Help me find a good hook for my new campaign setting. Here's what I got:
-1 Tropical setting.
-2 Dinosaurs.
-3 Humanoid Utahraptors are a race.
-4 All the rest of the races are there too.
-5 Dark ages technology.
Do you allow 3PP material? I would swap the Utahraptor-oids with this race:
A book I read aeons ago, "West of Eden", was set on an Earth where dinosaurs didn't go extinct, but evolved a complicated society based on bio-engineering dinosaurs for a wide variety of uses, from war machines to laborers. Mankind had evolved, too, but were kept in a very primitive state by the rulers. The only places the Humans were really safe from them was in the higher latitudes where the temperature was too cold for the saurians.
I know this doesn't really answer your request for a hook, but thought I'd toss it out there as a source from which to mine ideas.
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Do you allow 3PP material? I would swap the Utahraptor-oids with this race:
A book I read aeons ago, "West of Eden", was set on an Earth where dinosaurs didn't go extinct, but evolved a complicated society based on bio-engineering dinosaurs for a wide variety of uses, from war machines to laborers. Mankind had evolved, too, but were kept in a very primitive state by the rulers. The only places the Humans were really safe from them was in the higher latitudes where the temperature was too cold for the saurians.
I know this doesn't really answer your request for a hook, but thought I'd toss it out there as a source from which to mine ideas.
Thanks. Uh, though, I have to keep the utahraptor-oids as a thing. Though I still need some hooks with which to grab the players. I know everything's better with dinosaurs, but I need something else to work with than just "everything's better with dinosaurs."
I'll think on it for a bit.
I associate dinosaurs with extinction, so how about an End Is Nigh setup. Extinction-level event is coming, everybody knows it. Could be about finding a way to stop it, or survive it, dealing with false hopes diverting necessary resources, surviving other people's responses to it, and/or just coming to terms with it.
Dinos are tip of the iceberg. Deeper into the Jungle the Kaiju are stiring and should they wake, their rampage will bring civilization to it's knees.
As it so happens there is a nasty fellow who is looking for a magical alarm clock to wake them up.
Dinos are tip of the iceberg. Deeper into the Jungle the Kaiju are stiring and should they wake, their rampage will bring civilization to it's knees.
As it so happens there is a nasty fellow who is looking for a magical alarm clock to wake them up.
Sounds good there.
I associate dinosaurs with extinction, so how about an End Is Nigh setup. Extinction-level event is coming, everybody knows it. Could be about finding a way to stop it, or survive it, dealing with false hopes diverting necessary resources, surviving other people's responses to it, and/or just coming to terms with it.
This is good too.
Other than dinos being around how does that relate to the societies of the other races? To the Utahraptors? Do the Raptoids treat the dinos as Kin, or as beasts? Are the Dinos top of the food chain replacing the mammals and such we know? Or are they just another part of the food chain, and hence treated just like any other animal?
Once these have been answered I think you might be able to find more hooks.
I've been thinking of doing colonialism. The utahraptor-oids continent is a dark continent much like Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries. The humans and elves come to explore this new land. The Utahraptor-oids are the indigenous people, having steel tipped weapons and leather shields. Man and elf are armed with muskets.
Utahraptors are good silent hunters, having two claw attacks on each foot. They also hunt sauropods and hadrosaurs for their staples. They can eat red mammal meat, but they prefer the meat of dinosaurs. Utahraptors have strange coming of age rituals, a boy is not of age until he is circumcised. Before he is circumcised, he must prove that he is a man by going on a vision quest. Utahraptor-oids go naked all of the time in the tropical climate.
I better stop now before most of my ideas becomes copyrighted by Paizo.
how about...
above mentioned nasty fellow could have tragic backstory giving him a grudge against the colonist. Village burned, tribe killed in the name of claiming the new world sort of thing.
unleashing a 100+ Kaiju all at once could be fairly world ending. First they smash the cities of the colonists and then across the seas to the homeland of the invaiders. Too big and too powerful to stop with armies. Heroes might be able to stop one, but a hundred? The Utahraptors know the secrets of the land and how to calm them but can the PCs earn back a trust already broken by the actions of the colonists?
how about...
above mentioned nasty fellow could have tragic backstory giving him a grudge against the colonist. Village burned, tribe killed in the name of claiming the new world sort of thing.
unleashing a 100+ Kaiju all at once could be fairly world ending. First they smash the cities of the colonists and then across the seas to the homeland of the invaiders. Too big and too powerful to stop with armies. Heroes might be able to stop one, but a hundred? The Utahraptors know the secrets of the land and how to calm them but can the PCs earn back a trust already broken by the actions of the colonists?
You really like Kaiju, don't you Greylurker? Sounds good for a movie, though.
Utah raptors are possibly the dominant race. Are they another name for Troodons? In any case, there are probably snake people and troglodytes lurking at the outskirts of their civilization. Goblinoids wearing crude furs and welding hand made spears could raid outlying farm villages.
Another good adventure hook is the Couatl who have been trying to guide civilization have to get adventurers to help salvage a crashed spacecraft before the cave orcs being misguided by the demonic shadow fleet find it first.
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how about...
above mentioned nasty fellow could have tragic backstory giving him a grudge against the colonist. Village burned, tribe killed in the name of claiming the new world sort of thing.
unleashing a 100+ Kaiju all at once could be fairly world ending. First they smash the cities of the colonists and then across the seas to the homeland of the invaiders. Too big and too powerful to stop with armies. Heroes might be able to stop one, but a hundred? The Utahraptors know the secrets of the land and how to calm them but can the PCs earn back a trust already broken by the actions of the colonists?
You really like Kaiju, don't you Greylurker? Sounds good for a movie, though.
I once ran a campaign where a Necromancer animated a mountain sized corpse of the "Titan of Insects" and built a castle on it's head. Players had to scale the thing while it was marching across the kingdom to reach the castle and detonate the soul of the "Titan of Fire" in order to kill it.
Nothing says Epic adventure like climbing a Giant Bug Zombie while fighting off Giant Magotts
Ah, I bet that was successful, Greylurker.
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