Four Campaign Pitches

 With any luck, I will be starting a new game soon. I always like to whip up multiple pitches and let my players choose the one that interests them the most. I find that expositing settings with Three Truths works well because it’s a very digestible amount of information that leaves enough gaps as to allow the characters their own space to build out the world by asserting their place in it, as well as leaving a number of questions to be explored over the course of the campaign. That in mind, here are the Three Truths of the settings I’m going to present to my new group, so that I may have enough to run half of a session.

These first two are closer to the classical fantasy experience. I say “closer to” because if I run one more generic fantasy game I will rip my eyes out and feed them to the crows.

RIPPED FROM HELL’S WOMB SCREAMING

• You have been kidnapped by the Drow, subterranean humanoids with coal black eyes and unearthly pale flesh, at its thinnest points exposing miniscule spiders rushing through their veins like blood. They are holding you in the back cell of some strange temple-laboratory, intending to sacrifice you in some sort of ritual of summoning. Escape is imperative.

• Your locale of incarceration is miles below the earth in a chthonic network of caverns known as the Underdark. Choked with fungi and infested with infernal predators accustomed to the eternal lightless depths, survival is a challenge even for natives- the odds you’ll make it out, at least intact and sane, are slim to none.

• On the surface, the Paladins of the Red Sun conduct an invasive crusade on the demonic cults that have recently manifested and started festering in the dark corners of civilization. The Demon Lords Zuggtmoy, Fraz-Urb'luu, and the dread Demogorgon are rearing their heads and setting their putrid gaze upon the mortal realms, heaven help us all.

PERFECTLY FROZEN IN A MOMENT OF AGONY

• Thirty-three years ago, the sun inexplicably disappeared and the world suddenly plunged into an eternal icy darkness. You are among the survivors of this cataclysm, or perhaps those born into the world just after Nightfall.

• You don’t remember much of the light-drenched before-times anymore, the memories hurt your eyes like a phantom pain. Your remaining recollections are wracked by smoke-scented traumas in the shadow of the Ordinal Authority’s tyrrany. The Authority’s great bureaucracy was sundered by Nightfall, but the resulting anarchy wasn’t much better. The people of the darkness are bereft of leadership, a void waiting to be filled...

• The dead haven’t stayed dead since Nightfall.They return as dead-silent Gaunts, with flesh blue as ice and eyes black as the space between the stars. Their behaviors are erratic, ranging from mimicking human emotion to repeating basic behaviors to stagnantly staring to wandering the gelid wastes, but all seek isolation, and grow violent when they cannot be left to their own devices. Where have their souls gone?

These last couple of options are me going a bit crazy. If you don’t think considering what material your sword is made out of is fun, and you like knowing everything about a setting going into it, turn away here.

RUSHING THROUGH YOUR VEINS LIKE FIRE

• All your life, you have lived within the sanguine walls of some greater entity; that is to say, you dwell within a creature known only as the Flesh. You are surrounded by osseous flora and strange bacterial fauna, and bile rivers flow into sputum springs at the banks of kidney stone mining colonies.

• For decades, the Rot has plagued the deepest caverns of the Flesh, populated by mutated beasts of necrotized flesh and clods of rotting mayflies bringing plague with their kisses. Within the last year, the Rot’s ashy, cancerous demesne has spread aggressively, and threatens to consume and make unliveable great swathes of the Flesh within months.

• You are citizens of Ribcage, the greatest human city left standing. Peasant rebellions threaten to unseat the oligarchs of the Marrow Concursion, who live in their bone spire manors and gaze imperiously down on the meat farms they command. The only thing standing between open class warfare is the Blue Guard, whose purses are lined with Concursion grubs.

THE EMPIRE PERCHED UPON THE UNKNOWN CHAIN

• Just read this

Here’s hoping the game goes well. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.