Campaign Framework - Dream of Swords
Give a GM a one-shot, and you feed them for one day. Teach a GM a campaign framework, and you feed them for a lifetime. - Abraham Lincoln, rpg.net forums, 2014
Today I came up with a fun little campaign framework, for both solo and group gaming. It mixes cosmic horror and mythical fantasy, so you get “chocolate in your peanut butter”:
My goals for this were to combine two of my favorite settings for RPGs: modern investigative horror and OSR-style hex- and dungeon-crawling.
The campaign framework is composed of two layers, separated by dreaming:
- By day you play modern day investigators of the weird and occult. You work strange cases as a consultant and make it home by supper. You delve into libraries, peruse strange tomes, and strike deals with the local mob to help you against the new age cult. This can be played with your pick of whatever modern cosmic horror system (CoC, Cthulhu Eternal, Delta Green, etc.)
- However, by night, when you dream, you are transported to a world of mythic fantasy, inhabiting different characters. Here you play out pulp sword and sorcery adventures, delving for treasures and facing off against undead cults and monstrous beasts. This can be played with … take your pick (WWN, Knave, OSE, DCC, etc.)
Further notes
- The GM can decide what the connection is between the “mundane” world and the dream-world. Is the dream the past? Is the dream the future? Is the dream a parallel world?
- The Cosmic Prison. In this framework, the modern day is slowly being overtaken by the rise of an Old One, either as an outright apocalyptic series of events (flooding, madness, violence) or in a more subtle way (you simply wake up one day to feel that something is off — check Cthulhu City). You are one of the few survivors / seers of the truth, etc. You join a group trying to figure out what’s happening in the world. But the current day is already too late. In you dream world, you come across strange hints about the nature of what’s going on.
- Generally, ideas you research in the modern day may reflect back into the dreamlands. Ex. you read about a cult of Atlantis in the library of Arkham, and in the dream world you are a fierce warrior of Atlantis facing off against an attack of Deep Ones.
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