D&D General What "lateral thinking" campaign would you like to see?

[Richards]

Well, if you feel like reading through the write-ups, they can be found HERE. If you don't want to read through an entire campaign's worth of material (perfectly understandable), the entry into Gamma Terra starts with adventure #74, which is in post #86 of the Story Hour thread.

Johnathan

 

[Aging Bard]

Well, if you feel like reading through the write-ups, they can be found HERE. If you don't want to read through an entire campaign's worth of material (perfectly understandable), the entry into Gamma starts with adventure #74, which is in post #86 of the Story Hour thread.

Johnathan

Thanks for this! I don't know how far back your Dragon magazine knowledge goes, but if you have not read issue #17, you might want to...

 

[Richards]

Well, I have the CD collection of the first 250 issues...I'll have to go give issue #17 a peek, as it's been a while.

Johnathan

 

[jgsugden]

I have a dozen or so 'truth bombs' hidden in my campaign setting that rock the PCs preconceived notions of their universe when they are revealed. When I assembled my world in the 1980s, I was reading a lot of sci-fi that addressed the truth behind the facade, and that highly influences how the world came together. I layered the depth of a deep story beneath the superficial simplicity of a short story. A lot of those stories have evolved - a lot - since then, but the basic premise I took then applies still today.

1.) Figure out who the powerful beings are.
2.) Look at what common lore is about them. Assume that is the general view of these beings.
3.) Ask what real world inspirations might be behind those images. Then, ask how those people would see themselves.
4.) Figure out how to reconcile those two views.

This generally gives you the story everyone knows, and a deeper story that is less black and white. That results in a lot of interesting storytelling as heroes rush off to destroy the bad guys only to start questioning whether there are any good guys in the story at all (there always are, but they are decidedly rare - just like the real world).

 

[Aging Bard]

I have a dozen or so 'truth bombs' hidden in my campaign setting that rock the PCs preconceived notions of their universe when they are revealed. When I assembled my world in the 1980s, I was reading a lot of sci-fi that addressed the truth behind the facade, and that highly influences how the world came together. I layered the depth of a deep story beneath the superficial simplicity of a short story. A lot of those stories have evolved - a lot - since then, but the basic premise I took then applies still today.

1.) Figure out who the powerful beings are.
2.) Look at what common lore is about them. Assume that is the general view of these beings.
3.) Ask what real world inspirations might be behind those images. Then, ask how those people would see themselves.
4.) Figure out how to reconcile those two views.

This generally gives you the story everyone knows, and a deeper story that is less black and white. That results in a lot of interesting storytelling as heroes rush off to destroy the bad guys only to start questioning whether there are any good guys in the story at all (there always are, but they are decidedly rare - just like the real world).

Nice implementation!

 

[DrunkonDuty]

In my current PF1e game the PCs have just discovered that the BBEG, who kicked off the campaign by wiping out the army they were soldiers in, has no interest in invading their homeland. He did it because there was a map to magical macguffins that he wants to use to overthrow his own lord. The PCs have been acting to protect their homeland and their whole way of life for ages now. And they have just discovered that if they had ignored the BBEG he would have gone away already.

I mean, I find it funny. Not sure about the players...

 

[Aging Bard]

In my current PF1e game the PCs have just discovered that the BBEG, who kicked off the campaign by wiping out the army they were soldiers in, has no interest in invading their homeland. He did it because there was a map to magical macguffins that he wants to use to overthrow his own lord. The PCs have been acting to protect their homeland and their whole way of life for ages now. And they have just discovered that if they had ignored the BBEG he would have gone away already.

I mean, I find it funny. Not sure about the players...

Nice!

 

[Lanefan]

I think this is the most difficult campaign to run.
As a player it has been the most boring ones!
I can give some hint from the player point of view.
Players receive intel out of order, from different source and different level of accuracy.
These intel are received often weeks if not month away from each others.
if you add Npc that mostly don’t cooperate, false clue and bait,
The overall feeling for player is playing in a perpetual Fog cloud, unless the DM manage to give some free recap once in a while! That is the difficult part for the DM. Either you realign Players knowledge, or you let them build a totally different understanding that may make your punch and revelation completely meeh or even ridiculous.

Or the players need to read over the game logs now and then, assuming the DM puts such things together and makes them available, and do some dot-connecting. And yes, from the DM's point of view the players' theories might be completely out to lunch at times. That's what mysteries are all about; and leading players/PCs by the nose to the solution renders the whole thing pointless.

 

[Lanefan]

I have a dozen or so 'truth bombs' hidden in my campaign setting that rock the PCs preconceived notions of their universe when they are revealed.

Ditto.

Not long before covid hit, two of my game's major PC Clerics found out by direct in-person observation that their deity wasn't at all who they thought he was, and never had been: instead of being a major Elvish god (Corellon) he was in reality a deity thought to be a minor god among Gnomes (Bearovan). Yet Bearovan is his true and actual form.

There's only 20 true deities in my cosmology, plus the universe itself as a background 21st; all the hundreds or thousands of others are either facades or aspects of one of the 20 or are minor local things with no real staying power. Bearovan's had that Corellon facade going for close to eternity, it plays well to the Elves and he gets tons of support (and worshippers) from it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The old "truth bomb" strategy has been part of RPGs for a long time, and I'm having difficulty remembering the first campaign I saw it used in. Certainly it was used by WW a fair bit in the later '90s, but I know it was before that. A good early example that occurs to me is in Rifts, where the Shemarrians, an alien nation dominating parts of the Eastern Seaboard of the US (IIRC), are in fact extremely elaborate robots that self-annihilate in a pretty magical-looking way if taken out, and who are controlled by a rogue pre-rifts-era AI. If you ran a campaign in that area with PCs new-ish to Rifts, they are extremely unlikely to suspect this.

In general though I love any campaign where a major perspective shift is involved.