Ideas for quest involving modern day technology. Also gnoll quest

[Great cthulhu]

Hey guys,

I'm thinking of making a quest involving technology and NPCs from modern times. They are from earth. I'm also considering Adding alien technology too. I'm doing this to play around with the future technology lists in the DMG.

I'm also considering making a long term Gnoll "village of slaughter" quest where the party must fight their way through a huge Gnoll Village and eventually make their way into a castle where they battle a marilith.

Any suggestions for either quests? The specific details listed here are deep-rooted decisions and will not be changed. But I'm open to suggestions.

[Falcon X]

How big of a game are we talking here? Let me spitball a few ideas.


Gnoll ideas:
- Maybe a spaceship from another dimension (ours?) crash landed near a bunch of gnolls and they have been looting it for technology. Maybe this has attracted the attention of he merilith or whatever demon lord she serves.
- Maybe have a pseudo- Curse of strahd/ Ravenloft plot. The Merelith is the evil master of the realm, largely inhabited by gnolls. You find a gypsy woman(gnoll?) who tells you where to find the weapons to defeat the merelith. Those weapons end up being high-tech (or at least a gun with a silver bullet). This links them to a bigger plot of “where did this stuff come from”

Illithids: Mind flayers are the D&D space aliens and are nasty, nasty beings. It isn’t hard to come up with high tech stuff for them as they come from another dimension and have tech developers as part of their community. In my games, they have spaceships and anti-matter weaponry.
- If you can get the 2e book The Illithiad, it’s got great stuff in it, including some of their tech.
- The could be developing anti-matter weaponry using material forged from the plane of negative energy. Maybe their bases have anti-matter turrets powered by dark crystals. Maybe they are changing themselves into negative energy beings (like undead) instead of positive energy beings (like most normal life). Maybe they are using it to blot out suns as they strongly desire to do.
Maybe they are trying to summon their Far Realm god: Cthulhu!!!
Maybe you are seeing the beginning of that and have key things to stop it.
Alternatively, maybe you just need to find a genocide spell and wipe them out of existence (maybe it will also eliminate everything ever created by them, like Giths. Take THAT ethical dilemma.)
Maybe you are chasing a guy building a genocide spell that you think he is going to use on, like, elves. But through the course of play, you see how terrible the Mind Flayers are, and may end up agreeing with him in the end.

Mind Flayer/merilith connection: A merilith is a being of the Abyss. The Obyriths are beings of the Abyss and from a far Plane. Mind Flayers are from a far plane. There has to be something there.
- Asmodeus’s ruby rod holds the shard that the Obyriths rode in on. That could also come in handy.

[snowman87]

Adapt the setting from RIFTS. Just add the tech from the DMG and UA, add D&D monsters, homebrew to fill in the gaps. Beautiful world setup, in my opinion. Love the lore.

[KorvinStarmast]

If you can find it, take a look at the Blackmoor supplement from original OD&D. The Temple of the Frog. It's the first "module" that most of us saw in terms of a dungeon with a complete back story/purpose. It is an interesting mix of the D&D "medieval" world with a higher tech civilization. Dave Arneson often ran wide open games that mixed Swords and Sorcery with SF. (For example, he's the originator of the Clone spell (originally 8th level) which is far more SF than Swords and Sorcery in flavor).

[the_brazenburn]

I've also planned a thing like this. A group of dimensional travelers came to Earth (our IRL world) and returned with the technology to make modern weaponry. The goblinoids adapted it almost immediately, and became a modernized, militaristic society. The basis of their tactics still revolved around the shield wall, but they gave assault rifles and suicide vests to the bugbears and used them to clear large groups of defenders at once. They also developed a sophisticated sniper unit of goblins and gave their hobgoblin captains sidearms.

Then things got really crazy when the orcs started putting cannons on their war wagons and the illithids invented laser guns.

I abandoned the premise after a while because it got too complicated, but good luck to you!

[S_A_M I AM]

I actually ran an epic level campaign* based on an alien invasion back while 4e was still current and we collectively still had hope and vibrancy in our lives and what I feel like I learnt from the campaign was:

1. Exposition is always precious and creativity can actually hamper the players enjoyment and effective storytelling. Even in most "normal" campaigns, there is a certain mental and emotional distance that comes into play until they actually understand the situation, the stakes and the overall theme of play/ the setting.
It is not bad or lazy writing at all to give them as much help as possible to get past that barrier and into the game, particularly in something of a custom setting.

