Request for assistance with Planescape 4E setting

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Degausser's picture
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Request for assistance with Planescape 4E setting

Okay, so, I am planning on being crazy and trying a Planescape 4th E game. So far, I have figured out most stuff, such as factions and races, but I want help with my basic premise, it is quite involved and will take a bit of time to explain, but here is my concept.

Premise: use old cosmology with a twist, use old alignment system.

Idea: Approx. two decades ago, THE general of the grey Waste (yes, HIM, that guy) searched for (and eventually found) something called the well of eternity, something that had not been seen in untold years. The Well of Eternity is on the underside of the spire, at the junction point of all the outer planes. The Well of eternity also is linked to the existence of the multiverse.

While attempting to manipulate the multiverse with the well of eternity, things went horribly wrong. Not knowing exactly what he was doing, the General caused massive (but seemingly unrelated) cataclysms throughout all of reality. Prime material worlds were "blurred" creating an area of intense life (the feywild) and intense death (the Shadowfel) on each prime. Some monsters blinked out of existence, while others were created, and the laws of reality were re-written (resulting in the new 4th ed magic system.) This also resulted in the weave failing in Forgotten Realms, and various other disasters throughout multiple planes. This tampering utterly unmade the General, and thus very few people know what actually happened (yes, I plan to have this come up late in the campaign).

Fast forward 20 years:

After a long and bloody civil war, the Yugoloths finally have a new General of Gehenna. This never-before-seen breed of Yugoloth is ambitious, to say the least. He has decided to end the blood war and stage a grab for power in both Baator and the Abyss. He plans to do this by selling his human-like Semi-Yugoloths (can't remember their name) into the blood war, and having them sew dissention and confusion among the ranks. He also plans to spread lies and misinformation across the planes, and use the belief of other people to subtly influence the blood war to such a point that it will be malleable.

A small secret society of people called the "Order of the Black Lotus" discovered the new General's plan, and they realize he is complemently barmy and that it will never work. However, they also know that it will do SOMETHING and probably de-stabalize the planes for the worse. So they started using cloak-and-dagger techniques to try and counter what the General was doing. Occasionally, they needed to use force. So, they created a fictitious adventuring band, and gave them all the credit for fighting the Yugoloths, in an attempt to divert attention away from themselves.

Unfortunately, stories of this band started spreading like wildfire, aided by what they had (apparently) accomplished, and spread by the lips of every bard and storyteller, pretty soon they were the most popular thing in recent history. With so many people believing in them, they came into existence, as the PCs.

So the PCs pop into existence, knowing their names and who they are, but very little else (they cannot remember anything that has happened to them recently.)

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Degausser's picture
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Guys?  Hello?  Aw, c'mon,

Guys?  Hello?  Aw, c'mon, I need some feedback.  Is my story good?  Bad?  Horrible?  I would love some feedback, considering I am not a very good GM and need all the help I can get.

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Jem
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Naturally this setup

Naturally this setup requires a party of PCs willing to go along with the "you're an amnesiac" background, which may limit your options on players.  If they're willing to run with it, then they'll be encountering a lot of bardic stories that have an odd ring of familiarity to them, to be sure.  It's certainly a powerful takeoff on the theme of belief shaping reality that runs through traditional Planescape.

 

The "amnesiac" start also requires that the group at least believe it has a reason to stay together, and they will need starter adventures to work their way in to existence.  Right now what you have is very general, and like any such background it can work fine if the individual adventures are ineresting.  Unless you're starting at a very high level, I don't suppose the players will be going anywhere near the center of the multiverse for a while yet, so you'll need a few things for them to do in the meantime.  :^)

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Naturally, I have them run

Naturally, I have them run through low-level adventures first.  The first adventure has them wake up in the wake of a Blood War Battlefield somewhere in the outlands, and they are almost immidiatly attacked by other raiders looking to loot the corpses of the fallen (after all, bring in two-dozen Longswords in decent shape and that's a good haul for a party of first lvl guys, even if none of them are magical!)  They will eventually bumble into Sigil, where they (if all goes according to plan) will realize that they need money if they are going to survive in Sigil for long.  Eventually they will get hired for a couple courier missions, running research notes between scholars for a level or two, all the while hearing that their names sound framiliar.

