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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reprisal" data-source="post: 1212405" data-attributes="member: 1161">Hey all,I've been tooling around with the idea of running a D&D campaign after my Heavy Gear campaign ends around Spring, 2004; and as a result, I've been playing with various ideas to make this campaign different from the others that I've run in the past. I've just purchased the 3.5 Core Rulebook Collection box, so it'll use that ruleset, but that's not really my kicker of a question.I was reviewing some fantasy stories that I've half-written, and in one of them, I created a world without verification of the divine. In essence, I created that world to parallel this one: it's fundamentally agnostic in terms of God and/or Gods & Goddesses, and an Afterlife. This, of course, does not preclude faith and religion, but not truly knowing what happens after one dies became a central aspect in the motivations of most of the characters in this story.For some reason, I ended up calling this embedded agnosticism in the marginalia, so I decided to keep the term for this topic. I guess the point I'm trying to get at is how I'll address certain aspects of D&D as written, and how I'll have to change things to make it compatible with the premise that "We just don't know and perhaps cannot know" whether there are Gods and Goddesses and an Afterlife. I've decided early on that I want faith to figure in fairly stronglyin this prospective campaign, so I'm keeping the Cleric and the other divine spellcasters. My explanation for their existence will be that it's just another expression of magic like Sorcery, Wizardry, and what-not. On other fronts, obviously, I'll have to get rid of some of the spells in the PHB: Raise Dead, Ressurection, Reincarnation, True Resurrection and, of course, the "raise dead" abilities of the Wish spells. Also, any form of communication or interaction with Outsiders will have to go, too -- but at the same time, I'd like to keep the Summon Monster spells.Maybe that's a contradiciton, but is there a way to get rid of that sort of thing, yet keep with the Summoning schtick? Maybe make it some kind of magical/intellectual construct akin to the Metacreativity powers in the Psionics Handbook?Also, I want the lure of eternal life to loom large in the campaign, though I do not want it to be merely the threat of some monolithic evil. Generally, I'm going to pursue such a conflict over life with the forces of intelligent undeath, vampires mostly.I guess the central conflict of the campaign would be faith against materialism: those who believe in some form of Afterlife, and those who do not. Vampirism, in this game, would constitute a choice to exist eternally, albeit through stealing it from other beings. Of course, I don't have a clue where I'd go with the campaign, but it'd be a neat facet, I think. Would player-characters necessarily take the same risks that they would in a traditional campaign if they knew that if they died, they wouldn't be coming back?I dunno, should I make this the central theme to the campaign, or merely a facet like I just mentioned? Keep that in the background, but only as an ever-present part of that background. Let that knowledge, or lack thereof in this case, serve as a guide for the actions of characters and focus the campaign on whatever seems to crop up as important to the player-characters... yeah, perhaps this is the best idea.Interesting idea? Old hat, only new to me? Rules-input?Thanks, <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /> - Rep.</blockquote>

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