Epic-World: Creating a silly campaign

[Leewei]

So, I've had this notion bouncing around in my head for a while. Campaigns progress, characters advance, world-ending crises arise and are dealt with, then life goes back to normal and the whole thing starts anew.

Imagine a post-(multiple-)apocalypse fantasy realm where Ragnarok arrives every third weekend, and when people witnessing the rise of the Demon-god blotting out the sun merely shrug and grab an umbrella while heading to work.

There are a couple rules the world operates by:

1) Heroes always win in the end, setting things more-or-less as they were in the beginning.

2) Player characters are not the heroes.

I'd like to flesh out this realm a bit. Below, here are some examples. Feel free to modify these, expand these, or suggest your own!

Spoiler: Cat Folk

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The Cat Folk in this game world are the creation of the Great Matriarch, an immortal sorceress who ascended all of her house cats.

Cat Folk names lampoon those of the Kzinn ("Speaker to Animals"). The name translations, however, are taken from housecat names. Examples: "Unfingered Warmers of Hands", "Disc-shaped Fastener of Fabric", "Occlusion of Light"

Spoiler: Mumrats

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After the fifteenth Zombie Apocalypse, a Mummy Apocalypse seemed pretty refreshing. No unsightly rotting parts, extruded eyes, or crawling horrors this time. Instead, the infected displayed symptoms such as spontaneous wrappings and incense smells.

As with the previous versions, this was averted by the Resurrection Staff, which wiped all humanoid races clean of the plague, and restored the dead to life.

What wasn't fixed, however, was the infection ironically jumping species to rodents due to a wererat. Some nights, the lurching scamper and faint moan of mumrats can be heard. While benign, some people find undead rodents unsightly. Better homes keep them away by using holy water misters.

Spoiler: Riding Birds

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What fantasy world would be complete without knights astride their noble mounts?

Epic-world is no exception. Great mounted warriors often set off on their quests riding Dire Pea Fowl. ("Chocobo" is such a silly name.)

[noob]

1) Heroes always win in the end, setting things more-or-less as they were in the beginning.

2) Player characters are not the heroes.

Now I can not stop thinking to the player character team plotting and trying to beat a team of heroes for the challenge because they "always win in the end"

[Leewei]

Now I can not stop thinking to the player character team plotting and trying to beat a team of heroes for the challenge because they "always win in the end"

PCs are trying to scam and profit off of the heroes.

[jqavins]

If heroes always win and fix things, and the PCs are not said heroes, then what do the PCs do, and where, when, and why do they do it?

Do lower level characters advance to hero level, and that's what the PCs aspire to? I find myself thinking of the kids who are the main character in Sky High, while their parents are the heroes.

[Leewei]

If heroes always win and fix things, and the PCs are not said heroes, then what do the PCs do, and where, when, and why do they do it?

Do lower level characters advance to hero level, and that's what the PCs aspire to? I find myself thinking of the kids who are the main character in Sky High, while their parents are the heroes.

PCs are genre-savvy, cynical scamps who don't adventure for a living, but instead try to make a quick buck from those who do.

Adventurers by their nature will triumph over world-threatening evil, but their idealism makes them easy, if dangerous, to dupe.

I'm toying with the idea of having PCs secretly have heroic tendencies that they're desperately trying to suppress. Character backgrounds could include things like "lost orphan prince of the elves" or "spirit energy one thousand percent of normal unless character constantly drinks an herbal concoction".

From the skewed, meta angle of the players, the tedious world-ending scenarios wouldn't happen if it weren't for the champions that keep rising up to oppose it. The gods must be entertained enough by their shenanigans to make it keep happening. (This is actually somewhat true in the campaign world.)

Example session: characters are contracted by a powerful enchanter who needs a giant coprolith to create an item he's been contracted to make. No petrified poo of sufficient size is known to exist, so PCs must improvise with the Tarrasque, a Huge Earth Elemental, and a Heward's Handy Haversack filled with a mix of BBQ sauce and Draco-lax (TM). Of course, following the players' actions, Heroes show up intent on vanquishing the beast. PCs must then delay the Heroes until they can obtain their (ew) prize.

