Critique my campaign Idea!

[Serin]

I apologize in advance for the wall of text as well as any gramatical or spelling errors. Im in the middle of the ocean and satellite internet isn't the greatest so its hard to format and proofread this thing. Constructive criticism is welcomed.

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This game is designed as a pretty much solo campaign for the PC. The purpose is that I spend a lot of time in the middle of the Bering Sea due to my job and I am starting this as something for my girlfriend and I to do together while I am gone. It will mostly consist of email pong and phone calls. Logistics aren't really an issue for it.

I am running the game, she is my only player. I am using pathfinder rules but pretty much anything public PF or 3.5 is fair unless its 3rd party. I am also ported a little bit of rules text from Privateer Press's Iron Kingdoms so I could beef up technology and firearms and make the game a bit more steampunky. I also use 3.5 cosmology because I loathe PF deities and such.

She is playing a changling sorcerer. I'm not really sure what level were going to start at yet. I am planning to have a frequently occurring NPC that she can pal around with if she chooses. The NPC will be a gunslinger with a splash of rogue. Since it does have a decent hit die and damage and can do some skill monkeying if she wants.

Where I really want critique is plot.

Basically the entire plot is designed as a rabbit hole. The tech stuff that I modified from Iron Kingdoms is effectively a way of powering magic effects on items using alchemy and mechanical batteries. A +1 equivalent effect on an item can be produced for the same cost as a masterwork weapon, but the batteries have to be changed regularly unless you can develop something that is reusable.

This is going to result in a massive increase in the amount of arcane energy being used by the world's population. The drain on the world's arcane energy reserves will eventually cause the material plane to collapse in on itself, annihilating the plane. Obviously no one knows that though.

The game is going to be pretty sandbox-y but the plot reaches down to her low level local town via the government in the area. The Queen of this particular kingdom is an Outsider, she is from Mechanus. (Plane of super steampunk clockworks and golems and such if you weren't aware) The Queen has been in power for several generations and it is generally believed that she is immortal. She was originally put in place by a ruling body in Mechanus to monitor the growing use of arcane energy and technology on the material plane.

There will be some local level plot and political intrigue that if she follows will eventually lead her to find out the truth about the Queen and how she got there. Following the plot deeper down the rabbit hole she will discover that denizens of Mechanus are preparing to invade the material plane if the material plane does not keep its number of arcane energy users below a certain threshold. For example, if we use 1 million as the threshold, then when there exist more than 1 million individuals tapping into arcane energy sources the invasion would commence and the purpose of the invasion would be complete genocide.

At this point the character is faced with either having to police the number of arcane users, potentially have to kill innocent people to protect the rest of the population, or defeat the entire force from Mechanus. Defeating the invasion however won't stop the collapse of the plane, which is what Mechanus hopes to prevent.

If the Mechanus invasion is defeated, the character will discover yet another level to the mystery. Mechanus is just a puppet. The real source of this creepy control mechanism is the Far Realm. Where Aboleths, Illithids, Beholders etc all fear that this arcane energy drain associated in the rise in technology will eventually collapse the entire cosmic system. In the interest of the greater good of the universe they decided that if the mortal races could not control their advance and continued to recklessly charge forward then the mortal races must be exterminated.

Again it turns into a beat the invasion scenario. Although this one I get to have a lot of fun with as the DM by casting Aberrations in a drastically different alignment from what they usually are played as. Rather than being overly ambitious power-hungry fiends, they are still ambitious but learned to control and channel that ambition lest they destroy the universe and themselves in the process. Now they have set themselves up as the guardians of all life in the universe.

If she succeeds in stopping the Aberrations then that would be the end of the campaign. It leaves it in between a sort of Happily ever after ending and a cliff hanger since you don't know when the collapse will occur. If it even will occur, maybe they were all wrong.

It's a pretty long winding trek that leads from the alleys of her little home town to full on inter-planar warfare. With the added bonus that the aberrations in this world are drastically different from what is expected, and several large scale ethical quagmires along the way for the heroine.

