This is not a joke I am in session 3 of my "You have died and are now in the afterlife setting!" I am like 10 seconds into the video so I'm super hyped!
A thing I’ve had fun with in D&D is “ghost spouse”. Letting a PC have a significant other can be fun, because a lot of players enjoy a romance for their characters but don’t really want the “will they/won’t they” drama. But there are logistic issues with having an NPC follow the party around… like if they’re capable of protecting themselves it’s a balance problem since the party basically has +1 member, and if they’re just lvl 1 commoner, they’re basically a liability and the party is looking at a campaign-long escort mission. The PC’s spouse being a ghost (of the “can’t be heard, seen, or felt by anyone but their loved one” sense, not like one of the energy draining touch types), the PC gets to have their romance subplot, but they’re neither an OP asset nor a thing they need to worry about protecting… and needless to say “Yes they died, but they’re still with me always” is a fun bit while the other players put two and two together slowly why the one party member has one-sided convos when they think they’re alone and such (or fail to channel their inner detective and instead find out all at once the first time someone casts a Divination spell highlighting them), and makes for a cute encapsulation of two lovers secure in their dynamic… death doesn’t really matter because they’re still together and that’s what counts. Can work for those Players who live for drama too… a divorce is always a messy thing because of how much of their lives both people have given up for the other… a couple who are contemplating if they’re falling “out of love” is emotionally charged by default, but when one partner made some crucial sacrifice to a warlock patron to spare their lover from a death they weren’t ready for, say returned to Earth with their wedding ring as a metaphysical anchor, only for years or even decades after that reversal of fate have one or both realize they aren’t actually sure any more if they love the other is a conundrum with a ton of pathos.
You‘re last paragraph basically describes Kaos, a new-ish netflix show about eurydice and orpheus, with jeff goldblum as zeus. Check it out if you a haven‘t, it‘s very fun.
"Where is she? Not there-not in heaven . . . you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer-I repeat it till my tongue stiffens-Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you-haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always-take any form-drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!’
I like the idea of a higher level undead party comprised of a Lich, Deathknight, Mummy Lord, and Vampire. As a warlock/wizard/sorcerer, paladin, cleric, and bard.
I had a similar idea before of a one shot involving an undead party of adventurers. At first they're antagonists but it's later revealed that they're just trying to find a way to be put to rest and they've been doing as (who they THINK is) their 4th member instructs since he's the party wizard who always used to solve these kinds of things. The rest of the party would be made up of a Bonesinger (Bard), Huecuva (Cleric), and Kurobosu (Monk). I was even thinking of maybe including the wizard as something unrecognizable as their former self, like a Nothic.
I love this. Especially if your previous campaign ended in a TPK. You can continue with same characters (but maybe without the items as they're left with the bodies).
Wraith The Oblivion is probably the most intense & deepest exploration of undeath you can find in a ttrpg just make sure you've got a good group at your table. Who can handle such heavy stuff with respect.
Or you could go the entire opposite direction with Adventure Skeletons, where the party is a band of skeletons who got bored of being a wizard’s flunkies and wandered off to explore.
I'm currently running a campaign where, when my players die they lose one of three core memory of theirs that affects their character in someway. They do have a chance to reclaim their memories but it's pretty rare and if they lose all three of their core memories they are permanently lost with their bodies cursed to forever wander as a husk of their former selves.
I mean an Idea I have in my back pocket is to run a "You were epic heroes in an age long past, but now you've been ressurected by a person." With the reason being you're starting all over is that when you were active the underlying rules (or, meta-narritively, edition or even system hehe) changed since you were dead. The old magic you used is frayed, the god you were championing has fallen out of favor, your sword arm has literally rotted. The hows and why's are still up in the air, but the idea of playing session 1 with each characters final moments before they have life jolted back in them would be neat.
Me and Runesmith are on the same wavelength, I’ve got this idea recently as well but decided to run an Adventure Skeletons adventure instead. Oops, all skeletons and we need to delve into the human dungeon (also known as a village).
Hear me out: You know the Wild Hunt? Basically a bunch of dead guys decide to ride across the lands with someone at the front. There are many versions, sometimes a powerful person is leading it, sometimes they are hunting the living. Now, you know the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse, Conquest, War, Famine, and Death? And you know Danse Macabre, Death goes to the graveyard with a fiddle and starts playing for the dead? Okay, now connect the dots. Imagine a skeletal bard leading a horde of wrights on horse back while he rides a pale horse and plays the fiddle. Metal af.
If you want to see a very fun interpretation of The Wild hunt check out Limbus Company and Earlking Heifcliff a man filled with so much self loathing that he goes across the mirror worlds creating a giant army of the dead of all those who caused him pain and to slay the murderer of his love (himself) across every universe so that he and they suffer forever so that Cathy may forgive him even a little.
