I have a concept for a campaign which I am struggling to flesh out. I think it's got great potential but I'm really struggling to put any flesh on the bones!
The general concept for this is that the PC's have been fighting the villain for some time, then they lose their memories. The villain is going to be a charismatic manipulator and will be using their knowledge of the PCs (who the villain has met, spoken with, and knows very well) to manipulate them throughout the campaign. The rest of the world will also know the party.
How can I put this together into something more tangible? At present it's scarcely more than an idea!
A couple of ideas I've had:
The villain will be fed up of fighting them. They will exhibit resignation when they "first" meet.
The villain might have a trophy room of previous victories over the party
Here's the full explanation of their predicament:
The PCs are involved in a ritual with an Artificer who promises to help improve their chances against the villain, who is currently attempting to seize power in some way. The Artificer explains that when the ritual is complete, they will not be able to die - if they do, they will reappear here in exactly the same way they are now - with the same memories. He recommends keeping a diary for themselves to read if they should have to reemerge.
The ritual goes off, and there's a bright flash of light. Suddenly the room seems different; the plaster is cracked where before it was immaculate. The artificer seems much older and is wearing different clothes. He looks up at them and shouts "All of you! How did they kill all of you at once! You've overloaded it". the machine is belching smoke. "That's the last time I can bring you back!" he shouts "From now on, you've got one shot!".
The party is brought up to speed that it's 50 years since the ritual, and the villain has succeeded in seizing power. They have been fighting them for years, and have been dying and re-emerging. This is the last time they can do it.
The party emerges to a different world to the one they left - twisted by evil magic, the people are oppressed, the soldiers are brutal and mean. They are famous for deeds which they performed in previous lives, and have no memory of. They are in a world which knows them well, but which is utterly foreign to them.
This sort of reminds me of the Nameless One from the Planescape Torment game from many years ago. He was for all intents and purposes immortal and would reincarnate when he died, how many times he had done so was unknown. At the time the game is set he wakes up in a morgue in the the city/plane of Sigil. You spend the game (if I recall) encountering lots of people you've had previous conversations with but have no basis for when/where/how you met them.
Have the party lose their memories and have to use their diaries to piece things together. You could have the players do a little homework and write some diary entries, the more effort they put in the more their "latest" incarnation remembers when the game starts. You also have some additional NPC info to draw on/incorporate into the game world on so takes a little work off of you.
You could also watch an episode of Red Dwarf called Back to Reality (episode 6 of season 5) which deals with the crew of Red Dwarf waking up with no memory after dying and having to piece things together, finding luggage with names on, ID badges etc. One of crew gets identified as being the leader of a "evil" regime so for you game you could have the villan try to convince the party that one of their member is actually the head of the organisation.
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Have the party lose their memories and have to use their diaries to piece things together. You could have the players do a little homework and write some diary entries, the more effort they put in the more their "latest" incarnation remembers when the game starts. You also have some additional NPC info to draw on/incorporate into the game world on so takes a little work off of you.
Sadly this won't work as I am trying to enforce the idea that player knowledge = character knowledge, so the onus will be entirely on me to fill in their diaries (predominantly being things not to try, things that did or didn't work etc.). If the players fill out the diaries themselves then they will already know why those entries were there - I want them to read them as if they have never seen them before - so that's what it has to be!
I am also considering having one of the players have been a traitor in a previous life, but I'm concerned this would put a wedge between players which is a big heap of no-go. Logically, what they did in a previous life has no bearing on their current characters, but saying that one of them had betrayed the group will not help anything, despite being a kinda cool plot point!
So, I'm playing in a campaign that is a much mellower version of this. Maybe this will give you ideas:
Our party woke up in a locked room as strangers with no knowledge of how we got there. After escaping and going back to civilization, we discovered we lost a whole year of our lives, and all of us had strange markings on our hands. A mysterious mage found us and told us he was disappointed in us and wanted us to fulfill our obligations to him - our strange markings being a symbol of some kind of pact we'd made. He was a jerk, and after a battle with his minions, we told him to take a hike.
Later, another mysterious mage happened upon us and said he wanted to hire us to combat the first mage. In return, he'd tell us what happened in our missing year. He was slightly more trustworthy, so we got on board. The campaign so far as been us finding parts to build a magic MacGuffin to defeat the first mage. However, we keep running into NPCs that somehow know us...and the more we do, the more we find out that we did some really sketchy stuff in our missing year. On top of that, we are no longer sure the mage we're trying to defeat is really the bad guy. In fact, we may be working for the true bad guy right now...
We've had to do a lot of in-session research and interviews with NPCs to get a better sense of the situation. The ones who knew us during our missing year are patient with our confusion and questions. And we know that our enemies know a lot about our capabilities and have the capacity to spy on us. But we're more powerful than we used to be, and we feel like we're making progress in putting the pieces together about our past and our future.
