ChampionWiggles
2017-09-04, 06:01 AM
So I'm hoping to start planning a campaign to throw out some time in the future and was looking for general do's and don'ts, along with thoughts and suggestions on ideas I wanted to implement. Thoughts like "Is this mechanic good to implement or should it be avoided?"
The campaign would be an open-world campaign, taking place in a post-apocalypse type setting, but at a point in time where things don't feel like walking in a hellscape. Rather, the players would enter a world that was seeing actual recovery from the event. They are prepped to think that because of this world ending event, almost everything will be dead and resources will be hard to come by. Then they step out of their sanctuary and find that the world has recovered, plants are thriving and civilizations are starting to rebuild and take place again.
Since the party would spend a lot of time travelling the wilderness, things like water, food, and carrying capacity would actually be kept track of. With the campaign trying to give off the vibe that civilization isn't as prevalent, survival mechanics seemed fitting.
I had mentioned this in the "XP vs milestone" thread, where I wanted to use a mixture of both systems for leveling. The thought being that while this is an open world campaign, there would still be a "main quest line" of sorts, that the players had the chance to follow or participate in. Should they follow it, they would level up through milestones, where I would just set their XP to the starting point of the next level. But if they wished to diverge from the main story or not participate at all, they would level up through XP.
One thing that always bugged about open world games like Skyrim and such is that you would be presented with this world ending threat, but you were able to get sidetracked enough to where you'd be max level and still not have done a thing with the main quest. So I wanted to make it seem like the main quest events would carry on if the characters level up through XP and not following the main storyline, but it would carry on in a more negative way. Like, the group has gained enough experience to get to level 3, but by not helping this main quest NPC, he has died and will not be an ally should you need him as events unfold. Or the antagonist was able to obtain a needed MacGuffin while the group pursued their own goals, furthering his plans and making a fight with him more difficult.
The big reason I wanted to do open world was to try and encourage the group to pursue the downtime activities the DMG and PHP suggests. Try to plant the seed early in the campaign to establish a home base somewhere, either by building one, finding an abandoned fort from the past, or even re purposing a dungeon they've cleared out. Making a base of operations and fortifying it with siege equipment or with crafting stations like weapon forges always seemed like a cool idea to me and I've never been able to have that in previous campaign. A lot of the linear campaigns I've done in the past didn't leave a lot of time to pursue downtime activities that the PHP or DMG suggest.
So those are the big mechanics and ideas for the campaign I'd like to do. It's a skeleton structure right now. I just wanted to see people's thoughts and suggestions about using such mechanics or even cautionary advice about using certain mechanics.
The campaign would be an open-world campaign, taking place in a post-apocalypse type setting, but at a point in time where things don't feel like walking in a hellscape. Rather, the players would enter a world that was seeing actual recovery from the event. They are prepped to think that because of this world ending event, almost everything will be dead and resources will be hard to come by. Then they step out of their sanctuary and find that the world has recovered, plants are thriving and civilizations are starting to rebuild and take place again.
Since the party would spend a lot of time travelling the wilderness, things like water, food, and carrying capacity would actually be kept track of. With the campaign trying to give off the vibe that civilization isn't as prevalent, survival mechanics seemed fitting.
I had mentioned this in the "XP vs milestone" thread, where I wanted to use a mixture of both systems for leveling. The thought being that while this is an open world campaign, there would still be a "main quest line" of sorts, that the players had the chance to follow or participate in. Should they follow it, they would level up through milestones, where I would just set their XP to the starting point of the next level. But if they wished to diverge from the main story or not participate at all, they would level up through XP.
One thing that always bugged about open world games like Skyrim and such is that you would be presented with this world ending threat, but you were able to get sidetracked enough to where you'd be max level and still not have done a thing with the main quest. So I wanted to make it seem like the main quest events would carry on if the characters level up through XP and not following the main storyline, but it would carry on in a more negative way. Like, the group has gained enough experience to get to level 3, but by not helping this main quest NPC, he has died and will not be an ally should you need him as events unfold. Or the antagonist was able to obtain a needed MacGuffin while the group pursued their own goals, furthering his plans and making a fight with him more difficult.
The big reason I wanted to do open world was to try and encourage the group to pursue the downtime activities the DMG and PHP suggests. Try to plant the seed early in the campaign to establish a home base somewhere, either by building one, finding an abandoned fort from the past, or even re purposing a dungeon they've cleared out. Making a base of operations and fortifying it with siege equipment or with crafting stations like weapon forges always seemed like a cool idea to me and I've never been able to have that in previous campaign. A lot of the linear campaigns I've done in the past didn't leave a lot of time to pursue downtime activities that the PHP or DMG suggest.
So those are the big mechanics and ideas for the campaign I'd like to do. It's a skeleton structure right now. I just wanted to see people's thoughts and suggestions about using such mechanics or even cautionary advice about using certain mechanics.