Campaigns

Regular visitors will be familiar with our ‘top-down’ approach to campaign building through broad ‘campaign challenges’. The campaign challenges discussed in various posts have been tidied-up and used as the basis of Corruption’s guidelines on linking player choice, shared expectations and campaign-building to XP.

This page shows a group of players quickly sketching-out a campaign framework in a way that opens up player choice – while providing the GM/ Referee with clusters of ideas and shared expectations which should lighten the load during design and play.

Campaign challenges provide a platform for focusing gameplay around shared interests; while also presenting opportunities for players to take the initiative through connecting to the campaign challenges they prefer to have as gameplay options within the campaign.

Corruption also has Seeds of Corruption and Seeds of Wonder, which can be combined with campaign challenges to quickly style a campaign. Seeds of Corruption contribute to our ‘twist of evil’ with Seeds of Wonder offering contrast – a touch of light at the end of the tunnel.

Challenges

The examples of possible campaign challenges presented here are likely to support an extended series of adventures. New characters can start-out with a relatively lowly role in greater events and, in time, become caught-up in shaping major events within the game world.

There are a lot of instantly available shared expectations on tap for Referees to reference within each of these campaign challenges. These expectations can build authenticity, while leaving plenty of room to serve as a platform for unique adventures and campaigns. Spreading a few such campaign challenges across a game world, (or combining different campaign challenges), rapidly speeds up the process of adding terrain, settlements and landmarks. This is because campaign challenges will often suggest or ‘paint-in’ many features obviously relevant to the types of campaign challenges the adventurers are tackling.

Referees may wish to limit the number of campaign challenges encountered by adventurers to leave space for some of the other slot-in campaign and gameplay options introduced as Seeds of Corruption or Seeds of Wonder.

Player’s Choice

Rob: “I want to get out of Medieval Europe.”

GM: “Anywhere special?”

Rob: “New weapons, badder monsters, explore new territory . . . stuff.”

GM’s Challenge: Conquest and Colonization

‘Frontier life’ encourages plenty of novelty and exploration during play. Mapping territories, encountering exotic creatures, (unique to an island or continent), making contact with dramatically different cultures and coping with unusual environmental hazards are all part of the fun.

Forging a new nation, clearing major threats, establishing bases and forts, seeking out resources and surviving hardships are typical examples of elements of conquest and colonization suited to underpinning or refreshing a campaign setting.

Player’s Choice

tWoB: “Surprise me!”

GM: “Do my best.”

tWoB: “My PC eats nothing made by anyone else – whole campaign!”

GM’s Challenge: Massive Meteor Strikes

Modest meteor strikes and similar impacts make a good basis for a series of scenarios. Apart from play concerning the actual strike event they can offer survival gameplay and other situations linked to knock-on effects such as civil disorder and long term boundary changes.

A fairly modest lump of rock is enough to have a regional impact, but it’s possible to go a whole lot further by scaling the meteor and, possibly, giving the meteor a ‘payload’. For example, a planetary fracture that removes perhaps a fifth of the planet and creates a moon is going to change local gravity, oceans and weather systems for good. Throw in a race of invaders, a parasitic virus or a powerful, corrupting lodestone embedded within the meteor and players have a lot of new options to play out.

Player’s Choice

Jenny: “I’ve just got my wizard’s lab going?”

GM: “How about rare, exotic ingredients from abroad? Kind of stuff the finest magic items are made from?”

Jenny: “When do we leave?”

GM’s Challenge: Research and Experimentation

Magical research, terraformation, climate change, hybrid diseases, brainwashing, mass manipulation, finding a cure, inventing a new technology or starting a research division takes adventures into a further area of novelty and player choice.

Tracking down rare or repugnant ingredients, scouring ancient libraries for details of lost technologies and researching new forms of magic all provide self-contained adventure hooks. These can all be brought together to sketch out an open-ended campaign. Alternatively, research and experimentation can be placed at the center of campaign events by making the outcomes of research critical to major events across much of a setting.

Player’s Choice

Jam: “Undead and treasure.”

GM: “Just undead and treasure?”

Jam: “Zombies are fun!”

GM’s Seed of Corruption: Adrammelech’s Throne

This magnificent set of equipment is designed to fit a War Elephant. It was commissioned by the Dread Emperor Adrammelech who paid sorcerers hundreds of thousands of gold pieces to manufacture and enchant what amounted to a mobile throne. The entire ensemble is jet black with metal fittings of mithril and can be driven from the front by a driver/ drummer or by using reins inside the canopied and curtained howdah. The interior of the howdah contains a throne of pure obsidian. The components are:

Barding

The strands of mithril woven into the chainmail barding give an Armor Class 0 [19].

Harpoons

There is a platform around the howdah, which is lined with five large handheld harpoons on each side. It requires Strength of 17 or higher to hurl one of the +2 harpoons as a spear and each

harpoon can cause a target 5d6hp. Mithril chains trailing behind the harpoons skewer a target on a roll of 5 over that required to-hit or a natural roll of 20. This causes 3d6 dragging damage/ round and neither the mithril-forged chains nor the harpoon shafts can be snapped. A target must actually tear the harpoon out for 5d6 damage to break free.

If a target fails to escape before running out of hp the body disperses into shadow and forms an undead creature of equal HD to the target. Those newly released from the harpoon are held in thrall to the throne for a year. A harpoon can be retrieved by whoever threw it through simply outstretching a grasping hand while standing on the howdah.

War Drums

Providing they’re washed in blood beforehand, the twin war drums are capable of playing a number of beats. These are:

1. Create Undead as the spell.
2. Create Greater Undead as the spell.
3. Animate Graveyard: Once every day a drummer can animate 20 Zombies or Skeletons from the bodies buried in a graveyard.
4. Animate Battlefield: Once every week a drummer can animate 200 Zombies or Skeletons from the bodies buried at a battle site.
5. Animate Zombie Nation: Once every month a drummer can animate 2,000 Zombies from graves and battle sites within a five mile radius.
6. Animate Undead Legion: Once every year a drummer can animate 20,000 Zombies, Skeletons, Ghouls and Shadows, (in equal numbers), from graves and battle sites within a twenty mile radius.

Howdah

The curtains on the howdah provide True Sight to those within the howdah.

Throne

The throne is connected to the harpoon chains through the platform and contains the souls of creatures drained to a state of undeath by the harpoons. Under bright light the translucency of the obsidian allows viewers to catch fleeting images of the tormented phantoms bound within the throne. The throne is impervious to all known forms of damage and gives anyone sat on the throne control over undead creatures within 100’. In addition, undead creatures cannot be turned within a mile of the throne.

Tusk Sheaths

The tips of a War Elephant that’s carrying the throne can have its tusks fitted with these two tips of mithril and ivory. Rampages are possible twice/ day while these are worn, as they allow the driver to loosen the reins and to cause the elephant to charge around for d4 rounds. This attack allows an elephant to trample anyone it hits for 3d8 of extra damage. In addition, a rampaging elephant can try to smash through almost any wooden or earth defenses. In this state it may also be directed at stone walls which are up to 10’ thick or at metal portcullises. Both have a 50% chance of collapsing or snapping with each strike. The elephant is stunned for a round after such an attack, but soon recovers and may still be rampaging.

Armor

Items of light, but highly effective, equipment for a driver and a drummer include two sets of Gauntlets of Ogre Power, Chainmail +1, Brigandine +1 and Mail Coif +1. These items are designed to protect a driver and/ or drummer seated to the fore with AC -2 [22], while providing the strength required to partially control an elephant during a rampaging attack.

Player’s Choice

D: “Surprises, exploring . . . rare magic.”

GM: “OK that’s plenty to work with . . .”

GM’s Seed of Wonder: Mendle’s Marvelous Metals

The wizard Mendel was brought-up as a blacksmith and learned to study rocks and minerals during his many adventures. At some stage in his research he was able to form an alloy of rare metals which, once enchanted, became capable of being reshaped under certain conditions. Unfortunately, a trace of impurity in the final experiment caused an almighty explosion and the entire laboratory was blown apart. Mendle recovered, but was unable to recall the exact formulae.

However, the results of the experiment survived as chunks of metal embedded in the walls of the ruined laboratory. There are 14 known pieces of such metal; seven large enough to make a broad dagger and seven sufficient to form a long sword or buckler. The metals become as putty for two rounds when immersed in certain liquids, before fixing in a new shape. Any properties resulting from combining the metals are unknown, as Mendle hid the pieces separately to prevent them falling into the wrong hands.

Mendle’s Marvelous Metals Table

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