"Making the pillars of heaven shake," or "PC driven changes to your campaign world"

[Enkhidu]

We've all seen it, some from both sides of the screen, and I'm hoping to get some tales spun about how the PCs in your game have caused monumental shifts in your games.

Have your PCs ever founded a religion? I want to hear about it. Have they muddied the political waters? I want to hear about it. "Have they tried - and failed - to save the world? I want to... you get the idea.

 

[S'mon]

Well, there are PCs IMC who _are_ religions, most notably Thrin (Upper_Krust's PC). Gaining the rulership of a small country in my gameworld Ea is pretty par for the course at higher levels, one particularly ambitious PC in my current high-level game has gone from wanderer to Jarl, King and now High King of an expanding empire. The biggest pillar-shaking moment IMC in the past few years though was at the Conference of the Scornic League (a mercantile/trading alliance based on the Hanseatic League) when the PCs, with minor political power of their own, ubexpectedly acted as a catalyst to persuade the representatives of the nations of the Scornic League to vote to join the Overkingdom of Imarr, reshaping Ea's geopolitics on an immense scale and creating an entity capable of defeating the mighty Mongali Horde.

 

[Templetroll]

PCs took an adventure site and decided to restore the old village and ended up granted the land and the leader of the group was made Baron. The next year was spent mostly working on that including dealing with slavers who had captured some immigrants on their way there. the best adventures ended up being things where they got to defend their barony, their subjects. It was the base from which all the other groups operated from since it was so supportive of adventurers.

An LG cleric ended up the leader of the main human church in the world, He instituted a couple of Crusades, but they failed due to lack of PC involvement; no one thought as creatively as a PC. He instituted an Inquisition, set one of his own characters to run it and had a blast trying to come up with something on the other PCs. His biggest success was in defending the hometown of his temple. His best moment came when besieged by the forces of evil and his prayer for assistance got him two tigers made of flame. They weren't that tough but it was enough to boost the morale of his army as he led them out to victory. After that all his planning and stockpiling of resources came into play and his area was the first to recover from the invasion and help other nearby areas, thus leading to them all seceding from the kingdom that didn't respond anywhere near as well and set up a nation under his rule.

Then there was a PC named Marmaduke Bonthrop Shalmardeen. Marmaduke was a male who was only around during the day; Shalmardeen was a male who was only around at night and Bonthrop was a female who only showed up during battle. The party was in the underdark and met some drow. The party seemed tough enough so they were parlaying with the drow. While introducing them the leader, having met all three personalities, introduced Marmaduke by the full name. The ground shook, parts of the roof fell and there was general terror amongst them. The leader commented, "All I did was say Marmaduke bonthrop Shalmardeen..." followed by more ground-shaking, ceiling falling messiness and then the lightning bolt came in through the roof of the cavern! The found themselves facing an irate Emperor (uberlich, stuck in an ancient ruin and fixated on this batch of adventurers; lightning bolt was his way of summoning them). he demanded to know who had spoken "...the Words of Power that would undo My Works!" The leader of the group blurted out, "Uh...not us." and the Emperor replied, "Then find out and kill them!" and they were bolted back to where they had been. The character and the player were bemused that he was able to lie to the Emperor and he asked me, "Can we really affect your world with those words?" I shrugged and said, "You can destroy it." He nodded in understanding, and replied, "No. I don't want to do that." No one ever said that character's full name again.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Oh, joy. My campaign is a post-godswar setting. Only the most basic magics are around and the gods have been incommunicado for 4 centuries. My players have:

Managed to discover a group of psions that had hid from the world for 5,000 years while trying to figure a way to get rid of the warring gods. With the prophesies of the psions they managed to....

...bring back some of the Old Gods (not cthulu's old ones, the gods that were around before). More importantly, the Old God the PC cleric follows not only had her pantheon supplanted but the replacement stole her name! The internal/external religious wars were temporarily delayed because....

....the players unleashed about a bajillion undead from an extradimensional prison. They were trying to stop what they thought was a super-scary necromancer but was really the God of Death waking up. The PC's managed to mess things up and after about a million lesser undead were released the PCs went to get help....

....And "discovered" a new god of magic unaware of his own potential. And a god of magic qualifies as "help" if anything does so they decided....

....To venture across the continent to "rescue" an elven people who's evil dragon necromancer emperor had been replaced by some of the nastier undead they released. They went as guards to a mithral caravan (for a trading company owned by the psions) and discovered the Undead Overlords had lost control of some of the Dragon's minions and the outer reaches (where the mine is) haven't been heard from. In classic fashion they start to clear the road of monsters but learn some of those monsters are quite intelligent (if sometimes undead), are happy not being under anyone's control, and in a few cases are religious. So the party begins converting some of the rebel undead to the New Death God. As for the living....

