I play the Points of Lights idea where the world is overrun by evil. The good gods has basically lost already and sees they have nothing to lose by letting their last believers sacrifice themselves for the better of all living things. The neutral gods have provided an incentive by forcing the moon to crash into the earth. The tsunamis destroying all the naval cities because of the tidal forces.
The heroes, specifically the divine ones, have some serious qualms about what to do. Since they can’t stop the apocalypse because of their low power, they have to choose between saving thousands of believers or imprison the primordial. Should be interesting.

Can’t say too much more, except that the world is a very different (and in most ways, better) place than it was last month…

The Scarred Lands was written by the Sword and Sorcery Studios team and published by White Wolf. Most fans agree that the earlier supplements are generally better than the later half of the line, though there are some good ones in the second half. There is some content that can be potentially unbalancing but a GM has to use his judgement with that stuff, just like most campaign settings.

You might have seen a series of books called the Creature Collection (I, II, III). These books were original monsters for the setting and very nice work I must say. There has been a Creature book for 4e under the GSL, but I think Fiery Dragon is now the publisher for that as White Wolf retired the line long before 4e came out.

@David Reese – I’m a fan of his work and am working on the last book in the Baroque cycle right now. Anathem is a book for down the road or Audio book. Too involved in other projects to devote my reading time to that heavy of material.

@Hunaahi – Infectious Zombie Apocalypse games are always fun. I like to run them in fantasy settings for the added feel of hopelessness. At least in the modern world we have a bit of hope that the government/army will be able to contain something for a while at least. Magic (and the gods who help turn undead) might give hope that the apocalypse could be averted.

@Scott Martin – Actually I hadn’t even thought about the fact that this (and the regular comic that was supposed to be up at Dinosaur Comics) was at all in conjunction. I hadn’t even heard about the earthquake until later last evening.

@taotad – “The gods being willing to sacrifice the heroes’ planet to chain Codruchun to the abyss for all times and thus no longer being a problem for the prime material plane.”

That is a nifty concept. So are the heroes unwitting pawns, or are they ok with their planet’s sacrifice?

@BryanB – That setting sounds nifty. Who put it out?

@lampropeltis – I hope you do run this. I hadn’t really thought about that (not buying into the hype around the Mayan Calendar), but it is a good time to run an Apocalypse game.

Maybe one day I’ll run that campaign.

The usual start for a campaign is around 150 years since this event. This event changed the landscape in a literal way and kingdoms vanished, were altered, or blossomed during these apocalyptic events.

Since the Titans (Parents of the Gods)lost, they were chained up, buried, or dismembered and scattered across the continents. There are druidic cults that venerate the great titans and seek to usher in their return. It is beleived that some of the Titans will regenerate if their scattered parts were brought together in a secret ritual.

One of the main adventure tracks revolves around the followers of the Serpent Queen seeking to bring her back to her rightful status as a ruler over Scarn (the name of the world). The setting has a greek mythology feel to it and has a lot of fun locations and NPCs. It is a shame that I haven’t used this setting in campaign play.

Its quite fun to end a creation. Strange I haven’t done so before.

Sudden — and ominous — changes in the sky or the wind or the earth itself (tremors) might be the first distant signs of trouble, especially if the party is far off from the epicenter of the “disaster”. Rumors of war or of destruction could reach the party well before they have a chance to do anything to help, and probably during a quest that may quickly seem unimportant if what they’re hearing is true…

Part of the adventure, therefore, is how the party finds answers to what’s really going on behind the rumors and panic. As they move toward the epicenter, things get wilder and weirder as they discover what they think is the problem is actually something quite different, perhaps on a scope they can’t even imagine at first. Makes for an intense scenario!

I should therefore probably try it sometime…

Dan

I seem to rarely play games that have that immediate/near threat, i think it would be thrilling to play games like that more often.

The other thing I’d say, and this is true of the fall of Rome, is that end-of-the-world scenarios seem to be rather conducive to the rise of military strong-arms. As powerful institutions collapse, ruthless individuals quickly start arguing over the pieces. This is something I’ve noticed in almost every zombie film. In some, you have the odd “raiders,” like the biker gang in Dawn of the Dead. In others, rule by force is more explicit. Consider the last scene of Night of the Living Dead, and all of the social implications it has (for NotLD fans, think about what the scene means must have been going on in urban areas for the entire film…). 28 Weeks Later is all about living under a military dictatorship that justifies itself as necessary for protecting people from the nightmare “outside.”

Lovely stuff.

My Blog- http://bigballofnofun.blogspot.com/