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The main reason the Gods of Good are basically dicks in D&D (or incompetent idiots) is because if they weren't, your PCs wouldn't be needed. I totally get why it is, but the brutality of it tends to go over the top like the Wall.
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Nov 8, 2016 00:18
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Ao being a petty jerk because of the setting he oversees really helps to make it clear why the Ur-God in Dragonlance is an actively malevolent psychopath like Chaos (before the retcons)Night10194 posted:The main reason the Gods of Good are basically dicks in D&D (or incompetent idiots) is because if they weren't, your PCs wouldn't be needed. I totally get why it is, but the brutality of it tends to go over the top like the Wall. The problem is that the writing continually builds them up as these positive figures even when their actions are incredibly hypocritical. At least in other settings, if the gods are assholes, the writing clearly calls them out as such. Bedlamdan fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Nov 8, 2016 |
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Nov 8, 2016 00:22
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PurpleXVI posted:The thing about Planescape is that the factions don't map directly to alignments. For instance, the Harmonium is just generally Lawful, it covers everything from Lawful Good progressives wanting a functioning police system, through Lawful Neutral obsessives with legal minutiae and through Lawful Evil fascists who want to purge all the elves because they're scum. Anarchists can be Anarchists for any reason. Because they love seeing corpses, because they want to benefit from the chaos, because they want to upset the current order because they feel it's stifling, or maybe because they feel the existing Factions are doing more harm than good.
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Nov 8, 2016 00:30
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The problem is that people keep putting the Wall of the Faithless back in even though it's glaringly inconsistent with how everything in the setting is supposed to work because some nerds just seem to hate "we're just going to be different now" and prefer Massive Metaplots That Change Everything every four years.
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Nov 8, 2016 00:33
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The Dustmen take care of the dead. They encourage the embrace of death (and undeath) in the same way that a bunch of fringe Buddhists with access to necromantic powers might. They are one of the less dynamic factions, of course, but they get out there and help stop issues that you wouldn't think would be issues - for example, resurrection crises. Someone gets the bright idea to start massively reversing death and threatening to destroy the local area because it can't support so many additional lives? Dustmen are out there helping to put a stop to it. Plus, you know, running the mortuaries for the largest city in the multiverse is a big job. The Dustmen actually view undeath as a form of bodhisattva-ism - the willing putting off of your own eternal oblivion in order to guide others. In their own way they're immensely altruistic. E: Really, that's what keeps factions together - they believe, and strongly, about some way to achieve an Ideal State in the universe, either personally or for the universe as a whole, and they help each other to achieve it.
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Nov 8, 2016 00:39
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Nessus posted:So my questions are then, what makes these people in these factions stick together - I can see some gelling but it would seem like you'd get centrifugal force in them - and secondly, how do the Dustmen accomplish anything at all, as your outline here suggests if they did anything, they'd be hypocrites. A lot of the factions are technically split into subfactions already, like the Doomguard, who're really just three radically opposed factions sharing the Armory and battling for political power to affect the universe's decay, or the Anarchists, who're really dozens of separate cells with similar methods, but often wildly different ultimate goals(or, at least, wildly different reasons for said goals). I think that sums up faction coherency, really. They've got similar ultimate goals(at least very far down the road), but different reasons for wanting to accomplish said goals. Take the Athar, for instance. Pretty far down the road, what they want to do is destroy all gods, or at least radically change mortals' relationship with them. Whether someone wants to kill the gods because they think it's a scam that pays off in enslaved souls, or it's because they believe gods are actually killable and want to forge a god's essence into a badass hat, they both want dead gods. So what's to stop them working together? They don't have to get married, they just have to trust each others' devotion to the cause far enough to share weapons and information. An evil character won't backstab everyone he travels with on purpose, and especially not if it's liable to weaken his own position. If the ranger's watching the evil guy's back, the evil guy is gonna let him live, because it lowers his own chances of getting stabbed in the kidneys by a kobold. Like, plus, consider that in 2nd edition AD&D, no one runs around with their alignment tattooed on their forehead(well, maybe a few people in Sigil, to be honest, it gets weird sometimes). Even if the good guys could Detect Evil... it doesn't quite work as an Evildar. 