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So sort of like this, but with a human? :D
That reminds me, I wanted to do a game with multiple characters sharing the same body, played by multiple people, with varying skills.
I haven't read that yet. My idea was to use the Eclipse Phase system, as it is specifically built for such experimentation. I'd probably have them share a body of a giant cyborg coconut crab.
The system allows for plenty of options regarding the body and the origin of the mind (human, AI, uplifted animal, AI based on uplifted animal). And there are several implants that allow one to share a brain with others, or to have several of yourselves in your brain in parallel, though only one copy can control the body in that case, etc.
One of the player made adventures had an NPC with 3 minds sharing the same body (essentially a face, a barbarrian and a hacker, practically a well rounded party).
Not exactly a weird or ridiculous idea, but I feel like writing out this intro right now and here's as good a place to do it as any:
Crossed the Stars, Full of Deep Remorses, an Endless Space Starfinder game.
In some ways, the Academy is the only truly cosmopolitan place in the galaxy. Where else would brilliant, quick Sophon savants walk with towering, contemplative Unfallen Seconds? Or strange, mechanical Riftborn work along with hulking, savage Craver bishops?
It is here that the Dust-enhanced individuals known, with reason, as Heroes are trained, and from here that they go on to change the face of the galaxy... and it is here that you are nearing your graduation. But while most of your classmates are already looking forward to individual careers with the various powers that rule the stars, you have found an unusual sense of camaraderie with a few others. And for some reason, you've been told to hold off on accepting any offers of employment. What will your future be in the vastness of the galaxy? And what will the galaxy's future be after you're done with it?
In case it's not clear, the campaign would be set in the universe of the Endless Space games, with the PC's being recent graduates of the Academy who, contrary to the usual protocol, are to work together as a group.
In addition to the Endless universe games, inspiration would be drawn from Metroid Prime--the Endless left lots of ruins around which would provide opportunity for some Metroid-like exploration and puzzles.
In homebrew, I'm thinking of creating a random generated star system thread, with 1-4 suns being orbited by 1-10 planets or dwarf planets.
Posters can add interesting stuff such as comets, abandoned death stars, volcanos full of diamonds, or whatever.
Then a ship full of explorers will have to roleplay discovering these systems.
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In homebrew, I'm thinking of creating a random generated star system thread, with 1-4 suns being orbited by 1-10 planets or dwarf planets.
Posters can add interesting stuff such as comets, abandoned death stars, volcanos full of diamonds, or whatever.Then a ship full of explorers will have to roleplay discovering these systems.
This sounds almost like Diaspora.
You mean like... the PCs get affected by a curse which gradually levels them down? And they spend the campaign looking for a way to reverse - or at least halt the progression of - their cursed condition, before they get level-drained to death (by reaching level 0)? That sort of thing?No. That would be typical and fairly easy to implement.
I mean, the campaign starts with the PCs at the height of their power and ends with them at 1st level. And yet that would seem a logical, desirable progression, NOT a negative thing.
The tricky bit is finding a way to redefine "progress" and "success" so that they don't mean "going up in level" and "getting more stuff."
It's a subtle idea. Probably too subtle to actually work. The more I try to explain it, the more confusing it sounds, which is usually a good clue that I'm heading in the wrong direction.
Ever read 8-bit theater? Kind of reminds me of them.
That certainly is a challenge If you could somehow say that the monsters were getting stronger while they were actually getting weaker at least the party could say they are having an easier time as they went down in level. IT sounds very difficult.Edit Oh last minute thought. Have all their bonuses give penalties instead. literally all non voluntary bonuses. treat spells as if they were being cast by a 1st level caster at 20 and a 20th at 1st. (I have less spells because they are stronger?) still sketchy Would take a lot of thought. I feel like about as much work as making your own system.
I haven't figured out how I would implement this yet, but I would love to do a reverse-level campaign. The PCs start out at 20 and gradually work their way down to 1.
Sounds like . . . what I've heard about This Is Spinal Tap meets Pathfinder?
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You mean like... the PCs get affected by a curse which gradually levels them down? And they spend the campaign looking for a way to reverse - or at least halt the progression of - their cursed condition, before they get level-drained to death (by reaching level 0)? That sort of thing?No. That would be typical and fairly easy to implement.
I mean, the campaign starts with the PCs at the height of their power and ends with them at 1st level. And yet that would seem a logical, desirable progression, NOT a negative thing.
The tricky bit is finding a way to redefine "progress" and "success" so that they don't mean "going up in level" and "getting more stuff."
It's a subtle idea. Probably too subtle to actually work. The more I try to explain it, the more confusing it sounds, which is usually a good clue that I'm heading in the wrong direction.