[Leewei]

Spoiler: Elves

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All elven subraces will be named using puns about their ears.
Examples: Mulir, Daggrir, Poyenti`ir, Pokeneyowtir

[Bohandas]

("Chocobo" is such a silly name.)

Yeah. It sounds more like a breakfast cereal.

[Saintheart]

Spoiler: Dragons

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Dragons are bookies and loansharks, specialising in different sections of the invading-horror market.

Seriously, where do you think their hoards come from? Their main occupation in life is accosting unsuspecting extraplanar or elder god entities that come through to the Prime Material Plane full of ambition, assured that they're going to rule the world or bring it to an end. Dragons confront these creatures one of two ways:

Metallic dragons offer high-odds bets that the world-ending horror isn't going to achieve his aims.
Chromatic dragons offer of high-interest loans of equipment or gold to invading entities, or offer mobs of trained hirelings to advance their ambitions. These hirelings are big mobs of theatrically-trained kobolds who chant "Bow to Yog-Sothoth" in at least sixteen extraplanar languages very impressively - and who are also trained to absent themselves very rapidly when the party of One Punch Man adventurers shows up to put a stop to things.

Dragons are usually smart enough to require "security" be placed on the bet or loan. After the slaughter is over, the dragon shows up to collect on the bet or loan, usually offering a generous percentage of the takings to the adventurers who take the Eldritch Horror Of the Week down.

Bahamut wears a Large white fedora with a large feather in the band when confronted. Tiamat's red dragon head talks to players, while the other four heads are simultaneously all speaking on Rings of Communication devices that look suspiciously like call centre headsets; the subject of these simultaneous conversations is invariably statistical and punctuated with a lot of "A'right, guv?".

[TheStranger]

How meta do you want to get? Are heroes actually born and raised like normal people, or do they just wander into taverns in groups of 4-6 with tragic, but unverifiable and mostly-irrelevant backstories? I mean, Hiram the Brave won't shut up about how his village was burned to the ground by dire were-lemurs, but you'd think somebody else would have known somebody who lived there, or at least heard of that happening, right?

For bonus points, make the big plot twist that your PCs are, in fact, the PCs. Let them grift off heroes for a while, but eventually something happens and they're the only ones who can save the world. And if they complain, one of the NPCs points out that nobody's been to any of the places or met any of the people in their backstories, which by the way are kind of full of holes when you think about it (quick, tell me your mother's first name). Everybody in town knew they were heroes, they were just playing along (and helping them spend their WBL) until it was time for them to save the world. So are they going to get to fighting Urrick the Malodorous, or what?

For extra bonus points, follow that up with an even more meta plot twist where the entire hero/villain dynamic is actually intended to unravel the fabric of the multiverse. The universe is constantly tearing at the schemes as its history, geography, culture, and metaphysics keep getting rewritten to accommodate the increasingly-outlandish apocalypses and the backstories of the heroes that show up to stop them. If it keeps up, the universe will eventually collapse into a formless mass of fantasy cliches. Only the chosen ones can stop the cult of chaos worshipers that's behind this! (Or maybe it's already too late.)

[Leewei]

Be as meta as you'd like. The players will be encouraged to do so as well.

One of the "levers" I'm considering is Wealth By Level guidelines. If players play by the spirit of the game, they get to ignore this. Heroes, however, tend to have game balance issues inflicted upon them.

[Leewei]

Spoiler: Dragons

Show

Dragons are bookies and loansharks, specialising in different sections of the invading-horror market.

Seriously, where do you think their hoards come from? Their main occupation in life is accosting unsuspecting extraplanar or elder god entities that come through to the Prime Material Plane full of ambition, assured that they're going to rule the world or bring it to an end. Dragons confront these creatures one of two ways:

Metallic dragons offer high-odds bets that the world-ending horror isn't going to achieve his aims.
Chromatic dragons offer of high-interest loans of equipment or gold to invading entities, or offer mobs of trained hirelings to advance their ambitions. These hirelings are big mobs of theatrically-trained kobolds who chant "Bow to Yog-Sothoth" in at least sixteen extraplanar languages very impressively - and who are also trained to absent themselves very rapidly when the party of One Punch Man adventurers shows up to put a stop to things.

Dragons are usually smart enough to require "security" be placed on the bet or loan. After the slaughter is over, the dragon shows up to collect on the bet or loan, usually offering a generous percentage of the takings to the adventurers who take the Eldritch Horror Of the Week down.

Bahamut wears a Large white fedora with a large feather in the band when confronted. Tiamat's red dragon head talks to players, while the other four heads are simultaneously all speaking on Rings of Communication devices that look suspiciously like call centre headsets; the subject of these simultaneous conversations is invariably statistical and punctuated with a lot of "A'right, guv?".

Awesome! I also like the idea of particularly smart dragons being genre-savvy to the point where they, much like the players, are side-dealing and playing against type. A dragon that attacks villages very rapidly ends up with its head on a tavern wall.

[Saintheart]

Spoiler: The Undead

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The undead are basically all government bureaucrats.

Because most people have more important things to do like rebuilding their homes after the last Eldritch Horror invasion levelled a city block, government bureaucracy has been outsourced to the undead, with undead CR ratings generally according to their employee level within the kingdom's bureaucracy. Bloodsuckinus the vampire lord does not see any humour in the fact he has been appointed as head of the king's taxation office, and you had damn well better make sure your deductions are in order ahead of being, shall we say, audited, ah-ah-ah.

And because they're all Lawful Neutral undead, they have zero interest in doing things in a timely manner, but maximum interest in making sure proper procedures are followed. Which means adventurers are not unlikely to come across zombies not droning "Braaaaaiiiins", but more likely "Form Number A Thirty-Eiiiiiigggght" and proffering a piece of parchment with a quill. Frequently this form will require the person filling it out to depose as to what specific and legal circumstances permit them to collect more than strict Wealth By Level for their previous encounters. It is also not uncommon during end-of-campaign encounters, for a random skeleton to show up to the final battle demanding why the Big Bad has not obtained his Apocalypse Permit from the Department Of Climaxes.

[noob]

How meta do you want to get? Are heroes actually born and raised like normal people, or do they just wander into taverns in groups of 4-6 with tragic, but unverifiable and mostly-irrelevant backstories? I mean, Hiram the Brave won't shut up about how his village was burned to the ground by dire were-lemurs, but you'd think somebody else would have known somebody who lived there, or at least heard of that happening, right?

For bonus points, make the big plot twist that your PCs are, in fact, the PCs. Let them grift off heroes for a while, but eventually something happens and they're the only ones who can save the world. And if they complain, one of the NPCs points out that nobody's been to any of the places or met any of the people in their backstories, which by the way are kind of full of holes when you think about it (quick, tell me your mother's first name). Everybody in town knew they were heroes, they were just playing along (and helping them spend their WBL) until it was time for them to save the world. So are they going to get to fighting Urrick the Malodorous, or what?

For extra bonus points, follow that up with an even more meta plot twist where the entire hero/villain dynamic is actually intended to unravel the fabric of the multiverse. The universe is constantly tearing at the schemes as its history, geography, culture, and metaphysics keep getting rewritten to accommodate the increasingly-outlandish apocalypses and the backstories of the heroes that show up to stop them. If it keeps up, the universe will eventually collapse into a formless mass of fantasy cliches. Only the chosen ones can stop the cult of chaos worshipers that's behind this! (Or maybe it's already too late.)

The double plot twist is if the pcs are not the heroes (seriously if the pcs are heroes it would not even be sightly surprising in fact it would even be an untwist) but in fact villains and that a band of heroes is going to raise and kill them because they figured out the system was going to warp horribly the world (and so the system is going to try to get rid of them because they know and the system consider itself good).
Then the pcs discover that due to them being villains it is impossible for them to fight the system or the heroes coming at them and then they die of a pointless death just adding one more story of the heroes beating the villains.
Or if you are feeling very noble bright this day you can allow if the total outcome of the pc's actions was positive for the world(example: they did help rebuilding houses with a portion of their money and other possible stuff like that) to have the system doubt of whenever it is right or not to keep sending heroes and villains and to make the heroes defeat the villains over and over (it will still keep doing that however because the campaign setting can not change ever).

[Leewei]

Spoiler: The Undead

Show

The undead are basically all government bureaucrats.

Because most people have more important things to do like rebuilding their homes after the last Eldritch Horror invasion levelled a city block, government bureaucracy has been outsourced to the undead, with undead CR ratings generally according to their employee level within the kingdom's bureaucracy. Bloodsuckinus the vampire lord does not see any humour in the fact he has been appointed as head of the king's taxation office, and you had damn well better make sure your deductions are in order ahead of being, shall we say, audited, ah-ah-ah.

And because they're all Lawful Neutral undead, they have zero interest in doing things in a timely manner, but maximum interest in making sure proper procedures are followed. Which means adventurers are not unlikely to come across zombies not droning "Braaaaaiiiins", but more likely "Form Number A Thirty-Eiiiiiigggght" and proffering a piece of parchment with a quill. Frequently this form will require the person filling it out to depose as to what specific and legal circumstances permit them to collect more than strict Wealth By Level for their previous encounters. It is also not uncommon during end-of-campaign encounters, for a random skeleton to show up to the final battle demanding why the Big Bad has not obtained his Apocalypse Permit from the Department Of Climaxes.

Nice idea!

[TheStranger]

The double plot twist is if the pcs are not the heroes (seriously if the pcs are heroes it would not even be sightly surprising in fact it would even be an untwist) but in fact villains and that a band of heroes is going to raise and kill them because they figured out the system was going to warp horribly the world (and so the system is going to try to get rid of them because they know and the system consider itself good).
Then the pcs discover that due to them being villains it is impossible for them to fight the system or the heroes coming at them and then they die of a pointless death just adding one more story of the heroes beating the villains.
Or if you are feeling very noble bright this day you can allow if the total outcome of the pc's actions was positive for the world(example: they did help rebuilding houses with a portion of their money and other possible stuff like that) to have the system doubt of whenever it is right or not to keep sending heroes and villains and to make the heroes defeat the villains over and over (it will still keep doing that however because the campaign setting can not change ever).

If you've set your players up to expect that they are explicitly not the heroes, because heroes are kind of silly, the PCs actually being heroes would qualify as a twist and I think could be effective. I admit there's a degree of difficulty in the setup, though - you have to invert your fantasy tropes so thoroughly that it becomes legitimately unexpected when you play them straight. But I like the double twist that they're actually villains, too. Once the hero/villain dynamic in this setting is well-established, you could have a lot of fun messing with how the PCs fit into it.

[Fire Tarrasque]

Random idea for you:

Do you know the original 2nd AD&D Druidic hierarchy?
There's probably something funny there.

[Leewei]

Random idea for you:

Do you know the original 2nd AD&D Druidic hierarchy?
There's probably something funny there.

The idea of promotion through attrition does have some comic potential, doesn't it? Maybe mash it up with Highlander?

[Sam113097]

What role would "expendable" monsters play in this world? I'm really liking the concept, and I find myself asking what a goblin or orc would be up to.

[Leewei]

What role would "expendable" monsters play in this world? I'm really liking the concept, and I find myself asking what a goblin or orc would be up to.

The PCs wouldn't want to fight them (way too heroic). They'd need to be avoided, neutralized through dishonorable means (a sack of rat poison kibble for ROUSes), bribed, or intimidated.

I'm thinking that each fantastic race of "evil" humanoids will have something that they prize and will take from anyone else, and even fight over among themselves. For goblins, it's booze. For orcs, manflesh (there's an hour worth of bad humor in that word alone). Mind Flayers are obsessed with sudoku and torment their prisoners by reading bad Cthulhu fan fic to them. And so on.