2nd Edition AD&D DMG posted:Some characters--the paladin, in particular--possess a limited ability to detect alignments, particularly good and evil. Even this power has more limitations than the player is likely to consider. The ability to detect evil is really only useful to spot characters or creatures with evil intentions or those who are so thoroughly corrupted that they are evil to the core, not the evil aspect of an alignment. It's more of a detector of current evil intent, than general evil behavior in the past, unless it's been INCREDIBLY evil. The Dustmen posted:After reaching True Death, perhaps one can return to Lie. I do not know. I do know that one cannot reach the ideal state, total acceptance of death, until one leaves hope behind - the very hope that fuels the desire for life. Clearly, I still have yet to reach the ideal myself, for I appreciate the irony in this foolish presumption. An important thing to remember is that not every Faction consists purely of fanatics(probably the Anarchists are the only real exception to this). There are plenty of members of the Doomguard who're just low-tier members making a good living forging weapons and armor at the Armory. There are plenty of Dustmen just working at the Mortuary to make ends meet, or possibly because it's a good tie-in to stealing and selling corpses(or zombies) for a fat stack of coins. Most of the day-to-day work of the Factions, most of the actual business-work, rather than the ideological work, tends to be done by the lower-tier membership. While the top-tier tends to work on the grander, more broad and general directions. Also, just because you want to reach that gloried state of losing all attachments, doesn't mean you'll instantly get there, and if you die too early, you're back on the wheel again, having to start over from scratch with a new set of emotional, worldly attachments. So there's a paradox which requires you to invest yourself in the false world, to survive there long enough that you can leave it properly. The Dustmen posted:Most Dustmen know Skall’s walking the road to becoming one of the True Dead, but that he stays around out of a sense of duty. He feels compelled to enlighten as many berks as possible about the way of death, so they eventually might reach True Death.
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Nov 8, 2016 01:01
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LongDarkNight posted:I'd be pissed too if I was the over God of the poo poo show that is the Realms. Gouge out my own omniscience so I didn't have watch Elminster loving a bear.  ... go on.
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Nov 8, 2016 01:14
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Rand Brittain posted:The problem is that people keep putting the Wall of the Faithless back in even though it's glaringly inconsistent with how everything in the setting is supposed to work because some nerds just seem to hate "we're just going to be different now" and prefer Massive Metaplots That Change Everything every four years. The 5e revamp rolled back a lot of changes from 4e. Including filling in the giant hole in the ground that went down into the underdark, and resurrecting the racist egyptian nation (like they are literally ancient Egyptians stolen from earth). Simian_Prime posted:
Mystra died when the weave exploded at the start of 4e. Except she didn't, she instead transferred her consciousness into a Bear. At some point Elminster finds this bear and is given a holy quest to kill all the other wielders of silver fire and put it all into the Bear which ressurects into Mystra. Of course if there's one thing Elminster is known for it's "Having loads of sex with Mystra" so people have extrapolated that at some point he must have hosed the bear. Also: it is a crime that Mystra isn't still a bear, anthropomorphic or not, it would have been loving amazing. They could have had a goddamn bear god of magic but nooope have to go back to the status quo.
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Nov 8, 2016 01:32
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Kurieg posted:Also: it is a crime that Mystra isn't still a bear, anthropomorphic or not, it would have been loving amazing. They could have had a goddamn bear god of magic but nooope have to go back to the status quo. What the hell is wrong with the Realms that they didn't want this.
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Nov 8, 2016 01:33
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Mors Rattus posted:I've always found the best way to get PCs to do 'evil' is to studiously not judge anything they do out of character, let them do whatever they want, and give them reasons to seek power. I see it mostly in Ars Magica - while, sure, your average PC will violently resist advice from a demon, they'll be happy to gently caress some guy over just because he's annoying. That's kind of how "evil" works IRL anyway - people don't wake up and decide to want to arbitrarily tie people to railroad tracks while twirling their mustache, they have clearly defined goals and aims, and they even believe that they're in the right in pursuing those goals, and whatever we end up as "evil" is just them having a critical difference in opinion on the methodology of achieving those goals. Terrible Opinions posted:The Jester class that demoralizes people with bad jokes and taunts. My dad?
