09-10-2021, 08:07 PM | #11 |
Join Date: Dec 2004
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Re: Campaign idea: the Shattered Lands
There's an interesting write up of the world implied by the original D&D rules that might have some interesting ideas you could incorporate. Petty warlords, scattered powerful wizards & clerics perhaps left over from the apocalypse, strange monsters for each kind of environment either created or summoned by magic, etc. If you assume the war might have drawn in things from other worlds, you could have a forest like Mirkwood, a desert like Barsoom, etc. The feel of the campaign might vary a lot with travel.
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09-11-2021, 11:52 AM | #12 | |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Campaign idea: the Shattered Lands
Thinking of monsters in terms of weapons gives great ideas:
Seige Crabs are massive monsters with heavy armor that can climb right up walls and have a innate reverse missiles effect on them. old idea of mine. Quote:
Perhaps a necromantic or mind control spell that has achieved at least animal-level sentience, and moves around searching for new victims to power it.
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09-11-2021, 04:44 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: Campaign idea: the Shattered Lands
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Last edited by Michael Thayne; 09-11-2021 at 06:39 PM. |
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09-11-2021, 07:03 PM | #14 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: Campaign idea: the Shattered Lands
I'm trying to think of more ways to incorporate sci-fi—or at least relatively high-tech—elements into a hexcrawl. A few ideas:
Near-future spaceship: Would justify a lot of high-tech goodies but not for the most part weapons or armor. Space suits could be a bit better lighter and more durable than real-world models (like the TL7 model in GURPS Basic Set p. 285) but limited enough to be primarily useful in specialized circumstances (so not as good as the TL9 "vacc suit" found a few lines down in the same source). Alien prison transport: Might have a lot of weapons for the guards but exclusively of the "less lethal" variety, which could force PCs who get their hands on them to regularly ask themselves, "what's going to help us more here, a few points of damage or a second of stun?" An entire "wild west" town: Period pistols aren't such amazing weapons that the PCs would never use anything else after acquiring them. It's also interesting to think of specific items that could fit well in a DFRPG game. For example, something as simple as WWI-era binoculars wouldn't disrupt the game much but would still be superior to the optics in Adventurers. A more fanciful example would be things like chainsaws and welding torches—they look cool as weapons, but if you enforce practical downsides of using them as such they're not going totally break the game. |
09-11-2021, 07:28 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: Dec 2004
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Re: Campaign idea: the Shattered Lands
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One other oddball source of ideas might be Mad Max & similar post-apocalyptic movies. Replace tech with magic and it might give you a sense of what some of the communities are like. A couple other thoughts - are elves, dwarves, orcs, etc creations of the magic golden age? Or even mutants created by the magical apocalypse? And how does religion work? Is there an old pre-apoc religion and a new one, like pagans & Christians in late antiquity? That might lead to a situation where some of the various holdings are run by Evil(ish) High Priests of the old religion. Or Neutral High Priests of the old religion who aren't hostile per se but might be reluctant to deal with newer faiths. For druids, I'd be tempted to go less Wiccan/neopagan, more Wicker Man but that's me. On a tangential note, I remember a D&D blogger who came up with the idea of a campaign using only monsters from the Fiend Folio. He concluded you would wind up with something feeling more post-apocalyptic than vanilla fantasy. You might consider filtering for monsters that are a little weird & unnatural and weeding out more mundane & mythic creatures to give more of an "After the End" feel. |
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09-11-2021, 09:38 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: Campaign idea: the Shattered Lands
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I do, however, like the idea of having a region that is literally ripped out of GURPS After the End, complete with mutants and radioactive craters. Another idea is to drop some steampunk tech somewhere. The fact that GURPS and DFRPG are mostly-compatible with each other means the possibilities are endless. |
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09-12-2021, 04:45 AM | #17 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Campaign idea: the Shattered Lands
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. |
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09-12-2021, 12:46 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: Campaign idea: the Shattered Lands
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09-12-2021, 01:20 PM | #19 |
Join Date: May 2019
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Re: Campaign idea: the Shattered Lands
What's a reasonable price? I just noted a few on ebay that were in the thirty something or so price range that were in good condition. If I'd not just spent a bunch on Kickstarter and other gaming stuff this month I'd have snagged one of them myself. I'm not going to though because my wife just might disown me if I spent anymore "this" month on my gaming addiction err hobby.
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09-14-2021, 07:29 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Mar 2008
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Re: Campaign idea: the Shattered Lands
An area downstream from a toxic spell dump where the alchemical waste contaminates the land causing all kinds of odd one off creatures and powers.
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