The Campaign Builder's Guild

From time to time, I'm working on a GURPS Exalted conversion. But now I am beginning to think that these conversion efforts might also be interesting for a new campaign setting in its own right. I'm taking some concepts from both the official Exalted setting and the version of it I use in my own campaign, and I'm giving it a new spin. Here are the ideas I have so far:

- Next to the physical universe, a parallel dimension exists. Let's call it hyperspace for the time being, as long as I can't come up with a better term (any suggestions?). Living beings have the potential to tap into the energies of hyperspace, producing effects that could be considered magic or psi powers. With enough understanding, it is also possible to create devices that channel such energies (ranging from simple "magic items" to what could be considered magitech). Hyperspace is a potentially limitless energy source, but using it overmuch can be dangerous, as this tends to attract proto-intelligences living in hyperspace (any suggestions for their names? I will use "daemon" for the time being...). These will crystallize around the emotions, dreams, hopes, and fears of the living beings using such devices, potentially becoming living and even sapient beings in their own right (although their personalities will normally be somewhat "flat" and "one-dimensional" when compared to humans). These beings tend to be incredibly self-centered, as all they care about is maintaining their self-image - a "dream lover" will demand to be loved all the time, while a monster conjured from one's night terrors will live for terrorizing others. Precautions need to be taken to ward off the creation of daemons when using magic or magitech, and the more magic is used, the more powerful the wards need to be.

- About 8000-10000 years before the present time (that is, the year 2009 AD on Earth), an alien post-Singularity culture ascended to Hyperspace to have constant access to its energies (these are the equivalent to the Primordials in Exalted). To ward off the daemons - who were attracted to the aliens all the time, and could become very powerful indeed given their profligate energy use - they created an entire world within hyperspace. To power it, they sought out and found five planets in the physical universe populated by primitive but sapient beings  - including Neolithic Earth. They crafted five vast magitech pylons which accumulated all the magical energy subconsciously generated by the living beings of this world and used these to stabilize their artificial world (as it happens, this is also the reason why "magic" doesn't work on Earth to this day). They furthermore stabilized this world by abducting plants, animals, and sapient beings from these planets, which would presumably be motivated on their own to fend off the daemonic incursions at the fringes of this world.

The aliens stayed in this world for about two thousand worlds and studied their experiment. Eventually, they decided that they could build an even better world with better defenses against the daemons, and departed. However, they didn't want their old experiment destroyed, so they added some further safety precautions and made sure that the inhabitants of their world had potent leadership. Every once in a while - every decades or so, the automated defense systems would snatch a native of one of the five original planets and deposit him, her, or it into the artificial world and give him tremendous powers in the process. This person would stop aging, and eventually recover from all but the most grievous injuries. Furthermore, these "Chosen" could develop powers linked to their skills - and these powers would generally be undetectable by the daemons! Furthermore, they would grow in power very quickly, eventually surpassing any ordinary mortal with their abilities.

In GURPS terms it would work like this: You can buy pretty much any supernatural advantage, but with the following limitations. First, the character point value of the advantage may not be higher than four times the character points you have put into a thematically linked skill - for example, if you want to be able to summon a glowing shield that protects you from attacks, you need points in the "Shield" skill. Secondly, the powers always either need to have the "Obvious" variant of the Nuisance Effect limitation, or have the Cost Fatigue limitation. They either show some sort of thematic display hinting at the nature and character of the Chosen, or they fatigue him. Finally, to represent their rapid rise in power, they get two additional character point for every "normal" character point they get during play. These bonus points must be spent on supernatural powers.

(These are, of course, the equivalent of the Solar Exalted...)

For some time, this setup worked well enough. The Chosen were small in number, but they managed to protect this world from dangers. But then a massive alliance of daemons managed to destroy one of the Pylons, which not only caused parts of the world to fray and gradually dissolve back into Hyperspace, but also made it impossible to bring new Chosen from the associated planet. The remaining Pylons reacted and produced a large number of additional Chosen, who managed to drive the incursion away. They were unable to rebuild the destroyed pylon, but they invented "reality stabilizer" magitech which allowed them to stabilize the damaged parts of the world and even expand the world further into hyperspace. The Chosen jointly ruled the world and created a Golden Age that lasted for millenia.

However, about 2,000 years ago their empire broke apart due to infighting - and eventually, the ordinary people of the world (who had many potent magic-users of their own - though none as intrinsically powerful as the Chosen) rebelled against their excesses and killed off the remainder. Since then, most inhabitants believe that the Chosen are little more than another type of daemon, and most will gladly help in hunting them down. The few Chosen who have managed to survive need to hide away from mortals to conceal their nature and protect their lives.