The Hags deal doesnt even seem that bad "you get to be revived then you have to pay back your debt and then you can go free" sounds like a bargain if your an immortal undead
I've actually had an idea like this recently. I just need time to create and a party to play a Lawful Evil campaign where every character is a spawn of a Deep Spawn with no memories or ability skills due to having equivalent knowledge, understanding of their body, and social sense of a child with the mental capacity of adults. It would also probably be more intriguing to be clones of once alive heros than "You meet up in a tavern." Edit: I thinking about leveling up to be themed as them killing things with knowledge (experience) and then feeding them to the Deep Spawn and once they kill enough knowledge worth of things then the Deep Spawn can redigest them to impart more knowledge and level up the characters.
There's also the Ghostwalk setting which is pretty much right up the alley of that kind of thing...the boundaries between life and death are kind of screwy there. Hopping back and forth between life and death is just another part of the fun there
there is a campaign setting called ghost walk in 3.5 edition. a opening to the afterlife is in the region. when a character dies, they can become a ghost for a while and stick around. there is a effect on the region making the ghosts physical so they are no longer incorporeal. while they are a ghost, they get a free level into a new ghost class. while they can still adventure from where they were slain, the ghost levels take over, converting 1 for 1 a previous level each time they level up. once they have over half their levels as ghost type, they are pulled to the afterlife. it is a neat setting, especially when you get to punch the shadows without needing magic weapons.
I've ran a your dead welcome to the hells after a tpk. There is a chance you can go back to life but so do the others. And you have to compete against them. And everything wants to consume you since you are basically a soul given temporary mass. Good luck
3.5 had the wonderful book Ghostwalk that had guidelines for figuring out your ghost characters obsession like repeating actions or fixating on a type of item, wether its lamps because you had a favorite when alive or daggers because it was the last thing you saw, determining if your ethereal and intangible or fully manifested semi solid extoplasm as well as how your death would effect your ghostly appearance. Did you die to a finger of death that left no marks or were you ripped apart by a werewolf. Definitely worth looking at of you want phantasmal player practicing their poultergeistly passions
I've been considering running a mega dungeon campaign set in a necropolis. Though once a holy land, a graveyard the size of a city, it has been corrupted by the mysterious necromancer. No living souls remain, but the endless dead rise from their graves. Though most are mindless monsters a few retain their intellect, the players. Bound to the necropolis in tormented unlife the players must defeat the horrors within, find the mysterious necromancer, and undo the curse. Or of course, take the undead army as their own.
That's actually a really cool concept for a campaign setting. In my dnd world, each star is the soul of someone dead. I can make a neat little world with them, too. Also, I remember meeting you at a convention a few years ago during your break from making videos. I'm glad you've been back at it for a while and hope you're loving what you do!
Another bonus for Hades granting a handful of adventurers a second chance at life: they'll probably go on another adventure and send several more souls down to wait in line.
In Pathfinder cosmology, there is a whole class of neutral outsiders called Psychopomps, creatures that serve the local goddess of death and help her run the whole 'final judgement' business, from skeletal women who look like they're from Coco and welcome the newly dead in the afterlife to soften the trauma, all the way to 'angels of death' who chase after stubborn ghosts that refuse to rest in peace. If you're planning a full ghost campaign, it might be worth it to borrow those.
PF2 is insane with its weird playables so many flavors of Undead an soul fecking I have a Champion with Ghoul fever who has a Wayang companion with Spirit Warrior dedication who only work to test my other undeads an wacko fellas including a Mummy Dragon isk leader of a unofficial monster country and a Strix Zombie tyrant etc I have a problelm
It is even easier if you play Pathfinder 2e, and you have the Book of the Dead. It has the playable race of Skeleton, and the player archetypes (like a sort of multi class thingy) for Ghosts, Ghouls, Zombies, Vampires, and even Liches (at 12th level though instead of 2nd). My character started out as an alive male Goblin Alchemist named Boblin. Now I after things in the Tomb of Horrors (not nerfed and at levels 1-3), I am now an undead female Ghost Goblin Alchemist named Boblina. I literally just died to an overdose of Necrotic energy, and rose again thanks to the same overdose of Necrotic energy. Oh and the rules for this are also online on the archive of Nethyss for free to everyone, because all Pathfinder rules are.
i work on a campaign where they have to fight a overpowered BBEG and the tpk is included as they'll have to fight in avernus and travel various "afterdeath" to one of the heavens for reach sigil and fight again the BBEG
One of the best resources for ghost PCs is the 3e campaign setting book Ghost Walk. It revolves around a mega city built on top of a mega dungeon. At the bottom of the dungeon is a portal to the afterlife. Every ghost or other incorporeal being within 50 miles of the portal manifests fully on the material plane as if they were regular physical creatures. Everyone who dies automatically becomes a ghost until they walk through the portal. Like with all things 3e, the player options revolved around feats. There were a hundred or so feats only ghosts could take. The way progressing as a ghost worked is when you died, you became a ghost and kept all your levels, but any new levels would need to be taken from one of the two ghost base classes in the book. The ghost classes allowed you to continue spell casting level progression or take the fighter equivalent ghost class. Both ghost classes gave bonus ghost feats at regular levels. If you were revived, you exchanged all your ghost levels for regular class levels. It was one of the better standouts in 3e that is easy enough to port straight over to 5e.
