The following was the hook I used to find players.

The following was the hook I used to find players.

Near as we can tell, ninety years ago Gods rose again.  And no one was prepared for the ensuing disaster.  It was a dark day in history.  It takes a generation for a new religion to gain followers, train healers, build temples, establish infrastructure.  But it only takes one mad prophet to start a plague that brings civilization to it’s knees.  There is much that we still don’t know.  Who went mad first, the God or the Prophet? Was it the unfettered Titan influence that drove the god and his prophet insane?

All we know is that the disease destroyed everything.  Entire nations fell. So few people were left that fields lay fallow for decades.  Cities were reclaimed by nature.  But this was also a time of opportunity. For in the wake of destruction “monster” races were spared.  If it wasn’t for goblin/ogres/kobolds becoming farmers, undertakers, and caregivers even more would have been lost. Even with their help many cities disappeared, now little more than another set of overgrown ruins lost to the sand of time.  And not all monsters were willing to help, many gleefully destroyed those who once oppressed their kind.

Now two generations later, the “civilized races” are beginning to recover.  There are ruins to plunder and more knowledge lost than retained.  Will you take up sword and spell to delve long lost ruins, looking for treasure and answers among the ashes of civilizations lost past?

* * * * * * 

I had five players.  They picked a theme of a traveling circus with the idea that at the end of the world people still care about bread and circuses.   They chose to favor monster races and while asking them about what monster meant we fleshed out a lot about the disaster and the state of the world.

They also specified that the circus menagerie was to invoke a “Dark Dr Seuss”.   I mined their bonds and background for ideas and peppered the with questions.  The questions and answers and back stories got woven together here (https://sites.google.com/site/houseofmasks/campaigns/after-the-plague/summaries/introductions)

First session summary :  https://sites.google.com/site/houseofmasks/campaigns/after-the-plague/summaries/01—ying-that-sing-like-anything

I loved all the cliffhangers.  We all had a great time.  Going to play again this weekend to find out what happens next.