How to make campaign with theme of loss?

[HoboKnight]

Hey guys,

I'm sketching together something that may or may not be a campaign after corona and I'd like your opinion on it. I'm trying to make a campaign with a powerful undertone of loss. Going for really depressing stuff.

Now, the drive for this is of course, our current situation. We have lost so much in so many ways with the pandemic, I really do not feel I'd be happy starting my post-corona d&d life with some out-of the box campaign, but with something that has strong mentioned undertones. We'll see how it goes, the grip of the idea may release me at the end, but at the moment, this is a conceptual origin I'm working with.

A STRONG disclaimer: Loss can be very uncomfortable for players. I play with a mature group that likes such themes. We tried many other things and I dare say, I can present them with things, they find emotionally impactful, yet they take them as an adults.

With all this said: How should I set up the campaign? I have a few ideas, but I bet playground can build upon them.
One thing I was thinking is - loss of character. Not death, but loss. Campaign starts with PCs souls being transported into other bodies with completelly different skills and powers (or lack of thereof) in an unknown world. I take their CSs and issue them with new ones.

Loss of THE KNOWN. Players expect medieval-ish standard FR campaign. I actually took al look at Domains of Dread for this one, the Bluetspur (http://fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Bluetspur), in fact. So no towns, villages, traders, goblins. Barren rock, fungi, brual lightning storms, purely evil Illythids underground. With an adittional caveat: Bodies, that die in this plane, their souls get reborn in the same plane. No departure this way. Only way to leave is finding a portal. (except for very powerful individuals that have proper ways of teleportation, ofc.)

Adittional layer of loss would be shaped by lore. This plane randomly teleports small parts of other planes into itself - their inhabitants and landscape. I guess you could find a bunch of abandoned and ruined stuff here - a reminder of all that could be. Or perhaps even a really beautifully looking castle in pristine state - just to find it empty, devoid of any soul.

As for the tone, I'm sort of going along the vibes of Dark Souls game (very few NPCs, lots of abandoned architecture, scattered, very alien to NPCs) and movie The Road by McCormack (empty farms, roads leading nowhere, burning woods. A nice house is full of cannibals).

I'm thinking of players being lvl 3 -ish.

So. This is what I have. They are rough ideas, some perhaps tonally wrong. But in short: Loss of PCs, blasted landscape, devoid of life and fun, rare, depressing NPCs, lack of resources.

How should I go about it?

[MoiMagnus]

I'd note that it's quite difficult for people to feel the loss of something they never had.
Taking the example of removing the character sheets, if the players never got to play with those characters, this might just appears as a "meta" loss (the player having wasted their time creating the characters) rather than a thematic one.

Secondly, but that's really a choice from you, you might want to have more variety of emotions present in the universe. Loss can be answered in a lot of different ways: passive depression & hopelessness, denial & delusion, anger & vengeance, hope & cooperation, etc. Realistically, not every NPC should be on at the same stage of grief (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_stages_of_grief) (Denial -> Anger -> Bargaining -> Depression -> Acceptance).

[Aliess]

Have you had a look into wraith the Oblivion?
Far more populated than what you're going for, but might give you some ideas for how the setting looks.
Also includes the ideas of fetters and ties, things the character holds dear. Preserving/resolving them gives you bonus' but losing them lessens the character until they eventually fall into oblivion.

[NRSASD]

MoiMagnus hits the nail on the head with their comment. Loss alone isn't a theme, in the same way a waft of smoke isn't a fire. Overcoming grievous loss or suffering unavoidable loss despite your best efforts are closer, but you need to think about the moral of your campaign. What are you trying to convey to your players?

In my Curse of Strahd game, dealing with unavoidable loss the players caused to NPCs they cared about was a major factor. A family of NPCs who they grew quite close to, who offered the PCs their home as a base of operations and were a set of friendly faces in an otherwise hostile land, got killed by Strahd while the PCs were away. This was after about 8 sessions interacting with them, and I made it abundantly clear this happened because the villains wanted to hurt the PCs. My players were angry and sad, but at the villains, not me the DM, because they understood that the PCs hadn't thought to hide the closeness of their relationship with the NPCs. The NPCs were in harm's way only because the PCs had made them a target by befriending them. What really twisted the knife though was that the NPCs' oldest son, the party's sidekick, went from being gregarious and cheerful to quiet and withdrawn instantly after it happened.

As MoiMagnus says, you have to give the party something to lose first if you want the loss to feel real; otherwise it's just a bleak coat of paint over an otherwise carefree adventure.

The pain we feel from loss is definitely heightened by the sudden, abrupt nature of that loss. So the best way to heighten that impact is to make sure the PCs aren't expecting to lose whatever it is that they're losing. However, there has to be a clear cause and effect relationship to the reason the thing was lost, otherwise the emotional impact will convert from sorrow at their characters' misfortune to anger at the DM's perceived unfairness.

As a final thought, an idea I've toyed regarding the concept of loss is the concept that "You can never go home". Generally this means whenever you set out on an adventure you can't come home again without being irrevocably changed (the scourging of the Shire in Lord of the Rings for example), but I have a more literal example in mind.

There are many myths about the land of faeries, specifically how if you eat their food you can't return home. Have a campaign that starts with the PCs stranded in the Feywild but they know where the portal home is. It's just a month away. Make it so they'll have to make hard choices (like not enough food for everyone) and have plenty of opportunities for temptation. If anyone succumbs to temptation and eats fairy food (or whatever), just nod and keep going. At the very end of the campaign, when they reach the portal, have only those who remain untainted be able to pass through. Everyone can only watch helplessly as they try to follow but are rejected by the portal's magic.

[Jay R]

First of all, loss can be the centerpiece, but the game should still be about heroism. Your players don't need more loss; they need inspiration.

If it's about the pandemic, go with it. The land has been ravaged by disease. Villages are depopulated; forts have too few people to defend the area, wild beasts have lost their source of food.

The PCs are trying to defend what remains of civilization as all races try to build back up.

[Note that this scenario, among other things, actually would justify the sometimes absurdly large treasures people find in D&D.]

Or it might be a zombie apocalypse, and in the long run, they determine that these aren't real zombies; they are people controlled by some spores, and maybe they can be cured.

But the PC focus shouldn't be on the dreariness and sadness. It should be on heroically fighting back and providing hope for people after all this terrible loss.