Alternatives to "Save the World"

[roguerouge]

My 1 PC campaign has "promote the faith share of the demi-goddess of good luck" as its major theme. If the demigods don't get enough followers, they get booted from the pantheon.

Of course, thwarting the schemes of evil demi-gods trying to get believers by hook or by crook is a part of that...

Who knows? She may end up saving the world.

 

[WayneLigon]

A lot of posters seem to complain that ye olde "save the world from massive threat"-scenario is lame. I'm wondering - what's going on in your campaigns, especially at high levels and epic proportions?

I think it's less 'lame' than 'what do you do for an encore' after that? It's like trying to continue Lord of the Rings. After the War of the Ring, the world might as well just end because you've done just about the greatest thing you're capable of doing.

The last long-running game I did, the group had allied themselves with the queen of a war-torn realm and decided that they'd back her play to become the ruler of the area.

 

[mattdm]

In my last game, I tried to avoid having the ultimate plot be "save the world", but I didn't plan ahead very well and left things too open-ended. Or I should say, started too open-ended: I let everyone basically come up with the cool character background and motivations they wanted individually.

The party ended up having very little cohesion, and eventually the things that I used to try to given them logical reasons to work together sucked me down into a "hey, you've got to save the world, so, seriously, work together" plot. I'm not proud, but there it is.

 

[El Mahdi]

Save the world . . . BY DESTROYING THE WORLD! Sweet

 

[Mouseferatu]

Save the world . . . BY DESTROYING THE WORLD! Sweet

I planned to do that once... Sort of.

It was an Egyptian-style campaign (this was many years before Hamunaptra, or before 3E for that matter). My plan was that, by the end of the campaign, the world was going to be destroyed. There was nothing the PCs could do to stop that; it was just part of the cycle. But what the PCs could do was shape the nature of the new world to come, knowing that it was in their hands whether the next incarnation of humanity lived in a world largely of good, or largely of evil.

Alas, the campaign imploded for real-world reasons long before it got anywhere near the endgame. I'm still hoping to try it again, at some point, but it requires a combination of me being in the right mood, and me having just the right mix of players who would appreciate a bittersweet ending like that.

 

[Festivus]

The characters have to save themselves.

Put them into a position where they have to escape or be killed... like breaking out of a prison (doesn't matter how they got there but they are in prison, death row, scheduled for execution at noon).

Then it could turn into a "Fugitive" sort of deal, falsely accused and persued by a posse... etc etc

Or perhaps...

The party is trapped in another dimension and needs to adapt to life there, all the while looking for a way home (Land of the Lost type) or shipwrecked (Robinson Crusoe) on the Isle of Dread... with big dinosaurs. Interesting thing here is how magic would work.

 

[RFisher]

Take on ever more dangerous “dungeons” and “wildernesses”. Look for bigger treasure.

Fight injustice.

Establish a domain, clear it, protect it, expand it.

Politics. Wage wars. End wars. Prevent wars. Intrigue. Espionage.

Seek arcane knowledge/power.

Retire.

 

[steenan]

In my previous campaign the party ended up stopping a war. They didn't win it. They decided that whichever side wins, something important to them will be lost. They did some great diplomacy and managed to make two powerful leaders meet and agree on a peace treaty.
They also slayed the third one, but it was a part of the deal.

In my current campaign I have the same problem as mattdm described above. There was many character changes during the campaign and the new characters pulled the party more and more into a large-scale conflict, that I previously designed only as a background element for a cloak-and-dagger game. They will end up saving the world (or at least a big part of it), regardless of what I planned...

 

[wedgeski]

Current short-term goal: uncover the hidden, evil face of a cabal of wizards who already hold major power in the kingdom; discover why dragons and their bonded riders are suddenly dying en masse. Middle-term goal: galvanize a bunch of disparate nations into co-operation. Long-term goal: save the world. Soz.

 

[Ydars]

I have always wanted to run a campaign based on the metaplot of Babylon 5; The basic idea is that the Gods create wars and strife not to win territory or gain power but because they want the sentient races who live in the world to CHOOSE between their ideologies; so one of the best outcomes is to reject all gods and their demands and live a life based upon compassion for other living things. I guess in D&D these very ideals would have to become the new "gods" or else clerics would be screwed.

I also think discovery and exploration is a much under-used plot device; imagine the D&D equivalent of discovering a new continent and the race to carve up such a place. Or even the scouting of a continent in advance of an army; like the Roman recon of Britain before they invaded in 43 AD and later under Claudius.

To couple the two ideas above would be a triumph; imagine if the players were some of the first living beings ever to awaken and had to explore not only the land and their physical world but also come to terms with the nature of life and death and belief, magic and other races. I once ran something like this using MERP in the first age of Middle-Earth but it didn't really work because my players knew too much about the world for it to be truly mysterious.

I also like gritty games where surivival is the only aim; I once started a game based upon a post-apocolytic medieval world that I loved, but which never got far because I went to University...............