The Campaign Builder's Guild

I had this idea. A way to make a low magic game. Though I'd run by here.[blockquote=Flavour]By a planar invasion, the empires of Ayoun have been shattered. What once was prosperous, is now an idustrial slave pit.

Long ago, a huge rift opened on the Caspian Plains, a portal to Mechanus from which the most zealos formian hives pored in. In three short years, the primary continent of Malar had been overun, with the lesser lands becoming occupied. In each instance of defeat, the formians converted all the prisoners into mind controlled slaves to mine the world of all it's riches.

Part of the reason that the outsiders succeeded in ruining the empires is because the rift disrupted the flow of magic thru-out the world, and severed the ties of deities to the prime material plane. Were suddenly was a mighty wizard, there was a man with alot of useless knowledge and heavy books.

But not all hope is lost. The few people who escaped the slavers now hide deep within forests, atop the tallest mountains, or make a meager living in other hard to reach places. But they are there, building up the strength to take back the world.[/blockquote]Short and simple, eh?

I've had no experiance with the bugs of mechanus. I just read thir description and though "Logic Over Reason". Kinda like the borg of D&D.

Now my questions. What kinds of places do you hide from formians in? What could you do to take the world back? Well, what could the players try to do? Assume it's a full scale planar invsasion. Millions of bugs, dozens of queens.

QuoteAssume it's a full scale planar invsasion. Millions of bugs, dozens of queens.

No magic means the queens are incredibly weak.  They lose that level 17 sorcerer casting ability, as well as many at will SAs.
So, the trick is to ignore the peons, and assassinate the queens.  

QuoteWhat kinds of places do you hide from formians in?

You cannot hide!

I'll just post the PbP rules I was going to have.[blockquote=The Rules]This is a low-magic, war oriented campaign, emphysising martial prowess over the more magicaly inclined. Additionaly, magic has been nerfed by the Formians.

These are the books I have, and I'm more likely to accept characters that are built using these as sources. Classes, feats and races should be chosen from:

CORE (PHB, DMG, Monster Manuel)*DMG2*PHB2*Complete Arcane*Complete Warrior*Complete Divine*Races of Stone*Races of Destiny*Monster Manuel 2 (3.5 update availabe online)*Monster Manuel 3*Sandstorm*Frostburn*Savage Species (no monstrous progressions, sorry)*Hyperconscious*Books of Vile Darkness and Exalted Deeds. But ask first, and I discourage use without examplarary fluff, and heavy RPing.*Minitures Handbook*Unearthed Arcana (again, ask first)*Arms and Equipment Guid*Expanded Psionics Handbook and Complete Psionic, but within limits.

The following rules are in effect, so plan out your character acordingly.

Except under very unique circumstances, most of wich are not under player control, spell casting is limited to third level spells. This includes spell slots. Exception to this are tertiary casters, like Paladins and Hexblades, who don't get Orisons/Cantrips, but cap out with fourth level spells.*Everybody gets Eschew Materials as a bonus feat.*There is no chance of arcane spell failure. (Atleast not from armor. :D)*Craft Magical Arms and Armor doesn't require caster levels, just a character level of 6, or a caster leve of 5. You still need access to a spell if a specific enhancement requires it.*You don't have to be a spell caster to make use of Craft (Alchemy). Additionaly, a horn of gunpowder, has a craft DC of 35, and the container is part of the production cost.*Max ranks in any skill sarts at 1.5. Having a skill marked as a class skill in any class grants an additional +1.5 to you max ranks, once.*Your chosen class adds a +1 to the max ranks of it's class skills, and a +0.5 to cross class skills.*A skill point can be used to purchase a rank in any skill, reguardless of wether it's a class or cross-class skill.*The progressions of BAB and base saves are not exclusive absolutions of a class. You calculate how many levels you have in a better progression, referance the table in the PHB, record the number, reapeat with incrementaly worse progressions, add the total, and there's your base bonus. Thus a Fighter 1/Cleric 1 has a base fortitude of 3, not 4.*Bards, Barbarians and Monks can have any alignment and don't loose any abilites for having any particular alignment.*Monks don't get Kai Strike (Lawful), but might instead gain Kai Strike (Cold Iron), (Wood), (Silver) or some other material depending on their alignment.*Fighters and Monks gain Uncanny Dodge as a class ability at level five. At ninth level, they benefit from Improved Uncanny Dodge.

