Campaign Concept Help

[Fiendish Dire Weasel]

I've been considering giving my DM a weekend a month off from DMing and running a game if I can get a good idea. I have this idea that seems like a lot of fun and somthing different from normal games. I was hoping for some feedback to help me flesh out some ideas.

The idea is a kind of "Time of Troubles" thing. The players are members are part of a pantheon of deities that have been kicked out of the planes and reduced to mortal (albeit powerful mortal) status in punishment for... somthing (told ya I need help) maybe a rebelion (younger deities vs. older ones?) or doing somthing they weren't supposed to (like in Time of Troubles). The local "overdeity" is the one punishing them and while they are gone is providing spells but not directly answering prayers to the fallen deities priests. It should definatly be a lot of deities that have "fallen" to provide reasonable opponents to the players. My problem is figuring out what the "bad thing" was as well as how this ties into the plot. Also to make the group of 6 band together is proving a little tricky.

The players (and other fallen deities) are going to be missing a lot of their memories and only a hazy recollection of their past lives as gods. They know they are/were gods and in their weakened state it may be for the best if others don't know who they are and not a lot else. I'm planning on having people make their own deity/religion including portfolios and domains. They'll be gestalt characters (from UA) with classes matching their portfolios. They'll have max HP per HD and impressive ability scores, I'll also let them pick one of their domains to use as spell-like abilities. I addition I'll use UA action points for them to use as a remnant of their divine spark (only other fallen deities can use them), maybe a few other tricks. This will put them firmly above the mortals around them, but not wildly beyond all problems. Their main threats though should be other fallen gods and opportunistic outsiders that would want to take advantage of the PCs weakened state (I should come up with somthing cool that happens when you kill one of the godlings, a "Highlander-esuqe" type thing).

So, what do you think? Any ideas, comments, suggestions would be appreciated. I have a few weeks to prepare this so have plenty of time to spend more thought working it out. Any input to help me out would be great!

 

[kamosa]

Maybe you could have sort of a Sandman like situation. In Sandman the gods derive their power from how much they are worshipped. If everyone stops believing in them they die.

Your group could be on the outs and they need to gather fame and attention to regain their place in the heavens.

 

[Piratecat]

I think this sounds like great fun.

Kamosa has a really cool idea there. Posit two pantheons, the old pantheon and the new pantheon that was carried into the mortal country when they were invaded by foreigners. Worship of the old pantheon was outlawed, and now after several generations enough people have stopped worshipping them that they are thrown from the heavens. This means you don't need an over-deity, and you have a built in way of getting them back up.

How? They need to hook up with their current worshippers and add more by overthrowing the works of the new Gods! As the PCs do so, you can give them new levels on the fly to represent additional worship. This is a game where power equates to diplomacy skill.... The big fight could be against the champions/proxies of the new Gods, maybe in their biggest temple with all the new god worshippers watching.

Cool idea.

 

[Viking Bastard]

That is an awesome idea for an epic game. I had an inkling of an
idea like this when the epic handbook first came out, but I never
fleshed it out (mostly because I was so disappointed with the book).

 

[rbingham2000]

Forget campaigns, this would be a cool idea for a setting.

There are two pantheons, an older and a younger pantheon. The new gods are currently in charge of the land of the gods, but in order to gain their power, they had to battle the old gods and cast them down to the mortal world.

The old gods now live out their lives as immortals among mortals, mere shadows of their former selves, but still able to kick much ass.

They want to take back the land of the gods, but they need mortal help in order to do so because the new gods have stripped them of the bulk of their power, and the old gods know that they wouldn't stand a chance against them if they fought them directly.

Instead, they want to draw the people's worship away from the new gods and toward the old gods again. The priests of the new gods, of course, have painted the old gods as demons and deceivers, and worship of the old gods is punishable by death, so the old gods have their work cut out for them.

Hmmmmm...this kinda reminds me of Exalted somehow...

 

[Calico_Jack73]

This does sound so totally AWESOME!!! If it were ever published into a campaign setting I'd be one of the first in line to pick it up. I'd start the characters at a fairly high level (possibly Epic). Finally, a campaign setting where the intent is for the characters to start high level, not work their way up to it.

 

[Raven Crowking]

If you find my cosmology thread (thus far, just the initial post) in House Rules or my Middle World thread in Story Hour, it begins with the cosmology of my world. This includes not one, not two, but three groups of gods that have been cast out/banished. At the current time, the Celestial Deities have just started paying attention to mortals again, and the Faerie Lords who were busy being worshiped are suddenly discovering that their worshipers are being taken away. Some of the Faerie Lords are allied with the Celestials, some with various factions of fallen gods, and some just want their worshipers back.

I had not posited that the characters be gods...rather, this was the circumstances that their characters lived in. (I really wanted to come up with a reason that clerics and druids might hobnob, but work behind each others' backs.) But it might provide you with some ideas.

Daniel

 

[dreaded_beast]

Hmm, well off the top of my head, some of the "bad things" the fallen gods could have done:

1. The Prometheus myth, they gave fire to the mortals

2. They impregenated mortals, now there are semi-divine beings running around, which results in a weakening in the finite supply of divine power available

3. They chose not to relenquish their Divine status to mortals who would be better gods than themselves

4. They attempted to make mortals into "divine beings"

5. Creating new mortal races without permission

6. Inviting "interloper deities" to join the pantheon

7. They were framed by the overload deities favorite follower

8. They killed too many mortals and treated the planet like their personal playground, now they must learn humility.

 

[Fiendish Dire Weasel]

These look like some great ideas! Here is a few things that came to mind to promote some more discusson:

If the game is pantheon vs. pantheon, wouldn't this game be focused mainly on gaining followers? Meaning that characters (and players) who don't have that bent would suffer for it ("Vampire LARP Syndrome")? The game would turn into this huge "NPC-fest" fairly quickly, not everyone (I know at least one or two of my players) wouldn't enjoy that. Also, what is stopping the pantheon who wasn't cast down from sending crusades or just killing the PCs followers, even if they are disallowed from killing the PCs themselves?

Two things to note from my original concept I probably didn't make clear: First I wanted to start at low level (probably level 2), and make them work to regain their power (in my experience, players respect power they earn more than are handed). Second, I kind of wanted to avoid the whole diplomatic/NPC gathering focus due to knowing some players won't enjoy it and to give the players the freedom to make whatever they like for characters. Also, I think in this kind of game it would be hard for the 6 players to actually want to stick together.

8. They killed too many mortals and treated the planet like their personal playground, now they must learn humility.

This is a very cool idea!

Something of my own I came up with overnight: Maybe in this world it wasn't terribly hard to become a deity (relativley speaking) and they were all mortals once. Well, the overdeity decides there are too many deities now and which has caused to much infighting so "herd needs to be culled" and knocks the deities out of the heavens and doesn't let them back in until they achive a certain level of power (20th level or somthing) or maybe until there are less than 20 of them. This kind of gives the game the overall goal to come into conflict with the other fallen deities and gives incentive to stay together, especially if they are all good deities, they may see this as an opportunity to strengthen the good side of the pantheon.

Hmmmm...