Hope that helps!
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I have a concept for a campaign which I am struggling to flesh out. I think it's got great potential but I'm really struggling to put any flesh on the bones!
The general concept for this is that the PC's have been fighting the villain for some time, then they lose their memories. The villain is going to be a charismatic manipulator and will be using their knowledge of the PCs (who the villain has met, spoken with, and knows very well) to manipulate them throughout the campaign. The rest of the world will also know the party.
How can I put this together into something more tangible? At present it's scarcely more than an idea!
A couple of ideas I've had:
Here's the full explanation of their predicament:
The PCs are involved in a ritual with an Artificer who promises to help improve their chances against the villain, who is currently attempting to seize power in some way. The Artificer explains that when the ritual is complete, they will not be able to die - if they do, they will reappear here in exactly the same way they are now - with the same memories. He recommends keeping a diary for themselves to read if they should have to reemerge.
The ritual goes off, and there's a bright flash of light. Suddenly the room seems different; the plaster is cracked where before it was immaculate. The artificer seems much older and is wearing different clothes. He looks up at them and shouts "All of you! How did they kill all of you at once! You've overloaded it". the machine is belching smoke. "That's the last time I can bring you back!" he shouts "From now on, you've got one shot!".
The party is brought up to speed that it's 50 years since the ritual, and the villain has succeeded in seizing power. They have been fighting them for years, and have been dying and re-emerging. This is the last time they can do it.
The party emerges to a different world to the one they left - twisted by evil magic, the people are oppressed, the soldiers are brutal and mean. They are famous for deeds which they performed in previous lives, and have no memory of. They are in a world which knows them well, but which is utterly foreign to them.
Any thoughts welcomed!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
This sort of reminds me of the Nameless One from the Planescape Torment game from many years ago. He was for all intents and purposes immortal and would reincarnate when he died, how many times he had done so was unknown. At the time the game is set he wakes up in a morgue in the the city/plane of Sigil. You spend the game (if I recall) encountering lots of people you've had previous conversations with but have no basis for when/where/how you met them.
Have the party lose their memories and have to use their diaries to piece things together. You could have the players do a little homework and write some diary entries, the more effort they put in the more their "latest" incarnation remembers when the game starts. You also have some additional NPC info to draw on/incorporate into the game world on so takes a little work off of you.
You could also watch an episode of Red Dwarf called Back to Reality (episode 6 of season 5) which deals with the crew of Red Dwarf waking up with no memory after dying and having to piece things together, finding luggage with names on, ID badges etc. One of crew gets identified as being the leader of a "evil" regime so for you game you could have the villan try to convince the party that one of their member is actually the head of the organisation.
Sadly this won't work as I am trying to enforce the idea that player knowledge = character knowledge, so the onus will be entirely on me to fill in their diaries (predominantly being things not to try, things that did or didn't work etc.). If the players fill out the diaries themselves then they will already know why those entries were there - I want them to read them as if they have never seen them before - so that's what it has to be!
I am also considering having one of the players have been a traitor in a previous life, but I'm concerned this would put a wedge between players which is a big heap of no-go. Logically, what they did in a previous life has no bearing on their current characters, but saying that one of them had betrayed the group will not help anything, despite being a kinda cool plot point!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
So, I'm playing in a campaign that is a much mellower version of this. Maybe this will give you ideas:
Our party woke up in a locked room as strangers with no knowledge of how we got there. After escaping and going back to civilization, we discovered we lost a whole year of our lives, and all of us had strange markings on our hands. A mysterious mage found us and told us he was disappointed in us and wanted us to fulfill our obligations to him - our strange markings being a symbol of some kind of pact we'd made. He was a jerk, and after a battle with his minions, we told him to take a hike.
Later, another mysterious mage happened upon us and said he wanted to hire us to combat the first mage. In return, he'd tell us what happened in our missing year. He was slightly more trustworthy, so we got on board. The campaign so far as been us finding parts to build a magic MacGuffin to defeat the first mage. However, we keep running into NPCs that somehow know us...and the more we do, the more we find out that we did some really sketchy stuff in our missing year. On top of that, we are no longer sure the mage we're trying to defeat is really the bad guy. In fact, we may be working for the true bad guy right now...
We've had to do a lot of in-session research and interviews with NPCs to get a better sense of the situation. The ones who knew us during our missing year are patient with our confusion and questions. And we know that our enemies know a lot about our capabilities and have the capacity to spy on us. But we're more powerful than we used to be, and we feel like we're making progress in putting the pieces together about our past and our future.
Hope that helps!