Total Party Resurrection Quest?

[an_idol_mind]

So the whole party's dead. The campaign could be trashed, and everyone would have to make new characters. But maybe I'm feeling generous, and am going to give them a chance to fight their way back from beyond the boundaries of death.

Are there any good adventures out there that allow something like this to happen? Preferably an extra-planar quest or something that can serve as inspiration to allow the PCs a chance to make their way out of the Nine Hells.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Heh... I keep thinking about Kratos in 'God of War', but that's a video game, and I'm sure you don't want characters making so many rolls to hop from one platform hovering above a lava pit to another.

 

[Gundark]

Well of course there is the Ghostwalk book that WotC did a while back. Not sure how appropriate it is though.

I'd be thinking something along the lines of how they have to earn their lives back from the god(dess) of death. She has tasks for them to do, are they for the greater good? who knows? Will they have to correct the consequnces of their actions once they've bought back their bodies? I'd be using the ghost template with creatures and really it's no different from regular D&D.

Maybe their stuck on this quasi-plane between the living and the dead. They can see what happens for the living, but be unable to manipulate anything to this end. Have them go to their funerals. Who mourns them?

 

[mr_outsidevoice]

or...

Advance the campaign world ahead a few years, then have them brought back by forces that need them to stop their killer.

 

[Alzrius]

This isn't quite what you asked for, but here's something that may help. In Quirin Mythology #2: A Handful of Artifacts, it notes that The Observer (a very powerful sentient artifact) can bring the entire party back to life after it observes them die, and then uses them as pawns in its grand schemes.

 

[Hypersmurf]

A game I was thinking about running at GenCon (but I since decided to run something else) was going to involve the players being a familiar (probably a raven), an animal companion (dire ape, maybe), a paladin's mount, and a shadow companion having to get the dead party out of the dungeon and back to a cleric for resurrection... before the mount's time on the material plane expired and he returned to Celestia with the bodies in his saddlebags of holding...

-Hyp.

 

[Korgoth]

A game I was thinking about running at GenCon (but I since decided to run something else) was going to involve the players being a familiar (probably a raven), an animal companion (dire ape, maybe), a paladin's mount, and a shadow companion having to get the dead party out of the dungeon and back to a cleric for resurrection... before the mount's time on the material plane expired and he returned to Celestia with the bodies in his saddlebags of holding...

-Hyp.

When I was a kid and had just seen some family movie about a dog that travels across country to rejoin his youthful master, etc. I started trying to design a roleplaying game about playing animals. I never got very far. I totally forgot about it until your post.

As for the original question... maybe their souls got trapped in some sort of magic device that some bad guy is using for some nefarious purpose, but it doesn't work quite right and so there's a flaw for them to exploit? Or, if they're all the same alignment, maybe they all end up on the same plane in the afterlife? Or it was all a dream and they wake up to find somebody taking a shower? No, forget that last one.

 

[Jer]

Are there any good adventures out there that allow something like this to happen? Preferably an extra-planar quest or something that can serve as inspiration to allow the PCs a chance to make their way out of the Nine Hells.

Not just dead, but sent to the Nine Hells? Just how evil are your PCs? Or did they tick off someone they shouldn't have?

Ahem - if you're looking for inspiration, you could just open up Fiendish Codex II, pick one of the cities on a middle layer of Hell and have them all "wake up" there as damned souls and let them fight their way out. That could be a complete campaign right there, and a particularly nasty dungeon setup as they have to find and explore tunnels that will take them "up" layer by layer and closer to the portal that will lead them out of Hell and back to real bodies on the Material Plane. (You might find some more inspiration in the old White Wolf "Wraith: The Oblivion" game for running a game with damned souls).