Adventus Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 :sneaky:The campaign I am thinking about running is one where Evil just won the big battle instead of losing. That is where it starts. All the big powerful heroes are dead, missing or being forced to work for Evil. You are a student/trainee and did not go to the battle because you weren't ready. Now you are the only ones left to stop the Evil. And you didn't even finish your training. And the scales have tilted towards darkness and despair. Evil is more powerful and has more resources than you. And you have to stop them. Has anyone ever done a campaign like this? And how did it go? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghost-angel Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins No, but I've so wanted to get into such a game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pinecone Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins Not exactly like that...I did a "Post apocalypse" Fantasy game that well received. I don't see why this couldn't work. I'd add in that the chars were named by prophocy, but the big good guys were ego-tripping and left them behind...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Mhoram Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins Never ran one, but it could be fun to play. There is a D&D campaign setting (Midnight) that the basic idea is "What if Sauron won the war of the rings". The PCs are trying to be heroic in a world where darkness won, and the normal populace don't want upstarts around, so you really are on your own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheQuestionMan Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins The Echoes of Heaven by Final Redoubt Press http://www.finalredoubt.com/ The Last Dominion by Pencil Publishers Publications http://www.pencil-pushers.net/ Midnight by Fantasy Flight Games http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/midnight.html Give these a try QM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Comic Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins I've endured many, many campaigns of this sort. Some of them are actually pretty good, in a 'nowhere to go but up' sort of way. Thing you have to watch out for is the characters who decide, "hey, Evil's already won, why fight it?" and throw their lot in covertly with Evil. These characters, so long as they're rare enough, aren't so awful in campaigns were Good basically rules... but when everything is loaded in their favor, they're a nightmare. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins The Lone Wolf adventure books have that feel to it. The Bad Guys haven't beat everyone yet, but they managed to wipe out the Kai Monastery, except for Lone Wolf himself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gadodel Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins Has anyone ever done a campaign like this? And how did it go? Yes and it went great for about 12 sessions. Then summer arrived: many players went home for the summer-we were in college at the time. Synopsis: Characters were children. They escaped the Tyrant's 'School System'. Wherein, they were taught to worship, work for and breed for the Tyrant. The characters, 7 in all; escaped and hoped to free other children or inspire a general rebellion. They were doing quite well, especially when they found the last survivors of an old religion-a group of 5 monks. The monks began an 'orphanage' of sorts. When the campaign took a summer hiatus, over 150 children under the age of 10 were left with the monks. Another 20 had been inspired to start rebellion in three other locations. The Tyrant's true nature was revealed to the players and they were excited about restarting the campaign the next fall. They looked forward to being able to find and defeat the Ogre Shaman that had become The Tyrant. However, two got shipped off for active duty-Gulf War One and a third stayed home to help his brother run the farm while their dad recovered from a farming accident. A fourth found a new girlfriend and was off in la-la land for the next 7 months. Myself and the three remaining players felt it wouldn't be as fun without the MIA players and we couldn't convince two other people into joining us due to schedule conflict. Hmmmm...I could restart it with HERO perhaps. It was D&D and definitely could use an upgrade... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doc Democracy Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins We started a game like this in Middle Earth. It was just after Morgoth wiped the floor with the good guys and darkness spread over Middle Earth. It was pretty gloomy but I suppose it wasn't too bad because you knew that this did not last. I think that the message you have to get to the players is that everything cycles - the battle against evil is never over because it always re-appears but, from the opposite perspective, the fight against good is never over either, it always re-appears too. Doc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karmakaze Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins I was in a Post-Apocalyptic game a bit like this. Some fifty years before game start, an alien invasion force set off the first few rounds of WWIII to soften us up (they planned to stripmine the planet rather than conquer). Once the Earth worked out what was going on, the surviving supers headed up en masse, very annoyed. The resulting big battle took out most of the aliens and the supers, but the damage was done. As PCs we were mostly stopping a plot by some of the surviving invaders, but also trying to rebuild connections among humanity's survivors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hugh Neilson Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins Without thinking too hard, isn't this Star Wars? "The Sith have turned the bright hope of the Jedi, most of the Jedi are slain and the rest are in hiding, and the Empire rules the Galaxy. What do you do next?" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thia Halmades Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins My Flagship campaign is built around an idea similar to this; everything looks shiny on the surface, but much like a bad patch job, the real evil is seething right below it. The PCs are students at the academy and their training begins; about six sessions before the war begins. It's probably one of the best games I've ever run. YMMV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boomer Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins Sounds like the Plot of the Movie Mystery Men..