I’m running a campaign based on the Prototype games and one of the tag lines for that game has been something along the lines of “Permanent Death is for Other People.” Because the hive mind they’re fighting can reproduce anything it absorbs so they’re always waiting for some asshole from their past to show up again for round 2.
I ran a game like this! The idea was that each player during their "Session zero" with me did a brief play solo, where we played out the scene of their death where they left something unresolved, and it made their soul waver on the way to the afterlife and not quite make it there. So instead they got stuck in a realm of ghosts and memories, all the things half-forgotten that haven't passed on, sheltered there by a sympathetic and kind god of the dead. Their goal was to find lost artifacts with influence over time itself, because Death would not let them go back to the world of the living but would have no problem at all allowing them to undo dying in the first place. It was great fun, and let me play a very unusually magical setting with plenty of strange things in it for them to find. Got to play with themes around memories and things forgotten, from people to places, in a fun way. Great players made it a really fun game, and our finale session was them all going back in time to the moments of their death now with 15 more levels gained from the course of the campaign in order to marathon through undoing their deaths as newfound badasses.
Suggestion for a 4th party member in the ghost/skeleton/zombie Voltron: they could come back as a possessed suit of armor. Maybe a 5th could be a possessed sword (preferably a spell caster, so they can mage hand and fire off spells while being wielded and such)
I had an idea for a campaign where the players have to "become dead" via a special potion they have to gather ingredients for and then craft in order to access the plane of Hades (which is also the God Hades himself). The plane is infinite, but you're never far from the River Styx and if you follow it, the river leads to Hades massive tower. Inside is an infinite library containing books which represent the "life story" of every soul that comes to Hades. An Avatar of Hades sits in a throne room and uses the books to judge souls, sending them on to their proper afterlife. The conflict in the story is that someone has stolen their book, and in the process, escaped back to realm of the living. While the book is gone, no soul can be judged and so the afterlife is bottlenecked and the cosmos is in danger of imploding. :D
I have that for all my campains on the back burner in case it comes to a TPK, what hasn't happened in ages. I find it so much more interesting when you let the players believe they are dead but instead continue in the afterlife, especially for a long running campaign. Giving them a sort of second chance, have them face their enemies they killed or NPC's who died because of them.
I'd had a campaign idea kinda like this. Party would be part of a crusade being sent to an island that a being such as Orcus was building an army on. Ships would be met with tragedy and all the party would become some form of undead, due to a blessing from someone on board they and probably some other NPCs would still be undead but they would be free from the control of whoever. Perhaps they choose to still carry out their mission, perhaps not.
One aspect of my video game dev idea is to make the game a Rogue-lite, which essentially means whenever you die, you respawn into a new world and different point of time in that world with some traces of your past lives. This isn't always linear either. Each world time is linear after you spawn into it but the themes and tech and histories and geography of each world is shuffled. The timelines overlap too so you could eventually somehow get pack to previous worlds and times that you've been in before.
this reminds me of a one page RPG where you all play as a group of skeletons trying to exit a dungeon, which I could imagine being the torture chamber of an evil wizard who punishes people who oppose him to die in his dungeon but come back to life without memory and try to leave only to die again and I could imagine too that maybe the skeletons of different races might be different enough to make each skeleton unique to play too, that and if you wish to be some sort of zombie.
During a couple games I've played a character that is a ghost haunting a pile of junk (warforged statblock). The premise of the character is that the afterlife and cosmology (across all alignments and planes) of the Forgotten Realms setting is pretty fucking bleak the deeper into the lore you go (such as with the petitioner system and the Wall of the Faithless), and the character's pissed about it for specific reasons, so he's starting a ghost rights movement. Using refluffed Totem Warrior barbarian and Astral Self monk he'd manifest physically portions of his own spirit to fight with, essentially becoming a wandering poltergeist.
I really like the idea of the party coming back from the dead as different types of undead. It's a great way to literally play against character. How will that lawful good paladin retain his alignment if he returns as a revenant or ghoul?
