"Scorched Earth" Campaign Adventure Ideas


Advice


I'm running an Evil Gestalt campaign that takes place on a desert-like continent. It's more of a "scorched-earth" than it is like a desert. There are a couple of major cities on this continent, but there are many small towns throughout as well. Water and food are scarce so they have to take this into consideration whenever traveling. This place in general is quite lawless, except for major cities.

I'm trying to incorporate lots of political and religious disputes between various factions and organizations, as well as rival gangs (this is solely because of two of the PC's backstories). One of the PC's has made it his personal mission to be politically influential in this area, and wants to install "puppet dictators" in all the places he overthrows throughout the campaign. Another PC works for an organization that secretly wants to overthrow all other organizations/gangs, and he's a spy who specializes in toppling these organizations/gangs. Once they get around level 9-11ish, I'm planning for a major regime change (from evil to good) in one of the major cities called Malachi, where the despot is ousted from power by a good NPC.

I'm looking for some interesting story hooks for each of the small towns and large cities that they adventure to. I have some, but I'm getting writer's block.

Thanks :)


Something that might come up more than once is the apparent leader to be overthrown not being the actual power in the town, organisation or whatever. Someone who heavily influences (or even magically charms) the leader or their supporters might be the real power, or someone with control over a vital resource, or there might be another town/organisation which rules over the lesser one.

In Snow Crash there's one guy who gets left alone because 'you don't make war on a nuclear power'. While there are no actual nukes in PF which you might set to go off when you die perhaps there are other deadman switches. Like a cult which keeps some wraiths bottled up in a magical trap, or a gate to somewhere terrible which they keep sealed likewise.

If you keep moving so as not to overgraze any one region you can have quite large herds even in desolate areas. Look up Lapplanders with their reindeer herds for example. Or Mongols in the time of the Khans perhaps.

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