Maybe they are demon lords that are trying to become human for some reason, so the more they reach their goal, the less demon they become...until they are a 1/2 HD human. Perhaps someone has inspired them to become more human, or they are geas'd by a deity...either way in their eyes the goal is to become more mortal, more human, less demon or devil or whatever. To be redeemed on a cosmic scale.
^Great idea . . . except now I've got this vision of a Demonic heavy-metal rock band that goes from drawing record crowds in the Abyss down to trying to get a few stragglers to come in to have any audience at all at some barn in a dump of a backwater town on the Prime Material plane . . . .
Another idea I had while driving home from work:
Wildfang Warriors: An Animal Companion Ironfang Invasion Game
The basic idea is that all of the PC's would be former animal companions (or possibly familiars) who were Awakened when their masters were killed in a druid circle by Ironfang hobgoblins. From there it would very loosely follow the AP, with the PC's meeting up with refugees from town (possibily with their own heroes) and figuring out how to avenge their masters (or maybe just clean these nasty hobgoblins out of their forest) in their own way.
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I would want to run the most stereotypically Lovecraftian campaign possible, with appearances from all the actually Lovecraftian beasts possible (i.e. leng ghouls, deep ones, shoggoth etc...) and most of the ones inspired by him (aboleths and such). Throw in insane cultists, academics whose grasp on reality are easily broken, and alchemists who focus on reanimating the dead and creating abominations of science, the whole shebang.
...The twist is that it is a gestalt campaign. In which everybody has to have their second class be bard. And the first Perform skill you take has to be Perform(Sing). And it is a musical. And that is it. That is the Premise.
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Gnome halfling goblin and kobold only. An unlikely alliance of the small races plots a massive upheaval, seeking to supplant the larger humanoids as masters of the world.
I'd play that, I might even play as a kobold
Short folk unite!
A group of humanoids realize that their people keep losing because of infighting. The PCs are under the constant threat of drifting into a not evil alignment, because, friendship and cooperation.
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I would want to run the most stereotypically Lovecraftian campaign possible, with appearances from all the actually Lovecraftian beasts possible (i.e. leng ghouls, deep ones, shoggoth etc...) and most of the ones inspired by him (aboleths and such). Throw in insane cultists, academics whose grasp on reality are easily broken, and alchemists who focus on reanimating the dead and creating abominations of science, the whole shebang.
...The twist is that it is a gestalt campaign. In which everybody has to have their second class be bard. And the first Perform skill you take has to be Perform(Sing). And it is a musical. And that is it. That is the Premise.
** spoiler omitted **
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I can't even remember what I've said in this thread before, and I'm too lazy to go and look.
A campaign in which only non-core races are allowed - no humans, dwarves, elves, gnomes, half-elves, or half-orcs. No tieflings or aasimar, either. Nothing that looks closely similar to humans. Only anthropomorphic animal races like catfolk, grippli, vanara, ratfolk, etc. There used to be humans, and maybe other humanoid races, but they all disappeared.
There was an article in an old issue of Dragon (pre-3rd edition) suggesting possible campaign starts. One of them had the PCs turned into statues or trapped in some kind of stasis and then released a century or more later. I've always liked the idea of doing something like that, and having all the characters have families or friends or businesses that would have disappeared in the intervening time. Either that, or they've somehow become legendary heroes during their absence and now everyone has ridiculously high expectations of them.
A game world ruined by some badly worded wishes.
Shoes keep tying their own shoelaces, even when not being worn. Shirts keep buttoning themselves making them hard to put on. Sandwiches keep arriving as a live, angry, animal stuck between 2 loaves of bread, ect.
I would love to run a campaign where the party is a band and every player is a Bard with a different archetype. The goal would be to achieve fame and fortune by becoming famous for their music, while also being hardcore monster slayers on the side, and trying to save the day when their two professions inevitably collide during performances.
I would also love to do a high level campaign where the players are already legendary heroes celebrated in song and beloved by the masses. However, they are also desperately trying to retire from the adventuring business and must think of creative reasons NOT to go on adventures or save the kingdom without appearing cowardly and losing their heroic status.
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Standard Golarion world except a Rick and Morty live there. Players are encouraged to create parallels of fictional characters.
Another idea, is the characters are inside a town in a gargantuan aberration. All kinds of monsters keep appearing and attacking the town. The characters are sort of the teeth, killing and chopping up the food so the creature can swallow the monsters.
One thought I was having recently--playing a game of Stellaris until about the mid-game, then using the state of the galaxy as a setting for a game of Starfinder. :D
Thanks to Starfinder having launched and some lovely Gap inspired FUD,a Pathfinder game of Not!Tokyo Jungle.
It's a city. Everyone is gone. The animals remain. And the familiars are kicking off the battles for supremacy.