I decided to go with "fun" aliens (Three limbed, soft ant people) and generic tech. So rayguns, flying saucers and robots, stuff like that. Given the opportunity to do it again, I'd probably actually go more generic or place more significant signposts about what to expect: Little Green Men and BEM's or perhaps, ripping off The Predator or something. Probably with a single "big idea" twist like "they are all clones" or "fighting aliens along with the smart aliens" rather than something that would be "visually" interesting.

2. Your players are almost certainly going to want both to directly fight the aliens and to pick up an alien buddy.

Both of which actually aid you long term.

Feeding into a combat wont saves you time on escalation. You just flat out don't need to push as hard or design as many disadvantages and obstacles and issues into any given situation in order to satisfy that itch your group may have.

And because your aliens/ robots/ feral animals that were napping in the landing gear are all going to be re-flavours or homebrew anyway? You can cheat more readily in order to provide a good experience for everybody involved. (Important: Never cheat for your own gratification.)

Having a Tealc or a Legion or a Spock or anything like that gives you an opportunity to introduce cultural elements that the party, generally being interlopers/ violently inclined wouldn't have access to and importantly, lets them constantly play the good guys.

"We're fighting defensively and we recognise that they're not all bad." actually is a powerful little behavioural hook to help people keep their expectations of behaviour skewing towards psudo-mythic heroism and away from whatever Scifi baggage they may bring into play when they understand what's going on.

3. Making it clear that the players are punching above their weight is surprisingly difficult. The aliens die just like anything else when they fight them and just making them individually powerful; always being bosses or hard targets does not necessarily add credibility or mystique to them.

Obviously this is a problem that is mostly dependant on how often the aliens are on screen and importantly; one that is almost entirely broken in half by the introduction of an alien buddy.

The mundanity of hyper advanced technology is a power all of its own. Non-magic, amazing gear is a way to draw attention to the disparity in a different way than a blaster or a portable forcefield would be.
Perhaps an amazing non-magical shield or sword that is found early on in the campaign is shown to have been unaltered from a hunk of metal, torn off the bulkhead.
Perhaps any local factions/ quislings that are acting on behalf of the aliens have a bevy of healing potions on their person?
Maybe a material like glass is being produced and traded by them in massive, metre square panes of perfectly clear silica when all the local alchemists are able to muster are long, thin bands of slightly impure glass?

The specifics aren't necessarily important here: But having a main draw to your campaign have a presence outside of their immediate on screen presence is often a good idea anyway.

*How powerful? The party was introduced during a parade in their honour as they'd just returned from the Abyss, with Demogorgon's severed, still living heads in tow. Both of his heads became major NPC's and the first boss fight of the campaign proper was fought in free fall from orbit after the paladin cut his way out of a spaceship.


-Snip-

The Illithids are a great idea from Martin Swooper Sport of Kings, with one proviso: That's a choice that I feel would play much better to a group of old hands than it would to a relatively recent group and/ or a group who were not aware of the old lore you're drawing on.

Reincorporation and subversion of a known element like a fairly famous and relatively common game element is at its most effective when it's something heavily ingrained into the mind of your audience, otherwise its costing you "expositional dollars" and space in your players minds that could potentially better spent on another, similar core element of your experience.

edit: Man. I got really caught up with the alien thing and did not properly read your post. I'm sorry.

[Great cthulhu]

Hmmm... i didn't consider combining the quests, but come to think of it, that could be a very important part of the quest. A marilith is a very powerful monster, and there are going to be a LOT of gnolls in that village. So maybe if the heroes could get their hands on some of those insane anti-matter rifles in the DMG...

[KorvinStarmast]

I've also planned a thing like this. A group of dimensional travelers came to Earth (our IRL world) and returned with the technology to make modern weaponry. The goblinoids adapted it almost immediately, and became a modernized, militaristic society. The basis of their tactics still revolved around the shield wall, but they gave assault rifles and suicide vests to the bugbears and used them to clear large groups of defenders at once. They also developed a sophisticated sniper unit of goblins and gave their hobgoblin captains sidearms.

Then things got really crazy when the orcs started putting cannons on their war wagons and the illithids invented laser guns.

I abandoned the premise after a while because it got too complicated, but good luck to you! If you steal the guns but don't figure out how to manufacture the ammo, it's a short advantage. :smallamused: