FA+
Shop
Extracting an RPG Campaign Setup
4 years ago
I'd been reading a series of articles dissecting "Pathfinder" campaigns, summarizing the important parts or even ripping apart the sequential plotline to turn the whole thing into an open-world adventure loosely based on the original plot. See eg. https://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2019.....skull-and.html .
It's an interesting exercise. Some of the most interesting RPG material I've seen works by sprinkling a few key plot points around on a map and letting the players connect the dots about what they ought to do, instead of being told that "In book 2 of this campaign you will meet X ally who gives you the Y artifact." With that said, here's my attempt at describing an implied plotline from "Exalted". 2nd edition, book "The South".
1: There's a city-state called the Lap, known for great farming and being built on/around a mountain-sized statue of a seated monk. It's considered a boring, peaceful place.
2: It's ruled by King Noonecares. All power is held by the distant Scarlet Empire, which installed three competent but bickering "satraps" to run it. One of these wants to backstab the others and the Empire and become an independent queen, and will consider an alliance with anybody who might help.
3: The Empire is collapsing due to major problems of its own but really doesn't want to give up this breadbasket. The current garrison is weak and run by General Wrongway, a smart but inept commander whose underlings have orders to shiv him if he starts giving dumb orders in a crisis again.
4: The giant statue is an ancient magitech weather controller. It's widely known that it passively keeps the natural hot weather pleasant. But it also has other powers. An operator can scan a huge area for magical blights and anomalies, reshape magic leylines, and change the weather including even deadly storms and volcanic eruptions. It's a magic WMD with nobody currently at the helm.
5: Several powerful secret organizations know about the statue's full powers but don't know how to activate it. They've had the place staked out for centuries with spies who don't know about each other. They each want to control the thing or at least make sure nobody else does.
6: How do you take control of the statue? Get a team of Dragon-Bloods (elemental heroes) to poke the statue's various chakra points and then have a Solar (sun hero) poke it in the forehead to unlock the skull-based control room. Then you need a Solar to sit in the big chair, and have some way to undo the powerful lock that's deactivated all but the scanner function. This is tough to pull off partly because Solars are considered demonic villains in the world's dominant religion. There's also some important bureaucratic regalia in the control room, including a magic stamp that addresses letters straight to heaven with "no fooling, take this straight to upper management" labels.
7: The Lap has a hidden pro-Solar cult that thinks they're benevolent heroes. (This is closer to the truth.) If Solars openly started a rebellion these guys would join it. They don't know they're bankrolled by one of the spy organizations, one of the two factions of Siderials (kung-fu astrologer Illuminati), who have offices in heaven.
8: Wandering around in this area is Crazyblaze, old beggar. He does fun little fire magic tricks if you're nice to him, and less pleasant tricks if you're mean. Nobody's sure who the old coot is but he shows occasional signs of having been very educated before losing his mind. He gives out souvenir magic trinkets that, completely unknown to him, burst into flame and cause unexplained fires whenever someone makes him angry enough. Someone connecting the fires to him might realize he used to be much more powerful.
9: Centuries ago there was a mystic noodle dragon named Swan who fought evil fairies from beyond reality, and is missing, presumed dead. Fairies like to break people's minds and then let them go so everyone can point and laugh. He was a skilled, honest administrator in the heavenly bureaucracy and everybody liked him. There's a group of fire elementals called the Court of the Orderly Flame that tries to run magic/spirit affairs in this region in the same style Swan would have liked.
10: Swan's dragon-bureaucrat replacement is named Wong. After diplomatic snubs where heaven kept failing to give him the right titles and salary, he became a wildly crooked blackmailer that everybody hates except heaven, which keeps forwarding complaint letters to "Swan's office".
11: A couple of powerful magic users are wandering around looking for clues that Swan might not really be dead. One of these is an Orderly Flame woman descended from Swan and a mortal, and one is a Siderial.
12: One of the crooked gods in this region is Ahlat, brutal god of cattle and war, who hates the way the Lap religion/government worships him only as the happy cow god. He has a bunch of battle-nun followers in a neighboring country and wants to spread his influence.
So with just a collection of facts like this, you could put together an open-ended adventure where the heroes encounter these various things, with a fairly obvious goal and a way to reach it. Facts 11-12 aren't even necessary; they're a few of a larger set of add-in plot threads that give a party more ways to influence the situation. You could easily throw in a lost temple, as many spy rings as you want to include, the mundane civilian problems of the local peasants, or some wandering monsters. Just having the outline of a big prize/threat and various people who have some connection to it is the seed of a big plotline that doesn't railroad the players. It could also be spun in different directions based on player interest, featuring large-scale war, a few assassinations, a diplomatic approach, a magic-heavy solution, or even the party ignoring most of it and using the region as background for another storyline.
