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« on: November 26, 2022, 03:25:48 pm »
This is based on a campaign I ran in 1993-1996, which at the time was just a mega-dungeon that had no point in itself, but had loads of things in it that you would need to find for other campaigns. It started out as "The Archive," but after a while the players just started calling it the underground empire, after the old Zork game. So I was asking myself last night, why not incorporate both?
Things I am stealing from for this campaign:
1. The original Zork. Just for the entrance.
2. The Maze of the Blue Medusa, for the style of the joint, plus stealing multiple characters to use in different ways than they were intended.
3. My own campaign, "Ink World."
4. The graphic novel series "Colder."
5. "The Slumbering City of Tsar" by Bill Webb.
6. My old campaign from 1993, mostly just for the floor plan and the idea of it being an ancient repository of knowledge.
7. Various ideas plundered from the Fallout franchise.
Since this is a home brew campaign for a home group, I feel no problem plundering all of these sources, though if anyone has read them, they won't have much advantage, because I'm only stealing flavor, not the outline of the campaign.
All monsters the PCs will run into will either be created specifically for this campaign, or will be altered from the existing bestiaries. Not one encounter will be "stock."
There is no going back to town, because the PCs will be on a demi-plane. This is not a loot-heavy adventure. They may get a chance to get back to town once, between the archive and the empire, which would be when the PCs are somewhere between 8th and 10th level. This also means that my normal fame rules are not in play. In exchange, the PCs will select alternate races from the Advanced Race Guide (which also fits the flavor of the campaign). They may also choose freely between Eastern and Western weapons and classes at the start of the campaign.
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