice on! What are some good ways to ensure that the gates of hell are opened primarily due to the actions of the pc's? Any interesting ideas on flushing out the world? What sort of tings can I do to further the primary goals of the pc's? (like how to close the gates of hell, how to join the forces of good to do so; how to start an evil nation and have it grow) This will be the first writing i've ever done as far as rpgs. I'm going for an open world approach.

Dark Archive

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I posted this in your other thread... I am sure it very close to what your looking for...

Link: Imperial-Gazetteer

Vampires and spectral knights long ago claimed the country of Morgau & Doresh as their own, leaving the ghouls their empire deep beneath the earth.

Travel deep within the palatial crypts of deep realms of undeath and learn the secrets of the vampire-princes and the ghoul emperor. This gazetteer provides rich new Pathfinder RPG material including:
•A history of the undead nations above and below the earth.
•A giant cast of undying antagonists and allies.
•A new undead race of necropolitan ghouls for PCs to join the unliving.
•The subterranean realms of the Emperor of the Ghouls.
•Undead-themed gods and magical items.
•More original, inventive undead than you can shake a stake at


That sounds awesome! Hmmm now to decide between writing and getting that one...


I decided to write my own anyway! Haha so ideas from the masses?


So far the pc's will start in a tavern in a mining town, and the town will be beset by goblins. The pc's will dispatch them, and the mayor o the town will offer a reward for clearing out a goblin lair. After returning from the lair, a man will approach them with a job, as they seem like capable warriors. They will then be sent on numerous errands, then finally sent to a huge dungeon. At the end of the dungeon, there will be an artifact that their benefactor needs to open the gates of hell. The pc's will unwittingly bring the world to its end. Any ideas for what the artifact may be? Or the method for opening the gate?


One idea I've toyed with (but never actually implemented) is making the game more tense by changing hit points. Each PCs hit points equals Constitution plus 1 hit point per level above 1st (low BAB), 2 hit points per level above 1st (medium BAB), or 3 hit points per level above 1st (high BAB). A 10th-level fighter with a 20 Con ends up with a mere 47 hit points and a great incentive to avoid ill-planned violence.


That seems deadly for the pc's 0.o


Elondor wrote:
That seems deadly for the pc's 0.o

It would definitely change the tone and emphasis of the game. Even foes significantly below a party's APL could still prove quite dangerous. It wouldn't be an option I'd want to explore with players dedicated to fantasy superheroics and heavy combat themes. :)


I always like the reverse underdark idea. where evil has won essential and the good races were forced underground.


Icarus Pherae wrote:
I always like the reverse underdark idea. where evil has won essential and the good races were forced underground.

Me too! Obviously...

Anywho, does anyone have an random cool ideas? I need to flush the world out, as it is HUGE. Also, any ideas for pivotal points?


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After reading some of the OP, I'd recommend a short pause to look at the video game Morrowind. Especially those deadric and dwemer ruins close to Red Mountain for that blasted landscape. The brutal intensity of ash storms, and some of the twisted life forms found on the island. The inspiration from that could be infectious.


Buddah668 wrote:
After reading some of the OP, I'd recommend a short pause to look at the video game Morrowind. Especially those deadric and dwemer ruins close to Red Mountain for that blasted landscape. The brutal intensity of ash storms, and some of the twisted life forms found on the island. The inspiration from that could be infectious.

I LOVE MORROWIND.

Anyway, things like ash storms and the general landscape will have influences from morrowind especially near the hell rift, with lighting effects similar to those by oblivion gates.

Should I start a new thread that summarizes everything discussed?

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