My campaign's going to reformat now for a post-apocalyptic survival hexcrawl, which means it's time for a very special retrospective about a real climactic final war.
Power Levels:
Boy, for a game that's supposed to be set in a gritty low level world that sure got out of hand didn't it?
Dragon-Gods, walking cities, angels and demons, what a blast!
The thing I like the most out of this whole experience is how it didn't come from the standard epic-scale paradigm where heroes get to level 30 and stab God in the throat with their vorpal sword.
For the most part, the individual Player Characters weren't particularly strong.
Like POWERLAD himself was only level 8, and that took a couple of years of playing every week - he had like 38HP.
In every case the character's true power wasn't in their class abilities. It wasn't an intrinsic ability they'd gained on leveling up, tons of hit points or a fat BAB.
Their power was in the external, extrinsic, and in-world. They gained their power through play - allies, friends, and trickery.
I like it a lot.
Finality:
It really felt like a climax.
I think that's the first time it's happened in however many years this game's been going now.
If we had just ended the campaign here and started a new one in a completely new world, I think everyone would have been satisfied with that.
We'd had character arcs, and story arcs, that all somehow rounded off and felt complete.
The stakes had risen higher than they'd ever been. Stakes don't get much higher than the actual potential destruction of the planet!
It was epic, it was calamitous, it was triumphant. Good end.
Intent:
On story arcs, something I really dig is how the story seemed to have a life of its own.
My hands weren't on the steering wheel at all and yet we found ourselves with a proper story, told in retrospect, that was complete.
Sometimes you see people who say a sandbox game means nothing really happens and players just kind of aimlessly wander around with no real objective. Hopefully this campaign puts the lie to that!
Timelines:
Something that was pretty funny was as a result of a new player - George (or alternatively Jorje, Jawj or J'jj) - reading my Apocalypse Timeline. He'd come in from Discord and had seen the sheet when I'd linked it there at some point.
As a result he became a sort of mad prophet who kept telling everyone about the terrible fates that would befall them when the world ended.
The Apocalypse Timeline was a great idea though.
It was my projected timeline of events if nothing (ie. the PCs) got in the way, and so I had to keep updating it as the players did stuff.
For instance, the projected religious revolution in Fate was forestalled by Styx taking over the city, and Ninhursag's rise got brought forward by several months due to POWERLAD's actions.
This meant that the mad prophet didn't exactly have an up-to-date prophetic vision, but since when has that stopped doomsayers?
The Future:
Considering the cataclysmic finality of this arc of the campaign, it's time to shift the flavour of the gameplay. Just going back to the rhythm of dungeon-town-dungeon-town would be lovely, but perhaps too comfy and familiar.
Instead we're going to be hexcrawling the post-apocalypse, and I'm pretty excited! The campaign has always taken place in a settled and civilised land with roads and villages dotted across the landscape.
Now it's all dead, and the last survivors are protected in a mere 6 mile hex.
A fun part is that players have been living in this world for years and years now.
They've got the old maps. They remember what's out there.
They've got exactly as much knowledge as their characters would have, a unique situation for a game's post-apocalypse! I don't have to explain how the world used to work, and how the world works now, because they already know it.
Expect a lot of bodged-together hexcrawl rules in the coming months. I know I'm pumped!
No comments:
Post a Comment