Topic: Starting a solo campaign.

[Tiqon]

Hi all!

In the 80'ies I picked up a box with a rpg in middle earth (for some reason I cannot write the name of it... why is THAT wrong in the forum? It is/was an ICE product as far as I remember!). ½ a year later Rolemaster was aquired. Many homemade rules to RM and other RPG systems later. A marriage plus kids later, and MANY MANY years later Im sitting here looking through my Shadow world books....

No reason to tell you guys why .

I have played RPG with my wife and some friends for years now. On and off off course. I am a busy adult now :S.

Me and my wife talked about doing something else beside playing LOTRO and watching movies every night. Therefore I asked her about if she would be interested in a solo campaign. She said ok (shes not a dedicated roleplayer as you proberby all are) but she wanted to be POWERFUL for a change. That was a must....

Here is my idea:

Its in Kulthea offcource . She wakes up with amnesia (details are still on the drawing board). She soon discovers that she is superior to others. She knows how to fight, armed and unarmed. She has mental powers and knows magic too. Her primary quest will be to figure our what she is and why she has the skills she has, and what have happened to her. Nothing more about the campaign story is at the moment decided.

Other than:

Shes a Lord of Essænce. She wakes up after a sleep (hibernation) lasting since the first age. I think of her as an assassin used by a powerful K'Ta'Viir in the first age. Why she was put in hibernation I have no idea about yet. Maybe she has a hidden agenda, even she dont know and is "programmed" to kill someone... like Andraxx . I know she will play "good guy" and Im really interested in seeing how she reacts when she finds out she a cold hearted killer....

So. Actually Im writing this as Im sure you would bombard me with ideas! twists, adventure ideas, background idea and such. Dont hold anything back! This is the brainstorming phase!

My wife knows a little about SW (she has seen my books and is a good listener of my nerdy passion). But its been like 10 years since I played a campaign in SW and just as long since I have looked at the SW books. She knows what a K'Ta'Viir is (as I tried to convince her I was one, a month after we meet... hey she still married me, I guess Im just a lucky guy ) but I dont see that as a problem.

Thanks in advance for any input. And Ill try to read through some of the other topics here and join the talk .

[yammahoper]

There is a lot I could say...


First, the upper chamber of her hybernation chambers were violated and looted over the years.  Stolen were the X amount of diamnds that acted as memory crystals for her awakening and were an inherient part of the dram machines ability to make and modify her dreams while in stasis.  Each stone could be a daily spell item or provide pp or have weird powers or just be valuable: whatever.  By now they are cast far and wide around the globe.  Even an under sea adventure could be created.  Certain crystals may have been used in constructs, magic rituals, alchemist labs, as a power source to somethings nasty, daily spell adders, pp multipliers, psionic multipliers, etc.  In the end, our stalwart hero needs to recover the crystals and attune to them, downloading her memories from each one.

Some may become aware of a lord of essence emerging into the light.  consider her mind and powers mostly unshielded from scrying.  The eyes themselves may summon critters to haul her back across the boundry into the east.  Powerful orders might detect her.  Create what adventures you will.  Our hero will need to learn to shield her power (consider this an extrememly hard meditation mnv: some ally could teach her, like a dragon lord or andrax, or she could remember the discipline when she recovers the proper crystal).

A world in chaos, she should have no troubles finding oppresors to resist and oppressed to fight for.

Good luck and enjoy.

[rdanhenry]

And if she's now doing good, but finds her memories of someone who was hard and harmful... will she give up trying to recover her memory in order to get a new start? That crystal scenario could lead to some hard choices.

[Tiqon]

Indeed it could .
 
Thank alot for the ideas! Brilliant .

Im not using Rolemaster I must admit, but a point buy system that some of the SW books actually gave stats for.... With house rules off course . But that just makes the diamond idea easier to use system wise.

I have at this time made her character and shes pretty powerful. She have over average physical skills and martial skills, but no knowledge skills. All her stats are off course over average too. She CAN cast spells but knows non when she starts. She has her PSI abilities and for an average person she would formiddable, but shes not über in that regard.

I think Her chamber had been viloated too, because I dont want her to start with insane items.I love the diamand idea. It gives her something to hunt for. But as rdanhenry said is going to give her some hard choices later. . This is what I like to hear!

I think maybe someone found her in the chamber and carried her away, but she woke up and killed them all (but she dont remember). And that is exacly where I was considering of starting her. Looking down on a company of dead people, eg in a camp. Maybe there even is a half dead person still alive, begging her for his life . Here I could place some items she could start with.
I also thought about her really weak from wakening and taken care of by some good people (monestary perhaps). She could brought back to good health but after a while lacking her memory she heads out to find where she comes from. Maybe finding the chamber first and learning about the diamonds... hmmm.

[yammahoper]

As she gathers crystals they may well influence her.  Certainly if the psychic aura of the crystals has directed their users and use to dark purposes, then in time the player should become curious as to why all her crystals seems to be only in the hands of bastrds

She may resist the influence ( a GM can hope).  As the pool of crystals gather, a unique and seperate psychic force may be born.  The old mentality given birth as a disembodied entity that wants to live again and needs our stalwarts heros body to do so.  This would be the dark side of our hero.  Mechanically, it may only manifest within 50km of our hero, or the crystals themselves when so many are finally together.  Of course, the entity and the fact it is created by X amount of crystals being in proxemity should not be something our hero knows right off.  Eventually our hero learns that if she absorbs all the crystals and embraces her original self, the entity and her will once again become one.  If she refuses to remerge her old conscience, then as long as X amount of crystals are together, the entity will exist (thus, again as a hopeful GM, our hero will realize they must never be allowed to be brought together, she must allow her old self to stay dead and find a new life in the world, sacrificing all her memories and a great deal of power).

In the future, somehow the secret of the crystals is discovered and some group/individual quest to collect them and bring them together.  They desire power, perhpas to control the entity, whatever, but of course the entity only desires one thing; our stalwart hero.  Hopefully, said hero would feel obliged to prevent such a thing.  In the life of an immortal, this old freind of hers could return every few centuries or whatever.

This approach is fairly dark, but it could be done with an entity driven by very different emotions than the desire to be an ultimate evil assassin with a job to finish.