So i came across some stuff i like and wanted to do something with... so i decided on a BBEG that the players aren’t supposed to fight but to stop, maybe something sealed away that is up there with the great old ones... thinking someone from an ancient civilization that was wiped out and he was sealed away after his reign of terror.
then I was thinking of having remnants of that mess known as Void Light which would be parts of land tainted with dead plants, anti magic, messed up gravity, and cracks leaking glowing light in the earth. Not large areas but more small town size here and there spread far apart. Also was thinking of having it act like radiation causing void sickness (an illness the gods can’t touch).
then I have the thought of reflavoring some shadowfell creatures and using star spawn creatures for some things associated with all of this.
also was planning on having a mad scientist who has been studying ancient ruins and hired bandits to seek out test subjects and equipment he needs.
then I thought about maybe tossing i an oblex that if the party doesn’t think about killing in the lab will show up later stronger in another ark because of its escape.
Also I have a group chat they can’t reply in that I put quotes in such as patrons saying rumors and such just very vague things while i develope and brain storm. This allows me to see how they react to them so i can trial and error ideas while world building.
Also wondering where the skeleton is. This in and of itself a mystery I really want to solve.
Is the BBEG a skeleton? Are they trying to summon the skeleton? Are we talking like a medium-sized skeleton or like Majora's Mask Link fighting the giant Ikhana skeleton in the graveyard, maybe?
Or is this like the post and brainstorming is the skeleton? As in, this is the foundation, or "skeleton" of your campaign and you need to "flesh" it out.
How meta are we going? Are the players going to fight the "skeleton" of your story? They were the skeleton all along?
Ok, no seriously now I said that how about the players are already dead but don't know it yet? They have succumbed to the void sickness and everyone interacts with them in weird ways they don't understand yet. But the mad scientist knows what is going on. The mad scientist is actually the good guy but due to their sickness and him being "mad" from their perspective he is a bad guy.
Gasp! Maybe the players were the subjects of the mad scientist's experiments when they were alive? Dun dun duuuuuun!!
Ok, in all seriousness, I like the "bare bones" of your ideas but without more info, I don't quite know what you are asking for. Like it is all a great start it just needs more cohesiveness and "built" into a full campaign.
Remember, you don't have to have everything figured out right away. You can just throw hints at the lore of your world while focusing on the immediate adventure. Especially if you plan to get playing soon, then figure out that first adventure that will play out over X number of sessions so that in between you can work on the next leg of the adventure and have it prepared in time.
Yeah sorry for the misunderstanding, yes it’s me brainstorming the “skeleton” of my campaign although I do plan something with undead eventually lol.
maybe something like the void light causing an anomaly leading to some sort of ghostland.
also thanks for the advice on where to start, just trying to form this idea out (also yeah slight inspiration from a trash anime with the void light and the mad scientist side of things)
Ok so you have a lot of ideas of what you might do, work on which of those ideas are concrete, and to what extent.
I'm making the assumption that the mad scientist, BBEG, the oblex are things the players won't know anything about until after you've already been playing a while. This doesn't have to be the case if you like the flair of having the BBEG show up in the very first session and have a good story hook with it, but aside from that.
I think the void sickness and at least some ways in which it affects the land is the only thing that has to be decided on early under the assumption that it is widespread enough that pretty much everyone knows this is a phenomenon that exists. Basically how you literally cannot be oblivious to the coronavirus without having lived completely under a rock. The void sickness is a fact of your world's reality just as much as blue skies and purple worms.
You don't need the cause of the void sickness right now, but you definitely need to figure out how it affects the areas which it has infested and how people adapt. How widespread is the void phenomenon, not just their size?
Are they so frequent and commonplace that if the kids run out to play in the woods, the parents have to say "and don't you go near that void you know what happened to the Salvatore boy" and maybe the kids dare each other to see who can get closest? Is it instead something that you probably only see if you've done a lot of traveling, but not likely every traveler comes across one unless there is a void near enough to heavy traffic? Are they rare enough that many people think they might just be rumors, or if they believe such a thing occurs they might be the same as frequent as amusement parks (and whether or not they are treated as sightseeing locations varies depending on the phenomenon present in the land."
And consider that. If the "wonder" of the way in which the void affects the land is so great (i.e. "hey we're going to visit the anti-gravity fields wanna come?") people will ignore the possibility of the void sickness cause stupid people exist. (there are so many parallels with what is going on with coronavirus you can work with here)
thanks and yeah I am actually taking a concept i liked from "Magatsu Wahrheit: Zuerst" and altering it for my world and story plot. So I was using the idea of the scientist to be the catalyst point to bring the players form normal adventures to trying to prevent the end of the world where they start going form hunting bandits and the such to dealing with an extraplanar threat to their world.
Then I was thinking the oblex would be a fun thing to use since I recently got the tome of foes which has each phase of the oblex and associating it to an experiment would make a fun toy to mess with and give the players a potential long lasting consequence or ally in the future based on actions.
Then I was thinking of using the focus of the story being the void light which I am altering off of the shows light fire situation where it causes a sickness that will eventually kill you if you are infected so maybe some sort of constitution saving throw that is very difficult? maybe cause it's phases to lower the persons maximum hp and exhaustion of the course of a year to make it a real known threat within the world? I could imagine the point when the players come across a child with it or possibly find out an npc they grow attached to has had it for several months to give them more of a drive to figure things out.
Ps also have been replaying dragon age series and may be gaining some inspiration on that side of things, not with the rift persay but the darkspawn and a mortal becoming a threat to even gods kind of deal.
I am also trying to think how I want to introduce them to this campaign since I know one or two players want to be artificers while another will probably be a wizard and another was thinking about a blood hunter this may work out really well!