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maur Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins Or Orrosh from West End Games' TORG. Evil rules the realm and the heroes (storm knights) are trying to defeat the big evil, but have to defeat the little horrors that are in charge of various places throughout the realm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thia Halmades Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins Without thinking too hard, isn't this Star Wars? "The Sith have turned the bright hope of the Jedi, most of the Jedi are slain and the rest are in hiding, and the Empire rules the Galaxy. What do you do next?" Think harder, Hugh... Okay, no, you're right, on the literal level. But many stories are about good people over throwing oppression; some are just more overt than others. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teh bunneh Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins I sometimes run an "iron age" supers game at conventions in which the main/only superhero of the campaign city had just been murdered, and her protegees had to track down the murderer and insure justice was done. Ghost-Angel played in one of those games. It turned pretty black, but the "good guys" won. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sweeper Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins Hmm, almost sounds like the Inner Sphere just post fall of the Star-League. Thing with that era, is that it's filled with shades of gray. The big evil guy, Stephan Aramis, was killed by General Kerensky before he decided to leave the I.S. with the majority of the Star League Army to get away with all the infighting the Great Houses were getting into. Now you have 5 Lords, each trying to conquer the others and 'rebuild' The Star League in the their image. It's dark time for humanity where technology is, with a few expceptions, blasted back to the near-stone age. In this world, being a 'goodguy' is a matter of perception. Such is the world of Battletech. It's very medival in it's concept and can be adapted to fantasy pretty easily. In fact, Wotc did a similar background when they published Eberron. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thia Halmades Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins Hmm, almost sounds like the Inner Sphere just post fall of the Star-League. Thing with that era, is that it's filled with shades of gray. The big evil guy, Stephan Aramis, was killed by General Kerensky before he decided to leave the I.S. with the majority of the Star League Army to get away with all the infighting the Great Houses were getting into. Now you have 5 Lords, each trying to conquer the others and 'rebuild' The Star League in the their image. It's dark time for humanity where technology is, with a few expceptions, blasted back to the near-stone age. In this world, being a 'goodguy' is a matter of perception. Such is the world of Battletech. It's very medival in it's concept and can be adapted to fantasy pretty easily. In fact, Wotc did a similar background when they published Eberron. I don't know you could call BattleTech the neolithic, but it certainly has elements of Feudal Japan, Feudal Europe, and the Wild West. I believe Iron Kingdoms is similar. Eberron, to my understanding, is completely North of this. Everyone and everything runs on magic, and while there are certainly elements of anarchy, post-war and all that, it's a stable, high magic world. But that's splitting semantic hairs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sweeper Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins Just paraphrasing what they wrote in the BT background. As for Eberron, that world just got done with 'The Last War' which lasted about 100 years (IIRC) over succession rights to the Throne of Galifar. It resulted in the creation of a lot of magitech including, but not limited to, The Warforged. The War also resulted the creation of The Mournland, A large Wasteland where the laws of physics and magic are turned upside down, and (literally in some cases), inside out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thia Halmades Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins Just paraphrasing what they wrote in the BT background... and (literally in some cases)' date=' inside out.[/quote'] I think I saw that spell go off in game once. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hugh Neilson Posted January 4, 2008 Report Share Posted January 4, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins Think harder, Hugh... Okay, no, you're right, on the literal level. But many stories are about good people over throwing oppression; some are just more overt than others. Precisely - the point being that this is far from an uncommon premise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teh bunneh Posted January 4, 2008 Report Share Posted January 4, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins Following up on Hugh's post, Willow is also a good example. Evil Queen Bavmorda has conquered all the people who could possibly pose a threat to her. The only ones left are a disgraced swordsman, a Nelwin (Hobbit) farmer, a couple of over-caffienated Brownies, and a newborn baby. Dang, now I have to watch it again. I love that flick! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghost-angel Posted January 4, 2008 Report Share Posted January 4, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins I sometimes run an "iron age" supers game at conventions in which the main/only superhero of the campaign city had just been murdered, and her protegees had to track down the murderer and insure justice was done. Ghost-Angel played in one of those games. It turned pretty black, but the "good guys" won. Justice was done... up to and including leaving the poor schmuck to bleed out with no knees on the warehouse floor. (I liked the bar fight... poor gangers never had a chance) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Korvar Posted January 5, 2008 Report Share Posted January 5, 2008 Re: The Heroes blew it! Evil Wins The Dark Sun D&D background (http://www.athas.org) is exactly that - the Bad Guys won a great war a couple of thousand years ago, and now rule the world from their City-States in the decaying ruins of the world... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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