Geordnet
2021-05-16, 12:30 PM
So, a while back I read a story about a GM who pulled a surprise on one of their players by telling them to build a character for a low fantasy setting, but in session zero the rest of the party showed up in a spaceship to pick him up for a Rogue Trader campaign. I always thought this was an underutilized concept, since the 40k universe covers such a vast range in both space a time, you could put insert practically any low-mid fantasy world into it almost seamlessly. I figure, why not go bigger?
My goal here is to design some campaigns where the big twist is that the setting is actually 40k. Now, before I start I want to establish a couple of rules to limit the potential for players to feel like they were lied to (in a bad way) by the GM:
There needs to be significant build-up and foreshadowing for anything obviously non-fantasy: e.g. the PCs hear rumors of a "blue dragon" before seeing a Thunderhawk gunship.
No blatantly obvious "this is 40k" signs before the climax: e.g. no random mooks screaming "for the emperor" in the first session.
It should be clear by the end of the campaign (to anyone paying attention) that, at a bear minimum, the setting is secretly sci-fi instead of fantasy.
The campaign needs to have an obvious stopping point and not drag on too long, so the players can decide whether or not to continue in a setting they didn't sign up for.
So, here are a few ideas:
Once, the Church of Truth—an "atheist religion" that believes in the inherent divinity of man before any higher power—held sway over the entire continent, but a thousand years ago its power began to crumble and wane. In recent centuries, secular princes only tolerate it for the essential service they provide in exterminating dangerous witches, warlocks, and demons, while the sight of a court wizard has become less rare.
But recently, the Church has undergone a sudden reformation after receiving an influx of new blood from a distant land. They've become much more aggressive (and let it be said, successful) in rooting out cults, and it's only a matter of time before they start to purge the nobility.
A Duke's Senechal has contracted the party to "investigate" a person known as "Herald", a quarter-giant noble from the same distant country as the new clergymen.
This world was originally conquered by the Imperium in the Great Crusade, but was cut off by a warp storm c.M33 (before the Imperial Creed was fully established).
"Herald" is a Rogue Trader who recently rediscovered the world after the warp storm subsided. Sensing an opportunity, he didn't report the discovery until arriving at a nearby shrine world to pick up some "missionaries": by leading the conversion effort himself, he can secure planetary governorship. People think he's a "quarter-giant" because he's got high-end gene mods and wears power armor.
The rogue trader's ship ("merely" a corvette) is in high orbit, appearing to the naked eye as simply one more faint star amongst thousands (although perhaps a few devoted sky-watchers have noticed it). If Herald dies, the crew will launch an orbital strike in revenge, then leave. (Sequel hook is them returning a few years later with reinforcements... Like, maybe a bunch of old guardsmen who've been promised land to retire on.)
The Senechal is secretly involved with a cult of a demon of Tzeench that's been trapped on this world since the warp storm began (said storm was caused by it being sealed here by someone whose identity has been forgotten, and the storm stopped because it had been weakened by the church's efforts). The leader of said cult would be the Court Wizard, who's smart enough to not actually trust/worship Chaos, but dumb enough to think that'll make a difference. The party's mission doubles as testing the PCs to see if they're worthy of induction: midway through the campaign, the party gets the choice between siding with the cult to oust the church, or siding with the church to destroy the cult.
The world is savage and primitive, without any fantasy races (except conniving demons and mysterious elves, neither available for PCs) but with monsters everywhere. All men worship the Great Father and his Angels, which come to the world once a decade to host a grand tournament to select the most mighty of young men to Ascend. They aren't restricted to taking only the champion: they can take whoever they feel is worthy and sometimes even refuse to take the champion. Other, slightly-less-worthy become Wardens, who serve the angels and are the arbiters of justice worldwide: not even chieftains or warlords are above them.
Magic is strongly forbidden, all those who are found using it are either killed by the Wardens or arrested, never to be seen again.
The time of the Trials has come again, and the players seek to compete.
It's an Astartes recruitment world. The campaign's just the tournament at first; after that, it can continue into Astartes training and a more conventional 40k campaign with the surviving PCs.