The “Gothic Lineages” makes these kind of characters possible in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. For me, I’d use “Van Helsing’s Guide to the Unquiet Dead” for building the Ultimate Necromancer character.
had this idea for ages for a game where there are no perfect resurrection-type spells, and they can only bring you back in progressively weaker forms of undeath. when you die, you can be brought back as a zombie, but if you die again, you come back as just a skeleton, and then you become a ghost, and after that you're not coming back
I once wanted to recreate Hades in Theros, since the setting had rich descriptions of the different wards of the underworld and the kinds of monsters that guard it. Maybe I should get back to that idea.
No lie, sending low-level PCs into "The Underworld" to resurrect a fallen ally is one of my favorite things to do (the other being a storyline where they discover that they're all deities). Having them physically walk there like some Greek myth and building the entire adventure around what they find there too. I vote for Morph Suit + Slutty Cowboy combined too.
For those leaning in a Hades/GOW direction, Theros' underworld has plenty of options for ghosts (or Eidolons) seeking to return to life or just understand how they died. Also Anikthea is literally the Theros equivalent to Zagreus.
im just goung through a baclkog of vidoes i've missed for like a ayear and i gotta say , thinking about weird campaign settings where you´re not an atypical party seems really cool, like that infernal engine video made me think it'd be really baller if you had a campaign where you´re just various demons in avernus trying to like scroung and live and maybe get "big" maybe amass your own mad max horde of engines or scheme
"The gods favor you heroes of the light, and invigor your boken bodies and anchor your spirit to the material plane fight on! Rally against the dark, finish the mission to sever your bonds to this plane and finally rest!" Not great, but a tagline I thought of for a good undead party
See this reminds ds me of the story of the game Deaths Gambit. In it you are an undead, granted a free pass by Death to basically go to a place where immortality lies to basically undo the beings who are defying the natural order. Kinda a fun hook, death is not an imposition and your players die alot but just respawn and get back out their so the problem can't be solves with brute force.
The more you reference One Piece, the more I want you to make or modify a One Piece DnD module. Maybe work with Pointy Hat and Tulok the Barbarian to work out the details. Shortcuts I recommend: use islands and devil fruits from the movies and make it during Roger's time.
There's a One Piece DND game stream by Rustage I would recommend. They have completed those first campaign and are currently in their second series One Piece DND: Marines.
There’s definitely a lot of slap stick comedy potential that comes with being dead and it could allow your party to be a lot more reckless given the worst thing that can happen is something that’s already happened and that they no longer have to fear
Prime Defenders Campaign has a ghost player who''s a autism an homo coded wimpy fella who had died multiple times an the other players exploit his corpse while carrying it around as he fallows them in incorporeal form
I’ll just put it very simple. I’m making a tabletop RPG horror campaign and it’s probably around 80% different than most of the games out there with the dynamics of how it operates and the way the game is made. It’s closely similar to a couple RPG‘s out there but totally unique on a town, it’s only similar a few mechanics here and there which are basically neutral mechanics. I will eventually send you most definitely a free copy of the game when I’m finally done and I start doing a GoFundMe and getting more of a fan base.
I always liked the idea of undead in a marriage of mixed races. Sure you knew that your elf wife would outlife you. But dying of old age before your son could utter his first word? How about lichdom instead?
During the pandemic i made a one shot. Each player is bring back to life by a cleric who wanted to resurrect the old heroes to save the city that is under siege. But the spell failed and bring back the bunch of level 8 player as a ghoul, a squeleton and a ghost who have until sunrises to save the city before the spell end. The player loved that so much that i used the "well, the spell was supposed to bring powerful people for a night... So with your mediocre capacity you might have more time on your hands." to continue the game
Yu Yu Hakishu has the "protagonist is dead" hook for the first arc. Hell, he finds out about it in one of the first scenes. Though, to be fair, that first arc ends with him coming back to life (though he does go back and forth between the Spirit World and the Material world for the rest of the series, so it's KIND OF the same)
I had an idea for a campaign a while back. Where Eldritch horrors punch a whole into the mortal world, aiming to conquer. The gods of the mortal world shroud the area in colorless fog, to protect mortals from the madness of SEEING the Lovecraftian forces at work. Then get everyone together to beat back the invaders. They fail, and everyone dies or goes mad and joins the Eldritch forces. Including the mortal champions of each of those gods, who now act as siphons for their power and thematic boss fights. Having no other options left, the gods of death throw open the doors of the afterlife and allow the dead to return. But just in the fogged-up area. If heroes of sufficient power can put down the captured champions and banish the Eldritch evil, they can come back to life for real. But entire armies of dead have thrown themselves in the Lovecraftian meatgrinder, and large portions of them have lost their Sanity and become threats themselves. Because when you can come back as many times as needed, your Sanity is the operative limiting factor to your effectiveness. The PCs are the latest round of poor bastards drafted to the cause. Their bodies dug up and carted to the fog-lands (which are steadily growing) and transplanted to the graveyard base camp. Dark Souls-ass hijinks ensure. Can they win their freedom from the undead war with their Sanity intact?
