Undead Campaign Ideas?

[Yorick]

Hey guys,

I've been looking at running a campaign where the players are undead characters. I don't want to do anything like, "Surprise, you've been playing for a while and now I'll kill your characters off and make them undead" because it feels too much like GM railroading. I'd rather let them know right off the bat what we're doing. So I'm just having them start with their characters already dead, but having no memory of what happened (Kind of a Planescape Torment beginning).

The only thing is, I have no idea where to actually go with it. I want to play up the idea of them being "special" and not having them fight other undead, or even having most people have encountered such. Necromancy should not exactly be super common. But I'm not sure what to do with their story - were they adventurers in search of a magical item? Why have they been brought back? Etc. Any ideas would be very much appreciated.

 

[conanb]

If I were going to do an undead campaign I would do it first as a "who are we?" adventure followed with a "we need to stop X" with a dash of "get the maguffin".

So what does that mean?

"Who are we?"
A good motivator for a campaign to start but one where all the player's have to be on board. If they are ok not knowing who their characters are at the start then you can do this. The players all 'awake' or come to life at the same time. They are at the seen of a horrific battle. Everyone around them dead as well. They'll need a guide at this point. I myself would do something like a talking skull. Sort of mouthy but needing their help. "Oh good your awake, I was wondering who around here would wake up." Have the skull be the one who woke them up using left over magical residue around since he needed to get back to his own work.

Which leads into part two:

"We need to stop X!"
So the skull is a powerful relic of a now deceased necromancer. His master's rival killed his master and stole a rather powerful tome. He has no idea really of who the player's are no cares. They were the closest corpses so he reanimated them to help him get the tome back from his master's rival.

You could do a bit of a double take here that in reality the skull works for the necromancer who has the tome and simply got dropped during the ensuing scuffle. The heroes were there initially to stop the necromancer, although they don't know that. Killed along with the necromancer's army it was just the skull's bad luck to wind up next to the very people who almost stopped his master and those are the one's he reanimated to get home. Of course he's lying simply because he can't help himself. He's an evil henchman.

So on to the dash of:

"get the maguffin"

The player's at this point might need a bit more motivation so the skull would promise them a means to returning to life is hidden away in the tome. This could be true or not. The skull again is hardly trust worthy.

But the skull can push the tome as the key back to mortality. This will really depend on how jaded your player's are. Mine would know that they couldn't trust the skull at all but still might hold out for the tome.

Newer player's could get suckered into this and then when they get the skull home only to find that the necromancer has no intention of giving them the tome and that he was the one who defeated them would be grand.

 

[Kinak]

For what you want, I think you could really turn things on their head and make the necromancers the good guys. A couple ideas:

Champions Unborn
The world has been threatened by a demon lord's far-ranging plans time and again, sometimes being thwarted by great heroes and other times plunging the world into eras of darkness.

This generation's heroes discovered the endless nature of the fight and struck on a great idea: sneak into the underworld itself and bring back the heroes of the past. They succeeded before the demon lord's forces caught up to them, but never realized the souls of their predecessors had already drunk from the river Lethe.

So now they're undead inhabiting their own ancient bodies without only the faintest fragment of their old memory or power. Can they determine who raised them and fill their modern counterpart's shoes? Who has a memory long enough to tell them of their past lives? Can they defeat the demon lord once and for all?

An Affront to the Gods
The elven "Shining Empire" has long desired to purge the world of usurper races, but few believed they'd ever have the opportunity. However, their archmagi found the god of death in a moment of weakness and bound him in their capital city, chaining him to a mortal form with the help of ancient nameless powers.

Now, with legions of immortal soldiers at their command and terrible plagues sweeping through the "usurpers" lands, the archmagi think themselves above the gods.

The goddess of the sun, however, remembers Death's war against the Lord of Undeath in ancient times. As beings completely outside the natural order, the undead made mockery of Death's powers and had to be burned away by the sun.

A cadre of her most loyal followers made their way into the depths of the earth, recovering the skull of the Lord of Undeath. Now undead themselves, their memories have been stolen away by the Lethe... or the Lord of Undeath himself.

What can they trust: the cryptic notes in a spell book one of them carries or the skull that claims to know the secrets to unthrone the God of Death? Why do they carry holy symbols that now burn them? Will their power to kill the unkillable be enough to turn the tide against the immortals of the Shining Empire? What dark powers did the archmagi call on and why do their immortals return slightly different every time they escape death?

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Grogg of the North]

I think the first question that needs to be answered is "Why did they return as undead?". The second question you have to ask is "What type of undead are they?"

Libris Mortis has a lot of the common undead broken down into class levels. You might be even able to use something like the Pathfinder Skeletal Champion as well.

I think the answer to the first question, "Why are they undead?" will give you the biggest drive to the campaign. Was there something they failed at in life? Was there a great catastrophe and they cannot rest until they accomplish something? Or maybe their just vicious little monsters under the control of some other undead and wants to open a portal to the plane of shadow?

I don't know how the world is set up, but you'll have to consider how social interaction will go. If a group of wights, mummies, ghouls and vampires walks into town will the populace flee in terror or will they just shrug and go "Oh, the adventurers are back"? If its the first, then it makes getting equipment and selling shinies much harder.

Hope this helps!