When Angels Attack campaign idea

[Breakstone]

So, I was thinking of a campaign that centers around angels attacking.

I was thinking of a lawful good or lawful neutral god named Authority who's obsessive compulsive. He has a funky sin system, and anyone who commits sin must be killed.

He examines the current world and decides that just about everyone must die.

So he sends his hoard of angels to exterminate the races. Killing is a sin, but, hey, they are his angels.

Any ideas of how to run such a campaign?

 

[Breakstone]

Some ideas of my own:

The first adventures would have the PC's finding ways to protect cities, and finding tactics to drive off the angels. The angels are pretty powerful, so they'd rarely be fighting the angels.

In the middle of the campaign, all clerics (and paladins) would lose all spells. The gods will abandon (or be blocked off of) the world. The PC's must then find and awaken or convince Small Gods (see a thread below for a huge discussion on these) to help portect them from the angels.

With the gods down, a bunch of Druidic Cults will revolt. If there are any Druid characters, they'll be pressured to join the revolution.

Maybe even with the gods down, there will be no heaven or hell. All dead people will rise as either undead or ghosts.

Any more ideas?

 

[Pyske]

Well, I'm not entirely sure what your goals are, here. So far, I don't see much difference between "angels attack" and "demons attack" in your premise. In fact, your Authority sounds like LE alignment to me: lawgiver, but without concern for innocents. I think to really capitalize on the idea of angels attacking, they need to do more than just attack, they need to still behave like angels.

So, let me mutilate your idea, if you don't mind. First, let's give the angels a cause the PCs can identify with: the end times are here, and Authority is "evacuating" all the good people from the world, by having his angels bring them to heaven... the hard way. Not being used to having to explain himself to mere mortals, it initally looks like angels are randomly attacking.

Now, let's also play up the virtuousness of the angels. Some of the rumors the PCs hear about are people who encounter an angel, but are mysteriously spared. The same people are then attacked again and killed hours, days, or even a week or two later. What happened is that the person thought something like "I can't die now, I haven't told Jenna that I love her yet." or something equally good-hearted, and the angel, being a creature of mercy, spared them for a few days until they could accomplish their task.

Similarly, the attacks should not be fearful things per se; they should be painless, and survivors (by rescue or reprieve) should generally report feelings of serenity that sapped their wills and made them not want to fight back.

Is this the sort of ideas you're looking for? I'm not sure this is helpful if you're really wanting to make this an allegory about the evils of Authority.

. . . . . . . -- Eric

 

[Breakstone]

Those are some good ideas, Eric, but that's not quite what I'm shooting for.

Authority is actually Lawful Good. He's just Lawful Good to the extreme. He's trying to clear the Sin from the world, but he believes that he must fight fire with fire.

Thus he sends his hoards of angels to kill just about everyone (although complete innocents are saved, like small children and such).

Yes, basically, it's a Demons Attack campaign, but with a twist.

The ideas I'm searching for are general ideas about the campaign in general, random ideas, memories from campaigns like this, and ideas for adventures or plot twists. When I get back to the computer I'll type some more ideas of mine.

 

[ErichDragon]

This ideas strikes me as similar to the Robotech series with the Invid. Have the players run from encounter to encounter. Fighting only when they can bring overwhelming force on a few angels, until the PC's gain levels. Give them some small way to hamper the angels. The small gods idea above was good for this. The weak gods can't directly help the pc's, but maybe they can confer some kind of non-detection spells for short durations.
I personally like any campaign idea where good and evil are really abstracts the average person doesn't care about. The alignment system is way too simplistic to create a fun story.