Arising from this morning’s article, about the OSR, I’ve had a crazy series of ideas coalesce into something that might just work.
WARNING:
Raw, untested, undeveloped fantasy RPG ideas!
This is being posted with the hope that someone might help me refine it.
Of course, it could just as easily be simple madness.
The Set-up
![]() |
Yes, this is the album cover that inspired the title. |
I like the idea of near instant boosts to ability rather than the ‘lets sleep for 8 hours and wake up somehow better’ approach of most RPGs, the difficulty is then how that is implimented:
You don’t want it to slow game play, so the players would either have to choose their next advance before they get it, or the advance would be pre-determined some other way. Whatever method used, it would need to be a quick bolt-on that doesn’t take too long to figure out and implement.
It suggests gifts of ‘favour’ from the True god, as it develops strength from the steady reduction of the Moon King’s power.
It would be pretty cool if the new ability or boost either grants something related to the task required to achieve it, or something this is tailored to benefit our heroes in their upcoming challenges.
For example, if the True god knows your about to face some undead gribblies, something your heroes have no knowledge of yet, then the boost could be tailored to tackle them.
The whole thing buzzes nicely with common fantasy themes like classic Conan.
I hope it works out well.
If you did it as a split quest where players get to fight as the rebels first, then as long as some of the rebels still succeed in reaching the temple, perhaps if they’d brought the rest of the artifacts you can buy those heroes back in. = no lost players from early mistakes.
If you see it as a larger thing, you could develop the main adventure of the heroes, then oddly to most, go back and design a pre-quel expansion, in how the rebels learn of their quest, find the artifacts (various locations) all trying to evade the forces / knowledge of the Moon King before setting out for the Temple.
There’s so many layers available. Great concept 🙂
Really glad you like the concept. Nice and useful feedback – thanks!
I think I’d like to emphasise that the overall outcome of the game needs to remain open even though the aim to overthrow the Moon King is the goal. The players need to have the possibility of failure, otherwise it’s a no-risk pre-destined plot. That’ll be the hardest thing to work out.
I think that a co-operative style of play with the players pre-determining the upgrades they’d like to gain would work well though.
Someone on FB threw out this suggestion: “…stick with the rebels entering the tomb but instead of dying let them become ‘avatars’ vessels of the summoned Heroes. When waking these avatars have no knowledge of who they are…their tasks..to find out who they are..level/ knowledge unlock with a piece of armour/ weapon of thei hero aspect…”