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Nov 8, 2016 01:35
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Kurieg posted:The 5e revamp rolled back a lot of changes from 4e. Including filling in the giant hole in the ground that went down into the underdark, and resurrecting the racist egyptian nation (like they are literally ancient Egyptians stolen from earth). That's what I mean—they couldn't just write a version of the Realms to suit them better, they had to have another cosmic reboot instead of just saying "okay, 4e never happened."
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Nov 8, 2016 01:36
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Has there ever been an edition change that hasn't had a cosmic reboot to make the mechanics line up with the setting like anyone cares?
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Nov 8, 2016 01:44
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Evil Mastermind posted:Has there ever been an edition change that hasn't had a cosmic reboot to make the mechanics line up with the setting like anyone cares? 2e -> 3e didn't have one. (Mysteriously, this was the best edition.)
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Nov 8, 2016 01:44
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gradenko_2000 posted:My dad? "You're hungry, huh?" "I am more than hungry. I am ravenous." "Hi More Than Hungry. I'm Dad."
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Nov 8, 2016 01:45
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It would have been even better if it was just a random bear that drank the magic honey and became the new god of magic.
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Nov 8, 2016 01:46
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Bedlamdan posted:Ao being a petty jerk because of the setting he oversees really helps to make it clear why the Ur-God in Dragonlance is an actively malevolent psychopath like Chaos (before the retcons) Its funny, when I first heard about the wall in Mask of the Betrayer, I thought it was kinda neat. I never really knew much about the setting or cosmology of FR, and just sort of assumed it was generic fantasy land. So the idea that it had this super hosed up wall of souls for the faithless made me think that maybe there was something more interesting and bizarre to the setting than I'd assumed. Man was I disappointed when I went through some of the FR stuff on the wiki...
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Nov 8, 2016 01:46
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Rand Brittain posted:2e -> 3e didn't have one. (Mysteriously, this was the best edition.) Actually, I'm fairly sure there were some 2e -> 3e events to explain why, say, dwarves could be wizards now. I want to say that it had to do with the city of Shade and the Shadow Weave.
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Nov 8, 2016 01:46
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Mors Rattus posted:Actually, I'm fairly sure there were some 2e -> 3e events to explain why, say, dwarves could be wizards now. I want to say that it had to do with the city of Shade and the Shadow Weave. It was put down to Moradin's Thunder Blessing, that resulted in a lot of multiple births and a sort of magical renaissance.
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Nov 8, 2016 01:54
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Yeah, 3e had a lot of little shifts, mostly to account for 2e's metaplot (hey, Time of Troubles), but also to include new game elements and a general revision of most of the villainous factions to make them less "keystone" as some author put it. And so you had the heavy revisions to a lot of villainous factions and the return of Bane, for example. It's also worth mentioning the Athar aren't atheists per se - they acknowledge gods as very powerful beings, they just don't see why that fact makes them worthy of worship, since they're obviously not responsible for creating the planes. In fact, they're more akin to deists, since they believe in a "Great Unknown" that must have been the actual prime mover of the universe... or planar mover... y'know. In any case, given that most D&D pantheons (original or mythical) are filled with jackassery, it's a bit hard to argue objectively otherwise. Forgotten Realms certainly isn't alone there, the gods of Dragonlance were certainly a special level of what the gently caress, good.
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Nov 8, 2016 01:58
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Mors Rattus posted:Actually, I'm fairly sure there were some 2e -> 3e events to explain why, say, dwarves could be wizards now. I want to say that it had to do with the city of Shade and the Shadow Weave. One of the many reasons I love Eberron was because they dealt with the 3e->4e rules changes with what amounted to "who cares?"
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Nov 8, 2016 02:08
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, 3e had a lot of little shifts, mostly to account for 2e's metaplot (hey, Time of Troubles), but also to include new game elements and a general revision of most of the villainous factions to make them less "keystone" as some author put it. And so you had the heavy revisions to a lot of villainous factions and the return of Bane, for example. quote:Forgotten Realms certainly isn't alone there, the gods of Dragonlance were certainly a special level of what the gently caress, good. Isn't one of the laws of Dragonlance that if there aren't enough evil wizards in the world it will force a good wizard to become evil to fill the void? Evil Mastermind posted:One of the many reasons I love Eberron was because they dealt with the 3e->4e rules changes with what amounted to "who cares?"
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Nov 8, 2016 02:07
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Thorbardin and dwarf history are the only good things in Dragonlance. ...okay the minotaurs are neat, too.
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Nov 8, 2016 02:13
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Kurieg posted:Isn't one of the laws of Dragonlance that if there aren't enough evil wizards in the world it will force a good wizard to become evil to fill the void? I think it was closer to "good and evil must remain in balance, so if there aren't enough evil wizards, the good and responsible thing to do is volunteer to become evil."
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Nov 8, 2016 02:14
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Kurieg posted:Don't forget the eventual return of Bhaal after the horrifying death of the main character from baldur's gate. The main character from the novels, which is just insulting. Also Myrkul is back somehow. Honestly the releases have been so slow and scattershot that it's difficult to call Forgotten Realms 5th Edition a setting. There's not even a book for the Realms as a whole yet, just the Sword Coast.
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Nov 8, 2016 02:27
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Ugh why. Absolutely nobody likes the Baldur's Gate novels
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Nov 8, 2016 02:34
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For me, The Cataclysm really says it all. "Why is my kingdom on fire!?" "The gods wish to send a message to the Kingpriest of Istar to end his blasphemy." "But that's a different country! This is Abanasinia!" "The gods are pretty upset." "How is he supposed to know what the message is, anyway? Smoke signals? My people are burning!" "Oh, he won't, he'll completely misinterpret it." "poo poo. I knew I should have built my kingdom in Faerûn."
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Nov 8, 2016 02:37
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Kavak posted:The main character from the novels, which is just insulting. Also Myrkul is back somehow. I thought they weren't doing 5e supplements like setting books anymore?
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Nov 8, 2016 02:43
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Robindaybird posted:Ugh why. Absolutely nobody likes the Baldur's Gate novels They are technically canon since novels overwrite games for FR. Why they would chose to emphasize them with that adventure is beyond me- maybe they just assumed people would substitute their own characters or outcome in? Evil Mastermind posted:I thought they weren't doing 5e supplements like setting books anymore? Then how're you supposed to know what 5e Forgotten Realms is like? Are you supposed to make it up yourself?
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Nov 8, 2016 03:05
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Desiden posted:Its funny, when I first heard about the wall in Mask of the Betrayer, I thought it was kinda neat. I never really knew much about the setting or cosmology of FR, and just sort of assumed it was generic fantasy land. So the idea that it had this super hosed up wall of souls for the faithless made me think that maybe there was something more interesting and bizarre to the setting than I'd assumed. All the cool stuff was put in 4e and then promptly retconned in 5e
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Nov 8, 2016 03:10
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Evil Mastermind posted:I thought they weren't doing 5e supplements like setting books anymore? They released Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, and then two PDFs on converting Magic the Gathering settings to D&D
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Nov 8, 2016 03:12
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Kurieg posted:I believe the exact reaction was "holy poo poo look at all these new toys we get to integrate into the world! This is amazing!" Eberron had a few minor shifts as part of the edition changeover. They revised the planar cosmology to accommodate some 4e concepts like the elemental chaos and astral sea. they also changed the dragonmarks from having three forms that grow with successive feats to one feat and explicitly opened the feat up to any race-- with the in-setting admission that it would cause a great disturbance for someone to manifest particular type of dragonmark that doesn't normally appear on their race. They also gave a bit more of a explanation where the new PHB races would come from, which was particularly intersting for the dragonborn and eladrin. In a lot of ways 4e was obviously influenced by design philosophy behind Eberron, so the two things worked well together
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Nov 8, 2016 03:17
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Rand Brittain posted:I think it was closer to "good and evil must remain in balance, so if there aren't enough evil wizards, the good and responsible thing to do is volunteer to become evil." I'm reminded of the token 'evil' faculty member of the Unseen University. SKULL RING. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unseen_University#Doctor_Hix
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Nov 8, 2016 04:05
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Rand Brittain posted:2e -> 3e didn't have one. (Mysteriously, this was the best edition.) Die Vecna Die and the Apocalypse Stone were both enormous cosmic shake ups.