But currently, the world is going through another daemonic incursion - which has managed to destroy a second Pylon. The three remaining Pylons are, once again, mass-producing Chosen - and the PCs, freshly abducted from Earth, are among their number. They have been given great power, but been thrust into an unfamiliar world with thoroughly archaic mores, are surrounded by people who believe them monsters and want to kill them, some of their fellow Chosen are not nice people at all, and there is this gigantic daemonic incursion to deal with that threatens to overwhelm everything...

But they have been given the power to change the world - so what will they do?



So, what are your thoughts on this so far?

I like the Idea of PCs having power. It isn't used very often (or at least I dont see it much). What kinds of powers do they have anyways? I'm sorry if you already wrote that, but I'm hurying and had to jump around a bit.

Quote from: Gnomish CheetosI like the Idea of PCs having power. It isn't used very often (or at least I dont see it much). What kinds of powers do they have anyways? I'm sorry if you already wrote that, but I'm hurying and had to jump around a bit.

Almost anything, as long as it is thematically linked to specific skills. I was inspired by Exalted, and the range of abilities they can have is staggering. Think superpowers, except that they can only get these superpowers if they first hone specific skills. They can't just wake up and gain telepathy - they might need to study psychology in depth first. They might be able to turn their body as hard as stone, but only if they practice the Body Control skill. They can learn how to hurl glowing balls of energy, but only as an extension of their Throwing skill. Perhaps they can even learn how to create guns without any tools... but first they need to have the gunsmithing skill.


As in Exalted, the goal here is to truly give the PCs the power to change the world - and then see how they use that power.

Some further ideas...

- Perhaps all sapient beings in the physical world evolve souls naturally, but those souls normally disperse after death. In contrast, you can't create "normal" souls in hyperspace - all you'd get would be another daemon, and daemons are frankly mad.

So the singularity aliens needed to get some souls for the creatures born into their world. Therefore, they have created a maintenance system that recycles souls of people who die in the artificial world - and also gathers the souls of those who die on their origin planets (to compensate for population growth and losses of souls - i.e. when some souls get eaten by daemons).

This system worked reasonably well, but it is running into problems. The souls of sapient beings require a lot more "storage capacity" than the souls of animals, and the singularity aliens didn't quite expect humans on Earth multiplying that much without the use of magic - so now the storage units for human souls are straining under their load (as there aren't nearly enough humans in the artificial world to house all of them), and more and more subsectors are becoming corrupted. Periodically, the maintenance system has to "vent off" amalgams of corrupted souls, leading to a new kind of entity plaguing the artificial world. These hunger for bodies of their own, and tend to warp them when they take possession of them...


And for added fun, one of the other origin planet has been hit by a dinosaur killer meteorite - causing the extinction of one of the other races who now do no longer have any new Chosen of their own. Furthermore, the number of their souls gradually grows smaller - meaning that any "excess" children born to them gain daemon souls instead. The same is true for their animals - while the maintenance systems can, if necessary, put the souls of similar animals into animal bodies if not enough souls of the original species are available, that option is no longer viable thanks to the meteorite too...


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The natives of the artificial world can learn and use a wide range of magical powers, and in theory the Chosen can also learn those. However, they cannot spend their "bonus character points" on them, which must be spent on their own innate abilities - so they are going to be more effective if they concentrate on improving their mundane skills.

I think I will use names from Mesopotamian mythology for some parts of the setting, emphasizing the time period in which this world was created (and if the PCs ever get back to Earth, they can hunt for evidence of Ancient Astronauts...).

What I have referred to as "hyperspace" is called Nammu by the natives - the primordial sea from which the world sprung. The world itself is Kishar, the "earth goddess". The various factions of the singularity aliens - which might have become collective consciousnesses of sorts - can be represented by other Mesopotamian deities.

"Daemons" are utukku. Ensi seems like a good name for the Chosen.

Currently, I'm wrestling with two issues:

- While some intermingling between the various species of the different planetary origins is unavoidable (and in fact, makes the setting more interesting), I want to establish that the different ecosystems mostly live in different "zones". But how do I keep them separate? Keeping them within different climate zones wouldn't work, as these are equal among the paths parallel to that of the path of the sun...

- The tech level. Due to the appearance of the utukku - who are, after all, formed by the dreams of the humans of Earth (and the other races), the locals are probably familiar with the concept of firearms. Yet common firearms wouldn't mesh well with the "High Martial Arts" imagery I want to go for...