The Campaign Builder's Guild

What is Death Planet?

[Translated to English]
Death Planet is the galaxy's single most popular action packed Reality Television Show and Blood Sport. On the Planet Tal  Shorral teams of players slaughter each other for the glory and fame of being the toughest warriors in the sector! These teams will face all manner of dangers, from slaughter robots, to homicidal maniacs from the worse war zones imaginable, to strange and bloodthirsty monstrous beasts genetically designed to improve your Death Planet experience.

Invite the boys over to watch the Skull Collectors add another head to their bloody pile! Collect bets as Magog the Merciless rips a Gnorlock Bat limb from limb! Kids, pick up action figures of your favorite Death Planet Players available at all Death Planet Stores!

Investors, interested in running your own Death Planet team? Space is always open for new teams as more Players drop out every hour of every day!

Stop reading this and go watch it now! Get Some!

[End of Advertisement]

[spoiler] I had the idea for Death Planet a long time ago. The idea hit me while watching my brother and his 3 friends play Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4. I was surprised by how enjoyable it was watching them slaughter one another. Which led me to create this "show". I'm hoping to make it into a novel, or a campaign setting for a science fiction game. Not sure yet.

The show is caught on film by small floating cameras that capture every minute of every hour of every day. The Players are almost never alone (Editors will usually remove all the boring parts, saving it for special Uncut downloads). Each team consists of 5 squads of 10 people. The reason I used the number ten is that I need some cannon fodder for the main characters, my hope was to have 4-6 main characters, and a few "red shirts" to get eviscerated.

Teams dynamics are very diverse. Some teams are made up of professional soldiers, or amateurs, or veterans from a bloody war who could not cope with the real world, or, in one instance, inmates who accepted a deal from the local Magistrate to serve in his team for a few years rather than life in prison.

Teams are supplied by their Owners, and not every team is supplied equally. Some teams have the finest equipment available, some have cheap hand me downs from a war a hundred years ago. Each person is worth a certain number of points, which is mediated by the Death Planet Commission, essentially the better you are at the game the more points you are worth to your enemies.

The arena is an entire planet. Once is had a bustling modern society, but whoever lived on the planet is long gone. The planet is owned by the Death Planet Commission. The planet is covered in ruins, after decades of combat there are few buildings that have survived unscathed. However there is still standing the burnt out remnants of buildings (new buildings are constantly being built by small androids around the clock to keep the terrain interesting)

Vehicles are another interesting aspect of the games. They are controlled by the Commission and used to help make things more interesting. A prime example is a firefight between two teams suddenly turns as a tank teleports down the street. Suddenly the firefight has turned into a desperate dash for the tank. To keep players from trying to live in the tanks or over use the tanks, the tanks can fill with a deadly gas before they are teleported back to wherever they come from. These vehicles appear randomly, and come in many different designs (to sell merchandise of all the different models)

The Commission scours the galaxy searching for strange monsters to throw against the players. One of the few animals to thrive on the planet are Carrion Eaters, large lizards who roam from battlefield to battlefield devouring dead bodies whole.

There are also robots that will appear randomly, like booby traps. I have a few cool designs, but they are a lot like the tripods from War of the Worlds, they burst out from rubble and start shooting. I also like them to look completely alien, there are also plenty of configurations (also to help sell merchandise).

Food consists of corporate rations. These are tiny product placements that are paid for by various corporations. So players will drink Miller Beer and Burger King Burgers (naturally, these will be Alien brands) Their guns might be produced by a certain weapons manufacturer, and there combat fatigues from a certain sportswear retail outlet.

That's pretty much the gist of Death Planet. The hard part is coming up with names for teams, I want them to be violent and scary, like Death Metal Band names. I am also going to avoid a lot of alien sounding names, I want them to be "translated into english" because episodes of the show would be translated (or at least have subtitles) So names like Crimson Kings, or Skull Takers, or Shadow Knights (the last one was really cheesy)

The theme of Death Planet is brutal and intense. Everything is cranked up to 11. Naturally a show where people kill people probably wouldn't be well liked. But we enjoy Ultimate Fighter shows and Wrestling, so hey. Words that describe it include "savage" "brutal" "visceral" "ripper" "slaughter" and "murderous"

Any Thoughts?[/spoiler]

This would be cool to run as a mini campaign. I doubt it would work for a full sized one though.

I think it would be a mini campaign too. It reminds me an awful lot of Blood Bowl too, either you love it or you hate it.

Although you could make a whole campaign about it where the players turn against their owners and become a rogue team on the run trying to escape.

The hardest part is coming up with menacing sounding names for teams without sounding corny.

Quote from: Gnome NachosThe hardest part is coming up with menacing sounding names for teams without sounding corny.

The name you're going with for the whole idea is "Death Planet." I think it's safe to embrace the corniness.

I'd play this.

I think it does too. What I like about it is that it's a little bit of a parody of sports and reality televisions shows. It's a little seedy, a little dirty, and very gory. It's the Roman Gladiator turned up to eleven and with aliens.

I you follow the link I included a few notes I had drawn up. I'm a very visual person, and often it's hard to get across just words so I thought I might throw up some doodles too!

 Death Planet Notes Page One

Is it just me, or is this The Running Man?

Which makes me think, what about an Arnold Schwarzenegger theme-setting? I'd play it.

This would be so awesome for a short campaign/session. And it easily allows for all the classic tropes: why you all know each other, why there are monsters everywhere, why there is a futuristic rifle at the end of a dungeon (as well as why there is a dungeon), and why everybody is bat-shit crazy.
It should probably have its own system though, or at least not be DnD. I don't believe DnD can lend an experience that is gory and visceral enough for the concept.
Although with an entire planet of gore and blood, I have trouble figuring out how you would win... first to the nuke?  

Reminds me of the South park ep

Anybody, no?

The Earth reality tv episode?

A planet of deer...