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Nov 8, 2016 04:11
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Say, Hostile V; Are you planning on doing all of the AFMBE books? Like, say, Atlas of the Living Dead? I have bought most all the books in PDF format, because (at least most of them) are pretty great, (I do remember a couple of them being a bit meh, but not which ones,) but the core book and the Atlas are the two I have in actual physical copy. Atlas of the Living is probably my favorite because of how well it really chronicles and Monster Manual-izes the undead from around real world mythology, legend, and folklore, with a few renditions of pop/horror culture staples like modern vampires. Admittedly, the familiar old adage states good zombie stories are really about people and the breakdown of society, rather than the monsters themselves. But I really love monsters.
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Nov 8, 2016 05:25
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 On this episode of System Mastery, we look at another book from Jonathan Tweet and it even has some Robin D. Laws all up in there. Special recognition to the game for being the only one I can think of to be based on Burroughs' book Naked Lunch. Oddly ahead of its time considering it was out in '92 but still manages to get weirdly bogged down in mechanics for shooting and has its "bestiary" spread out over the entire book thus making it fairly useless as a reference during play. Enjoy!
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Nov 8, 2016 05:35
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Grnegsnspm posted:
There's also a bit of Greg Stolze hidden in there too.
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Nov 8, 2016 05:40
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Drakli posted:Say, Hostile V; On the other hand, I actually like AFMBE (which is why I might be, uh, not picking up Victoriana again any time soon. I wouldn't call that abandoned but it's certainly 320 pages of papercuts) and sinking my wrists in these guts of these books is a pretty good way to learn more about them and really understand the mechanics. Plus it would be nice to have a series of books to read-read, not hate-read. I guess I'll just see how I feel when I'm done with book and how awful the holidays are going to be with my free time. (also I second your sentiment about the Atlas. It's really excellent and it's a great tool for setting games in other countries in addition to adding plenty of fun qualities for zombies to have. My favorite detail is how there's two types of vampires: the sensual New World Vampire and the violent rear end in a top hat beast of the Old World.)
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Nov 8, 2016 05:44
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Evil Mastermind posted:There's also a bit of Greg Stolze hidden in there too. DAMMIT! I noticed that and made mention of it before recording. Then I forgot during recording. He's like a playtester or something.
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Nov 8, 2016 05:51
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OTE + Unknown Armies is my dream game. Or my dream alternative reality.
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Nov 8, 2016 08:36
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 CHAPTER SIX: Part Two They Came From Beyond  The Race is not native to our solar system, but they're here now. The Brood Queens arrived suddenly and without warning, using their massive reserves of psychic energy to teleport themselves into safe places to rest and recover from the strain. After a few years of recovering and research, the Queens release drones, foot-long centipede drones with eight tentacles helping them get around. They steal the bodies and corpses of the Others (mankind or really any species targeted by them) and turn them into suits and disguises to help prepare a conquering army for the Queens. They're slowly working on amassing power and an army to fight for them, using their own lesser psychic powers to animate the corpses and keep them together. When all is said and done, the Brood Queens will rule Earth, all nations crushed beneath them. They'll breed mankind as a resource to be exploited, using them as slaves and culling them to create more hosts. This oppression will last until the Brood Queens get hungry enough to devour every resource the planet has to offer. When the planet is dead, the Queens will project their mind through the stars to find a place to begin again and use their energy to teleport and begin the cycle all over.   