This is not a joke I am in session 3 of my "You have died and are now in the afterlife setting!" I am like 10 seconds into the video so I'm super hyped!
Dude I'm running a campaign where my party's would got stolen by a devil and they're in hell. We're starting session 2 next week!
My party's souls got stolen
Yeah, my Party had died but the Raven Queen has up and vanished centuries ago, leaving souls stranded in the afterlife.
You’re excited for the sleepy hollow sale?
Does anyone know where to watch the campaign he mentioned in the video
A thing I’ve had fun with in D&D is “ghost spouse”.
Letting a PC have a significant other can be fun, because a lot of players enjoy a romance for their characters but don’t really want the “will they/won’t they” drama. But there are logistic issues with having an NPC follow the party around… like if they’re capable of protecting themselves it’s a balance problem since the party basically has +1 member, and if they’re just lvl 1 commoner, they’re basically a liability and the party is looking at a campaign-long escort mission.
The PC’s spouse being a ghost (of the “can’t be heard, seen, or felt by anyone but their loved one” sense, not like one of the energy draining touch types), the PC gets to have their romance subplot, but they’re neither an OP asset nor a thing they need to worry about protecting… and needless to say “Yes they died, but they’re still with me always” is a fun bit while the other players put two and two together slowly why the one party member has one-sided convos when they think they’re alone and such (or fail to channel their inner detective and instead find out all at once the first time someone casts a Divination spell highlighting them), and makes for a cute encapsulation of two lovers secure in their dynamic… death doesn’t really matter because they’re still together and that’s what counts.
Can work for those Players who live for drama too… a divorce is always a messy thing because of how much of their lives both people have given up for the other… a couple who are contemplating if they’re falling “out of love” is emotionally charged by default, but when one partner made some crucial sacrifice to a warlock patron to spare their lover from a death they weren’t ready for, say returned to Earth with their wedding ring as a metaphysical anchor, only for years or even decades after that reversal of fate have one or both realize they aren’t actually sure any more if they love the other is a conundrum with a ton of pathos.
You‘re last paragraph basically describes Kaos, a new-ish netflix show about eurydice and orpheus, with jeff goldblum as zeus.
Check it out if you a haven‘t, it‘s very fun.
"Where is she? Not there-not in heaven . . . you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer-I repeat it till my tongue stiffens-Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you-haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always-take any form-drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!’
Morph Suit + Slutty Cowboy so you go as the Slutty Cowboy Costume itself
Not gonna lie, I love this idea. In conjunction w/ a ghost episode, I think this is brilliant.
I like the idea of a higher level undead party comprised of a Lich, Deathknight, Mummy Lord, and Vampire. As a warlock/wizard/sorcerer, paladin, cleric, and bard.
I had a similar idea before of a one shot involving an undead party of adventurers. At first they're antagonists but it's later revealed that they're just trying to find a way to be put to rest and they've been doing as (who they THINK is) their 4th member instructs since he's the party wizard who always used to solve these kinds of things. The rest of the party would be made up of a Bonesinger (Bard), Huecuva (Cleric), and Kurobosu (Monk). I was even thinking of maybe including the wizard as something unrecognizable as their former self, like a Nothic.
Fire Skull. Thats how they make them is with wizard skulls.@@TheMightyBattleSquid
I love this. Especially if your previous campaign ended in a TPK. You can continue with same characters (but maybe without the items as they're left with the bodies).
"Arrg Zombies" comes to mind for a great story. They are all zombies and do not know it and perceive the world was it is hyper fast.
Wraith The Oblivion is probably the most intense & deepest exploration of undeath you can find in a ttrpg just make sure you've got a good group at your table. Who can handle such heavy stuff with respect.
Or you could go the entire opposite direction with Adventure Skeletons, where the party is a band of skeletons who got bored of being a wizard’s flunkies and wandered off to explore.
I'm currently running a campaign where, when my players die they lose one of three core memory of theirs that affects their character in someway. They do have a chance to reclaim their memories but it's pretty rare and if they lose all three of their core memories they are permanently lost with their bodies cursed to forever wander as a husk of their former selves.
The use of Kira clips from JJBA is genius because of a spin off story I've yet to read.
This is how ALL my D&D games go! _(I am so bad at balancing)_
Same
Amen
I mean an Idea I have in my back pocket is to run a "You were epic heroes in an age long past, but now you've been ressurected by a person." With the reason being you're starting all over is that when you were active the underlying rules (or, meta-narritively, edition or even system hehe) changed since you were dead. The old magic you used is frayed, the god you were championing has fallen out of favor, your sword arm has literally rotted.
