Draconi Redfir
2013-12-07, 04:16 AM
Okay so, I’m not building this world yet as I’m currently a player in another D&D game at the time and I’m not a DM myself, but my current DM is going to be hosting a "DM training school" at some point of which i plan on attend, and I’ve sort of had this basic idea of a campaign that I’d like to run once i was finished with it.
the idea began with a simple idea, low-magic world, no gods. From there it expanded a bit, a low-magic world, orbiting a star drifting between galaxies thus no stars in the night sky, and one god, who is dying. Most arcane magic would be cut out, and divine magic would probably be all but unusable as the one remaining god is putting all his effort into maintaining the world.
How the story would be set up would be as such; However many years ago, the dying god used all but the last of his power to send out X amount of souls that had the potential to become gods themselves, the rate at which these souls were birthed as mortals would vary to allow Goblins a chance to compete with the much-longer lived elves without the Elves having a huge head start on them. the whole point of the game was going to be "trying to become gods", with each "God-soul" as I’ve dubbed them having some special features that make them unique to the world, such as an automatic diehard feat/highlander syndrome (only killable by cutting off head/by other god-souls possibly) (mostly inspired by my personal pet-peeve of my partymembers always re-rolling new characters whenever their current one dies rather then getting revived/starting a side quest to do just that, ending up in a party completely unrelated to the one who started the quest.) or something along the lines of pathfinder sorcerer bloodlines, potentially useable even if the character in question didn't have any sorcerer/other spellcaster levels, all topped off with some visual feature such as blue hair or a third eye or something that made them stand out.
The problem was, then what? How would the characters "become gods"? I started toying with the idea of an "All must find their own path" phrase being thrown around everywhere, hinting that the characters would need to find out/decide for themselves what would make them gods, buuut that always leads to the problem of people potentially just saying "oh well then I’m a god!" and being done with it. A "Highlander" idea is sort of out i think as that would just lead to another one-god rather then the require multiple, and all in all i just had no idea how to go about having a goal and story going on.
but then at work i had an idea. This was a low-magic game, but that doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be low-technology right? The idea popped into my mind of the different civilizations having sort of Edison-era technology, perhaps not telephones or binary radio messages, but definitely clockwork and electric lights, probably even the Goblinoids having access to guns and gunpowder and the like. With that came another idea, what if there was a sort of cult, that was Building a god? A massive machine they worshipped and continued to build, capturing god-souls and feeding them to it in an attempt to give the machine a god-soul of it's own to allow it to ascend. It could potentially give the players a mystery to solve what with all the disappearing god-souls, as well as a potential "final boss" in a fully-souled machine-god seeking more power and destruction. but.... would it be campaign-building material do you think? or does it seem more along the lines of a side quest?
I’m not trying to build the actual world yet, keep that in mind, but I’m just keeping ideas floating around in my mind, and I’d like to know what you guys think about this particular one. would you be interested in it if you were to play it? or does it sound like something the heroes would do in their spare time? what would you recommend the driving force behind the campaign should be aside from the general "become a god" theme? Give me your thoughts.
the idea began with a simple idea, low-magic world, no gods. From there it expanded a bit, a low-magic world, orbiting a star drifting between galaxies thus no stars in the night sky, and one god, who is dying. Most arcane magic would be cut out, and divine magic would probably be all but unusable as the one remaining god is putting all his effort into maintaining the world.
How the story would be set up would be as such; However many years ago, the dying god used all but the last of his power to send out X amount of souls that had the potential to become gods themselves, the rate at which these souls were birthed as mortals would vary to allow Goblins a chance to compete with the much-longer lived elves without the Elves having a huge head start on them. the whole point of the game was going to be "trying to become gods", with each "God-soul" as I’ve dubbed them having some special features that make them unique to the world, such as an automatic diehard feat/highlander syndrome (only killable by cutting off head/by other god-souls possibly) (mostly inspired by my personal pet-peeve of my partymembers always re-rolling new characters whenever their current one dies rather then getting revived/starting a side quest to do just that, ending up in a party completely unrelated to the one who started the quest.) or something along the lines of pathfinder sorcerer bloodlines, potentially useable even if the character in question didn't have any sorcerer/other spellcaster levels, all topped off with some visual feature such as blue hair or a third eye or something that made them stand out.
The problem was, then what? How would the characters "become gods"? I started toying with the idea of an "All must find their own path" phrase being thrown around everywhere, hinting that the characters would need to find out/decide for themselves what would make them gods, buuut that always leads to the problem of people potentially just saying "oh well then I’m a god!" and being done with it. A "Highlander" idea is sort of out i think as that would just lead to another one-god rather then the require multiple, and all in all i just had no idea how to go about having a goal and story going on.
but then at work i had an idea. This was a low-magic game, but that doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be low-technology right? The idea popped into my mind of the different civilizations having sort of Edison-era technology, perhaps not telephones or binary radio messages, but definitely clockwork and electric lights, probably even the Goblinoids having access to guns and gunpowder and the like. With that came another idea, what if there was a sort of cult, that was Building a god? A massive machine they worshipped and continued to build, capturing god-souls and feeding them to it in an attempt to give the machine a god-soul of it's own to allow it to ascend. It could potentially give the players a mystery to solve what with all the disappearing god-souls, as well as a potential "final boss" in a fully-souled machine-god seeking more power and destruction. but.... would it be campaign-building material do you think? or does it seem more along the lines of a side quest?
I’m not trying to build the actual world yet, keep that in mind, but I’m just keeping ideas floating around in my mind, and I’d like to know what you guys think about this particular one. would you be interested in it if you were to play it? or does it sound like something the heroes would do in their spare time? what would you recommend the driving force behind the campaign should be aside from the general "become a god" theme? Give me your thoughts.