As a variant, you can make this the recruitment world for a traitor chapter (or one about to turn) and allow magic builds to compete.
This one isn't fantasy, but post-apocalyptic (the GM doesn't say it's Earth, but doesn't say otherwise, either). It's been long enough that nobody remembers the details, only that it involved "abominable intelligence", legions of "machine men", and that at the end "the faithful cried out, and the gods of steel smote the land with holy fire from above."
The players start off in a bunker contolled by this waco-like cult (which worships "cyber-christ", if anyone asks) where the leadership's inner circle doesn't let anyone else touch the life support system. They've been abusing their power as the "maintainers" for generations and now don't actually know anything about how to repair it if it breaks. So of course when an earthquake happened something did break, and the players are sent out to get a replacement.
They're told to travel the wasteland to "The Final Assembly", a ruined mega-city inhabited only by gangs of scavengers, and mindless cyborgs which continue to operate the factories. (Where the materials come from and where the finished products go is unknown: most scavs simply assume it's a giant loop of recycling.) The scavs and cyborgs don't interact unless it's the former stealing from an assembly line or the latter acquiring "replacement parts".
However, on their travels they learn of a new breed of "mutant" that has appeared, hulking green brutes that have terrible aim but terrifying strength and toughness. Whatever caused their appearance seems to have greatly agitated the cyborgs...
The setting's a forge world that had a heretech rebellion that started when some magos discovered either a broken Dark Age AI or a sleeping Necron tomb, and ended when a Titan Legion arrived. Afterwards, the Mechanicus just restaffed the factories with servitors and left the human survivors to fend for themselves. "The Final Assembly" sends its finished products off to the planetary spaceport (separated from the playable area by an impassible radioactive desert) via underground rail, and receives its materials the same way.
The "vault" was a hideout for some low-ranked heretechs; over generations of isolation their already-heterodox version of the Mechanicus religion has been mostly abandoned as anything more than a pretext for keeping the "engineers" in control. The scavs are more pious in their worship of "the gods of steel" (aka the Titans) and superstitiously believe that any unknown machine they come across may have sentience (which isn't completely wrong: there's still heretech artifacts laying around).
The earthquake which set off the campaign was caused by an Ork Rok hitting the ground: the crater should be visible in the distance to the PCs shortly after leaving the "vault"—checking it out would require diverting slightly from the path to the megacity and finding a way to cross a heavily irradiated zone safely. The Rok had been shot down by orbital defenses, so most of the Orks onboard are dead—the orkoid-fungus loves the radiation, though, so there will be a new Whaaagh in a couple months if the players ignore it.
In the end, it really doesn't matter whether the party saves the vault or not. The BBEG is the Ork warboss: as long as he's killed or the Whaaagh is otherwise stopped (or at least sent in a direction away from anything the PCs care about) then the campaign should be considered a "victory". There are a few ways they could achieve this:
If the players try to communicate with the servitors in the factory and mention the Orks (or are otherwise persistent enough), they'll be able to talk to a living Magos. Said techpriest doesn't have time to educate savages, but doesn't try to hide anything, either. If asked for aid, he reveals that the skitarii are busy fighting off more successful Ork landings on the other side of the planet, but is willing to provide an effectively unlimited number of weapons and a far more limited number of combat servitors (he will not, under any circumstances, take essential servitors off the assembly line or otherwise reduce production).
If the players become friends with enough gangs of scavs, they might be able to assemble a great alliance to fight the Orks. The bloody carnage will lure the warboss into the open, where the PCs can fight him (or better yet, blast him with artillery). There will be far less human death if the scavs can get supplied with weapons from the factory (including through theft).
If it comes to a siege of the vault with the PC inside, the Orks will not stop coming. They may get beaten back temporarily, but there is no escape (unless they can somehow get outside assistance). However, the vault leaders are hiding a bunch of heretech that can be repurposed into weapons. They will not willingly tell the PCs this and are too cowardly to simply blow up the vault if it gets overrun (they'll want to surrender instead, which will go as you'd expect). But the PCs can use this cache to go out in a blaze of glory or attempt to cut their way to freedom, though they'll have to kill the warboss first.
