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roarinflames
2012-10-14, 09:28 PM
This is gonna be a long first post, just a forewarning.
I'm looking to revamp a world from an old game, only with a new party. I want to keep the events that happened in the previous game as part of recent history and for plot development. The game had originally started at low level (3 I think) and was cut short in the epic range (about 24 avg.), so it was a really long game with a lot that happened that I for the most part remember. It was cut short due to a fallout with a friend who had a major (I mean like he could have been the darn railroad) influence to games plot and events. Well the other players want me to revamp the world cause they thoroughly enjoyed the world.

Original plot: After narrowly preventing the release of Graz'zt (crazy timeline warping bs happened involving a really smart player with a Fates card), the party soon realized that the alternate timeline they were in led to the invasion of the material plane by Tenebrous and his hordes under the direction of a cosmic entity formed from a conglomerate of atropal scions from a distant destroyed galaxy (for lack of a better name, I called it Legion at the time). So the party fled and the material plane was conquered by Tenebrous with his new found divinity. With the help of a traveling Githzerai monk, they made it to Limbo where they took refuge in the city of Zerthadlun (totally obvious I know, but they didn't know about it at the time). There they learned of Tenebrous' godhood and found a way to defeat him. So I came up with a plot item that could keep them interested, called it the Wax of Creation. Blah blah used to formulate the cosmos where Tenebrous achieved his godhood, could be used to strip said godhood through some awesome and cliché ritual blah blah. So anyway, the wax needed to be collected in the forms it was left on the outer planes. Enter Plane-hopping campaign.

So I got to be ridiculously creative as far as mental descriptions went for each of the plans. I tried to stay a bit original with the descriptions though. Mechanus for example, had the wax stored in the stonework of an observatory dedicated to the creation of the plane in the middle of a city of automatons. The only problem for the party was that the observatory was locked and the item was stored behind a series of interconnected puzzles that could only be solved by going through a bunch of legislature to start new laws that specified the ability to pass certain laws that allowed things to work in the city. The party had a great time with and ended up adding a bunch of other laws to the city that kept them well entertained.

The game ended on Hades, in charnel-house to be specific, right after brokering a deal with Incabulous that involved giving Yggdrasil root rot in Niflheim so that he didn't outright destroy one of the good characters in the party (CG half-solar). The person that quit was playing a stupidly beefed up drow true-namer that had spent an enormous amount of time learning of each of the outer planes, had the only form of planar travel for the party, and had to literally take advantage of planar time differences to actually learn Tenebrous' trun-name needed for the unnaming process. So yeah.

Continuation plot idea:
following the events of charnel-house, the previous party finds the roots but understanding that doing Incabulous' deed could lead to cross-pantheon war, they begin to have second thoughts. They decide to retrieve the wax first by completing a procedure to bring the major roots down (the true-namer's knowledge checks were frakin stupid, like 60+). After defeating the guardian of the roots they retrieve the wax and the true-namer decides they need more time to weigh the outcome of poisoning the roots. So they plane-shift to Celestia (HQ for this party), but the travel is interrupted by Incabulous who claims that they have failed to fulfill the deal and erupts the party member mid-travel. Upon arrival to Celestia, the party mourns and decides to abandon the mission and split up. Begrudging of the lack of leniency on Incabulous' part, the true-namer seeks a way to transcend vulnerability and mortality. When he did his research on Yggdrasil, he found out about the heartwood, a source of immeasurable power, was accessible through a small moment of planar travel. Shortly after, the now insane drow has studied the method of pushing through time-space enough to arrive a fraction of a second out of the time-stream, supposedly the location of the heartwood. After arriving at the roots in Niflheim, he lowers the main roots again and proceeds to use this ability to rip a fragment of the heartwood from the core. The sudden loss begins to kill the tree as the roots began to collapse from the skyline of Niflheim, destroying much of the layer as the drow (his name is Azarath btw, not my choice, but fitting) transports himself to charnel-house to exact his revenge.

Okay now stop me if this is too much.

My questions
1. Do you feel its okay that im using the guy who left the game's character as a main villain?
It honestly made the most sense to me.

2. My games have a tendency to borderline way over the top, and the players are used to that.
But do you feel its allowable for me to have the Asgardian pantheon affected by the death of the tree?
Is it something a 5th level party can build up to solving by the time they hit 15th or so level? If need be, I can scale fights down for them.

3. Obviously I'm choosing the heartwood fragment as the major artifact to retrieve to stop the end of a pantheon. How can I throw some gravy in the mix for this though? I want it to be expansive and tedious like the last game was, but rewarding at the same time, so as not to lose interest from the players.

4. It seems as though planar-travel in this game should be something different and creative and also not as pricey at low levels. Kind of like a subway system, now that the material plane is still overrun.
Does anyone have any ideas that might be interesting or a different take on it?

Lastly, don't complain about my grammar, spelling, word use, or my descriptions of people and places being different than what you've read please.
Also, yes I know I said beefy true-namer.

Tl;dr
epic level cross-planar campaign, have questions about plot development as well as minor game mechanics. If you tl;dr'd you probably shouldnt try to answer the questions.
also, thanks in advance to all help.
also sorry if formatting sucks, using openoffice

and also, the original plot description is obviously not in great detail. if you have any more questions about it, i should be able to answer

Isle
2012-10-15, 10:40 AM
1. No. I wouldn't make a pc into a villain without their knowledge and consent. When I revived a campaignsetting and played in it some decades later, I found out that my players had strong ideas for retirement plans for their old characters. They wouldn't have liked it if one of them had an alignment change. Of course, your players might be way less attached to their old characters, but I would be very careful especially because you had a falling out with the player. You do not want bad feelings in real life seeping through into your game.

And for a bit of brainstorming:
3. If I understand correctly, the heartwood is part of the poisoned Yggdrassil? If so, it could be the case that the heartwood itself is poisoned as well. And you can come up with an original way to purify it. Or inform your players how the thief intends to purify it, so they can prevent it. Or allow your players to travel through time and let them prevent things that happened in your last campaign. But that might be a bit too much.

4. I'm starting to image a race of taxidrivers. I can't think of a race that travels between planes easily, but you could find one or pick one as you like. Use message to contact the taxicompany. Or you could give your players some sort of key they can use to open portals. Or adapt rope trick a bit and allow them to drop the rope into another plane.

roarinflames
2012-10-15, 08:48 PM
ill just kind of number the replies haha

1. the pc original intent for his character was to become a neutral evil vestige, however, since i cut the game short due to his lack of showing up, i figure this might be the best way to give the character some justice. i am aware of players having strong feelings towards character retirement, so i made sure i had a good grasp of what they wanted to do with the character overall. i definitely appreciate the input on this.

3. i should have clarified, they never get to poison yggdrasil, since they abandon the mission, thus the heartwood still being pure. the time travel idea is a good idea actually, for some reason i hadnt thought of going back to the timeline skewing deal. time travel is one doozy of a subject to keep together though. will keep it in mind

4. for some reason i can't get past the idea of having a Gith taxi service, and just rp my voice like the Jamaican guy from Crazy Taxi :smallbiggrin: