So, I've been slowly gearing up to launch a new D&D Campaign.

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Krishnath
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Post by Krishnath » 2 years ago

It is loosely based on Conan the Barbarian and the works that are part the Cthulhu mythos. It'll be using the 3.5/pathfinder ruleset because that is what we are the most familiar with. With a few of my own twists thrown in to the ruleset (but the players will be well informed of this beforehand).

The PC's will hopefully be a diverse bunch, but all will be first level characters who have been tried and sentenced to slavery by one of the larger empires of the world. It doesn't matter if they actually did what they were accused of, they got sentenced anyway, guilty or not. On the way to a slave colony, the ship they are on sinks in a storm, and they get washed up on the shore of an unknown continent, with only the most basic of basic gear (essentially only the clothes on their back), but I'll allow them to scavenge for gear before their first combat encounter. I've even created a few semi-randomized spellbooks should one of the players decide to create a wizard.

The basic premise of the campaign is for the players to survive on the unknown continent, contesting with various hostile (and possibly not so hostile) humanoid groups, a handful of elder races, alien invaders (in the form of among others Mi-Go and Neogi), and eventually decide if they are going to help or hinder the continents three most influential factions who all have designs on the world. One is a race from the ancient past, one from the far future, and one who is a rising power in the world. None of them succeeding in their plots would be good for the empires of the world, or the civilized races in general. I'll try to amp up the cosmic horror aspect as the campaign unfolds.

There won't be many playable races in the campaign, just the following:

Human
Dwarf
Elf
Gith
Orc
Half-Elf
Half-Orc

They will all be pretty basic versions with most of their abilities stripped away, each character will be allowed to select a "background" feat from a specifically created list that will show of their cultural or ethnic backgrounds in the setting. Different races have different available feats. The idea is that the campaign is relatively early in the era of the humanoids of the world, and many of them haven't had a chance to evolve into different subspecies. Which is why there is only an Elf race, and not High Elf, Wood Elf, Dark Elf, what have you. I think to many different races, although cool, can sometimes take away from the experience. I wanted more than just humans though, so I went with the three classic fantasy races of Dwarves, Elves, and Orcs, and then threw in a very basic Gith variant for good measure (which actually has to do with a major secret in the campaign).

I also dropped a few of the base classes, specifically Bard, Monk, and Paladin, as they didn't really fit into the "early age" setting I was going for. Although one background feat does allow a character to multiclass into the Bard class (the feat is called "Skald", and gives a couple of other small bonuses as well.)
Additionally, I added a few other classes that fit with the setting, most notably the Archivist from Heroes of Horror (A divine scholar) and the Oracle and Witch from the Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide.

There will be a "madness" mechanic, but I haven't settled on exactly which version I'll decide to use, but I still have a couple of months before the first session, and they really shouldn't encounter anything madness inducing until at least level 3. I'll try to avoid aberrations and outsiders until then. Lol.
But yeah, most aberrations and outsiders will be causing madness in those who encounter them, and that includes the "good" outsiders such as angels and archons.

As for the pantheons, I've made five major pantheons, and like in the mythos, I've used a mix of early history real world deities (particularly from the Pharaonic pantheon as Bast is a major character in the mythos), entities from the mythos itself, and entirely new made up entities. Basically none of the regular D&D deities except the two from Babylonian myth (Bahamut and Tiamat) make an appearance. And I can be honest and say that the one pantheon I had the most trouble with was the far eastern one. While eastern mysticism had some influence on the mythos (particularly in the form of Yig/Set, and the plateau of Leng), there was not all that much representation in it. Most of the mythos had a near Asian or North African feel. As with the mythos itself, most of the deities are at best ambivalent about the mortal races, but a considerably number are outright hostile, only a tiny handful are actually friendly towards mortals, Bast, Bahamut, and Mithra being the big three. Set/Yig is friendly towards humans, but that has more to do with his ultimate agenda than any form of nobility on his part, while Nodens is more incidentally friendly towards the mortal races only because he is the enemy of the creatures that want to see harm to mortals, he doesn't actually care particularly about mortals at all. Of the elder gods/great old ones, only one is outright hostile towards mortals, and if you've read the mythos you know who it is. It's not that Nyarlathotep hates mortals, he's just a sadistic prick.

The world itself, preliminarily named Tharsis because I couldn't come up with anything better that didn't feel forced, is located out in the backwaters of the prime material, near the edges of the prime, where the walls to other universes and realities is thin. There are several permanent portals on the plane that open sporadically that lead to all kinds of weird and madness inducing places, including to Leng, Yoggoth, and even the Far Realms.
Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.

Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.

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