Finally, who knows what the PCs could find in the waste? A Forgotten Titan? Dark Age Stealth Tech? Loose Nukes? Or they could just ride off into the sunset, letting the wasteland fend for itself.
These are just my initial ideas (free to any GM who wants them). Does anyone else have their own?
My goal here is to design some campaigns where the big twist is that the setting is actually 40k. Now, before I start I want to establish a couple of rules to limit the potential for players to feel like they were lied to (in a bad way) by the GM:
There needs to be significant build-up and foreshadowing for anything obviously non-fantasy: e.g. the PCs hear rumors of a "blue dragon" before seeing a Thunderhawk gunship.
No blatantly obvious "this is 40k" signs before the climax: e.g. no random mooks screaming "for the emperor" in the first session.
It should be clear by the end of the campaign (to anyone paying attention) that, at a bear minimum, the setting is secretly sci-fi instead of fantasy.
The campaign needs to have an obvious stopping point and not drag on too long, so the players can decide whether or not to continue in a setting they didn't sign up for.
So, here are a few ideas:
Once, the Church of Truth—an "atheist religion" that believes in the inherent divinity of man before any higher power—held sway over the entire continent, but a thousand years ago its power began to crumble and wane. In recent centuries, secular princes only tolerate it for the essential service they provide in exterminating dangerous witches, warlocks, and demons, while the sight of a court wizard has become less rare.
But recently, the Church has undergone a sudden reformation after receiving an influx of new blood from a distant land. They've become much more aggressive (and let it be said, successful) in rooting out cults, and it's only a matter of time before they start to purge the nobility.
A Duke's Senechal has contracted the party to "investigate" a person known as "Herald", a quarter-giant noble from the same distant country as the new clergymen.
This world was originally conquered by the Imperium in the Great Crusade, but was cut off by a warp storm c.M33 (before the Imperial Creed was fully established).
"Herald" is a Rogue Trader who recently rediscovered the world after the warp storm subsided. Sensing an opportunity, he didn't report the discovery until arriving at a nearby shrine world to pick up some "missionaries": by leading the conversion effort himself, he can secure planetary governorship. People think he's a "quarter-giant" because he's got high-end gene mods and wears power armor.
The rogue trader's ship ("merely" a corvette) is in high orbit, appearing to the naked eye as simply one more faint star amongst thousands (although perhaps a few devoted sky-watchers have noticed it). If Herald dies, the crew will launch an orbital strike in revenge, then leave. (Sequel hook is them returning a few years later with reinforcements... Like, maybe a bunch of old guardsmen who've been promised land to retire on.)
The Senechal is secretly involved with a cult of a demon of Tzeench that's been trapped on this world since the warp storm began (said storm was caused by it being sealed here by someone whose identity has been forgotten, and the storm stopped because it had been weakened by the church's efforts). The leader of said cult would be the Court Wizard, who's smart enough to not actually trust/worship Chaos, but dumb enough to think that'll make a difference. The party's mission doubles as testing the PCs to see if they're worthy of induction: midway through the campaign, the party gets the choice between siding with the cult to oust the church, or siding with the church to destroy the cult.
The world is savage and primitive, without any fantasy races (except conniving demons and mysterious elves, neither available for PCs) but with monsters everywhere. All men worship the Great Father and his Angels, which come to the world once a decade to host a grand tournament to select the most mighty of young men to Ascend. They aren't restricted to taking only the champion: they can take whoever they feel is worthy and sometimes even refuse to take the champion. Other, slightly-less-worthy become Wardens, who serve the angels and are the arbiters of justice worldwide: not even chieftains or warlords are above them.
Magic is strongly forbidden, all those who are found using it are either killed by the Wardens or arrested, never to be seen again.
The time of the Trials has come again, and the players seek to compete.
It's an Astartes recruitment world. The campaign's just the tournament at first; after that, it can continue into Astartes training and a more conventional 40k campaign with the surviving PCs.
As a variant, you can make this the recruitment world for a traitor chapter (or one about to turn) and allow magic builds to compete.
This one isn't fantasy, but post-apocalyptic (the GM doesn't say it's Earth, but doesn't say otherwise, either). It's been long enough that nobody remembers the details, only that it involved "abominable intelligence", legions of "machine men", and that at the end "the faithful cried out, and the gods of steel smote the land with holy fire from above."
