Heroes of the End Times

[Palanan]

There seem to be plenty of campaigns that feature the PCs as the first heroes of a young world, legends from the dawn of time who shape the world to come.

But what about campaigns that take place at the far end of history? I don’t mean the end of the Third Age or some other midpoint in a world’s lifespan, but past the final eons of a world, fighting for dead gods on the ruined remnants of countless forgotten empires.

Has anyone run a campaign like that? How did it pan out?

[DrMotives]

The entire Dark Sun campaign is that. It's kinda like Mad Max, if no one invented engines. It's pretty much the world has ended, this is the what's left over.

[Arcanist]

The entire Dark Sun campaign is that. It's kinda like Mad Max, if no one invented engines. It's pretty much the world has ended, this is the what's left over.

The Engine does exist on Athas. It is just powered by psionics and the souls of a million orphaned and tortured slaves.

But yeah, Dark Sun tries to do this, and depending on where in the setting your focusing on can get really friken grim. It gets really tense if the PCs in game know about Rajaat, the nature of the Sorcerer-Kings, and despite all of the Sorcerer-Kings nearly godlike powers are actually losing to Rajaat :smalleek:

[ksbsnowowl]

I'm running a game like this right now.

Magic is tainted, and the users of it get sick and go insane. When they die, they actually stain the world in the spot they died (bigger area the more powerful they were), creating tainted locations that can make anyone who passes through them gain depravity. The campaign took a little inspiration from Dark Sun, a little from Wheel of Time, and just daydreamed ideas that I was playing with to work my "DM-Brain" on a lark. A lark that became an entire campaign. A campaign meant to emphasize the "alternate magic" of D&D 3.5 (psionics, incarnum, tome of battle, binders, etc.)

The campaign started as pretty much a sandbox type campaign. They lived in a "safe" city that outlawed taint (and had taint-detecting paladins as captains of the guard, to make sure no tainted creatures came through the gates). The gods are all dead, except Boccob, who was responsible for tainting magic ~700 years ago, went insane, and murdered all the other gods.

They are currently 13th/14th level (there've been a few deaths...), and I think one of them has finally caught on to the unspoken "secret" of the campaign. They are actually in the Greyhawk campaign setting, just fastforwarded ~1,000 years, and with a magical apocalypse in the interim. The campaign-long over-arching plot has to do with the REAL reason magic & Boccob got tainted, implementing the Dragon magazine and Dungeon magazine tie-ins with Elder Evils (giving Tharizdun the Elder Evils treatment).

There are three main plot points I'm working them toward.
1) The Tharizdun Elder Evils thing
2) Return to the Tomb of Horrors. They were assaulting the Black Academy, decided the Elder Evils part was more pressing, and just last session left Skull City behind (the though of facing a demilich FREAKED them out), but they hope to get back to it later.
3) Time Travel? The players have discussed really wanting to find a way to get rid of the taint... I'm also running a separate campaign in traditional time-line Greyhawk, and one of my players is in both games. In the traditional GH game, his wizard has found Tovag Baragu, and spent some time studying it. That campaign is nearly finished. I'm toying with a plot involving the Deity and Time Inevitables (from FF), and a time travel trefoil knot, where the Taint game PC's go back in time, armed with info to stop Boccob from approaching a Tharizdun problem in the wrong way, and thus preventing the tainting of magic in all of Greyspace... but I haven't committed to this in any way, yet. If it happens, the one player might get to have his two characters interact... :p