Dosadi Experiment
Calico_Jack73 said:
I'm sure several of you DMs out there have done the same thing in your campaigns and I'd love to hear the details. When have you picked apart the basic plot of a movie, book, or play and made it your own?
Yes, I took the Frank Herbert book, The Dosadi Experiment, and made a campaign based on some key ideas from the story. Herbert is better known for Dune, which has probably inspired many games out there.
Dosadi Experiment concerns itself with the planet Dosadi which has a very harsh and deadly wilderness, and a super-concentrated-population in its megacity. The planet is surrounded by the "God Wall", a powerful force field that keeps the planet isolated from the rest of the galaxy.
The extreme conditions on the planet give rise to an incredibly focused and powerful population, a sort of ultra-Darwinism. Our hero, an investigator from the outside who has breached the God Wall to seek out what is going on on Dosadi, determines that secret masters have created the God Wall and the situation on Dosadi in order to foment the ultimate force in the universe: a super army that will easily overpower convential forces of standard worlds.
My campaign was centered around a sub-continent guarded from the rest of my game world by uncrossable mountains and seas of impassable maelstroms. The elves/dwarves/humans huddled in a few cities, their society based on military training and survival, while the Horde, goblinkind, ogres, and giants, assault the cities relentlessly. Both sides become ultra-efficient in warfare, their religion and magic centered around martial prowess.
The party is from the few cities and soon uncovers a wider plot: the gods themselves, joining powerful mortals, created the land as a breeding ground for the ultimate army to conquer the world.
Over the course of the campaign, the players dealt a serious blow to the Horde, overcame the mortal conspirators pulling the strings, uncovered a plot within their own cities of corruption and evil, and brought freedom to the region. The wilderness is still harsh, and there are more dangers, but the campaign ended with an opening to the rest of the world where some players would become ambassadors or explorerers.
It was a great campaign with lots of big wars/battles, epic foes, and some strong role-playing. Perhaps we'll return to the campaign again, to see the aftermath: even with the evil masters overcome, is it inevitable that the elite warriors of the region will conquer the world? Can our heroes turn a war-focused civilization into a peaceful land?