 

Meanwhile, a mercenary company hears that these supposed heroes apparantly popped up, and are hired by the Yugoloths to kill them "in case they are those guys" even though they are pretty sure the party is not.  So they will be attacked by random mercinaries for no decernable reason from time to time.

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Degausser's picture
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I have come up with the 15

I have come up with the 15 new factols for my campaign, as well as the faction namer abilities.  The Namer abilities can be found in another thread (I will post them here if you want), whereas here are the new factols.  Again, tell me what you think!

 

http://www.angelfire.com/80s/alternate/a/Factols.html

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Here are the changes I will

Here are the changes I will make to this campaign, as always, I would love input.

1)Use standard 2nd ed. cosmology.  However, each Prime material plane was 'blurred' creating a shadowfell and Feywild plane on every prime material world.  

2)Use 2nd ed. alignments.

3)The "Analyse Portal" ritual is now a lvl 1 ritual, with normal lvl 1 ritual costs assosiated with it.  It can no longer stabalise portals or determine who went through one last, but it can determine portal keys.  The old "analyse portal" spell is now "manipulate portal" and functions the same.  It, however, cannot stabalize portals going into Sigil (only the Lady of pain can manipulate Sigil's portals)

4)There are no spelljammer ships.  Plane Shift now works as True Portal, except that it will only transport you to the 'outermost' area of a plane.  For outer planes, this means the area immidiatly next to a plane's gate-town gate.  For the outlands, it means at the spire, etc.

5)There is now a new Racial trait: Planar.  Anyone born to planar parents has the racial trait planar.  Planar charactes can notice portals on a successful perception check (DC 20), but can be hedged out by magic circles, and can be banished.  Characters born on Prime Material Feywild or shadowfell worlds are NOT planar, but all Immortals (and thus: Devas) are.  It takes about two or three generations for people to become planar, thus, if two prime elves settled on the planes, their grandchildren would probably be planar.

6)True Portal will also teleport you to most places on the planes.  Places inaccessable by True Portal are: Sigil, some divine domains, the 8th and 9th lvls of Baator, various powerful domains of the abyss, the top of Mount Celistia, etc.

7)I am getting rid of the "Magic gets less powerful the farther you are from your home domain" rule from 2nd ed.  While it kinda made sense, it unfairly punished divine characters, and ended up screwing players out of their magical goodies.

8)Baatorian Green Steel has new rules: When used to make a bladed weapon (such as a heavy or light blade, an axe, a spear, or a polearm), the weapon becomes similar to a +1 Vicious version of the weapon.  It is not, actually magical, thus people cannot enchant or disenchant green steel, but it must be crafted.  However, it remains, to all other effects, a +1 vicious weapon.  The cost is only 4/5ths the normal price.  There exist more rare and purified veins of the metal, which result in +2, +3, +4 etc. versions of those weapons.

When Green Steel is applied to armor (only chain, scale, or Plate), it acts as screaming armor, with the same properties as above (4/5ths cost, not magic.)  Green Steel armor is almost never masterwork (though GMs may wish to allow some masterwork materials if they see fit, such as Gith Green Steel armor, which does not denote what the armor was made out of, but how it was made.)

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Center of All's picture
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The origin story sounds a

The origin story sounds a LOT like WarCraft lore, right down to the Well of Eternity Eye-wink You'll probably want to come up with something different -- at the very least you'll want to rename the "Well of Eternity."

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Center of All wrote: The

Center of All wrote:

The origin story sounds a LOT like WarCraft lore, right down to the Well of Eternity Eye-wink You'll probably want to come up with something different -- at the very least you'll want to rename the "Well of Eternity."

 

Lol, I hadn't even realized that, I forgot all about the WoW 'Well of eternity.'  Maybe I should just call it 'The infinity well.'

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A great role player thinks of others' characters.

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