Campaign Idea! Big Brother is Broadcasting You [on Primetime]

[Xallace]

PCs are crazy. They do things that no sane person would do. They do things that many insane people wouldn't do.

Now let's say there's a world that embraces this, wholeheartedly. Let's say this world wants- no, needs something that only crazy people like adventurers are willing to get. Say all those ancient dungeons have ancient technology or something; power sources required to fuel today's society.

So somewhere between being unwanted outcasts and necessary for society, adventurers become a kind of pop-culture icon. Household names, even. Fan clubs pop up around these "heroes." Some adventurers sell their fame to corporations and start making appearances on advertisements.

Well, from out of nowhere comes a small company with an excess of Divination specialists. This company starts sending magical sensors to track the adventurers on their missions. The recordings are brought back to the studio, edited, and sold to the public in 22-minute segments.

The public goes wild. Finally able to see their heroes in action, fans across the nation sit down with their families and friends to watch their heroes (sometimes) overcome brutal traps, horrible monsters, and ancient machines. Of course, now they also get to see their heroes bite the dirt in gruesome ways.

The adventurers are split on their opinion. Some are all for this and sell themselves out to companies for extra training, equipment, and let's not forget face time. Others just want the broadcasters to butt out, and make it a habit of taking out the sensors if they find them. Others are neutral towards the whole thing, of course.

The problem is that the involvement of all these money-grubbers is that competition is rampant. Teams are fighting each other (or at least, more viciously) rather than helping each other out. Common folk and company-trained tactical squadrons are entering the deep dungeons in the hopes of fame and fortune. The dungeons are a lot more hazardous than they used to be.


But here's the secret: This show is not just popular on the Prime Material, oh no! This show is very popular on the outer planes especially. The thing is, this "small broadcasting company" that popped up? Actually an alliance of good and evil! You see, the end of the world is coming, the great war to decide the fate of Good vs Evil is near at hand!

Neither side is willing to send their full force into the fray, so in order to minimize bloodshed (as the Good like) and minimize resource investment (always nice, by anyone's standards), both teams have agreed to pick their champions from the material plane, and have these 10-or-so individuals decide it all instead. And what better way to figure it out, than with a competition?


Too Long Didn't Read? Good and Evil are deciding the fate of the world based on a violent reality show. Although I think it's much lamer if you just sum it up like that.


Whatcha think?

[Octopus Jack]

I love it, this gets the 8 thumbs up

[Draconi Redfir]

i was actually in something like this once called an X-crawl. the whole campain was just a big gameshow for the amusement of others, my charicter died after a burning arrow launched by one of her allys lit the ten alchemists fire flasks in her backback while trying to free her from spider webs.

[Axolotl]

Very similar to the XCrawl setting, although different implimentation of the same basic idea.

Sounds good.

[Dornath]

This sounds awesome. I would love to play in a game like that.

Now...if only I could convince my DM to think that way..

[Infernum]

Sound rather entertaining, I would enjoy playing in a setting like this. Although the only thing your gonna run into is the Players running up against lots of NPCs as opposed to monsters if this thing is as popular as I think im reading it is. If these companies and other individuals are entering dungeons, your going to end up with small scale skirmishes kinda like in Shadow Run, not really a dungeon crawl. Also, whats to keep the bad guys from watching these "broadcasts" and adventure proofing their dungeons.

A very interesting, and yet lethal as hell setting depending on how you run it.

[Raimun]

How about they are on an island, Survivor-style? I always thought the show lacked swords.

Anyway, a reality-tv campaign would be almost impossible for me to play. That's because I once took an oath to never watch or interact in any way with reality-tv. True story, in fact. I'm hoping this would become a trend and end the whole thing.

And with that, I return the thread I hijacked.

[Xallace]

Anyway, a reality-tv campaign would be almost impossible for me to play. That's because I once took an oath to never watch or interact in any way with reality-tv. True story, in fact. I'm hoping this would become a trend and end the whole thing.

I've never watched reality TV either!

---

X-Crawl, huh? I'll look into this.

@Infernum: Maybe not that popular, it's still for "the highly trained and the crazies" only; others don't last too long. So other teams would be used as special encounters once every few dungeons (but maybe more at certain junctions of the story).

[Rumpus]

There's actually a book that's a lot like this. The title is Heroes Die (don't recall the author). It's a bit of a SF/Fantasy mashup, but I thought you were ripping the book off until about halfway through your post. Might want to give it a gander if you decide to run this campaign.