Psion! Help! River of Worlds

[Desdichado]

don't forget Rifts. last year they did a new edition.

What do you mean? What does that have to do with anything I'm asking?

 

[DaveyJones]

What do you mean? What does that have to do with anything I'm asking?

penultimate creation of planes.

things to visit or fight.

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah---I don't know much about Rifts, nor have I ever cared to, but your posts aren't doing much to convince me that it has anything whatsoever to do with my question.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I really like the idea that---as evil and unlikeble as a ruler as the Emperor is---the PC's pretty much have to end up protecting and supporting him because the alternative is much worse.

Do not discount the possibility that the PCs will decide to destroy the emperor anyway (assuming they can), then take their chances with the fiends. As a player, I've frequently been an advocate of "simplifying the equation" by killing those evil beings who try to manipulate the party.

Still trying to imagine other potential missions the PC's could be sent on.

It might help if you tell us what kind of game you like to run, or what kind of game your players want to play. Site-based adventures? (a.k.a. "dungeons") Event-based adventures? Free-form personality motivated adventures? (in which you make up detailed NPCs and their goals, then insert the PCs... mayhem ensues)

In general, when the PCs start out, they could be working for the Inquisition on various little tasks appropriate to their level. As they advance in power and prestige, they move in higher and higher circles, until they start working for the emperor himself. You can make the emperor as sympathetic or unsympathetic as you want -- maybe the PCs genuinely want to help him (at first, before they know the truth); or maybe they are simply cowed into line by compulsion magic, blackmail, or the like. This would lend itself to a lot of site-based adventures, or a traditional object-focused quest (find the McGuffin).

At some point the PCs are approached by agents of the fiends who want them to turn on the emperor. And, as noted above, maybe the PCs do this. Then you can get them involved in multiple layers of backstabbing and diplomacy, with the PCs trying to play one side off against another while the fiends do the same to the PCs. This would lend itself to personality motivated adventures with a lot of free-form roleplaying. You as the DM would [-]steal[/-] adopt the players' best ideas about what is going on and make them true.

At some other point the PCs are approached by some kind of good-aligned organization that wants the PCs to refuse to work with either the emperor or the fiends. There's no choosing the lesser of two evils for this group; just utter refusal to let the evil ends justify the mean. Maybe this group has found another way out of the mess (unseal the good-aligned planes so an army of righteous angels can cleanse the cosmos?), or maybe this group is just a bunch of Lawful Stupid do-gooders. This would lend itself to event-based adventures in which the good-aligned organization pursues its timeline, while the PCs either assist them or work at crosspurposes.

If you want nitty gritty advice on adventure design -- choosing EL appropriate monsters, inventing interesting locations, placing enticing treasure -- that's a whole different story, of course.

 

[Desdichado]

If you want nitty gritty advice on adventure design -- choosing EL appropriate monsters, inventing interesting locations, placing enticing treasure -- that's a whole different story, of course.

No, I've got that angle well in hand--more the ideas of what the PC's would be doing in the first place are where I'm hanging. I don't do site-based adventures as much as event based and freeform. But freeform takes some doing, and you have to give the campaign some inertia of it's own before freeform can take off, IMO.

So, it looks like you've got essentially a few pretty solid ideas--let me try and hang them in a possible high-level campaign arc framework to see if I can make some sense of them. We can add a few details later:

• Emperor sends PC's on missions into the planes to recover items, rescue agents, assassinate particularly deadly fiends, etc. This is especially appropriate early when I need the campaign to get some inertia of it's own before I can let PC motivations start to take over. Eventually,
• Fiends themselves try to talk the PCs into joining their side. And
• Some agency or powerful character tries to convince the PCs that the Emperor is just as evil as the fiends, and they shouldn't be working for either one of them.
• Some OTHER agency or powerful character tries to convince the PCs to support the Emperor since having the fiends run the show is certainly not going to be any better, and very probably will be considerably worse.

This can also lead to the PCs being made aware of these sealed off good planes with their armies of celestials chomping at the bit to reclaim their ties to the material plane. This in turn showcases a possible avenue whereby the PCs can lead a defeat of both the fiends AND the emperor both without suffering the disasterous consequences hinted at earlier in the campaign. At this point (in fact, probably at any point) I don't want to put any details around the various options that the PCs can take the campaign, since I want them to be in control of how they deal with these revelations as they come up.

Cool! Thanks, JR!

Any other ideas, folks?

 

[Joshua Randall]

Glad to be of help, and it sounds like a great campaign in the making. Please send royalty checks to...

There are some planes in Beyond Countless Doorways that will be very useful to your proposed campaign arc -- spoiler-protected just in case players are reading --

Spoiler

Burning Shadows of Kin-Li'in [demonic flame/frost underground hell];
Curonost (sp?), Realm of Dead Angels [graveyard for deceased celestials and site of strange oracular location];
Avidarel, the Sundered Star [cold, dead world, illustrating what could happen to the PCs' homeworld if they fail];
Justiral [mentioned only in sidebars, lawful plane of celestials who hire out as mercenaries];
Ten Courts of Hell [Oriental-themed infernal bureaucracy].

I think you could get a lot of use out of Manual of the Planes, Book of Vile Darkness, Book of Exalted Deeds, and the Fiendish Codices as well.