Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andor" data-source="post: 6178158" data-attributes="member: 1879">Sounds like a great campaign, I'm jealous of your players. The twisting of divine magic is a really clever tool, and I think there's more than one way to twist it. For example at the start the power vaccum left by the gods might be filled by the alien gods of the far realms themselves. Healing spells leave ring worm-like scars, light spells shed gliimering spores of alien fungus etc... Worse, research shows that casting these spells pulls more of the alien power into the world. Every divine spell cast weakens the work of the gods. At this point perhaps a demon cultist steps forward and mentions that his power is working fine. The PCs might continue to tap the power of the far realms and hope the good they do outweights the damage done, switch to demon power to at least stop sabotaging the gods, or, if they are clever enough, manage to get enough of the attention of a god or angel to get permission to draw on hellish power by divine license. Thus avoiding personal corruption at the expense of whatever damage was done to the world while the Gods attention wavered. Also I don't think you should leave arcane magic alone. Even if it represents the neutral power of the world, as the Old Ones grow closer to breaching the barrier their power should start to taint the nature of magic. Perhaps summoned creatures start showing up with a free pseudo-natural template. Or fireballs start to burn funny colors. Sendings leave the impression of barely heard whispers in the mind. More generally I'll note that the keys to horror are powerlessness and fear of the unknown. Don't show your hand, and feel free to change the rules. And remember "It ain't what you don't know that's dangerous, it's what you do know that ain't so." A line of salt will stop a normal zombie but a virus zombie won't even notice it. (Assuming magic zombie are still normal, I got a blank look from a player when I mentioned magic zombies recently.) Now there is an problem with horror and heroic fantasy and it is that they have almost opposite expectations. A horror movie victim is lucky to survive to the sequel. A Swords and Sorcery hero expects to survive and maybe even beat the badguy but he's probably not saving the village. But a Hero (and D&D is a Heroic game) expects to be able to triumph. Or at very least to be able to make a meaningful and heroic sacrifice that furthers the plot. A Hero is Gandalf being dragged into the pit with the Balrog. If the bridge collapses and the Balrog just hovers there laughing it is good horror, but not terribly heroic. So you're going to have some tension between the two sets of tropes. However the fact that the Gods themselves are basically trying to pull a Gandalf should probably clue the PCs in that they are not going to end the campaign standing on the smoking corpse of Great Cu'thulu.</blockquote>

Verification