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Since people seem to be enjoying the hydra campaign, I was wondering how much interest there might be in another of my crazy campaigns I ran back in college. The basic idea is that the players would be the 'boss monsters' of a dungeon, running a profitable enterprise in which various evil overlords pay you to be 'the threat' that the heroes will fight while the real evil does its thing unopposed (you've figured out some ways to 'die' without it sticking). However, one day you discover that a huge number of unscheduled adventurers have descended on your dungeon and killed all of your minions during your weekly game of Hearts. So now you have to fight your way through all of these would-be heroes to reclaim your home.
Now, if I do this, I'll be requesting a lot from my potential players. Specifically, in addition to building a nasty monster character, each player will be the 'boss' of one floor of the dungeon, and will thus be responsible for creating their own themed dungeon level (that I will then populate with hostile adventurers). And they'll have to do all this while maintaining a fairly light-hearted tone (I'm not a fan of serious evil in PC's, even when they're evil monsters, so I'd be going for more of a cartoon-villain tone).
So, given all of that, who would be interested? Note that this isn't an actual recruitment yet--I'll only come up with the character/dungeon floor creation rules and such if there's enough people interested for me to do so. I also don't want to run another campaign until Nevermore ends, which I'm guessing will be towards the end of October. So if there's enough interest, I'll likely begin recruiting early next month, with an eye towards starting the game in November.
This sounds really fun. I'm always interested in playing unusual characters, and I've been involved in a couple of "mercenary-evil" campaigns (as opposed to "sacrificing-people-evil").
You're friends and co-workers, so you'd be assisting each other in clearing the dungeon out. Whether you do that by traveling as a group or some other means would be up to you, but you would generally need to clear each floor in sequence. My assumption is that the monsters would fight together against the adventurer invaders.
Hmmm, certainly seems like there's plenty of interest. I'll have to start working up some dungeon-creation rules and some ideas of what I want for character creation.
Yep, Almonihah, very creative idea! It reminds me of Dungeon Keeper, somehow. It's cool to think the idea of "an army of do-gooders invade our dungeon, killed all our goblins and orcs and now are trying to put their filth hands on the gold that we spent all our sweat to steal!"
For monster creation and whatnot, you might want to consider the rules CaveToad created for his game, and obviously adapt.
Consider me very, very interested.
Awesome, I always love ideas like this. Playing the species you normally find yourself fighting against!
Just double checking through, but you don't have to be evil right, but just netural? I mean, if your in it for profit, and don't actually go out of your way to hurt people when your not on contract, your more netural than evil right?
Actually, I kinda wanna play a Vigilante character now. Someone who disguises them as a normal guy, perhaps a minor noble of some sort. But goes out into the wider world as a monstrous mercenary and bounty-hunter for the highest bidder... but I don't think that entire fits the entire of the game.
Still, playing a Hero-Killer would be fun.
Love this idea!
You have one very interested necromancer.
(Also, that vigilante concept is pretty brilliant, Fury. It's especially awesome because the best Vigilante archetype right now is the Serial Killer.)
Love this idea!
You have one very interested necromancer.
(Also, that vigilante concept is pretty brilliant, Fury. It's especially awesome because the best Vigilante archetype right now is the Serial Killer.)
Because they can use Hidden Strike to qualify for Sneak Attack stuff, right? Have to admit, I was thinking of an Avenger Type Vigilante more than Stalker, someone who makes it sure that the hero's know just who they are going up against before he cuts them down.
But, if I do end up going for a Stalker Vigilante, I'll probably go Teisatsu. I just prefer it to all the assassination stuff.
How many levels are there? Is the dungeon in the middle of no where or near a surface city?
Do the monsters have the ability to take over other, more prestigious levels during this event? For example, the Goblin King rules level 2, but with the adventurers coming through is able to claim level 3? Level 3 has that shrine of evil, which all the bosses want access to.
Can we loot the equipment from the adventurers? Can we manipulate the adventurers into developing resources within the dungeon, such as expanding the library level with books from the surface?
Is there an economy within the dungeon? Any ability to have surface dweller allies, such as thieves guild or corporation.
Can we blackmail (in the nice-est way possible) to assist others with taking back their level? Future favors seem appropriate. Creating vassal bosses is also cool.
Any mechanism to expand territory within the dungeon, ie displacing other bosses? So Goblin King expands from level 3 into level 4, but helps/blackmails boss of level four to take over joint custody of level 5 with boss of level 5. A romance made in dungeon for bosses 4 and 5...
Any neutral territory within the dungeon, such as level 10 is the bar level. Bacchus holds it firm.
At present, I'm planning on it consisting of one level for every PC--so four levels total. I'm not planning on this being a big, complex dungeon, nor a long-lasting campaign, though if it goes well, I might decide to run a longer-form version that has more in the way of diplomacy and economy to it. But I want to run a simple a version as possible first to try to get a handle on it before trying to do anything more complex.
You're a Dungeon Master, you're a Dungeon Master, we're all Dungeon Masters now! Mwahaha!
Sounds like a blast.
So this is a bit of a trail run? That sounds good to me!
I would play the Goblin King.
I would prefer the 2nd level of the Dungeon.
I'm considering a dragon, but I want to see the creation limits first.
I'd shoot for Brain Ooze.
Remember this is just an interest check. :D I'll make the actual recruitment thread the first full week of October.
Im over 9000% into this idea. Makes me think of the anime overlord too!
If it does go to recruitment, I want to offer a character and dungeon floor too.
I'm in.
Well it certainly seems like I'll have more than enough interest for this. XD Hopefully I'll be able to do the concept justice--when I ran this face-to-face in college, I had some difficulty keeping it from just being a slog.
This sounds fun. And I might have an idea for my floor. It's not physically challenging but mentally. It starts off as a crappy horror house that slowly becomes much worse like the NoEnd House from Creepypasta.
No, I said above that this was just an interest check, and I'll be making the actual recruitment thread next week, so everyone is waiting for that, I would imagine.
Hrm it would be hilarious to actually have groups of real players go against everyone's villains. What would it take to manage a game like that?
More work than I'm willing to do right now. XD In seriousness, the difficulty with doing that would be the consequences--whichever group won would still probably have serious casualties, so it would basically be the end of both groups. I've seen similar things done sometimes as the finale of some kind of simultaneous campaign.
No problem!
I was planning on having something up for this by now, but yesterday and today have ended up being far busier than I would like. If I don't have something up by tonight, it will be Thursday evening before I get something up.
I'm totally up for this. I was thinking to make a minotaur
Official recruitment thread is up here!