Dead Gods - your experiences?

[Banshee16]

I bought this adventure from RPGNow, and this was the part of Planescape that was left altogether unexplained. Even adventures that take place completely on the material plane address the issue of how characters know about going from point A to point B. Is it assumed that the party has a working knowledge of all the portals they need to get around in the adventure?

There were some excellent Dragon magazine articles in one of the Best of Dragon annuals that discussed finding out about portals, keys, etc.

When I ran my campaign (and consequently, Dead Gods), a fairly significant part of the game involved the characters developing contacts who had information related to how to find portals to places they needed to go...it involved bribing people, paying off officials, researching in the Great Library, meeting sages in the Lady's Ward or knowledge brokers like Shemeshka etc.

Planescape tended to leave that fairly open, but I found that there was a tonne of cool stuff you could do with that whole process.

Banshee

 

[Banshee16]

I'll be doing things like this throughout the adventure. But this adventure seems to make an awesome quest to use as a backbone to your campaign.

That's *exactly* how it's best used. I stretched Dead Gods and the Great Modron March into years and years of game time (real life). I think it started in 97 or 98, and ran until 2005.

Banshee

 

[timbannock]

Haven't run it straight up, but I too pillaged ideas for a previous campaign (using Tcian Sumere as an abandoned fortress of "some dark god") and then reviving Tcian Sumere and the whole Orcus plotline in my current campaign.

Neat tip: I advanced the storyline so Orcus has been back for some time, and instead made Tenebrous simply an Avatar of Orcus. The Last Word is something no God could use, but instead was a sort of "police measure" that non-deities could use against deities. So, Tenebrous, as a more-or-less mortal aspect of Orcus, can use the Last Word.

I've since tied it all into Rappan Athuk...Tenebrous has escaped with the Last Word to Rappan Athuk, and resides there as The Master. The PCs are currently traveling the Planes to figure out the origin of the Last Word, and figure out how to "erase" it from that temple place in Pelion, thus causing Tenebrous to lose its power. Then they get to head into Rappan Athuk and take him on directly.

Not to toot my own horn, but I'm very happy with how well these adventures have come together, especially considering how different they are in tone and even in how Orcus is portrayed. The players are loving the storyline (especially since I've used Orcus in various incarnations in pretty much every campaign I've ever run).

 

[Oryan77]

We're finally on the road towards getting into Dead Gods. At the last minute though, I read a little bit from Tales of the Infinate Staircase for the first time and came up with a more interesting way to get the PC's on the trail of the Khassta on the Outlands and getting to run an adventure from the Staircase (which I've always wanted to do).

They'll be doing the Reflections adventure & visiting the Mirrored Library trying to find a book that will give secrets for destroying a Book of Vile Darkness artifact. They'll run into the Khassta in the Mirrored Library where they'll steal a PC's beauty. Then the chase begins (except Yggdrasil takes them to the Beastlands instead of the Khaasta lair.

If any of you who have played Dead Gods has any ideas, I could really use some suggestions on weaving the plot to destroy the BoVD with Dead Gods. I honestly haven't figured out what the secret will be for destroying the book. I'd like it to be a side quest somewhere within Dead Gods so they can destroy the BoVD & still be on the Dead Gods storyline. Any ideas?