Moxiane/CampaignIdeas

Chronicles of the Future-Past

Below are thoughts and ramblings and mentions of inspirations for games that I may or may not run at some time in the future. The Saga of Ice and Wave is currently taking up much of my time, but things may change, so it’s worth thinking of stuff to take its place, just in case…

Duty’s Pain, Honour’s Reward

”In any war there are heroes on both sides…”

Set in the waning days of the Shogunate, the characters will all be subjects of one of several regional Daimyos in the River Province. Knowing each other through some social system (schools, salons, etc…) they will find themselves allies or enemies depending on the vagaries of the internecine politics that dominated the latter years of the Shogunate. Expect much angst as honour and loyalty forces lovers to become deadly foes and father to battle son.

The Game

• New Backgrounds would be created: Favour (the degree to which the Daimyo is invested in the character, a mixture of Liege from Exalted: the Abyssals and Patron from Exalted Player’s Guide) and Naval Command (the amount/size of skyships the character commands, from simple wingboats to Skywolf-class dreadnoughts).
• Magitech would be everywhere - the Artefact background would be empowered to the degree in Exalted: the Abyssals, if not even more so.
• The Immaculate Dragon Paths would be available for characters, but they would not be as restrictive as in the present day – the Immaculate Order was not the powerful tool for social control during the Shogunate that it became during the Scarlet Dynasty.
• There would be a limit of one story (4-6 sessions) per year – downtime between stories would cover politics, relationship building, and the changing fortunes of war.

Righteous Warriors of the Sun

”Your kung-fu is pig dung!”

In “classic Exalted” style, the players will all be Solars and the game will largely centre around the Scavenger Lands and the East. Each of them will also be one of the star pupils at a Gold Faction training camp, learning the martial arts from some mysteeeeerious men and women who call themselves the Sidereal Exalted. The camp is attacked when the characters are away, and they return to find a blackened ruin – revenge ensues.

The Game

• Mostly standard Solar character creation, although there are the following provisos: Every character must favour Martial Arts if they are not Dawn Caste and begins with 5 Charms from a chosen MA style (the Immaculate Dragon Paths are specifically excluded) as well as five dots in MA. Each character must have a different style – the dots and Charms are in addition to the standard amount given.
• Characters will have access to Face from the Exalted Player’s Guide and Sifu from Exalted: the Sidereals. Face is a measure of a character’s general martial arts badassedness as well as the other uses of it. Characters who fight with an ability that isn’t MA in front of witnesses risk losing Face as a result.
• As well as being engaged in revenge for the loss of their home and friends, the characters will become entwined in the machinations of the Five-Score Brotherhood and learn that their teachers may not have told them the whole truth about certain past events.

Things to Do in Stygia When You’re (Almost) Dead

”It’s nothing personal, just... business.”

The city of Stygia lies at the heart of the Underworld, crowded around the Mouth of the Void, millions of ghost do what passes for living in the grey land of the dead. Craftsmen and scholars and concubines and labourers populate the city, many doing in death what they did in life – a fate that the ghosts of criminals often share. Into this sepulchral world of criminality come the agents of the Deathlords, the Abyssal Exalted, and their arrival is a herald of massive change in this otherwise largely-static city of the dead.

The Game

• The characters are all Abyssal Exalted (the assumption is that they are loyal deathknights), all recent arrivals to the capital city of the Underworld, and sent there by their Deathlord(s) to take over the underworld (pun intended).
• The characters are not the only beings with this task, since controlling the criminals of Stygia would be a fine prize for anyone.

Lions of the Desert

”The Jungan Wastes are not to be travelled lightly…”

The South. A land of endless desert, filled with Fair Folk, cannibals, and wandering flames – or so the stories would have you believe. Wander these lands to see the truth for yourself, experience awe-inspiring wonders and nightmare-inducing terrors, right wrongs and generally do the right thing (or at least the right thing at the time...), and do it all because you’re one of the Solar Exalted, determined to prove those old tales about you wrong.

The Game

• The characters are all standard Solars, who must come from in or around the South (edges variable).
• Very much a “see the sights, fight the fights” game, with heroic Solars doing the A-Team thing all over the South.
• The Locust Crusade may well make an appearance.