[rot42]

It sounds like you have a pretty workable mechanism for shifting gears as the PC grows in power. Since a major plotpoint revolves around the queen being on the plane under false pretenses, get into the habit of asking for a Sense Motive roll for every social encounter with anyone. You might consider instead of focusing on just one gunslinger/rogue using a series of DMPCs who get left behind as the PC levels. This gives you a bit more flexibility in introducing plot and can provide a good contrast to showcase just how far she has come. Good fodder for difficult choices if a sometime boon companion now several levels lower calls in a favor that would take time away from the main mission.

Foreshadowing of the danger in all this apparently free arcane power can come in the form of encounters with a vast and obviously unsustainable open-pit mining operation in the backdrop. Start with a small single-person harvester in the starting village portrayed as just another part of living a simple life, then show an industrial version on an inhumanly huge scale. Magical Beasts make good low level encounters, and they might grow unusually aggressive if starving because some vital arcane nutrient stops being available due to the extraction.

A dead magic zone at the site of a magical mishap could also provide foreshadowing. Since you are running for a caster and they tend to have a strong aversion for places that magic does not work, you could say that rather than magic not functioning it is simply that the intrinsic magical field of the area has been disrupted, making spell casting more difficult. Make a caster level check for every spell, reduce effective caster level, or simply describe the effect as wan and swiftly fading. The PC could hear about an enlightened enclave atop a high mountain - like a kung fu temple for sorcerers - then find it devestated or perhaps be part of a ritual that "overtaps" the local magical field. A more urban way to introduce the same plot point could draw from the Boston Molasses Disaster.

Rather than have Mechanus as a true puppet, I would play them as wanting to keep the Material Plane and its denizens in their proper place, even if it means bombing them back to the Stone Age. The Far Realm could still be looking out for the stability and best interests of the multiverse as a whole, but their preferred solution would be to excise the plane and stitch the rest back together around the lack. This still gives you the weirdness of having the interests of Mechanus and the Far Realm be partially aligned (have agents of each approach her to accomplish some task that turn out to have the same solution?), but only one cares about maintaining the present harmony of the planes.

Since you want a magipunk feel, the phrase "the mainspring of the world is winding down" or some similar should definitely see play. This could manifest as the days are literally getting longer - the still functional clocks in an ancient ruin might consistently show a later hour or the queen could maintain a Hall of Standard Time storing old clocks that still count the seconds correctly but not enough of them for the lengthening days. Less literally, perhaps sorcerers and other spontaneous casters are being born less and less frequently. They might even be rare enough that a wizarding college tries to collect her as a specimen or the queen confides in her as a relic of a past age.

Your setting opens up excellent narrative opportunities for cold iron and DR/cold iron. Perhaps when the batteries are drained of their magical motive force, the dross that remains is cold iron? Perhaps iron mines around the plane report that the seams are yielding cold iron ore now? Damage reduction that is overcome by something utterly devoid of magic could indicate that fey count as natural arcanists for the purposes of the planar collapse equation? This would further give their civilization a strong incentive to portray magic as fiendishly complex, requiring centuries of study to master (so you mayfly races should not even bother).

Introducing genuine moral quandaries into a light hearted game can be problematic, but it sounds like a goodly part of your purpose here is to be thinking about each other. I would still recommend actively seeking feedback to make sure that it is adding something to the experience and that you are not coming across as just mean or unfair; so sayeth this stranger on the internet.

[Serin]

Those are all excellent suggestion and exactly the type of thing I was looking for. In response to some of your ideas:

There will be many recurring NPCs that provide plot and help move her through the mystery. Especially since the game is really designed around a single player having large scale boss fights could become difficult. So when it gets to the full on warfare aspect I am hoping I can get her to take on a sort of General or Hero role where she won't be winning the day by herself such much as being an instrumental part of the battle providing a victory where her absence would have spelled defeat. Similar to Achilles or Hector rather than Hercules or modern superheroes.

If it goes to plan she will meet and leave behind many NPCs and friends as she moves up the ranks of whatever organization rallies to oppose these invasion forces once the truth starts to become known. The Gunslinger/rogue DMPC is there for three reasons really:

1) Having a character stick with her provides her with a sense that she is not alone in the world or in having to deal with this.