It's an interesting exercise. Some of the most interesting RPG material I've seen works by sprinkling a few key plot points around on a map and letting the players connect the dots about what they ought to do, instead of being told that "In book 2 of this campaign you will meet X ally who gives you the Y artifact." With that said, here's my attempt at describing an implied plotline from "Exalted". 2nd edition, book "The South".
1: There's a city-state called the Lap, known for great farming and being built on/around a mountain-sized statue of a seated monk. It's considered a boring, peaceful place.
2: It's ruled by King Noonecares. All power is held by the distant Scarlet Empire, which installed three competent but bickering "satraps" to run it. One of these wants to backstab the others and the Empire and become an independent queen, and will consider an alliance with anybody who might help.
3: The Empire is collapsing due to major problems of its own but really doesn't want to give up this breadbasket. The current garrison is weak and run by General Wrongway, a smart but inept commander whose underlings have orders to shiv him if he starts giving dumb orders in a crisis again.
4: The giant statue is an ancient magitech weather controller. It's widely known that it passively keeps the natural hot weather pleasant. But it also has other powers. An operator can scan a huge area for magical blights and anomalies, reshape magic leylines, and change the weather including even deadly storms and volcanic eruptions. It's a magic WMD with nobody currently at the helm.
5: Several powerful secret organizations know about the statue's full powers but don't know how to activate it. They've had the place staked out for centuries with spies who don't know about each other. They each want to control the thing or at least make sure nobody else does.
6: How do you take control of the statue? Get a team of Dragon-Bloods (elemental heroes) to poke the statue's various chakra points and then have a Solar (sun hero) poke it in the forehead to unlock the skull-based control room. Then you need a Solar to sit in the big chair, and have some way to undo the powerful lock that's deactivated all but the scanner function. This is tough to pull off partly because Solars are considered demonic villains in the world's dominant religion. There's also some important bureaucratic regalia in the control room, including a magic stamp that addresses letters straight to heaven with "no fooling, take this straight to upper management" labels.
7: The Lap has a hidden pro-Solar cult that thinks they're benevolent heroes. (This is closer to the truth.) If Solars openly started a rebellion these guys would join it. They don't know they're bankrolled by one of the spy organizations, one of the two factions of Siderials (kung-fu astrologer Illuminati), who have offices in heaven.
8: Wandering around in this area is Crazyblaze, old beggar. He does fun little fire magic tricks if you're nice to him, and less pleasant tricks if you're mean. Nobody's sure who the old coot is but he shows occasional signs of having been very educated before losing his mind. He gives out souvenir magic trinkets that, completely unknown to him, burst into flame and cause unexplained fires whenever someone makes him angry enough. Someone connecting the fires to him might realize he used to be much more powerful.
9: Centuries ago there was a mystic noodle dragon named Swan who fought evil fairies from beyond reality, and is missing, presumed dead. Fairies like to break people's minds and then let them go so everyone can point and laugh. He was a skilled, honest administrator in the heavenly bureaucracy and everybody liked him. There's a group of fire elementals called the Court of the Orderly Flame that tries to run magic/spirit affairs in this region in the same style Swan would have liked.
10: Swan's dragon-bureaucrat replacement is named Wong. After diplomatic snubs where heaven kept failing to give him the right titles and salary, he became a wildly crooked blackmailer that everybody hates except heaven, which keeps forwarding complaint letters to "Swan's office".
11: A couple of powerful magic users are wandering around looking for clues that Swan might not really be dead. One of these is an Orderly Flame woman descended from Swan and a mortal, and one is a Siderial.
12: One of the crooked gods in this region is Ahlat, brutal god of cattle and war, who hates the way the Lap religion/government worships him only as the happy cow god. He has a bunch of battle-nun followers in a neighboring country and wants to spread his influence.
So with just a collection of facts like this, you could put together an open-ended adventure where the heroes encounter these various things, with a fairly obvious goal and a way to reach it. Facts 11-12 aren't even necessary; they're a few of a larger set of add-in plot threads that give a party more ways to influence the situation. You could easily throw in a lost temple, as many spy rings as you want to include, the mundane civilian problems of the local peasants, or some wandering monsters. Just having the outline of a big prize/threat and various people who have some connection to it is the seed of a big plotline that doesn't railroad the players. It could also be spun in different directions based on player interest, featuring large-scale war, a few assassinations, a diplomatic approach, a magic-heavy solution, or even the party ignoring most of it and using the region as background for another storyline.
