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The Archives => Campaign Elements and Design (Archived) => Topic started by: Philibusted on April 20, 2010, 09:43:04 AM

Title: [Doctor Who] Help fine-tune a campaign concept!
Post by: Philibusted on April 20, 2010, 09:43:04 AM
Hey everyone - first time poster looking for help in fleshing out the kernel for two interconnected Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space campaigns; I feel like I have most of the pieces in place - I just can't seal the deal, so to speak.

Oh, also - End of Time spoilers below, so if you don't want to be spoiled...

Structurally:
The two campaigns should only really touch tangentially:
* One is a ~ 6 session game where the players are a UNIT investigative task force of some sort; I feel like it should be akin to an extended Trail of Cthulu game.
* The other is more traditional doctor who, probably going 12-18 sessions

Based off of player input (one has already made a  and my own muse, here are my scratch-notes for a story arc / plot:

Background: During time war ...
ƒ   Terrible experiment ordered by Rassilon, involving (Keeper, other timelord PCs) during Time War -> First attempt at ascension
ƒ   Keeper (or other timelord PCs) conscience won out and they stole the vortex manipulator and ran.
ƒ   [The Spartan?, a timelord who hunts rogue timelords - probably one of those King-Always-Knows-Best types] sent after the rogue time lords; given that this was the time war, maybe dalek pursuers if works well?
ƒ   The experiment went on anyway, but the PCs' replacements weren't as good as the PCs (? Or maybe it would be darker if the PCs plans wouldn't have worked anyway?) Either way, the resulting instability awoke [dark and terrible creature].
1.   Story 1 begins with PCs running away; they land somewhere and, even though they don't know it, encounter something that only exists because of experiments' end result.
2.   Phase 2: The Bounty Hunter of Time comes; probably one of those two antagonists who initially appear to be working together type stories; his inevitable defeat reveals the instability (he blames PCs?) and the existence of the monster.
3.   Phase 3: Chaos amidst Contemplation: While PCs figure out what to do, another story occurs, show casing the growing threat; possibly randomly generated with Mythic for giggles?
4.   Phase 4: The Climax / Choice Made-> Do the PCs hunt the monster? Shut down/Fix the instability?
5.   Conclusion / Epilogue

I feel like the UNIT game would revolve around a certain side circumstance... but I'm not sure about what the experiment should have been/ the thing released would be, etc.

Any help in brainstorming would be greatly appreciated!
Title: [Doctor Who] Help fine-tune a campaign concept!
Post by: Philibusted on April 22, 2010, 11:29:03 AM
:-/ Is it that bad? Or was it something I said?
Title: [Doctor Who] Help fine-tune a campaign concept!
Post by: Lmns Crn on April 22, 2010, 11:29:46 AM
I'm sorry; I just don't know anything about Doctor Who. :(
Title: [Doctor Who] Help fine-tune a campaign concept!
Post by: LordVreeg on April 22, 2010, 12:45:25 PM
OK, let me get onto this tomorrow night.
But the PCs are supposed to be timelords?  Is this for both groups?  What do you mean by ascension?
where does the dark and terrible come from?
Title: [Doctor Who] Help fine-tune a campaign concept!
Post by: Philibusted on April 22, 2010, 01:27:57 PM
Ha, it's cool; I didn't mean to come off as offended; mostly just unsure.

There will be two campaigns:
* One will be human UNIT investigators
* Two will be timelords, aliens, companions - essentially classic doctor who'

[spoiler=ascension spoilers]

At the end of the last season, Rassilon was going to have the timelords ascend to a higher kind of being, discarding their bodies and 'killing time itself.' So, I think the shorthand would be godhood.

The Dark & The Terrible would be a result of the experiment that the PC timelords were originally a part of; possibly something trapped in the vortex? I was thinking one of those mega-vampires referred to in the e-space trilogy.
[/spoiler]

And thanks for the replies!
Title: [Doctor Who] Help fine-tune a campaign concept!
Post by: Lmns Crn on April 22, 2010, 03:36:36 PM
Hey, just as a heads' up, you can enclose spoilers on this board in [.spoiler]SPOILERIFIC TEXT[./spoiler] tags so that it has to be clicked on to be visible (just remove the periods at the front of the tags and it'll parse correctly).

I'm not upset or anything because none of this really means anything to me, but since you're already making an admirable effort to avoid spoiling things for people who care about the source material, the [.spoiler] tags work great. :yumm:

You can even label the darn things with an optional value in the opening spoiler tag, like this: [.spoiler=ascension spoilers]here are spoilers about ascension; you're reading them because you clicked a button[./spoiler] The end result looks like this:

[spoiler=ascension spoilers]here are spoilers about ascension; you're reading them because you clicked a button[/spoiler]
Title: [Doctor Who] Help fine-tune a campaign concept!
Post by: Philibusted on April 23, 2010, 09:42:42 AM
Ha! Thanks, LC.