Camaign themes

[Greenfield]

As many of you know by now, our game group has an unusual arrangement when it comes to our campaigns.

Someone (frequently me) comes up with the grand story arc, the campaign quest that drives the whole thing, from level 1 through 20.

The nature of these is that they are quests with an open ended goal, something that can be extended, added to and built upon by various DMs as they pile on, and resolve, plot complications.

In one, the world was dying. The crystal artifact that the gods created as the parallel/model for our world had been shattered. The group's mission was to locate and gather the pieces so it could be repaired.

In another, the world had grown complacent, and many great secrets of the past had been lost. Feats, spells, prestige classes etc were things of legend. No one knew, for example, how to forge a magic sword or weave a magic cloak. But the gods saw a dark time coming, a time when mortals would need these ancient arts and secrets. So the group had to go and find what shards of knowledge they could and try to rebuild the past, and share that knowledge with all the mortal nations.

Our most recent campaign was to find out who was behind a plot to tear down civilization. Their weapon was a layer of cloud cover that blocked the sun, and somehow seemed to also block out the gods. Divine magic worked, but the gods themselves couldn't be contacted. Add to this people conspiring to destabilize the Roman empire, fomenting war not only within the empire but from outside forces. We had to find them, stop them, and clear the sky before the world starved to death.

You get the picture? We look for pieces of things, enemies and their agents, something whose number is open ended, a search that can take the group all over the world.

Our current campaign, set in that same Roman Empire world, isn't running quite so well. Lack of inspiration perhaps.

So I'm looking for ideas that would make a good, open ended story arc. The kind of thing that PCs can set out to deal with, but without a pre-defined solution. Heck, the problems themselves are rarely well defined.

Our last Roman campaign was a grand one, largely because we had all of Greek/Roman mythology to play with, a richly defined setting with more than enough heroic legends to build upon.

One player has suggested an almost GAMAWORLD setting, an after-the-apocalypse world where people struggle to recover.

So, while we may be 10 levels away from the end of our current campaign, I'd like to be prepared for the next one. Any thoughts or suggestions?

 

[Dandu]

So I'm looking for ideas that would make a good, open ended story arc. The kind of thing that PCs can set out to deal with, but without a pre-defined solution. Heck, the problems themselves are rarely well defined.

Multiple wars across the continent have put out the light of a generation and exhausted the wealth of nations, yet coalitions form again and armies are marshalled to fight once more despite rising economic instability, famine, and disease.

But the Caesar and his nobles care not for the suffering of the common man, and grasp at the chance for new conquests and riches to add to their empires.

Will the party fight for wealth and power, or champion the serfs and laborers toiling in the fields and workshops?

 

[Talmek]

Civilization's lack of faith in the gods and their power has finally brought down their wrath. Prayers alone will no longer stave off the deities' retribution of the races, and with the destruction of one nation (as an example) the remaining people of the continent are looking for the (earthly) responsible parties. It is only a matter of time before the act is repeated, but which country will be targeted next, and why? What would a band of adventurers have to do in order to stop a god, or all of them?

 

[Gilladian]

Magic is failing. The most powerful spells have not worked for generations, but the pace of the failurE is increasing. Ninth level spells only work some of the time, and artifacts are being drained. Lesser items may also soon begin to fail. Can the cause be found before the last magic drains from the world?

 

[gamerprinter]

One idea is do both GAMAworld-ish and Rome - consider the fall of the Roman Empire. Barbarians - Germanic Tribes, Huns, Goths, Scythians are invading the borders of the empire, multiple coup de etat of Caesars in Rome as one military general assassinates an emperor and takes over even multiple emperors over a single year. The legions aren't be consistently paid, some legions abandon their posts, others become trapped in foreign lands (such as those in Britain), roads, bridges, plumbing, aqueduct maintenance has essentially stopped and the infrastruction is beginning to breakdown. Provinces are becoming independant of Rome, no longer paying taxes, and starting to see incursions by barbarian tribes. Commerce is breaking down, luxury items become rare to nonexistent. Rome gets sacked and pillaged. Everything a Roman citizen could depend on is gone and chaos reigns. Perhaps the adventurers are Romans trying to keep some level of "modernity" and civilization in an age that is becoming dark all around them.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The Great Veil which separated the world from the Abyss was once torn, and to close the breach, a powerful but costly enchantment was wrought. Its makers--an unlikely alliance of the living and the dead, who were both threatened by the darkness beyond--decided that it was better to survive a grim existence than to accept oblivion. So they blotted out the sun, taking all but a pittance of its life-giving energy and channeling it into a Shining Wall that no demon could cross. Most of civilization collapsed as the frozen North became the frozen everything; different groups found their own ways to eke out survival from the bleak and meager prospects.

But then, the Shining Wall faded. No massive demon army has yet crossed over--so either they can't, or they won't, but nobody knows which, or why. The bedraggled survivors have begun to rebuild, and nascent nations have begun to form--some with dreams, or delusions, of Empire. Old things, long entombed beneath the ice, beckon...be it treasure or danger, or both.