Waspinator
2008-05-22, 10:37 PM
There's a book that I've had for awhile called "Mechamorphosis". It's a third-party sourcebook that all about running Transformers-type robots under the d20 rules. It's not the most perfect or complete game system and I'm not sure that I would want to run a game where the players were playing "Mechamorphs", but an idea I've been thinking of is whether it'd be interesting to use them as the bad guys in a D&D campaign. That way, I can control the use of these new game design elements a little bit more than if the players had access to them. I'm not sure if this would be a play-by-post or a real-life game, right now I'm just in the brainstorming stages.
Basically, start with your stereotypical swords-and-sorcery, D&D world. It could be Greyhawk or Faerun or whatever. Then have a race of giant alien robots invade it. Depending on which variant of the Transformers mythos we're ripping off, they could have crash-landed on the planet centuries go and only now be waking up or they could have just arrived. Either way, at least some of them would be hostile and wanting to conquer the planet and although the more highly magical things like dragons and high-level wizards would be able to pose threats to them, they would probably succeed through stealth and sheer force of technology. You don't expect your horse-drawn carriage and its horse to turn into giant alien robots and attack the king, after all.
This is a rough outline of how I would have the campaign play out: The characters would probably be somewhere in the level five to seven range or higher in order to give them a decent level of power. You don't want them to be in the "killing rats for pennies" levels, since then it'd be hard to justify having even the smallest of alien robots being a fair fight. Anyway, they would be contacted by the leaders in charge of a small mining operation to help retake their mine from "strange little metal men" who had invaded it. They would fight their way through many smaller, possibly non-sentient robots who would turn into bits of construction or mining equipment until they found the 'bot in charge of the mining effort, who would probably turn into something threatening and appropriate to D&D, like an owlbear or something. From examing the remains of the defeated robots and from bits of dialogue I would have the leader throw in, I would give the PCs enough information to deduce the alien origin (strange starmetal-like materials, markings that resemble no language ever seen on this planet, references by the big 'bot to an invasion and/or coming conquest, etc..). From there, I'm not quite sure where to go. Should I have the robots take over a kingdom and start attacking others with an army? Should I have them be constructing a base out in the desert somewhere that would be used to contact their home world for reinforcements? I'd be open to any suggestions or ideas that anyone might have.
Basically, start with your stereotypical swords-and-sorcery, D&D world. It could be Greyhawk or Faerun or whatever. Then have a race of giant alien robots invade it. Depending on which variant of the Transformers mythos we're ripping off, they could have crash-landed on the planet centuries go and only now be waking up or they could have just arrived. Either way, at least some of them would be hostile and wanting to conquer the planet and although the more highly magical things like dragons and high-level wizards would be able to pose threats to them, they would probably succeed through stealth and sheer force of technology. You don't expect your horse-drawn carriage and its horse to turn into giant alien robots and attack the king, after all.
This is a rough outline of how I would have the campaign play out: The characters would probably be somewhere in the level five to seven range or higher in order to give them a decent level of power. You don't want them to be in the "killing rats for pennies" levels, since then it'd be hard to justify having even the smallest of alien robots being a fair fight. Anyway, they would be contacted by the leaders in charge of a small mining operation to help retake their mine from "strange little metal men" who had invaded it. They would fight their way through many smaller, possibly non-sentient robots who would turn into bits of construction or mining equipment until they found the 'bot in charge of the mining effort, who would probably turn into something threatening and appropriate to D&D, like an owlbear or something. From examing the remains of the defeated robots and from bits of dialogue I would have the leader throw in, I would give the PCs enough information to deduce the alien origin (strange starmetal-like materials, markings that resemble no language ever seen on this planet, references by the big 'bot to an invasion and/or coming conquest, etc..). From there, I'm not quite sure where to go. Should I have the robots take over a kingdom and start attacking others with an army? Should I have them be constructing a base out in the desert somewhere that would be used to contact their home world for reinforcements? I'd be open to any suggestions or ideas that anyone might have.