the long winter, and your p.c.'s!

[alsih2o]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/02/040204000254.htm

time for a comet in the campaign!

sorry for the lack of monday history threads, i have had company for 10 days.

so, what do you guys think would be the reaction of a d+d world to a comet?

can a comet be wished away? would the gods explain it? in a fantasy world is a comet just a comet?

 

[Piratecat]

We missed you!

I had a major plot arc built around a comet... and between the time I came up with the idea, and the time the players got to it, Armageddon and Deep Impact hit the theaters. Bad timing on my part.

More recently, I had a falling goddess hit the planet. It's like a comet in a lot of ways, just messier metaphysically.

 

[Henry]

Somehow, I have this image of the Defenders' home city with signs posted: "Watch for falling goddesses."

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Never had a comet angle, and never wanted to for fear of making inalterable changes to the game world. However, in my homebrew I DID have a city-sized alien spacecraft fall from a thousand feet up. Caused a LOT of trouble, and caused an edit of a major swamp.

 

[Ferret]

Tear of anger from the gods. Medieval people dig the whole "punished for sins", and they could probably rationalise it.

 

[Hand of Evil]

To me the comet would be the coming of a new god(s) or new age as predicted in my story. I would have built my story around it and make ready for the question: Why did the gods allow this to happen?

The question is would the effect be the same? Druids, wizards, and clerics could shorten the effects but I don't know if it would impact the general pop.

 

[BlackMoria]

Check out 'When the Sky Falls' by Bruce Cordell [Malhavoc Press]

When the Sky Falls deals with the concept of a comet/meterorite and impact in a fantasy world. It has a lot of good ideas about foreshadowing, reactions to the appearance of a comet/meterorite in the night sky.

Most of the supplement deals with an impact and the aftermath. And the impact doesn't need be a comet or meteor. It also talks about falling gods/angels, war machines, ships, alien life forms, arks and other stuff that could literally impact somewhere on the game world.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Hello!

I think comets make for great portents of doom... Theres a very interesting campaign event in the Shadowrun universe that hinges off of one... people suddenly changing into 'other things'. I was tempted to rip it off for DnD some time...

As to whether mere magic can stop them? IIRC, a Wish can duplicate spell effects up to 8th level - I think stopping thousands of tons of rock over huge distances is beyond the scope of the spell? Smells more like epic magic to me.

Also depends whether science really works in a given DnD world:

Are diseases caused by bacteria or demons?

Would gunpowder actually work?

Is gravity a force of physics or the actions of tiny little skydiving demons? If they get bored, does it stop?

Are the stars gigantic flaming balls of hydrogen or simply holes in god's blanket?

To get to the point - is a comet a big ball of rock+ice+other? Or some sort of mystic wibble?

I prefer to make most modern science not work in DnD - keeps things simpler

Edit: Missed a bit!

 

[WayneLigon]

I've been thinking about picking up When The Sky Falls, considering just that thing.

If I was running a 'scientific' universe, I'd probably re-read Lucifer's Hammer, watch Deep Impact for some visuals, then pick where the thing would hit (since that place would be going away very quickly ). Weather mages would become very popular, very quickly, when people realize that the winter isn't ending...

Historically, having a Comet just passing by could create panic and wide-spread mayhem. Maybe have an unscrupulous con man do what some real ones did in our world: convince thousands to sell all their worldly posessions (including land and buildings, at a fraction of the price, to a person the con man names who is in on the scheme) and troop up to a mountaintop to await the coming of a Celestial or God who will show them the way to paradise. Then when this doesn't happen, you have a starving homeless mob coming back to the city...

Or maybe it does happen...

 

[kigmatzomat]

can a comet be wished away? would the gods explain it? in a fantasy world is a comet just a comet?

I had a world where comets were used to tell the years. There were 5 comets as I recall, each with a different color or appearance in the sky (equatorial vs. polar). The High Calendar would reference the location of all 5 comets so anyone with an ephemeres could identify an absolute date.
Scryers and prophets, real ones, might get a vision and if they saw the night sky and were competent enough, would know +/- a week of the exact date of the vision. Of course all it requires is a color-blind seer to make everyone panic. Good times, good times.

The comets had slightly different return cycles and were likely unstable in cosmic timeframes but I didn't care.

 

[DaveStebbins]

can a comet be wished away? would the gods explain it? in a fantasy world is a comet just a comet?

I know it's a cliche, but in my homebrew an impact/extended winter was CAUSED by a group of mages. They were the ruling council of the most advanced nation of the times and they summoned a falling star to obliterate their enemies. But last minute in-fighting caused it to veer off course destroying their own country, shaking the world to its foundations and beginning a dark age that lasted more than a century.

I suppose a group of high-level spell casters working in concert could somehow divert a comet if they knew about it in advance and believed the source. Personally, I like the idea of politics and egos and cynicism towards the source/prophet getting in the way and a short (perhaps only a year or two) extended winter resulting.