The hows and why's are still up in the air, but the idea of playing session 1 with each characters final moments before they have life jolted back in them would be neat.
morph suit + strap a skate board to your chest and roll around as someones shadow
4:36 - or 2e Planescape lorebooks. I can't recommend them enough
Me and Runesmith are on the same wavelength, I’ve got this idea recently as well but decided to run an Adventure Skeletons adventure instead. Oops, all skeletons and we need to delve into the human dungeon (also known as a village).
Hear me out: You know the Wild Hunt? Basically a bunch of dead guys decide to ride across the lands with someone at the front. There are many versions, sometimes a powerful person is leading it, sometimes they are hunting the living. Now, you know the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse, Conquest, War, Famine, and Death? And you know Danse Macabre, Death goes to the graveyard with a fiddle and starts playing for the dead?
Okay, now connect the dots. Imagine a skeletal bard leading a horde of wrights on horse back while he rides a pale horse and plays the fiddle. Metal af.
If you want to see a very fun interpretation of The Wild hunt check out Limbus Company and Earlking Heifcliff a man filled with so much self loathing that he goes across the mirror worlds creating a giant army of the dead of all those who caused him pain and to slay the murderer of his love (himself) across every universe so that he and they suffer forever so that Cathy may forgive him even a little.
*Ghost Riders in the Sky bardcore version playing in the background*
The Hags deal doesnt even seem that bad "you get to be revived then you have to pay back your debt and then you can go free" sounds like a bargain if your an immortal undead
4:14 - Dude! Where's my body?
I've actually had an idea like this recently. I just need time to create and a party to play a Lawful Evil campaign where every character is a spawn of a Deep Spawn with no memories or ability skills due to having equivalent knowledge, understanding of their body, and social sense of a child with the mental capacity of adults. It would also probably be more intriguing to be clones of once alive heros than "You meet up in a tavern."
Edit: I thinking about leveling up to be themed as them killing things with knowledge (experience) and then feeding them to the Deep Spawn and once they kill enough knowledge worth of things then the Deep Spawn can redigest them to impart more knowledge and level up the characters.
There's also the Ghostwalk setting which is pretty much right up the alley of that kind of thing...the boundaries between life and death are kind of screwy there.
Hopping back and forth between life and death is just another part of the fun there
there is a campaign setting called ghost walk in 3.5 edition. a opening to the afterlife is in the region. when a character dies, they can become a ghost for a while and stick around. there is a effect on the region making the ghosts physical so they are no longer incorporeal. while they are a ghost, they get a free level into a new ghost class. while they can still adventure from where they were slain, the ghost levels take over, converting 1 for 1 a previous level each time they level up. once they have over half their levels as ghost type, they are pulled to the afterlife. it is a neat setting, especially when you get to punch the shadows without needing magic weapons.
I've ran a your dead welcome to the hells after a tpk. There is a chance you can go back to life but so do the others. And you have to compete against them. And everything wants to consume you since you are basically a soul given temporary mass. Good luck
3.5 had the wonderful book Ghostwalk that had guidelines for figuring out your ghost characters obsession like repeating actions or fixating on a type of item, wether its lamps because you had a favorite when alive or daggers because it was the last thing you saw, determining if your ethereal and intangible or fully manifested semi solid extoplasm as well as how your death would effect your ghostly appearance. Did you die to a finger of death that left no marks or were you ripped apart by a werewolf. Definitely worth looking at of you want phantasmal player practicing their poultergeistly passions
I've been considering running a mega dungeon campaign set in a necropolis. Though once a holy land, a graveyard the size of a city, it has been corrupted by the mysterious necromancer. No living souls remain, but the endless dead rise from their graves. Though most are mindless monsters a few retain their intellect, the players.
Bound to the necropolis in tormented unlife the players must defeat the horrors within, find the mysterious necromancer, and undo the curse. Or of course, take the undead army as their own.
That's actually a really cool concept for a campaign setting. In my dnd world, each star is the soul of someone dead. I can make a neat little world with them, too.
Also, I remember meeting you at a convention a few years ago during your break from making videos. I'm glad you've been back at it for a while and hope you're loving what you do!
Glad our game has given you some inspiration bud I've really enjoyed having you in it!
perfect timing! I’ve been planning a new campaign with the players traveling the hells
Another bonus for Hades granting a handful of adventurers a second chance at life: they'll probably go on another adventure and send several more souls down to wait in line.
