Sudden campaign idea.

[gridlore]

Good for a high-powered, high-level game.

Sometime in the past all the characters sold their souls to an infernal power. An even more powerful cleric has discovered a way to retrieve the contracts. The quest is in three parts:

1. Searching out the pieces of the artifact that makes up the key to Hell.


2. Finding the Gates of Hell


3. Fighting your way in and out again.

There are of course some limitations. Since this is a quest for redemption, the characters cannot engage in grossly evil acts. Picking a lock to access a room? Fine. Slaughtering the 800 guards in that room for no particular reason? Not good. This applies for the first two parts; onces in Hell, all bets are off. If a character engages in too much evil activity, s/he will be unable to leave Hell at the end of the quest. Also, the rules are that the number of people able to escape Hell is one less than the number of qualifying characters. Someone is going to be left behind. Either in a heroic stand to buy time or as the result of betrayal, one person isn't leaving.

This just came to me. Itd be really fun to run. What do you do when one part of the key is the Papal Crown?

Yes, a lot of this was inspired by the Key to Time story arc in Dr. Who.

Comments

[seawasp]

Hey, we did a campaign through hell once. Of course... it was a bit less serious, what with running over Cerberus with a bus-sized hovervan.

[dalen-talas.livejournal.com]

Can I bring my rocket launcher?

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Sure! Bring a weapon that depends on a highly combustible fuel with a fairly low ignition point along.

[dalen-talas.livejournal.com]

That's OK, I'll only be using it until I get to that secret room on level 3. That's where the BFG's at.

[seawasp]

That's what cooling cantrips are for. Until it's time to launch.

[caprine.livejournal.com]

I would play this.

[kengr]

Step 2 is easy:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://vikki.ethernauts.net/images/clothes14.jpg&imgrefurl=http://vikki.ethernauts.net/clothes.html&h=336&w=448&sz=28&tbnid=svoJgKp2DhUeGM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=120&zoom=1&docid=oG5zEWH3qO8bZM&sa=X&ei=6f6xTuWVJ8nYiALJo4EW&ved=0CEsQ9QEwBw&dur=3041

[melchar.livejournal.com]

It sounds like an AWESOME idea - with a nifty item to get hold of - and the 'must leave one behind' reminding me of the Skuld holding of the hordes of Hel that 'Thor' managed ... was that 15? years ago now?

I've done some quests to hell before. A grim, basically lawful one with paladins committing rescue on souls not meant to be there.

Then there was a later adventure in hell about 10 years later - with the same basic premise - but this was led by Gilrandir* - who had heard about the hell-rescue the paladins led - and was mainly a party of chaotic goods. This adventure turned into far more of a zany romp and ended up as more akin to a massive jail break [when they reached the circle of the thieves]. Lots of clever, on-the-fly ideas as they ran along causing havoc.




*Gil_liant's PC Gilrandir being run by the same guy as ran the main paladin, Michael, in the first adventure

[mikkop.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a cool game. Too bad I'm too far away to come to california to game...

I've been reading Burning Wheel Gold recently and this seems like a game meant for this. It has these mechanics for setting goals for the characters, and that'd be just great for a game like this.

Of course that doesn't depend on the rules, really. Free-form could be fun, too.

[jilesa.livejournal.com]

Heh... our current Pathfinder campaign is a quest through Hell to defeat a demon who is being held captive by the devils in Hell and bound to the service of the red dragon who's trying to wipe out the humanoid races of our world. I think our adventure this Saturday is taking us into Dis, so we've already found the way INTO Hell, though I'm not at all certain we'll get back out again...