Although this is a non-psionic game, the following psionic material is allowed. From XPH:

No races. Sorry.*Soulknife base class*Fist of Zouken, Psion Uncarnate, Pyrokinetisist, and Warmind PrCs*Psionic powers with a range or personal or touch*All general feats that are not anti-psionic feats (Anti-Psionic magic, Chaotic Mind, etc.)*All psionic feats (some of wich will be completely useless)

From Complete Psionic:

Illumine Soul, Soulbow, and Zerth Cenobite PrCs*Again, psionic powers with a range of personal or touch.*All psionic feats.

From Hyperconscious:

Again, any power with a range of personal or touch, some

may even be added to your list without Expanded Knowledge apon request.*The Lucid Cenobite PrC, ignoring the Lawfull alignment requirement. I may allow other PrCs apon request.[/list]One more rule: Their is no Psicraft or Use Psionic Device skills. Anything that requires Psicraft instead uses a Knowledge (Psionics) check, and mentionings of Use Psionic Device is replaced with Use Magic Device instead.[/blockquote]

I WANT to join this... it sounds cool. One small point, however. I believe that the PrCs, mostly, require a manifester level - and with no base manifesting classes, you're gonna get... how shall I put it... stuffed.

Perhaps allow psychic warrior with powers up to 4th?

I've put those specific instances of psionics as an alternative to magic available to those who study hard and follow a specific path. The only PrCs that require a manifester level are the Psion Uncarnate and the Lucid Cenobite. A few of the other PrCs grant manifester levels, and stuffed is the right term. I may change the basics of the Psion Uncarnate (HD: d8, medium BAB) but only if there's a sqeeky wheel.

Join this game? It's good to know I can get a group going without posting a notice for one. :D I was thinking of hosting one game on the WotC game boards around November, if I could get some things worked out in the setting here.

Places to hide:

I figure the best place would be in the deepest tombs of a Necropolis, assuming you can keep the undead off of you. But then, I'm a fan of both Gothic and Egytian architecture.*Deep withon a dungeon forest. Not a forest/dungeon hybrid like from Dexter's Laboratory, but a deep foreboding rain forest where lions, tigers and bear (Oh my!) lurk around every tree. There are no trails, just moss and the occasional scotch pine. And big trees. The kind of place the Drow would have lived in before moving to the underdark, and becoming Drow.*A city on a cloud. A wizard might not be able to cast spells anymore, but any magical item or artifact still works perfectly. Just try getting it to move where you want it.*Romote Oasis. Crossing the desert is a realy dangerous adventure, especialy when the natives can turn the dunes against you.*A pirate's cove.

"Apon the high seas, we jou'ney, lootin' bug barges, and'a sinking formian galleeys. Hoist the anchor, yee worthless buckets of worm swill! There be a some swag on that friggette. And it ain't gonna jump onto our deck by itself. HARR HARR!"[/list]

Any other ideas? In any case, how would you (as one of four PCs) go about reclaiming your world from one of these starting bases?

Hmmm...

From a necropolis I would begin by looking around for magic items to control undead (unless I was a cleric, in which case - well, obvious). I would then start controlling them and sending them out into the world in their masses... *rubs hands*

For the forest/dungeon, I'd have to be a mage (I believe some of the lesser spells allowed include charm animal. ;))

City on a Cloud... I'd start by trying to hire those enslaved during the attacks and collecting allies. Then... muahahahaha...

[blockquote=Starting location: Ayoun City]Early history: Long ago, a mighty warrior was born to the Vegrons. She nearly their image of the perfect person. Physicaly powerfull, keen of mind and senses, and incredibly passionate. Her glaring and absolutely damming flaw was her literal superiority to all of her people. She didn't respect the authority or traditions of her people, and was incredibly compasionate for the 'weaker' non-Vergrons. Finding her wild and irrational, the mighty womyn was first ordered assasinated, then exiled when found too difficult to remove.
As tales of her daring adventures returned to her home, her popularity and influence in the Courts of Kings became an increasant irritant. At first the High-lords tried to stiffle the stories, but the bards and heralds could slip thru millatant nets and let the tales loose among the common folk. The foundation of the High-lords' power was sundered when the wild one created her own mercenary accademy.
At first, only a few serfs migrated out of Vergis, but as those who left sent home stories of their own respectable exploits, more and more of the peasants became restless and simply dropped the field work and left. At first, the High-lords tried to simply bribe their former workers into staying. As the peasants refused to stay, the High-lords implemented a law declaring anyone leaving a Vergon region a treasonous crime. Civil war errupted, since the ability to freely adventure and quest was the most important tradition and foundation of Vergon society.
As the serfs of Vergon warred, the mighty womyn was hired as a supplimental mercenary general. True to her reputation, the wild womyn brought viscious and bloody battle before the High-lords. In short order, the arrogant High-lords were defeated.
The wild on refused the offer of direct rulership of the new-and-improfved Vergon people, though she insisted on being regularity sent gifts, and permission to come home.