In Pathfinder cosmology, there is a whole class of neutral outsiders called Psychopomps, creatures that serve the local goddess of death and help her run the whole 'final judgement' business, from skeletal women who look like they're from Coco and welcome the newly dead in the afterlife to soften the trauma, all the way to 'angels of death' who chase after stubborn ghosts that refuse to rest in peace.
If you're planning a full ghost campaign, it might be worth it to borrow those.
PF2 is insane with its weird playables so many flavors of Undead an soul fecking
I have a Champion with Ghoul fever who has a Wayang companion with Spirit Warrior dedication who only work to test my other undeads an wacko fellas including a Mummy Dragon isk leader of a unofficial monster country and a Strix Zombie tyrant etc
I have a problelm
I recommend looking up 3rd editions campaign setting book Ghostwalk. It is an official setting that did not get enough love.
It is even easier if you play Pathfinder 2e, and you have the Book of the Dead.
It has the playable race of Skeleton, and the player archetypes (like a sort of multi class thingy) for Ghosts, Ghouls, Zombies, Vampires, and even Liches (at 12th level though instead of 2nd).
My character started out as an alive male Goblin Alchemist named Boblin. Now I after things in the Tomb of Horrors (not nerfed and at levels 1-3), I am now an undead female Ghost Goblin Alchemist named Boblina. I literally just died to an overdose of Necrotic energy, and rose again thanks to the same overdose of Necrotic energy.
Oh and the rules for this are also online on the archive of Nethyss for free to everyone, because all Pathfinder rules are.
i work on a campaign where they have to fight a overpowered BBEG and the tpk is included as they'll have to fight in avernus and travel various "afterdeath" to one of the heavens for reach sigil and fight again the BBEG
One of the best resources for ghost PCs is the 3e campaign setting book Ghost Walk. It revolves around a mega city built on top of a mega dungeon. At the bottom of the dungeon is a portal to the afterlife. Every ghost or other incorporeal being within 50 miles of the portal manifests fully on the material plane as if they were regular physical creatures. Everyone who dies automatically becomes a ghost until they walk through the portal.
Like with all things 3e, the player options revolved around feats. There were a hundred or so feats only ghosts could take. The way progressing as a ghost worked is when you died, you became a ghost and kept all your levels, but any new levels would need to be taken from one of the two ghost base classes in the book. The ghost classes allowed you to continue spell casting level progression or take the fighter equivalent ghost class. Both ghost classes gave bonus ghost feats at regular levels.
If you were revived, you exchanged all your ghost levels for regular class levels.
It was one of the better standouts in 3e that is easy enough to port straight over to 5e.
Ah. Nothing beats the look on your players’ faces when you *start the campaign with “rocks fall, everyone dies”*
I’m running a campaign based on the Prototype games and one of the tag lines for that game has been something along the lines of “Permanent Death is for Other People.” Because the hive mind they’re fighting can reproduce anything it absorbs so they’re always waiting for some asshole from their past to show up again for round 2.
I ran a game like this! The idea was that each player during their "Session zero" with me did a brief play solo, where we played out the scene of their death where they left something unresolved, and it made their soul waver on the way to the afterlife and not quite make it there. So instead they got stuck in a realm of ghosts and memories, all the things half-forgotten that haven't passed on, sheltered there by a sympathetic and kind god of the dead. Their goal was to find lost artifacts with influence over time itself, because Death would not let them go back to the world of the living but would have no problem at all allowing them to undo dying in the first place. It was great fun, and let me play a very unusually magical setting with plenty of strange things in it for them to find. Got to play with themes around memories and things forgotten, from people to places, in a fun way. Great players made it a really fun game, and our finale session was them all going back in time to the moments of their death now with 15 more levels gained from the course of the campaign in order to marathon through undoing their deaths as newfound badasses.
Suggestion for a 4th party member in the ghost/skeleton/zombie Voltron: they could come back as a possessed suit of armor. Maybe a 5th could be a possessed sword (preferably a spell caster, so they can mage hand and fire off spells while being wielded and such)
I had an idea for a campaign where the players have to "become dead" via a special potion they have to gather ingredients for and then craft in order to access the plane of Hades (which is also the God Hades himself). The plane is infinite, but you're never far from the River Styx and if you follow it, the river leads to Hades massive tower. Inside is an infinite library containing books which represent the "life story" of every soul that comes to Hades. An Avatar of Hades sits in a throne room and uses the books to judge souls, sending them on to their proper afterlife. The conflict in the story is that someone has stolen their book, and in the process, escaped back to realm of the living. While the book is gone, no soul can be judged and so the afterlife is bottlenecked and the cosmos is in danger of imploding. :D
I have that for all my campains on the back burner in case it comes to a TPK, what hasn't happened in ages. I find it so much more interesting when you let the players believe they are dead but instead continue in the afterlife, especially for a long running campaign. Giving them a sort of second chance, have them face their enemies they killed or NPC's who died because of them.
