I had a nifty idea for a series of adventures to run my group through for a campaign. The idea is the party are a group of town guardsmen fresh out of the academy. Day one on the job while patrolling the streets, all hell breaks loose... semi-literally. The city comes under attack from within it's walls. The idea is supposed to be the PC help with the resistance, and help take back the city district by district.
How are some ways I can go about doing this?
I'm thinking each district has a general in charge of it, and defeating that person will lessen the overall opposition there and freeing it up.
Well, my first thought is that it would help if the city had some internal divisions/lines of defense. Like old walls, rivers and/or canals, built on a series of islands, etc....
I was thinking a similar thing. The anime Attack on Titan has walls in concentric rings that divide up the place, and Midgar from FF7 was divided up into pie wedges. I didn't think of a series of islands being an option though, that's a neat idea!
If your party likes that kind of things, this is an ideal setup for creating and using important NPC's.
The other districts will have resistance cells as well, perhaps even slightly suspicious ones. So winning the trust of the resistance leader in a given district, and supplying the resistance fighters with weapons, healing or other support will either allow them to liberate that district without the PC's getting directly involved, or at least mean that the end-boss of that district is weakened.
with this set-up, you could run rescue-missions, in which the goal is not to kill every baddie in the dungeon, but rather to get in and out as fast as possible... the enemy will keep on reinforcing, and will eventually overwhelm you.
Likewise, setting up ambushes, especially targetted ambushes, aiming for that specific guy, and not caring if his bodyguards survive, could be great fun.
If you want to introduce "mini-games", give each district an occupation number. The PC's will then take actions to lower that number, and once it reaches 0, the district is freed. That way, you'll liberate the districts in different ways, rather than just one big boss-fight in every district. The actions to lower occupation score would be the ones outlined above, plus whatever else you can dream up: sabotage, propaganda, scouting, whatever your PC's will think of.
I really like the district occupation number count to track the status of each district and give the PCs a sort of gauge.
You might want to take a look at two computer games for ideas:
Both could provide inspiration for quests and plots.
BzAli brings up a lot of great points I hand't thought of. My allergies have been bothering me all day so my mind has been somewhat clouded. There are some great alternatives to the marathon murder fest I had been thinking of to get to a boss.
If the player spend time to undermine the power of the area, they should be rewarded. Killing everything between you and your goal isn't always the option. On the one hand you can let out a bunch of inmates from the prison and set them free, but on the other a good number will help the resistance. The thieve's guild will be less than happy to show the party to their super secret hideout, but everyone has a price.
Boss fights are a big part of a homebrew mechanic I'll be using, but player planning should definitely be rewarded. A stopped caravan might mean better gear for the party or weaker gear for the invading force. Distractions will have enemy patrols moving elsewhere so there is less resistance along the chosen path.
The campaign is heavily based off of Mega Man. Constructs are a part of everyday life. One day there's a pulse that starts from the castle at the center and expands outwards, and suddenly all the constructs go wild, and try to force the city into a lockdown. Several hours after this event occurs and when things have possibly quieted down a bit an evil artificer of sorts proclaims he has taken the city and placed it under his command. All of its inhabitants are now his subjects. Lockdown will be in effect until the "small" bouts of resistance stop resisting.
The part of it being the party's first day on the job is because I'm a fan of Leon Kennedy from the Resident Evil series. First day on the job as a police officer, and a zombie outbreak is waiting for him. Joins the secret service, and is immediately sent to go rescue the president's daughter.
I think there's a fair point in not necessarily making it the first day in town. Because if the _characters_ has been there for some time, it can be hard to come up with all the contacts and friends they might have. If they haven't been there for some time, the characters has no ties to the city and thus not that much reason to care and not just move to the next city...
And regardless of the characters, the _players_ have no connection to the city and doesn't care about it.
Adding maybe just one or two sessions beforehand, where they (as players) can get to know and start caring for an NPC or three in town could be great. This is easier to skip in video games because video games are by nature more railroadey and you go in with the expectation that you should just follow the railroad and that the character has _reasons_ for doing what you're forced to do, but in P&P RPG's the players are much more prone to want to do their own thing, or ask "what reason does my character have for doing this?".
In video games it's okay to be railroaded and forced to do stuff. When a DM forces a storyline down the throats of players they tend not to enjoy it as much. I say this as a DM that in my youth tended to make that mistake oh so much. Remember, you might have perfectly reasonable reasons for why things should happen as you want them to, but the players don't have more information than you give them.
Try this [url=http://dragonscalesstuff.wordpress.com/category/game-master/adventure-design/]Adventure System[\url]
It is a highly modified system from 3.5s Heroes of Battle.