Campaign finally over! Now to start a new one! [My players stay out!]

[scourger]

d20 crossovers

I suggest you mix in your other favorite d20 games on this extraplanar jaunt. I'm currently running the Dungeon Magazine Shackled City adventure path using a mix of character classes from D&D, Star Wars, Judge Dredd and Omega World. The introduction of the three latter character types has made D&D much more interesting. You could do the same thing in reverse. Let the characters loose in other d20 settings/games for a change of pace.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I suggest you mix in your other favorite d20 games on this extraplanar jaunt. I'm currently running the Dungeon Magazine Shackled City adventure path using a mix of character classes from D&D, Star Wars, Judge Dredd and Omega World. The introduction of the three latter character types has made D&D much more interesting. You could do the same thing in reverse. Let the characters loose in other d20 settings/games for a change of pace.

Be careful with this. I wouldn't recommend throwing in high-tech or otherwise strange settings without some really good explanations about how they fit into your multiverse.

The Nobilis RPG has some pretty good ideas on a multiverse - and an ongoing cosmic war - that could be useful for a very strange multiverse where magic and technology both exist on different worlds...

 

[Dancer]

Just a quick idea. Maybe let them find the kid in 3 or 4 adventures but not his soul/spirit. That has been taken by some creature from the far realms to use as a sheath because it cannot survive without it in the near realms and it has some evil purpose for being here. Now the creature (maybe using the form of the kid) is out in the planes causing all sorts of trouble and the pcs have to stop him/her/it. The original kid, with no soul/spirit is pretty useless but the soul/spirit needs a body to return to. Can they just kill the far realm creature? What happens to the soul/spirit then? What is the creatures purpose? Why is it gathering allies and making alliances all over the planes? What is the strange connection between the original kid and the creature? Why does the original kid sometimes spout babbling statements? Well, you get the idea.

 

[RangerWickett]

I'm leading up to a planar game in my campaign. The basic idea is that a powerful villain was defeated, but not before she linked her life force with that of the world. The world is slowly dying, and it looks like the only way to survive is to get the hell out.

Part of the backstory of the world is that it used to be floating in the middle of a huge muddle of planes, which allowed creatures of all sorts to use the world as their playground. Eventually the native people of the world sealed off their plane, creating a system of planes that included everything you need to keep a fantasy world working -- four elemental planes, a plane of space, a plane of time, a plane of life, and a plane of death (which is the only connection to the rest of the multiverse; you can only leave this planar system if you're dead).

The villains are a trio of Machiavellian mages who are in charge of a wizard's academy. Once they found out what was going on, they kept it secret, so as to prevent a panic. They believe the best way to fix this is to do it themselves, then bring along those who they can, even if it means letting millions die.

On each of the eight planes, there is a magical seal, placed thousands of years ago. Likewise, on the prime material plane there are eight seals, connected to the planes. In order to break the barriers and let people escape the planar system, you have to open each of the sixteen seals. The PCs are getting involved because they stumbled upon part of the conspiracy, and the villains are using them to do their dirty work.

Basically, this whole set up is an excuse for me to have the PCs go through a series of different planar adventures. Somewhere near the last two planar seals, the PCs will find out what's really up, that their bosses have said to hell with the world.

So basically the point of my post was that you just need to think of a reason to keep the party going to different planes. Have a set of items that need to be found, or a series of villains each working in a huge plot, or something similar.

 

[Morrus]

Some great ideas here. I agree that searching for the child shouldn't take too long. I kinda like the idea of the "trying to find the way home" campaign, although at those levels, players have access to magic that can do it fairly easily.

I've just been lent the Planescape boxed set and a few other books. I'll be using them for inspiration, but not using them as-is.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Some great ideas here. I agree that searching for the child shouldn't take too long. I kinda like the idea of the "trying to find the way home" campaign, although at those levels, players have access to magic that can do it fairly easily.

I don't know about your characters, but mine don't like "trying to find a way home" plots, as I discovered when I DMed some Ravenloft adventures for them. And as you said, characters of that level are very powerful, so forcing the characters to stay where they don't want to be will feel wrong somehow. At these levels and upwards, adventures should be about what the characters can do, and not what they cannot do...

How about some sort of "planar invasion"? That can keep the PCs occupied for a long time, and if the stakes are high enough, the PCs will be highly motivated. But they will still be able to decide on their own just how they fight the invasion...

Mind you, I'm not talking about an invasion of the Material Plane by otherworldly forces - though that can happen as a side effect, too. I'm talking about an invasion of the Outer Planes themselves! Some sort of cthonic entities (read Call of Cthulhu for inspiration) have managed to gain access to the regular multiverse, and now they attempt to destroy/transform the regular planes - with disastrous consequences for both Man and God.

