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View Full Version : DM Help Toying with a Demonic Campaign - Ideas?



RealMarkP
2017-12-20, 10:54 AM
My players are an experienced bunch. We've played our fair share of good campaigns. I think it's time for something outside-of-the-box. DEMONIC CAMPAIGN!

So, I'm introducing a major mechanic into the game - Demonic Possession. Basically, it functions like Magic Jar but at a much slower rate. A demon possesses an NPC by putting the host soul in the back seat. Over the next couple of weeks, the host body slowly transforms into the demon's likeliness. If the player dies while in this body, their soul is kicked back into the ethereal realm and they're free to find a new host. I have not worked out all the details of this mechanic, but the take-away is that possession takes a long time and there is nothing you can do from halting the host body from transforming into a demon.

But that's not what I'm here for. I'm here to get ideas what type of campaign I could run with this. Demons have a hierarchy despite being chaotic. Lesser demons bend the knee to greater demons. Greater demons fight amongst each other for turf, politics, etc. Sometimes demons collaborate to invade the nine hells.

So far, my back-of-the-envelope campaign notes consist of the following:


Players are lesser demons under the thumb of some greater demon. This demon demands more souls for his demonic army, so the players are tasked with that.
Players are sent to the mortal realm and, using the mechanic I mentioned prior, are tasked with converting and taking as many souls as possible.
Players need to deal with a good-align country (maybe Cormyr?) and to stay hidden from their good-aligned crusaders.
Players need to find a way to gather as many souls as possible, which I have not yet figured out. Possibly using a Thinaun-based weapon to store the soul of a deceased individual.


While I got a decent start to this campaign, there are a lot of subtle points missing. I think the biggest quandary is how to glue this campaign together. As creative as the players are, I think they'll be at a loss when it comes to starting their big task. I don't expect the players to read tomes about Cormyr (or any other place), so they will need to approach it with trial-and-error.

Another issue is that I don't have a BBEG, or rather a Big Righteous Good Guy?. I want this person, or organisation, to be present throughout the campaign. Maybe it's a church that slowly hunts down and foils the player's efforts. Also, ideally, I'd like more than one BRGG; the first being one they can kill and feel good about themselves and the second being too powerful to take down? They can all be from the same church or possibly one is a local cleric while the other is the head of the church?

Anyway, this campaign can go in any number of directions. So, with that said, what would you guys add to this idea? All suggestions are welcome.

NichG
2017-12-21, 08:35 PM
If it's a demon campaign, it's weird to assume anyone would be loyal to their greater demon boss while unsupervised. Rather, even if demons toe the line they should constantly be looking for any sign of weakness or any opportunity to betray their boss and replace them, or undermine them for their own gain, or otherwise advance their own agenda.

Also, presumably when demons are possessing mortals they're somewhat insulated from their boss's power, both in the sense of the threat of punishment and perhaps also in the sense of information gathering.

So in a demon campaign, I'd focus on the idea that basically everyone is an enemy, but the enemies are also each-others enemies. So a demon might sell out their lord's ally to the church in order to get them sealed, lie to their lord that they uncovered that ally's plans for betrayal and acted preemptively, then leak information to a rival demon lord about the weakness just to get back at their lord for that one time he ripped away their power and forced them to start over from mane.

In that sense, having multiple mutually antagonistic BBEGs seems like the thing to do.