Beholders are genius-level creatures that can be distracted by throwing sticks. This is canonical.

[Fire Tarrasque]

The PCs wouldn't want to fight them (way too heroic). They'd need to be avoided, neutralized through dishonorable means (a sack of rat poison kibble for ROUSes), bribed, or intimidated.

I'm thinking that each fantastic race of "evil" humanoids will have something that they prize and will take from anyone else, and even fight over among themselves... Mind Flayers are obsessed with sudoku and torment their prisoners by reading bad Cthulhu fan fic to them. And so on.

The question is: Do Neolithids play crossword puzzles?

My question: What about elementals? What roll do they play?

[Leewei]

The question is: Do Neolithids play crossword puzzles?

Sure, why not? The solution book would be a dangerous and rare sought-after tome with flavor inspired by the Necronomicon.

My question: What about elementals? What roll do they play?

Probably very passive, except for fire, which might have aggressively pyromaniac tendencies. Air elementals would be vapid, water elementals just go with the flow, and earth elementals are pretty much permanently stoned. I may decide to also lump fire elementals in with the rest (in which case, they'd be "burn-outs"). PC challenges involving elementals would typically involve cajoling them or angering them into action. From a metagame perspective, any semblance of a natural order is constantly disrupted by the frequent ragnaroks, apocalypses, and armageddons, and occasional dammerung, so they have no clue what they should be doing.

[Saintheart]

Sure, why not? The solution book would be a dangerous and rare sought-after tome with flavor inspired by the Necronomicon.

Probably very passive, except for fire, which might have aggressively pyromaniac tendencies. Air elementals would be vapid, water elementals just go with the flow, and earth elementals are pretty much permanently stoned. I may decide to also lump fire elementals in with the rest (in which case, they'd be "burn-outs"). PC challenges involving elementals would typically involve cajoling them or angering them into action. From a metagame perspective, any semblance of a natural order is constantly disrupted by the frequent ragnaroks, apocalypses, and armageddons, and occasional dammerung, so they have no clue what they should be doing.

Fire elementals are annoying motivational speakers! "UNLEASH THE BLAZING FIRE THAT'S INSIDE EVERY ONE OF YOU!"

[Leewei]

Fire elementals are annoying motivational speakers! "UNLEASH THE BLAZING FIRE THAT'S INSIDE EVERY ONE OF YOU!"

Bwahahaha!

[The-lost-Byte]

The Inn regulation Act.

Unlike earlyer belives that Heros spawn from the existance of Villians, tougth at commoner-schools the last sevenhundert years, new studys actually sugest the opposite: Villians only emerge when there are Heros avaible to fight them. Since Apokalypse-level events occured on a reliable weakly base and rebuilding in time for the next was near impossible, one had to fight the problem on the root. Adventures spawn usually at Inns, so regulating it was one of the most important things done the decade.

1. 'Inn' is defined a a place for Travlers to eat and/or sleep.
1.a. There may only be one Inn per Town or City.
1.b. Not more then two shady corners are permitted per Inn.

2. 'Tavern' is defined as a place for Locals to eat and/or drink. It may also offer services to travlers, but it provides no bonus for 'a good rest'.
2.a. Only up two one bartender or three guests are allowed to share information to travlers when asked for 'unusuall' (read: the usuall) information. Directions do not count and are classified as non-dangerous.
2.b If questgivers are localy avaible, try to give the adventuring group as many of the jobs that need doing as possible, since jobs not taken by at least one group will attract diffrent groups.

3. Bartender and Inkeeper are required to report any adventuring group (you will know when they are one) to the local authoritys, so a meeting and redirection towards a fitting dungeon can take place.
3.a. Should you be able to redirect themself, reporting still is mandatory to keep your licence.

Thanks to this rules, we can live in peace as the end of the worlds got reduced to biweekly events.

[Leewei]

I like that!