The campaign is set in the early days of the attack of the Drone/Corpse army. The drones have managed to come up with a couple thousand undead troops and have started attacking mankind, using any recently kill as a new soldier by letting a loose drone take it over. There are 307 Queens across the world and mankind doesn't know they exist; they're only aware of the drones piloting bodies. Mankind is fighting a threat they don't fully understand that will only grow bigger, but they've managed to figure out that the drones control the body from the spine and destroying the spine kills the drone. They've also figured out that once a body is ridden, it can't be used by another drone and that drones can't use a body that's been dead longer than two days. The most important thing mankind can learn is that killing a Queen kills all of her drones. If we can figure that out, we might have a chance of making Earth be their last stop. Story Ideas: Fight to Survive: The players are besieged by an army of corpses that are smart and durable and working together. There's too many of them to engage in a fair fight, so the campaign should revolve around trying to find somewhere safe to defend themselves and figure out how to stop the walking dead. If you want to throw curveballs at the players, two good choices are "the drones can also control dead animals" or "the building the players are inhabiting is secretly a Queen's sanctum".  Killing the Brood Queen: The players are involved in the military in some capacity, either as civilian conscripts or soldiers. The brass has figured out that there's no way for these gribbly little drones to speak, so they must have some kind of psychic or pheromone language. What if there's a Queen? Spoilers: there is a Queen. The problem is finding the Queen and dealing with her (not to mention the fact that there's 306 other Queens, but we'll squish those bugs when we get to them). Getting to the Queen is equally tricky, as it cutting a path through all of the drones and zombies protecting her. The Queen herself is no slouch; she's got psychic powers strong enough to cut a small cave into a gigantic cavern for her babies and she's got plenty to throw around at the PCs. It might be prudent to follow the Resident Evil school of thought and make sure you have a RPG with a few extra rockets.  Mein Zombie  In 1944, the Occult Corps had a breakthrough in preparation for the Allied landing at Normandy. Using a mixture of Nazi junk science and magic rituals, they created a special serum that would reanimate the dead the moment their heart stopped. This surprised the hell out of the landing Allied soldiers when the German soldiers of Normandy got back up and started shrugging off bullets. Worse, the Nazi zombies were able to still use their weapons (though not reload them, simply using them as clubs or using the bayonets when empty). The terror advantage of the ground and sea lead to the loss of Normandy and a propaganda victory for the Reich. Now the German chemical plants are churning out more of the special serum to distribute them to every man, woman and child, turning every population center into a possible death trap if the Allies try to invade.  There's not too much that's fancy about the backstory; it's an intentionally quick-and-sloppy WWII-themed historically inaccurate setting for players to muck about in. Actually let's talk about that aspect in particular; the Deadworld of Mein Zombie is basically the only Deadworld to be re-used/evolve over the span of multiple books. This scenario only presents Nazi zombies, but there will be another Deadworld featuring Nazi zombies vs. Soviet zombies and later an entire sourcebook for WWII going horribly off the rails and affecting the entire world. How bad do things get? Long story short, Karl Haushofer (Rudolf Hess' teacher) causes the apocalypse in 1943 by reading a forbidden incantation from a book from a cursed Sumerian city. We might get there eventually, though. Right now, let's keep things simple.   Mein Zombie takes place in 1945; Germany is mostly fighting the Eastern Front with the help of their undead troops while the Allies are fighting in Italy and being bogged down by a zombie counter-offensive. The Nazi strategy has zombies at the front armed with bayonet-tipped guns being followed by living troops armed with more advanced weapons and vehicles. The Allies have decided that the existence of zombies need to be kept a secret and that they have to figure out the power of the serum if they want to stand a chance of winning the war. They're getting some help from horrified German civilians informing on spies. Basically, Hitler wants every civilian to get a shot of the serum. The Reich is getting public morale up with propaganda of the victory of D-Day and a lot of faithful are willing to take the serum as part of a national pride thing. The big issue with this plan is that the serum only works for a month (requiring monthly shots to retain potency) and retooling the national infrastructure to crank out enough serum for everyone hasn't happened yet. The other issue is the fact that the Nazis have managed to make zombies with a shred of intelligence. They know how to shoot their guns, they know to listen to commanders wearing Nazi officer clothing and they follow the chain of command. There's no turning the zombies against the Nazis unless someone was to kill, say, Donitz and put on his uniform and tell them to. They're also only killed by the destruction of the brain and they're being used as walking bombs to deal with tanks and vehicles. That's enough to put a crimp in some plans. Story Ideas: Bring 'em Back Dead: This campaign puts the players in the shoes of Allied soldiers fighting in Italy and introducing them to the quirks of the Nazi zombies over the span of a few firefights. Then word comes down from the brass and the players get a special assignment: they have to capture a Nazi zombie and bring it back for analysis. A good idea, but it's got some issues. First, they want the zombies to come back