Farscape-esque shake up to D&D Campaign

[Kheti sa-Menik]

I am thinking of shaking my campaign up. I'd like some input and feedback on what I plan to do.

We're playing a low magic D&D campaign in Magnamund, the setting for Mongoose Publishing's Lone Wolf RPG. Love the world (I was a huge fan of the LW Adventure Books of the 80s), hate the rules they hacked together.

The players have been doing some dungeon crawls against some kobolds and gnolls, working as security for a mining town where they beat back thri-kreen raids, and involved in some intrigue with the Cener Druids of Ruel.

I want to shake things up. In the campaign setting of Magnamund there is a realm known as the Dazairn Plane. It is a transitive plane mostly, filled with strange creatures...a very alien world. I plan on embellishing it, making it wild magic and with wierd time fluctuations. Instead of a corporeal realm, it is all Gray Void airless, gravity less with small or large patches of "civilization" here and there, unstable half worlds, beginning civilizations, dying races, etc. I have not been using extraplanar creatures in the campaign at all but on the Daziarn Plane is where the PCs would start meeting them as well as being exposed to psionics for the first time. I want to make it truly alien to the PCs.

I plan on using a Farscape-esque kind of plot line. For anyone who hasn't seen the show, astronaut John Crichton gets thrown into a far part of the galaxy after a failed experiement and gets tossed together with a group of alien convicts and spends 4 seasons trying to find a way back to earth while evading various dangers.

I want to force the PCs out into the void (read space) of the Daziarn Plane and strand them there trying to find a way home. I'll give them a ship of decent size and with ancient and powerful technology/magic (sans weapons) to safetly travel the gray void in search of a Shadow Gate to send them home. The ship I envision as powered with crystal/gem based magic. It won't be like Spelljammer, powered by a mage and the PCs certainly won't be able to step out on the deck unprotected. But I'll give a couple small runabout like boats to travel to the various lands and worlds they enounter.

A few planned campaign encounters:
- a very militant Githyanki Empire (Peacekeeper -like) who are in the mopping up stages of the total annihilation of the Githzerai race.
- the neogi, one of which the PCs ran into duing their travels in Magnamund and were perplexed what this creature was that they never found in their research
- ethereal marauders/filchers become a plague that have wiped out whole civilizations
- problems with the ship of course...a StarTrek/Farscape staple


The ship will have contain the soul/spirit of the Builder of the ship to assist in ship operations.
Occasionally there will be issues with the gem/crystals that power the ship
I'll throw in a few magical maguffins...like crystals that can translate languages on a limited basis, etc.

I'll also use this world as a pretext for, if the players want, replacing slain/retired PCs with strange and alien races as PCs. I'll have a few human-like races around too for those players not feeling adventurous.

The PCs' main motivation I can imagine will be both exploration, running from the various folks they've ticked off (although the neogi and githyanki will be among the very few on the Daziarn Plane who have discovered Void travel, most civs/populations will not have the magic/technology to travel to other half worlds and such)

Anyway, sorry for the long explanation.
Thoughts? Ideas for plots? Problems you can see arising? Input? Suggestions? Please share your opinions.

 

[Psion]

Sounds cool. Recently, someone else posted asking for advice about a farscape inspired storyline. You might want to read my recommendations there, and likewise, I'm sure abe might get some use out of your ideas here...

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=183081

 

[Joshua Randall]

Sweet. I adore Magnamund -- I too set a campaign there.

I think LW 11 and GS 3 (?) will be your best sources for this type of campaign. As long as the players haven't read the books, you can freely mine them for ideas. The Chaos Master, the villains of Sommerlund (Vonotar et al.), the Beholder of Yanis, and so forth.

You can also mine the D&D books related to the planes, MotP and Planar Handbook.

My only strong advice is DO IT. When I was running my Magnamund campaign, I too wanted to introduce a big shakeup, but I kept procrastinating and not doing it, and then the campaign fizzled out before I got to use any of my cool ideas. So be like the Nike commercials and Just Do It.

 

[Huw]

Campaign shake-ups almost always work well, in my experience. Actually, make that always always - I don't remember any going wrong. Just make sure the players are with you.

Here are some I've pulled:

1) Spelljammer. An easy way of doing things. The players found a spaceship.

2) Blow up the world mid-campaign. Seriously. Lots of plane hopping and time travel ensued. This one relied heavily on the PCs having the ability to escape and eventually restore things. They got the hint that something big was going down and didn't mind a bit of railroading.

3) Faeries. Only way of escape was a one-way portal into the land of faerie. Only about 3 characters survived the trip intact (a Deck of Many Things was involved ). Once again, I had to take the player's considerations into account. Several were in the mood to try out new characters.

 

[Aaron L]

Do you have the Dragonstar books? They have stats for spacecraft, from strike craft to capital ships. The starships in Dragonstar are technological, except for the FTL drives (because science haven't come up with any way to go faster than light, so they use magic to do the things that science can't) which are called Starcasters, that are large liquid metal spherical artifacts connected to arcane navigation computers. They teleport the entire ship, like jumpships in Battletech. They also provide magical atificial gravity and the like. Navigators have to make a roll to set the coordinates, and failures can be really bad (see below)

They also have Astral Drives, which let the ship skim through the Astral plane at 10 light years a day, kind of like a cross between warp drive and hyperspace. The timelessness of the Astral causes time dilation effects on the ships and the crews of Astral Drive ships end up with their aging slowing down.

Lastly, the elves have liveships, grown wooden plant ships that are embedded with technological parts to serve as starcraft. They are still alive and heal damage to themselves. If you've ever seen Tenchi Muyo, think Jurai ships, because that's pretty much exactly what they are. (I've modeled the elves in my personal Dragonstar game directly on the Juraians, right down to LightHawk Wings and the royal trees)

The book also has a critical failure chart for when the navigator fails is navigation role on a Starcaster. Anything from taking damage to the ship disappearing into another plane for years is possible (think Event Horizon. The ship winds up in the Far Realm )

Imperial Supply, a sourcebook for Dragonstar, has many more ships, from Aliens Colonial Marines style strike dropships, to gigantical, enormonstrous cargo ships and battleships. If you plan on running a game set in space, I highly recommend Dragonstar. I dearly love it. It just may be my favorite setting.

 

[Kheti sa-Menik]

For those interested in specifics:

Githyanki.....they have spent the better part of the last millenia wiping out the Githzerai.
Their society is very PeaceKeeper-like. The military has control of most parts of society...social policy, economics, government and the law, everything is rigidly regulated. There is a caste system besides a military hierarchy. I envision them as Lawful Neutral to the extreme. They have no permenant home, just a massive asteroid like fortress that floats in the Void. Other smaller moveable ships comprise their Void Navy.
The war with the Githzerai has weakened them to a greater degree than they let on.
Mechanics-wise, I am toning down their psionic powers except for those soldiers who have really concentrated on developing it and reducing the silver sword's magic is greatly reduced. Also I am removing their red dragon affinity in exchange for being able to travel the Void in ships.

Neogi....slave traders with umber hulk allies. The Githyanki tolerate their existence because they deal in some items the Githyanki need. And the Neogi always keep their word and stick to their deals....when dealing with the Githyanki. Other less powerful races beware.
They also can travel the void.