I've been toying with the idea of running a campaign that has a kind of doom system. And when I say that, it is in reference to World of Horror's doom system.
For those unfamiliar, you are given 5 mysteries, and a final boss dungeon to complete. Every time you investigate a mystery, your doom percentage rises by 1-5%, with the occasional event that decreases it. Resting increases doom, as well as shopping, and other sorts of time taking upgrades. Finishing a mystery grants a small reduction in doom.
And there is a cult trying to bring an eldritch god to Earth, which will destroy and alter everything in lovecraftian ways.
Once the doom meter reaches 100%, the player loses the game. And I'm trying to think of ways to do something similar with a campaign.
The 5 mysteries and boss dungeon are easy enough to do. But tracking doom could be something which is dangerous to penalize players with. It would absolutely suck to spend several months on a campaign just to lose it because they took one too many long rests. But it's also something that can be an empty threat of reaching.
So my current thoughts:
- Every session, doom rises by 10%
- Once doom reaches 100% it resets to zero, and an entire location gets wiped off the map.
- Completing a mystery reduces doom by 50%, min 0%.
In effect, it could severely hurt them, but not immediately kill the campaign. If the party was planning on going to candlekeep but it suddenly got sucked up by a demon portal, then they must change their plans. Alternatively, if a location they didn't depend on gets destroyed, then it would at the very least still be a threat in terms of guilt tripping them to some degree.
Another difficulty with a system like this is keeping it balanced to the speed of play. Maybe 10% per session is too much, or maybe too little. And changing that rate mid game would feel a little cheap. Another option would be to go based on vibes from the get go. So any rate changes could be gradual. This would still feel cheap, but it would at least be more subtle.
What about a Groundhog Day meets mega man remix. Basically, doom starts really high and ramps very quickly. The party wipes against the BBEG almost immediately.but they respawn, and discover they can run it again. Certain actions, certain moves reduce doom significantly. Now they get to rerun the scenario multiple times until they find the right combo to defeat the boss and leave the loop.
To clarify the mega man reference, in the first few seconds of megaman X, the player fights the final boss, and loses, and in doing so is shown: A. How the final boss works B. Some moves they need to learn
Helps motivate the players to defeat the bad guy. They have a vendetta
I could see doing something like this, with the insta death at the beginning and the insta restart. But I would want to limit it to one loop after that, for which a myriad of plot reasons could suffice and explain.
Because starting a X year campaign over again from the start probably wouldn't be fun, and making it so short that they TPK and respawn every month or so of IRL time would I think get messy, or potentially boring.