2) It is a character that can provide useful skills and backup without overshadowing her because of the Tier difference.
3) Ive never run a gunslinger before and it sounds interesting.

I had planned on using magic dead zones to some extent but your ideas for their mechanics are good examples.

Your suggestion about the motives of Mechanus is going to require some thought. I do like the idea of them having their own motivations and not being a true puppet, but I kind of want to keep the feel that while horrific these actions are intended to be for the greater good. There may not necessarily be a conflict there though. If Mechanus comes across solely as a conquering force it may provide excellent roleplay opportunities when she confronts the head honcho and learns that this all for the greater good at the same time she begins to learn about the involvement of the Far Realm. It may be a good idea to portray Mechanus as callous and objective rather than maliciously seeking to keep mortals in their place: both are rather interesting perspectives.

Your suggestions involving mining operations and cold iron will definitely see use. They portray the feel I want to generate well and do provide nice foreshadowing opportunities. I am also shamelessly going to steal your line "the mainspring of the world is winding down." It is pretty epic and fits well in the setting. I also want to incorporate the ideas of time winding down and being noticeable in clocks and so forth. The clocks themselves could serve as an excellent vector to hint at the effects on the world early on before the source or even the existence of the issue is truly known.

The moral quandaries I know could be an issue but I’m not including it to be so much as an ethical or alignment challenge for her. It isn’t supposed to be a trap. It is there to portray the intensity of the situation and the mindset of the “villains.” (In quotes because the villains are not actually evil here.) The intent is for her to craft her own solution to this problem. If she rebels against the controlling aspect of the extra planar entities and fights them it leads to the currently planned ending. If she were instead to work with them then the whole campaign could shift toward preventing the actual disaster.

Without some sort of terrible consequence I could easily see the PCs in a campaign shrugging and wandering off when someone they’ve only just encountered starts prophesying doom. Even if a God comes down and says “Don’t do this it will ruin the plane!’ – most PCs may choose to ignore it until it becomes more tangible.

I don’t want to give her options of do bad things or worse things may happen. I want to present the problem so that the Hero’s mind connects the dots that the only options are to do bad things to prevent worse things, die, or search for your own Heroic solution. Of course this gives her the option to take the do bad stuff route, but she also almost *always* plays CN characters and those tend to be the type that search out creative solutions and resist other people mucking with their destinies.

I hope that last part makes sense. I’m definitely open to more creative ways of accomplishing it.

[ahenobarbi]

Sounds Familiar...
TTGL?

[Serin]

Sounds Familiar...
TTGL?

I'm not sure what your abbreviation refers to specifically but I've got a pretty good idea.

If it sounds familiar it's because it probably is. It's an adaptation of a plot from an anime I recently re-enjoyed when I remembered it was on my hard drive. I made a bunch of tweaks that I liked and so it would work with the game system.

[rot42]

Those sound like three excellent reasons to bring along a gunslinger.

I am definitely in favor of Mechanus seeing its horrific actions as being for the greater good. The logic would be "if we cannot keep arcanists under control, then we must invade to impose our order and save some rather than see all perish to the collapse of the plane".

The sense of that line if not the exact wording comes from any number of books and stories in a more fantastic sub-genre of steampunk, so steal away.

Trolley problems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem) in ethics might have some ideas, though I think some would count as "trap problems" unless a third way can be opened up. The evil fascist dictator intent on optimizing society over the puny objections of the actual citizens could work well ("world optimization" as a euphemism for "total global domination" is shamelessly stolen from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (hpmor.com/) fanfic).

An element to consider adding might be to account for power in the "one million arcanists" calculation. As your PC levels up, her ability to call upon arcane power becomes more destabilizing, but her ability to deal with the problem becomes greater in equal measure. The comic Rising Stars by J. Michael Straczynski has (major spoiler)
superheroes who share a single pool of power. You could tie this to your "policing arcanists" idea by trying to convince high level casters to donate "their share" of the safe casting limit to her.