as intact as they can be. Second, the zombies fight in large packs that mob the enemy, making it difficult to separate one from the herd short of killing 99% and taking a survivor. Third, there are living Nazis following the paths of the zombies and they have sniper rifles and big guns to help their undead troops. Worse, one might not be enough for testing, and now that the players have proven themselves to be competent soldiers... Blowing the Chemical Plants: The players are soldiers again, and this time the job is to sneak behind lines into Germany to destroy one of the serum plants. The Allies have been doing the best they can to destroy them from the air, but a lot of the plants are in remote locations or heavily defended. For thematic sake, let's pretend the plant is high up in the Alps on a cold, snowy night. The players have to get to the plant, get in and evade living and dead guards while stealing vials of the serum for study and setting bombs. A good complication is the inclusion of an old, frail scientist who was one of the main minds of the project and wishes to defect. He'll gladly agree to leave with the players, but how are you going to get an old man out of enemy territory? After the Bomb  If you're looking for a bad Fallout d20 RPG or a game about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, look elsewhere. What we have here is a good old fashioned apocalypse brought on by the folly of man. It started with a serial killer fleeing the People's Republic of China for the safety of Taiwan. When Taiwan refused to turn the man over, Chinese special forces attempted to reclaim him only to be killed by Taiwanese military. The Chinese blockaded Taiwan, the US Navy intervened to break up the blockade and the noise of the boats shooting munitions at each other made the Taiwanese government panic and attack China with a missile. But not just any missile, oh no. They shot a Soviet nuke at China, one they bought as a special emergency option. When all was said and done, civilization was ended in nuclear hellfire followed by nuclear winter. However, the Chinese had been playing with an altered deck and weren't using standard nuclear weapons. They had been using neutron bombs because they're quick and clean and get the job done, killing civilians but leaving infrastructure intact. Thirty years after World War III, the survivors and new generation of mankind have found out that the special neutron bombs had strange side effects on people. You had your standard disfigurements, but a lot of people were born baptized in the fires of the atom and came out resistant to it. They're naturally radioactive and background radiation of the ruined cities does absolutely nothing to them, giving mankind the chance to return to the abandoned cities and explore them for supplies and lost technology. However, their mutations also bring a horrible side effect: death is not the end for them.  Thirty years after the apocalypse, there's a couple million humans still alive across five continents. Tribes and families are the metric of government/civilization and the north is too cold to live in, heavily affected by the sky that's been blocked out by ash and dust. The scavengers have been finding amazing caches of equipment to help bolster the bow and arrow, but they've been dying in the ruins for a variety of reasons. Some die from mistakes, some die from fights and some die because despite being resistant to radiation they accidentally went into a zone that was still too hot. These radiation-resistant humans, when dying in a city or hot area, are further mutated by the lingering radiation and inevitably rise as undead. They're resistant to all forms of damage and don't need to eat, sustained by the ambient contamination. They viciously hunt and kill anything in their territory and can't be stopped short of total dismemberment or atomization. They're also different every time one of them rises up, all of them strange and mutant but still tenacious and strong. The "best" way to kill or disable one is get them to the limits of the radiation and then remove them from the area of influence; they're helpless without radiation and will starve immediately but they're smart enough to know the limits of where they can travel and won't willingly step past it. The other method is to carry around a lead-lined container to trap them inside, cut them off and drag them out to a safe place to chop up the body and burn the pieces. Story Ideas: The Quest for Firearms: The players are tribesmen being harassed by a neighboring threat, likely an enemy tribe or raiders or something else. They live a few miles away from a city and one day they hear of a weapons cache that would be a boon in protecting the tribe from their enemies. The players must then venture into the city to find it, having brushes with the undead and other humans scavenging the city. They should come to blows with a group of dangerous scavengers and someone should die, letting the players understand just where the zombie mutants are coming from and putting the immediate heat on them by having a threat manifest so close to them. On top of that, the weapons are being unwittingly protected by more zombie mutants, keeping the haul from the players. Out of the Vault: The players are from an underground shelter that was legitimately secure and protected