Adventuring for many more years, she eventualy came apon a demi-power wich granted her a great gift for all the deeds she had done. Her gift was the ninth stable cloud island. Making the most of her gift, a city was built atop it, wich invited many of the Vergons to populate it, if they be victorious in a small competion of her devising. Additonaly, the champion would be allowed to name the nimbus-city, on her behalf. The champion, incredibly her nephew, nammed it after the wild one, as beffiting a demi-power's gift, Letris of Ayoun City.

Special Attributes: Over the years, one Mage-lord of Ayoun, in co-operation with the accestral spirit of the city's namesake, the ability to fly with grande wings to the populants of the city. The spirit of Letris demended a test of worthiness to those who would recieve this gift, and has since been hosting the test within the halls of her shrine within the central Ayoun Nimbus Tower.
The city watch, guards, most proffesional soldiers, and some adventurers have the winged template from Savage Species applied to them. The test is a Zelda styled dungeon. Traps, set-piece fights with monsters and a variety of puzzles apropriate to 5th level characters.
CR 3 or higher followers of PCs with the Leadership ability can be winged warriors.[/blockquote][blockquote=Starting location: Necropolis Mirafar]Recent History: In the final years of the Primary Formian Invasion, the Great Undying Army of Mirafar was finaly defeated. The blow t came with the final colapse of the divine connections. Without the resonance of the Lord of Bones, many of the Undead warriors either stopped responding to commands, or became tainted and truned on their formal controllers. Without it's undead legions, the city of Mirafar fell quickly to the invaders. It's collapse was total.
Mirafar himslef, by order of his own council, locked himself in the central under-tower deep within the bowels of his Necropolis. Sensing nothing of value within the completely dead city, the formians left the city, ruined and empty.

Although their Lich-King is gone, the last three Vampire Lords rule the remanants in squalor. Every ounce of their time is spent collects bits of metal, gems and other componants for magical items to control the now roaming, mindless undead. The few livng inhabbitants spend much of their time maintaining their strength to feed their masters blood.

Special Attributes: Characters with the Leadership ability may recruit units of undead if available, although it imposes a -1 Moral penalty to the recruiter's Leadership score for as long as they have an undead unit.[/blockquote]

Any thoughts, comment, compliments and brains, complaints, and/or insights? Please?

[blockquote=Starting Location: Spiderwoods Valley]

Everybody likes dark elves. It's like a dark choclate nighmare version of your regular elves. Since this campaing setting has no underdark, the dark elves of my campaign go here, in this forest.

Player Options: A group of players starting the game from this faction may only select Human, Drow, Tiefling, Aasimar, Forest Gnome, Hobgoblin, or Goblin as a starting race. The Spiderwoods are deadly, and only those that can become aclimated to the hositle environment can survive it.

Special Ability: It's incredibly difficult to bring an army into the Spiderwoods. Huge trees, no roads or paths, thin trails and dangerous fauna are abound. The flora itself is unusualy resistant to fire, making burning the forest to get thru just as much trouble as trail blazing. Also, flames atract treants.
A game played in the Spiderwoods needs no fear of attacks from the Formians. Additionaly, the Woodland Stride ability of certain classes and races is available as a feat to players beginning in these woods.[/blockquote]

The rules I'll be using for the unusual races can be found here. Change the drow's favoured classes to be Druid and Wizard, as there is no Spider Goddess, and druids do better in tree cities anyway.

Read also, by K:
[blockquote=The Drow: A Higher Technology Setting]Everyone knows that the dark elves are hardcore. Even in the bad old days of DnDâ,¬,,¢s conception, dark elves were â,¬Å"mirror matchesâ,¬Â to the party with class levels of their own, crazy magic items of their own, and good tactics. The real question is: â,¬Å"why are the dark elves so hardcore?â,¬Â The answer is simple. Dark elves are living at a higher technology level than the rest of the DnD world; their society only exists because, as a society, they cheat. Rather than grow food like surface races, they eat magic mushrooms as the basis of the food chain, they enslave other races for menial positions rather than work, and rather than mine or gather their own resources, they take them from other races. They donâ,¬,,¢t even have to work that hard on defense as Underdark caverns are naturally easy to defend with small numbers of troops stationed at chokepoints

This means that your average dark elf has free time to spare. While some take that time to indulge in the pleasures of their society, most dark elves are the products of a very odd world view: if only dark elves are your peers and everyone else is a slave, then the only real power worth having is power over other dark elves. That being the case, this means that dark elves have both the free time and the inclination to attempt to enslave each other all the time. This breeds great internal strife with each noble house being an armed camp designed to use stealth, power, and manipulation in order to both resist the efforts of other dark elves and attempt to enslave them.

