HeloDragon
2022-11-25, 11:17 AM
I was thinking about running a campaign that would go a little bit like the old Sliders television show: every 1-3 sessions the players would jump to a new plane, and a lot of the action would be based on figuring out how to make the jump to the next plane.
I'm a pretty new DM, but experienced enough to know that I shouldn't try to map out the details of a campaign before starting. I still want to map out the basic rules of how the multiverse works and the goals of some antagonists. I find that having a slightly-rigid framework helps me map out sessions, foreshadow, and so on. I'm looking for advice on how to do this.
Goals: The only real point of having multiverse rules is to serve the gameplay. The "main" rules should be simple enough that the PCs understand immediately what is going on, and they should put a lot of pressure on the PCs to keep jumping. Ideally, they would still allow some messing around (e.g. so that PCs will usually jump to a new plane alone, but might occasionally jump to an old plane or have people tag along).
Current Ideas for Multiverse:
PCs start on a low-magic, high-tech world. Government has recently figured out how to "drill" between planes. They build a little drone to do this, and find that the nearby planes are low-tech. They decide to build a big drilling machine to build a "tunnel," travel a low-tech nearby plane, drop another device to stabilize the "tunnel" between planes, and drill for oil. They start building the device and training a crew to operate it. However, there is a training "accident": the drilling machine turns on, the crew follow it and can't get it to turn off before it makes another jump. The PCs are sent to rescue the initial with a one-use "get-back-home" teleporting device and some kits.
The basic rules for the drilling machine are something like: the machine "drills" at a constant rate, but the boundaries between planes are of different thicknesses. Every few days it "breaks through" and creates a tunnel between planes. The tunnel is unstable and oscillates: it is open for about an hour, turns off for a day, on for an hour, off for a week, on for an hour, and so on.
PCs may have other McGuffins that lets them e.g. phone home and talk to their original government, though this should be at least a little unreliable. This allows for the possibility of them getting new tech or instructions (or for going rogue).
Current Ideas for Antagonists:
The original training crew was contacted by some entity from another plane, who told them it's plane's "coordinates" and instructed them to drill towards it. I don't think it is too important to know what this entity wants or what the original crew believes, but I'm thinking something like:
(1) The original world has a lot of ambient magic (because it isn't being used), and the entity wants to harvest it. This is of course an inversion of the government's plans.
(2) The crew believes that the entity is essentially an angel, and that they are going to merge the worlds.
Presumably at some point the PCs should catch up to the crew and figure some of this out. Presumably the original government will also have some goals, and the PCs should run into people on various planes.
Some Sketchy Ideas for Early Encounters:
- A bunch of planes should be "played straight" and have no big connection to the plot: fish-out-of-water stories, tunnel is in a guarded location that the PCs need to break into, there is some treasure to loot and take with them, etc etc.
- The original crew should be pretty awful - in some planes, PCs need to deal with fallout of their actions. This should prepare the PCs for the fact that they might not face a very pleasant reception when they catch up to the original crew.
- In some planes, people figure out what is going on and try to take control of and stabilize the tunnels.
- In some planes, allies and/or antagonists follow the PCs.
- In some planes, the PCs run into a major threat to other planes (e.g. the plane has been completely taken over by shadows, who threaten to spill over into adjacent planes through the tunnels the machine is making).
- Some planes should know about planar travel, and it should be possible for PCs to steal some of this technology (maybe this is how they catch up with the original crew for the first time). This tech shouldn't stay with them forever. One option I like is stealing a planar "battleship" like in the Planebreaker campaign book.
Thanks for any advice!
PS: I've run into a lot of DM advice along the lines of "at first, just prep the small area you start in." However, that seems really hard to do for this sort of campaign - I don't know how I would get NPCs to act coherently without first establishing the basic rules for how planar travel works. Am I missing something? Or does "the basic magical premise of the campaign" count as "the area you start in" for this sort of campaign?
I'm a pretty new DM, but experienced enough to know that I shouldn't try to map out the details of a campaign before starting. I still want to map out the basic rules of how the multiverse works and the goals of some antagonists. I find that having a slightly-rigid framework helps me map out sessions, foreshadow, and so on. I'm looking for advice on how to do this.
Goals: The only real point of having multiverse rules is to serve the gameplay. The "main" rules should be simple enough that the PCs understand immediately what is going on, and they should put a lot of pressure on the PCs to keep jumping. Ideally, they would still allow some messing around (e.g. so that PCs will usually jump to a new plane alone, but might occasionally jump to an old plane or have people tag along).
Current Ideas for Multiverse:
PCs start on a low-magic, high-tech world. Government has recently figured out how to "drill" between planes. They build a little drone to do this, and find that the nearby planes are low-tech. They decide to build a big drilling machine to build a "tunnel," travel a low-tech nearby plane, drop another device to stabilize the "tunnel" between planes, and drill for oil. They start building the device and training a crew to operate it. However, there is a training "accident": the drilling machine turns on, the crew follow it and can't get it to turn off before it makes another jump. The PCs are sent to rescue the initial with a one-use "get-back-home" teleporting device and some kits.
The basic rules for the drilling machine are something like: the machine "drills" at a constant rate, but the boundaries between planes are of different thicknesses. Every few days it "breaks through" and creates a tunnel between planes. The tunnel is unstable and oscillates: it is open for about an hour, turns off for a day, on for an hour, off for a week, on for an hour, and so on.
PCs may have other McGuffins that lets them e.g. phone home and talk to their original government, though this should be at least a little unreliable. This allows for the possibility of them getting new tech or instructions (or for going rogue).
Current Ideas for Antagonists:
The original training crew was contacted by some entity from another plane, who told them it's plane's "coordinates" and instructed them to drill towards it. I don't think it is too important to know what this entity wants or what the original crew believes, but I'm thinking something like:
(1) The original world has a lot of ambient magic (because it isn't being used), and the entity wants to harvest it. This is of course an inversion of the government's plans.
(2) The crew believes that the entity is essentially an angel, and that they are going to merge the worlds.
Presumably at some point the PCs should catch up to the crew and figure some of this out. Presumably the original government will also have some goals, and the PCs should run into people on various planes.
Some Sketchy Ideas for Early Encounters:
- A bunch of planes should be "played straight" and have no big connection to the plot: fish-out-of-water stories, tunnel is in a guarded location that the PCs need to break into, there is some treasure to loot and take with them, etc etc.
- The original crew should be pretty awful - in some planes, PCs need to deal with fallout of their actions. This should prepare the PCs for the fact that they might not face a very pleasant reception when they catch up to the original crew.
- In some planes, people figure out what is going on and try to take control of and stabilize the tunnels.
- In some planes, allies and/or antagonists follow the PCs.
- In some planes, the PCs run into a major threat to other planes (e.g. the plane has been completely taken over by shadows, who threaten to spill over into adjacent planes through the tunnels the machine is making).
- Some planes should know about planar travel, and it should be possible for PCs to steal some of this technology (maybe this is how they catch up with the original crew for the first time). This tech shouldn't stay with them forever. One option I like is stealing a planar "battleship" like in the Planebreaker campaign book.
Thanks for any advice!
PS: I've run into a lot of DM advice along the lines of "at first, just prep the small area you start in." However, that seems really hard to do for this sort of campaign - I don't know how I would get NPCs to act coherently without first establishing the basic rules for how planar travel works. Am I missing something? Or does "the basic magical premise of the campaign" count as "the area you start in" for this sort of campaign?