For this you need:

- Some vague descriptions of the prime powers behind all this - these entities should be at least godlike in power, and very, very alien.
- A large array of interesting minions of various sizes and powers (best come up with some appropriate templates - this will make things easy).
- Some human worshippers and other people who want to help these entities for their own reasons. This is important - you can fear otherworldly entities, but you can't hate them. But if there are some human followers involved who will sacrifice their own kind to help these entities destroy the world, then then you have a few villains whose eventual death will be really satisfying for the PCs...

Just let the PCs come across some early outbreaks and come up with a reason why the gods can't do all the work of fighting the invaders alone...

 

[EricNoah]

http://webpages.charter.net/ericnoah/noahrpg/log.htm

This was my first planescape campaign. The overplot involved a rash of kidnappings around the multiverse -- including one PC's wife (PC's name was Thibor Ferenc). And another PC was an amnesiac escapee of these same kidnappers whose past slowly started to reveal itself over the course of the campaign. Here's the big bad girl's "I'm revealing my plan before I kill you" speech -- the names aren't important, but just before this encounter she'd managed to sway one of the PCs to her side (he turned evil as the result of a curse he'd received earlier) and had had conversations with the others about betraying the amnesiac, Exista Existencia:

Shemeshka speaks, and all viewers become silent:

"The time has come! Witness! All that I have told you shall come to pass!"

Then to the PCs, "There are choices to be made now, dear friends. One of you has already made his choice. For another other, now is the moment of choosing. A third will have his mind changed shortly. Only one of you has no choice in the matter."

"Doctor Ferenc," she says, gazing stonily at Thibor, "your heart's desire is known to me. In fact, she's in this room. Behold!" And with a dramatic gesture, she points to the now visible Anasthasia [Thibor's long-missing wife] -- in bizarre Lady of Pain get-up.

"Yes, Thibor, run to her!" Anasthasia is completely unable to respond to any stimulus. "No doubt you wonder how she comes to be here, where she has been these long years, and ... what I want in return for her safety.

"Anasthasia -- or is it Mrs. Doctor Ferenc? -- has been part of a grand experiment, one conducted by ... well, names aren't important. What is important is that she, as well as a few select other women from all over the multiverse, have been transformed from the pathetic mortals they were into the puppets they are now. Oh, yes, she's a puppet." With a gesture, she causes Anasthasia's arm to rise, then lower. "But she's not just a puppet, you see. She's more of a fool-proof disguise. She's been conditioned to let any yugoloth climb inside her mind and drive her around like she were a carriage. And the best part -- no way to detect the ruse. No magic can determine her intentions, read her thoughts, gauge her tendency toward good or evil. When one of us climbs inside her, she's a yugoloth in all respects -- but no one knows!" She laughs heartily.

“Even better -- I can manipulate her across the planes. Any where I am, anywhere she is, I can just jump in her skin and walk around doing as I please. Imagine an army of these women, a few stationed on each of the outer planes, completely undetectable. Exciting, isn’t it?

"But why only women?" she asks rhetorically if queried. "There's an even bigger scheme at work. Even I don't know the whole story. Something about infusing these women with so many evil experiences that they become the essence of evil itself. Something about then pitting these women against each other in a grand battle royale. Something about the champion being used to eventually replace the Lady of Pain with someone a little more ... shall we say, amenable to Yugoloth interests. Sounds crazy to me," she adds, "but I'm willing to try anything for a millenium or two!

“So, Thibor, you know now what we have planned for her. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If I get what I want from you, I’ll arrange to release her to you. She’ll be as she was -- oh, a few year older, but none the worse for wear. All you have to do is ... stay out of it. Take her now, and leave.”



“Exista, dear, the look on your face is priceless! I can tell you finally know where you’ve been the past few years. You are the only one of dozens of women who managed to escape us. You are, to put it bluntly, a security leak. If the celestials were to get hold of you, they’d probe and study you until they learned the secret of creating these mortal disguises -- or until you died. Simply put, I can’t afford to have you leave this room alive.”



“Zephyr, the time has come. You know what I expect of you -- Exista must die. I’ve offered you a fee you can’t refuse!”



“Kultiras, all that I have promised you awaits. Your allies await your commands.” [This is the betrayer.]



So there's the skeleton of a potential overplot for you -- special children being kidnapped so they can be used as "living disguises" by fiends to more easily infiltrate mortal society and wreak havoc.

 

[Plane Sailing]

If you read recent Sagiro's storyhour the current storyline has the party adventuring through fractured portions of planes and worlds, and is chock-full of inspiration and spooky ideas (e.g. the village where nobody ages. Not even the babies...)

If you happen to have Eberron it has a very interesting take on planes, substituting the boring old "great wheel" of greyhawk with a lovely Orerry cosmology. Some details here

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/eb/20040309a

Cheers