The players start off in a bunker contolled by this waco-like cult (which worships "cyber-christ", if anyone asks) where the leadership's inner circle doesn't let anyone else touch the life support system. They've been abusing their power as the "maintainers" for generations and now don't actually know anything about how to repair it if it breaks. So of course when an earthquake happened something did break, and the players are sent out to get a replacement.
They're told to travel the wasteland to "The Final Assembly", a ruined mega-city inhabited only by gangs of scavengers, and mindless cyborgs which continue to operate the factories. (Where the materials come from and where the finished products go is unknown: most scavs simply assume it's a giant loop of recycling.) The scavs and cyborgs don't interact unless it's the former stealing from an assembly line or the latter acquiring "replacement parts".
However, on their travels they learn of a new breed of "mutant" that has appeared, hulking green brutes that have terrible aim but terrifying strength and toughness. Whatever caused their appearance seems to have greatly agitated the cyborgs...
The setting's a forge world that had a heretech rebellion that started when some magos discovered either a broken Dark Age AI or a sleeping Necron tomb, and ended when a Titan Legion arrived. Afterwards, the Mechanicus just restaffed the factories with servitors and left the human survivors to fend for themselves. "The Final Assembly" sends its finished products off to the planetary spaceport (separated from the playable area by an impassible radioactive desert) via underground rail, and receives its materials the same way.
The "vault" was a hideout for some low-ranked heretechs; over generations of isolation their already-heterodox version of the Mechanicus religion has been mostly abandoned as anything more than a pretext for keeping the "engineers" in control. The scavs are more pious in their worship of "the gods of steel" (aka the Titans) and superstitiously believe that any unknown machine they come across may have sentience (which isn't completely wrong: there's still heretech artifacts laying around).
The earthquake which set off the campaign was caused by an Ork Rok hitting the ground: the crater should be visible in the distance to the PCs shortly after leaving the "vault"—checking it out would require diverting slightly from the path to the megacity and finding a way to cross a heavily irradiated zone safely. The Rok had been shot down by orbital defenses, so most of the Orks onboard are dead—the orkoid-fungus loves the radiation, though, so there will be a new Whaaagh in a couple months if the players ignore it.
In the end, it really doesn't matter whether the party saves the vault or not. The BBEG is the Ork warboss: as long as he's killed or the Whaaagh is otherwise stopped (or at least sent in a direction away from anything the PCs care about) then the campaign should be considered a "victory". There are a few ways they could achieve this:
If the players try to communicate with the servitors in the factory and mention the Orks (or are otherwise persistent enough), they'll be able to talk to a living Magos. Said techpriest doesn't have time to educate savages, but doesn't try to hide anything, either. If asked for aid, he reveals that the skitarii are busy fighting off more successful Ork landings on the other side of the planet, but is willing to provide an effectively unlimited number of weapons and a far more limited number of combat servitors (he will not, under any circumstances, take essential servitors off the assembly line or otherwise reduce production).
If the players become friends with enough gangs of scavs, they might be able to assemble a great alliance to fight the Orks. The bloody carnage will lure the warboss into the open, where the PCs can fight him (or better yet, blast him with artillery). There will be far less human death if the scavs can get supplied with weapons from the factory (including through theft).
If it comes to a siege of the vault with the PC inside, the Orks will not stop coming. They may get beaten back temporarily, but there is no escape (unless they can somehow get outside assistance). However, the vault leaders are hiding a bunch of heretech that can be repurposed into weapons. They will not willingly tell the PCs this and are too cowardly to simply blow up the vault if it gets overrun (they'll want to surrender instead, which will go as you'd expect). But the PCs can use this cache to go out in a blaze of glory or attempt to cut their way to freedom, though they'll have to kill the warboss first.
Finally, who knows what the PCs could find in the waste? A Forgotten Titan? Dark Age Stealth Tech? Loose Nukes? Or they could just ride off into the sunset, letting the wasteland fend for itself.
These are just my initial ideas (free to any GM who wants them). Does anyone else have their own?