Dread Angel
2012-04-03, 10:07 AM
I've been GMing 3.5/Pathfinder for years, and my group and I are heading in a new direction - d20 Modern.
I have read over the core rulebook and I really like the system. Its simplicity is very elegant, and still familiar enough that I know we will have no trouble adapting to things like firearm use, vehicle combat etc.
But my problem is this: I am unsure as to which of the campaign ideas I keep coming up with to use. So here, I shall brainstorm with the good playgrounders, and hopefully settle on something.
Idea 1: Mercenary Group
This one is straight Modern, with no supernatural flavouring at all. The players are members of a renowned group of "specialists for hire" who are based off a rather awesomesauce ship-base-thing floating around in international waters. They are hired primarily by governments looking for black ops but wanting plausible deniability should things go wrong or who are unable or unwilling to use their own agents....or private richies who need things done. Their tasks range from assassination to research and artifact recovery, to infiltrating secret bases and stealing sensitive documents, to blowing the cover of a drug cartel, whatever.
What I like about this one is that it enables me to write all sorts of different adventures, and have them seem totally unattached to one another until the PCs come upon clues referring to their past missions, etc. My idea for the finale is that it becomes gradually clear that the heroes are being used to systematically weaken and undermine the operations of yet another government who are trying to prevent.....X Terrible Thing happening, and the PCs have unwittingly been used as tools to bring XTT closer and closer to completion. Cue angry revenge stuff!
Idea 2: Helpless Victims
This setting may seem non-supernatural at first but it is not. The PCs are a team of federal agents whose latest case is a murder-suicide. Some guy has killed his whole family and then himself. He has also cut an odd mark into his left palm. Friends say he was totally normal and has never been a bad guy etc etc. Seems very open-and-shut. Next case, something different but halfway into that one, the team is transferred to another case...a murder-suicide very similar to the first, with the little girl having stabbificated her parents, and another weird mark cut into her palm. Different mark from the first but the similarity cannot be denied. So on and so forth until at some point the PCs discover hints pointing to a tightly-shut government base, which is publicly claimed to be a medical research center but there have always been wild rumors of what goes on in there.
The trail eventually leads them to discover that the base has a very secret section within which they are experimenting with paranormal stuff....including a very, very disturbed little boy who has shown psychic power but is very...sadistic. It is him who has been taking random people somehow related to the scientists working on him and causing them to kill the people around them and themselves. The marks they cut into themselves actually form a message to the boy's mother detailing where he is and what they're doing to him...but it is heavily encrypted. The PCs will have access to a bunch of resources, including a friend in the cryptology department who owes them a favor for ...something i'll include along the way. The endgame of this campaign is the decision about how to deal with the kid....do they try to infiltrate the base and kill him? Persuade the government to release him, somehow? He's just a kid, after all. Break the story to news agencies with what proof they can gather? Depending on their decision, I can build a sequel nicely around this one.
I have a few other ideas but those are the two I like best. Both require a cubic buttload of preparation, but I can definitely make either one work. What are you folks' thoughts and opinions?
I have read over the core rulebook and I really like the system. Its simplicity is very elegant, and still familiar enough that I know we will have no trouble adapting to things like firearm use, vehicle combat etc.
But my problem is this: I am unsure as to which of the campaign ideas I keep coming up with to use. So here, I shall brainstorm with the good playgrounders, and hopefully settle on something.
Idea 1: Mercenary Group
This one is straight Modern, with no supernatural flavouring at all. The players are members of a renowned group of "specialists for hire" who are based off a rather awesomesauce ship-base-thing floating around in international waters. They are hired primarily by governments looking for black ops but wanting plausible deniability should things go wrong or who are unable or unwilling to use their own agents....or private richies who need things done. Their tasks range from assassination to research and artifact recovery, to infiltrating secret bases and stealing sensitive documents, to blowing the cover of a drug cartel, whatever.
What I like about this one is that it enables me to write all sorts of different adventures, and have them seem totally unattached to one another until the PCs come upon clues referring to their past missions, etc. My idea for the finale is that it becomes gradually clear that the heroes are being used to systematically weaken and undermine the operations of yet another government who are trying to prevent.....X Terrible Thing happening, and the PCs have unwittingly been used as tools to bring XTT closer and closer to completion. Cue angry revenge stuff!
Idea 2: Helpless Victims
This setting may seem non-supernatural at first but it is not. The PCs are a team of federal agents whose latest case is a murder-suicide. Some guy has killed his whole family and then himself. He has also cut an odd mark into his left palm. Friends say he was totally normal and has never been a bad guy etc etc. Seems very open-and-shut. Next case, something different but halfway into that one, the team is transferred to another case...a murder-suicide very similar to the first, with the little girl having stabbificated her parents, and another weird mark cut into her palm. Different mark from the first but the similarity cannot be denied. So on and so forth until at some point the PCs discover hints pointing to a tightly-shut government base, which is publicly claimed to be a medical research center but there have always been wild rumors of what goes on in there.
The trail eventually leads them to discover that the base has a very secret section within which they are experimenting with paranormal stuff....including a very, very disturbed little boy who has shown psychic power but is very...sadistic. It is him who has been taking random people somehow related to the scientists working on him and causing them to kill the people around them and themselves. The marks they cut into themselves actually form a message to the boy's mother detailing where he is and what they're doing to him...but it is heavily encrypted. The PCs will have access to a bunch of resources, including a friend in the cryptology department who owes them a favor for ...something i'll include along the way. The endgame of this campaign is the decision about how to deal with the kid....do they try to infiltrate the base and kill him? Persuade the government to release him, somehow? He's just a kid, after all. Break the story to news agencies with what proof they can gather? Depending on their decision, I can build a sequel nicely around this one.
I have a few other ideas but those are the two I like best. Both require a cubic buttload of preparation, but I can definitely make either one work. What are you folks' thoughts and opinions?