Like any heavily-automated wartime culture, the dark elves spend considerable resources on weapons research, espionage, and cultural misinformation. This means that every noble house or other organization is constantly looking for an â,¬Å"edgeâ,¬Â in their dealings with other dark elves and other races. This leads them to kidnap experts from other races, engage in spell research, experiment with weird magic or exotic technology, forge partnerships with magically or technologically-advanced races, and otherwise do whatever it takes to grow in power. In any particular drow city you can expect to see dozens of competing forms of magic, odd inventions ranging from mechanical limbs to powered gliders, exotic troops like demon-bred orcs or elite espionage races like skulkers, and constructions with magical architecture or resonances. Since every drow is attempting to master his peers, these magics and technologies are tightly controlled, meaning that when the individual or organization that controls them is killed off, these secrets are often lost, meaning that any particular drow might be using relics from a previous generation (that he may well lack the ability to understand or reproduce).

Other races in the Underdark realize that the dark elves truly only want to control each other, so they allow the occasional resource and slave raids of the dark elves. They know that the dark elves are ill-suited to any form of large-scale conquest due to their particular style of command, so placating the drow is often the best way to conserve the resources of your society. Since the other Underdark races tithe goods to the drow and the drow are smart enough to see the value in trade relationships, Underdark races of note are allowed to use dark elf cities as major trading posts between their own kind and other races. The dark elves see all races as being underneath them, so as long as the other races show deference to them and bring in a profit in trade, they allow this enterprise to continue.

The average drow city is thus a hornetâ,¬,,¢s nest of power, full of indolent, wildly dangerous, and spoiled aristocrats. Even the lowliest of drow lives in a level of luxury suitable to the most powerful of nobles on the surface, and each one of them has reached adulthood in an atmosphere of distrust and manipulation with the weakest dying early. As individuals this makes them powerful and cruel, but as a race it keeps them inwardly looking and less of a threat than more ambitious warrior races, a fact that actually prevents other races from gathering their forces and destroying the drow outright.[/blockquote]And[blockquote=PatheticN00b's Reply]This is all great stuff. One qualm was your section on drow wasn't detailed enough. They are one of the most poorly defined races out there, and half the stuff out there contradicts the other stuff.

Fact One: Elves and Drow are generally assumed to have only a few children each.
Fact Two: They constantly, constantly kill eachother from early childhood on, and parents don't really do much to protect them.
Fact Three: Given the fact that they constantly die in raids and assasinations (not to even mention mundane causes), it can be assumed without any great leap that less than 5% of Drow children reach the equivelent age of 20, and maybe 1% make it to middle age.
Fact Four: Because Drow society shuts out males at the higher levels, and competition grows more deadly as one advances in age and rank it can be assumed that Males vastly outnumber the females.
Fact Five: The only people with any real power in Drow society are high level females of middle age or older, because they are the only women of Middle age or older in the enire city, and their badass power and influence is the only possible reason why they could have made it that far.

In order to facillitate a group with an absurdly high death rate, you need an absurdly high birth rate, but maybe 5% of Drow girls ever actually make it to childbearing age. What you get is a society that doesn't function, and a race that goes extinct.

The way you get around this is to entirely drop the notion that drow have few children, it's ******** anyway, and you make it so the one percent of the female population that makes it to middle age, is having nearly all the children. I mean, they have a window of fertillity of a 3-4 hundred years (more if you add in anti-aging magic). So rather than assuming a Drow matron will have 2-3 children, you should assume she has 2-3 hundred children. Naturally, no human would survive that, and I doubt drow would either, but that's where powerful healing magic comes in.

Now, you're probably wondering how Drow Matrons stay in power in the first place. They are massively outnumbered by their male counterparts, so why should the Men of Drow society put up with them? Simple: sex. Male adult Drow can outnumber the females more than ten to one, so there is a huge competition to be the source of some of those 200 hundred children. Consort to a matron is the highest honor a male drow can acheive, and is his surest shot of getting laid more than once a decade. So, all drow males are competing for favor from a handful of females. Those who are not bound by such base ambitions and make trouble are killed by their hornier brethren in an attempt to gain favor. Which makes you wonder if some of the "outcast males" are really just gay.

It should also be noted that drow as presented in the Monster Manual probably should be Neutral Evil, they are far too organized to be Chaotic, and seem to have an elaborate set of laws and customs besides. It is only the fact that most of these laws can and are subverted with an knife that keeps them from being Lawful[/blockquote]