So i came across some stuff i like and wanted to do something with... so i decided on a BBEG that the players aren’t supposed to fight but to stop, maybe something sealed away that is up there with the great old ones... thinking someone from an ancient civilization that was wiped out and he was sealed away after his reign of terror.
then I was thinking of having remnants of that mess known as Void Light which would be parts of land tainted with dead plants, anti magic, messed up gravity, and cracks leaking glowing light in the earth. Not large areas but more small town size here and there spread far apart. Also was thinking of having it act like radiation causing void sickness (an illness the gods can’t touch).
then I have the thought of reflavoring some shadowfell creatures and using star spawn creatures for some things associated with all of this.
also was planning on having a mad scientist who has been studying ancient ruins and hired bandits to seek out test subjects and equipment he needs.
then I thought about maybe tossing i an oblex that if the party doesn’t think about killing in the lab will show up later stronger in another ark because of its escape.
Also I have a group chat they can’t reply in that I put quotes in such as patrons saying rumors and such just very vague things while i develope and brain storm. This allows me to see how they react to them so i can trial and error ideas while world building.
thoughts so far?
I'm confused. I read the post and found nothing about a skeleton.
WHERE'S THE SKELETON?!
Also wondering where the skeleton is. This in and of itself a mystery I really want to solve.
Is the BBEG a skeleton? Are they trying to summon the skeleton? Are we talking like a medium-sized skeleton or like Majora's Mask Link fighting the giant Ikhana skeleton in the graveyard, maybe?
Or is this like the post and brainstorming is the skeleton? As in, this is the foundation, or "skeleton" of your campaign and you need to "flesh" it out.
How meta are we going? Are the players going to fight the "skeleton" of your story? They were the skeleton all along?
Ok, no seriously now I said that how about the players are already dead but don't know it yet? They have succumbed to the void sickness and everyone interacts with them in weird ways they don't understand yet. But the mad scientist knows what is going on. The mad scientist is actually the good guy but due to their sickness and him being "mad" from their perspective he is a bad guy.
Gasp! Maybe the players were the subjects of the mad scientist's experiments when they were alive? Dun dun duuuuuun!!
Ok, in all seriousness, I like the "bare bones" of your ideas but without more info, I don't quite know what you are asking for. Like it is all a great start it just needs more cohesiveness and "built" into a full campaign.
Remember, you don't have to have everything figured out right away. You can just throw hints at the lore of your world while focusing on the immediate adventure. Especially if you plan to get playing soon, then figure out that first adventure that will play out over X number of sessions so that in between you can work on the next leg of the adventure and have it prepared in time.
Yeah sorry for the misunderstanding, yes it’s me brainstorming the “skeleton” of my campaign although I do plan something with undead eventually lol.
maybe something like the void light causing an anomaly leading to some sort of ghostland.
also thanks for the advice on where to start, just trying to form this idea out (also yeah slight inspiration from a trash anime with the void light and the mad scientist side of things)
Ok so you have a lot of ideas of what you might do, work on which of those ideas are concrete, and to what extent.
I'm making the assumption that the mad scientist, BBEG, the oblex are things the players won't know anything about until after you've already been playing a while. This doesn't have to be the case if you like the flair of having the BBEG show up in the very first session and have a good story hook with it, but aside from that.
I think the void sickness and at least some ways in which it affects the land is the only thing that has to be decided on early under the assumption that it is widespread enough that pretty much everyone knows this is a phenomenon that exists. Basically how you literally cannot be oblivious to the coronavirus without having lived completely under a rock. The void sickness is a fact of your world's reality just as much as blue skies and purple worms.
You don't need the cause of the void sickness right now, but you definitely need to figure out how it affects the areas which it has infested and how people adapt. How widespread is the void phenomenon, not just their size?
Are they so frequent and commonplace that if the kids run out to play in the woods, the parents have to say "and don't you go near that void you know what happened to the Salvatore boy" and maybe the kids dare each other to see who can get closest? Is it instead something that you probably only see if you've done a lot of traveling, but not likely every traveler comes across one unless there is a void near enough to heavy traffic? Are they rare enough that many people think they might just be rumors, or if they believe such a thing occurs they might be the same as frequent as amusement parks (and whether or not they are treated as sightseeing locations varies depending on the phenomenon present in the land."
And consider that. If the "wonder" of the way in which the void affects the land is so great (i.e. "hey we're going to visit the anti-gravity fields wanna come?") people will ignore the possibility of the void sickness cause stupid people exist. (there are so many parallels with what is going on with coronavirus you can work with here)
thanks and yeah I am actually taking a concept i liked from "Magatsu Wahrheit: Zuerst" and altering it for my world and story plot. So I was using the idea of the scientist to be the catalyst point to bring the players form normal adventures to trying to prevent the end of the world where they start going form hunting bandits and the such to dealing with an extraplanar threat to their world.
Then I was thinking the oblex would be a fun thing to use since I recently got the tome of foes which has each phase of the oblex and associating it to an experiment would make a fun toy to mess with and give the players a potential long lasting consequence or ally in the future based on actions.
Then I was thinking of using the focus of the story being the void light which I am altering off of the shows light fire situation where it causes a sickness that will eventually kill you if you are infected so maybe some sort of constitution saving throw that is very difficult? maybe cause it's phases to lower the persons maximum hp and exhaustion of the course of a year to make it a real known threat within the world? I could imagine the point when the players come across a child with it or possibly find out an npc they grow attached to has had it for several months to give them more of a drive to figure things out.
Ps also have been replaying dragon age series and may be gaining some inspiration on that side of things, not with the rift persay but the darkspawn and a mortal becoming a threat to even gods kind of deal.
I am also trying to think how I want to introduce them to this campaign since I know one or two players want to be artificers while another will probably be a wizard and another was thinking about a blood hunter this may work out really well!