from the bombs during the war and have known their whole lives in the safety of the vault. Good news is that today is the day that the radiation monitors say it's safe to exit. Bad news is that you're fresh meat in a ruined city full of raiders and dangerous undead mutants. Do you stay home and fight to protect it or fight to make your way out of the city and into the outside world? All We Need is Zombiedrome: An enterprising group of survivors has constructed a makeshift stadium right on the limits of the city's radiation field, covering the field with a metal cage. They've taken to going to the city to capture zombies and find weapons, using both as bloodsport entertainment. Criminals or slaves (or anyone, really) are forced into the cage with a zombie to fight for survival for the entertainment of the crowd. The players can either be on the evil/amoral side of things and be the ones supplying the undead and the weapons, or they can start as prisoners of Zombiedrome and try and find a way to escape the arena before they're torn apart in combat. Dead at 1000  As far back as humanity has existed, we've always worried about the apocalypse. It's just taken different forms. The people of the year 999 AD were happy when the world didn't end when it became 1000, but they should have given it another year or so before celebrating. Lucius Mordecai was a Venetian nobleman who enjoyed dabbling in the occult arts with the help of Italy being the central trading hub to the East. Collecting Chinese and Indian manuscripts became a past time to the budding sorcerer, who would eventually take to performing Satanic rites and human sacrifice from the comfort of the Mordecai family estate. Then the neighbors found out and burned the estate to the ground while he was home. Angered, Mordecai fled Italy to explore Europe and find a place to call his home. Eventually he settled on Paris, France and decided that it was time to show them, show them all by using a Sanskrit ritual to sacrifice 13 virgins. I'm not sure if Mordecai knew what the outcome would be, but he ended up raising the dead in the city's cemetery who quickly devoured his followers and obeyed his every command. Now every person slain by the claws of Mordecai's hoard gets up and joins his cause and France is in danger of falling into Mordecai's hands completely.  This has been a pretty good recruitment drive for the Vatican because all of the other European states (and Britain) are panicking at what they're hearing out of France. Pope Silvester II doesn't think this is the end of the world because otherwise God would have told him so and he has reason to suspect that Mordecai is to blame thanks to word that Mordecai was last seen in France. The Venetian sorcerer had been excommunicated by the Church and they've been keeping tabs on him. Instead of preaching that Armageddon is here, the Pope has declared that the walking dead are caused by Satan and all faithful should join the next Holy Crusade. The people are starting to feel hopeful that God's protection will bolster their fight into France, but they really have to get together quickly to stand a chance. As for Mordecai, he's totally drunk on power and loving every minute of it. He's not sitting idly by, though; he's got other books to pick through and experiments to run to help ensure that ushering in the forces of darkness will lead to him becoming ruler of a damned world. Story Ideas: Last Stand at St. John's: The players are good old fashioned poo poo Farmers or whatever they feel like being who have gotten swept up in a panicked local mob that has run to the local church for protection. There are two problems with taking refuge inside of a church: there is generally just one way out and that's been cut off by the undead, and they have crypts. While the zombies are trying to break in to the church, the players and the trapped peasants have to contend with undead saints and bishops clambering into the church from the crypts. The big dilemma is whether or not the players should stand their ground and defend or try and escape. If they do escape, what about everyone they're leaving behind?     The Great Crusade: The players meet in the Vatican, surviving the journey to answer the Pope's call and being put together as part of the army that will march on France. Being the players, it's their job to lead the hike into France and scout ahead to see if Mordecai is still there (he is) and how they can lead the army to them. Complications arise in the form of mortal cultists who worship him like a god and are hell-bent on sabotaging the players' efforts to find Mordecai, but defeating the cultists will let them find a safe route into Paris. The bigger complication is the fact that Mordecai might've summoned a demon to make their dramatic duel against him even more dangerous. What happens if the players win or lose? That's up to the GM to decide.  Unofficial Game Idea: Misplaced time travelers armed with enough firepower to stop the forces of evil (un)dead in their tracks. Does the Army of Darkness RPG exist? Yes, yes it does, but let me just play a little Devil's Advocate here. NEXT TIME: A Christian priest, a houngan and a Buddhist monk walk into a graveyard...
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Nov 8, 2016 10:32
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