How Would You Run an All-Petitioner Game?

[Sardia]

Rocks fall, everyone dies. After that, assuming the players wind up on the same outer plane as exceptional petitioners, how would you go about setting up their quest for a new material existence?

[Jerthanis]

Whoa, I actually had this very same idea about 6 months ago, but instead of falling rocks killing the party, it was the BBEG of the campaign, who ignores tradition and offs the entire party in the most efficient manner possible, ensuring that they cannot come back to haunt him (or so he thinks). The way I was considering handling it was that the players started as Lantern Archons (or something) and as they level up they gain more racial HD or class levels, and they could trade in the racial HD to become higher level outsiders. So a Wizard might just stay a Lantern Archon for his entire career, but a fighter-type might keep taking outsider HD until he qualified to be a Solar. Now, naturally, the mechanics of this process take a lot of hammering out, and I never got very far, but I really liked the idea.

Running adventures on the planes can be a bit of a pain though, with problems involved in what threats can be presented believably. Also, some players might have a lot of trouble getting attached to roleplaying as a Lantern Archon, or whatever type of outsider they qualify for at first. I thought an appropriate end to the campaign could be the players finally confronting the horribly powerful BBEG who murdered them in the first session and finally putting a stop to the evils they had begun their quest to do.

[BlueWizard]

I'll tell ya this, unless you are starting the campaign like this, the players are not going to like their players indefensibly killed.
They will never trust you as a DM again.
Same as railroading.

[Thomas]

Agreed there; it's got to be an all-new game, rather than railroading the PCs dead. No matter how cool the GM thinks it is, the players will almost certainly be disgruntled, insulted, and/or unhappy if actual PCs are just bumped off to start what's essentially a gimmick adventure (or a series of them).

Our local gaming magazine (only RPG magazine ever published in Finland...) had a great Call of Cthulhu -style (BRP rules) afterlife adventure; the characters started out as laborers and crafters in an Egyptian village, and they die almost immediately. The stats of their afterlife selves are determined by their family's wealth, and how much they use for which rite and supply for the funeral. The actual adventure is full of Egyptian mythology, naturally. That's what I recommend - a regular adventure of whichever style you prefer, but full of symbols & symbolism, mythology, and magic greater than the puny sort that there are rules for.

[healbot42]

I've thought about this before and the best way to do it, I think, is to let them become petitioners of the plain that lets them keep their class levels minus a few (I think Ysgard or Elesium).

This will allow players to keep the characters that they made and still get some of the fun petitioner abilities.

[Gorbash]

Just throw them in Sigil and make a big quest to get back to Prime Material to kill BBEG. With their memories or without, as you please.

[Variable Arcana]

In the version of this that's been going around in my head for some years, the party (rolled up in the knoweldge that they're going to lose their first epic battle, and all die) gets wiped out by the BBEG, and sent on to their respective afterlives.

At least one ends up as a "messenger"-type Lantern Archon (but I'm picturing a barbarian who comes back as an einheriar (sp?) in Valhalla, and a NG thief who's now a musteval, and so on...) and at least one party member who got zapped with a really nasty spell by the BBEG and ends up in Hell as a lemure.

That would be the plot hook, of course. The Lantern finds out about the friend in Hell, and reconstitutes the party to try and rescue their friend.

[Sardia]

It's also something to do after the players manage to TPK themselves. No railroading involved, and they might well be happy that they've got something of a chance to get them back to mortal life...somehow...

[Closet_Skeleton]

I'd turn them into an extraplanar version of Delta Force. If they have the same diety they work for him, otherwise they get captured by demons (devils might work but they have to ask first).

Or you could send them to that Prison Plane. It has plenty of cool monsters spread out in various books.

[Gorbash]

And what if that player doesn't want to play a lantern archon? Or the other player doesn't want (or even worse, wouldn't like to play that, and says nothing and ruins the game by not enjoying his character) to play einheriar. And you can't really blame that player who gets to be a lemure.

[Sardia]

And what if that player doesn't want to play a lantern archon? Or the other player doesn't want (or even worse, wouldn't like to play that, and says nothing and ruins the game by not enjoying his character) to play einheriar. And you can't really blame that player who gets to be a lemure.

Thus the notion of petitioner-- they're rather close to the character they were playing before death.

[Variable Arcana]

*shrug*

That's why you start with new characters -- part of the "character design" would be what they start as in their afterlives.

Plus, you rush the first few HD of advancement (since they already were mid-level characters...) -- playing a hound archon (for the lantern) and a chain devil (for the lemure) starts to get more interesting...

[Person_Man]

I would actually write it as a long side quest, and then file it away until all the PCs die somehow. Don't force them into death. Just roll all of your dice in front of the DM screen, and eventually luck will kill them all for you. Then run your quest to get them back onto the Material Plane.