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I like to collect minis. While looking at Dark Sword Miniatures' 'Critter Kingdom' line of anthropomorphic animals, I thought, why not a campaign about a group of anthropomorphic animal adventurers? Perhaps they've been cursed or the victims of a magical accident, or maybe they come from another plane or country where anthropomorphic animals are the norm.
I like the idea that they're cursed. Then they have to persuade people to recognize them and take them seriously.
But I also like the idea of them coming from someplace where they're the norm, like a magical fantasy version of Zootopia, and then ending up in a traditional fantasy setting surrounded by humanoids.
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A campaign in which only non-core races are allowed - no humans, dwarves, elves, gnomes, half-elves, or half-orcs. No tieflings or aasimar, either. Nothing that looks closely similar to humans. Only anthropomorphic animal races like catfolk, grippli, vanara, ratfolk, etc. There used to be humans, and maybe other humanoid races, but they all disappeared.
In my current homebrew campaign, I've decided that the world's Asian-cognate continent (on the opposite side of the world) is populated by anthropomorphic animal races, with no human-like humanoids. I have several questions that I need to answer before my players' characters go there (what do near-human-looking kami, oni, etc., look like there? what do kitsune look like with change shape?) but as they know nothing of its existence yet, I have plenty of time. ;)
I came to this decision partly because I didn't want to use every single ARG race in the main campaign area, so decided to omit pretty much all of the animal-like races. And it gives me a way to make my antipodal continent even more distinct from other pseudo-Asian settings.
(This idea also comes in part from when, after learning that C.S. Lewis and his brother created the animal-land of Boxen as children, I thought about using it in a Narnia LARP that I never finished writing.)
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There was an article in an old issue of Dragon (pre-3rd edition) suggesting possible campaign starts. One of them had the PCs turned into statues or trapped in some kind of stasis and then released a century or more later. I've always liked the idea of doing something like that, and having all the characters have families or friends or businesses that would have disappeared in the intervening time. Either that, or they've somehow become legendary heroes during their absence and now everyone has ridiculously high expectations of them.
I’ve been thinking more about this idea, and now I’m thinking the PCs should be petrified/in stasis/trapped in a pocket dimension for much longer. In the meantime the geography of the world has been dramatically altered by some cataclysm that happened long enough ago that the cause has been forgotten or distorted into myth and legend. The PCs would be the only people who know what the world was like before, and now it looks like a similar cataclysm is about to take place that only they can prevent.
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I want to do a campaign where the world is destroyed and the PCs lead a small band of survivors to another world. Just as they go the Gods of the old world empower the PCs to become the gods of the new world. The Gods then sacrifice themselves to stop the force that has consumed the old world.
The rest of the campaign would be about my players literally building a new campaign world themselves. Seeking out and claiming their own divine portfolios, guiding the rebuilding of civilization and defending their world against the remanents of the force that destroyed the old one, (reduced in power by the sacrifice of the old gods to something enough to threaten the PCs but not crush them like ants).
and then....when it's all over I want to run a regular campaign in that world my players created.
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I want to do a campaign where the world is destroyed and the PCs lead a small band of survivors to another world. Just as they go the Gods of the old world empower the PCs to become the gods of the new world. The Gods then sacrifice themselves to stop the force that has consumed the old world.
The rest of the campaign would be about my players literally building a new campaign world themselves. Seeking out and claiming their own divine portfolios, guiding the rebuilding of civilization and defending their world against the remanents of the force that destroyed the old one, (reduced in power by the sacrifice of the old gods to something enough to threaten the PCs but not crush them like ants).
and then....when it's all over I want to run a regular campaign in that world my players created.
What a fantastic idea!
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What a fantastic idea!I want to do a campaign where the world is destroyed and the PCs lead a small band of survivors to another world. Just as they go the Gods of the old world empower the PCs to become the gods of the new world. The Gods then sacrifice themselves to stop the force that has consumed the old world.
The rest of the campaign would be about my players literally building a new campaign world themselves. Seeking out and claiming their own divine portfolios, guiding the rebuilding of civilization and defending their world against the remanents of the force that destroyed the old one, (reduced in power by the sacrifice of the old gods to something enough to threaten the PCs but not crush them like ants).
and then....when it's all over I want to run a regular campaign in that world my players created.
I gotta thank this thread. With our DM out of action this week and game cancelled, I ended up going to my favorite Pizza joint and spent a couple of hours in a booth, writing up an outline of the campaign along with key "scenes-of-cool" I want to include.
I'm liking it, I really am. The prelude (IE: the part before the PCs evacuate the world) ended up longer and more involved than I had originally planned but it has cool things like the PCs unleashing Rovagug and stuff. I might actually get to run this next year
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