....They find that 99% of the elves had their spirits broken while simultaneously having fairly easy lives so the elves have no desire to rebel. On the other hand, the elves forced to mine mithral were both rowdy and sick of slaving in a mine. So the PCs arranged for the whole village to be teleported out while the PCs bring back the mithral shipment, earning them the thanks of the Undead Overlords for maintaining trade.....

....though later the mithral market destabilizes when the entire mining village is found to be missing, earning them massive return on their investments. Which is handy since their liege duke has granted them a thanedom and they need the cash to begin construction.

Though I expect they may be in for a shock when they discover that with the undead threat abated the religious wars will soon boil over. bliss!

 

[Piratecat]

Without PC-driven changes, my campaign would suh-huck. I was going to describe it in that "describe your campaign in one sentence" thread, then realized that the only really cool bits have resulted from the PCs.

Over the years the PCs have put into motion events that resulted in a god dying for the first time in history. They have stopped a war through diplomatic intervention, and ruined a major trade pact (with unfortunate results back home.) They have reorganized major churches and put new rulers on thrones. In fact, something they did ended up resulting in the death of several hundred thousand orcs. Not too shabby.

That's really my favorite part of the game. I love interpolating the PCs' actions forward and seeing what they affect.

 

[RangerWickett]

One time the PCs saved the world, and got no credit for it because nobody knew the villains were up to anything. That kinda peeved them off.

A different campaign, same setting, 120 years later, had the party fighting an Elf whom they hated from the previous campaign. The Elf was an emperor, and one PC fell in love with his daughter, killed the emperor, killed a bunch of other people who wanted to be in charge, and eventually became lord of an entire continent.

In the current campaign, the PCs are working to depose this character.

The group has changed how magic works in the setting by fiddling with the planar connections of the world. They destroyed the only true means in the world to become immortal -- after one PC's sister became immortal.

One PC group committed genocide. Sure, they were the big bad evil guy race, but only a handful remained after the party got done with them.

 

[the Jester]

The pcs in my game have:

-Released a bad guy who depopulated a continent
-Slain him over a century later
-Destroyed the Elemental Prince of Evil Fire, which set off an interplanar war between various fiery factions to claim his throne
-Released a terrible ancient force that was bound, the thing that preceeded the current masters of Hell
-Slain an arch-devil
-Become the Jesus-figure of the major world religion in my game
-Tried to save the universe, but failed, and destroyed it instead (the end of my old campaign world)

 

[Kemrain]

We've been playing for 3 years, and we've done a lot, but not too much on that scale..

My character has personally talked a general out of a war (and into treason), and been the catalyst for the plane being locked, preventing all extraplanar travel in or out of the Prime. She has also fathered (don't ask) a child who is destined to either save or utterly destroy Heaven. No pressure, really. We've opened a new trade route through a mountain chain, to alleviate food shortages, which, if another planned road is built, will destabilize the local center of commerce and financially ruin a city state. Oh, one of the PC's got the Gods to war amongst themselves, causing them to leave the plane for months and leave their clerics without divine spells...

I guess we've done more than I thought...

Right now we're working to abolish slavery and return Arcane MAgic to the world (global antimagic, it sucks.)

- Kemrain the World-Alterer.

 

[Enkhidu]

And time for me to share - here's some stuff going on in a current campaign in which I'm a player. The PCs have so far:

- Averted (for the time being, though hostilities are still high) war between two kingdoms by breaking a demonic famine that was destroying all food in one of the two countries.

- Brought down the Veil (a magical "curtain" cutting off the prime from the planes) in order to save the racial homeland of an entire civilization (which had gotten "captured" by demons on the other side of the Veil through a weak point) and re-enabled summoning magic for the first time in a generation.

- Inadvertantly let loose the "Eye of Kronus" (all that is left of a vanquished and forgotten god, it is a sphere of pure hatred, corrupting and destroying all it touches - OK so its a Sphere of Annhilation, but still), now in the hands of an army set to sweep from the north throughout all civilized lands - guess who's problem that gets to be.

There's other stuff too, but that's just the stuff the PCs are known for.

If we get out way, one more thing will be added to the list - probably the biggest thing I've ever seen as a player:

- Perform the rites necessary to make all extraplanar creatures summoned to the prime mortal (permanent death for those pesky demons ought to make them think twice before coming here and getting jumpy!). This one probably means that I as a player will have to help the DM come up with new rules if it works.

 

[nopantsyet]

Oh yeah, the usual sorts of things. Inciting social progress in their native barbarian tribe. Causing a mad demon to ascend to godhood by mistakenly bartering a party member for a bundle of sticks and two sacks of rocks. (Heh--that was a fun one.) But lately they've been very focused on the plot, which I take as a (probably unintended) compliment to my adventures.