I am saying this with all the love in the world, just play Wraith: The Oblivion.
Yeah, the premise of this video is very strange. Surely, he's been living that TTRPG life long enough to know WoD exists, right?
Fun ideas for a spooky one-shot that you could even squeeze into a longer campaign
I'd had a campaign idea kinda like this. Party would be part of a crusade being sent to an island that a being such as Orcus was building an army on. Ships would be met with tragedy and all the party would become some form of undead, due to a blessing from someone on board they and probably some other NPCs would still be undead but they would be free from the control of whoever. Perhaps they choose to still carry out their mission, perhaps not.
One aspect of my video game dev idea is to make the game a Rogue-lite, which essentially means whenever you die, you respawn into a new world and different point of time in that world with some traces of your past lives. This isn't always linear either. Each world time is linear after you spawn into it but the themes and tech and histories and geography of each world is shuffled. The timelines overlap too so you could eventually somehow get pack to previous worlds and times that you've been in before.
Theirs a playable race in Pathfinder second edition where they die an always return as that race with some memory of the last lives they had
this reminds me of a one page RPG where you all play as a group of skeletons trying to exit a dungeon, which I could imagine being the torture chamber of an evil wizard who punishes people who oppose him to die in his dungeon but come back to life without memory and try to leave only to die again and I could imagine too that maybe the skeletons of different races might be different enough to make each skeleton unique to play too, that and if you wish to be some sort of zombie.
During a couple games I've played a character that is a ghost haunting a pile of junk (warforged statblock). The premise of the character is that the afterlife and cosmology (across all alignments and planes) of the Forgotten Realms setting is pretty fucking bleak the deeper into the lore you go (such as with the petitioner system and the Wall of the Faithless), and the character's pissed about it for specific reasons, so he's starting a ghost rights movement. Using refluffed Totem Warrior barbarian and Astral Self monk he'd manifest physically portions of his own spirit to fight with, essentially becoming a wandering poltergeist.
I really like the idea of the party coming back from the dead as different types of undead. It's a great way to literally play against character. How will that lawful good paladin retain his alignment if he returns as a revenant or ghoul?
World of Darkness has the game line 'Wraith: The Oblivion' for a good reason. The concept of being a ghost is really cool.
Look, Manuel may not be the most attractive guy but calling him a monster is just mean.
This is actually a really useful video. Thank you.
There's actually an "after story" for Kira called Dead Man's Questions.
The “Gothic Lineages” makes these kind of characters possible in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft.
For me, I’d use “Van Helsing’s Guide to the Unquiet Dead” for building the Ultimate Necromancer character.
3.5 did this pretty well with Ghostwalk.
had this idea for ages for a game where there are no perfect resurrection-type spells, and they can only bring you back in progressively weaker forms of undeath. when you die, you can be brought back as a zombie, but if you die again, you come back as just a skeleton, and then you become a ghost, and after that you're not coming back
dude i would love to see more campaign outlines. it was really cool
Thank you for making your videos the perfect length for a bathroom break.
2:16 Is that Stibble on the right? I didn't even know he was sick!
4:51 Show him the mirror! Show him the mirror!
Love the sound of that~
I once wanted to recreate Hades in Theros, since the setting had rich descriptions of the different wards of the underworld and the kinds of monsters that guard it. Maybe I should get back to that idea.
death in dnd is basically just a side quest at best, at worse it's just a minor annoyance.
No lie, sending low-level PCs into "The Underworld" to resurrect a fallen ally is one of my favorite things to do (the other being a storyline where they discover that they're all deities). Having them physically walk there like some Greek myth and building the entire adventure around what they find there too.
I vote for Morph Suit + Slutty Cowboy combined too.
For those leaning in a Hades/GOW direction, Theros' underworld has plenty of options for ghosts (or Eidolons) seeking to return to life or just understand how they died. Also Anikthea is literally the Theros equivalent to Zagreus.
im just goung through a baclkog of vidoes i've missed for like a ayear and i gotta say , thinking about weird campaign settings where you´re not an atypical party seems really cool, like that infernal engine video made me think it'd be really baller if you had a campaign where you´re just various demons in avernus trying to like scroung and live and maybe get "big" maybe amass your own mad max horde of engines or scheme
"The gods favor you heroes of the light, and invigor your boken bodies and anchor your spirit to the material plane fight on! Rally against the dark, finish the mission to sever your bonds to this plane and finally rest!"
Not great, but a tagline I thought of for a good undead party
My dude actually put king's quest 6 in there. That's freaking awesome.
Use the black morphsuit as foundation for a shadow wizard money gang costume
See this reminds ds me of the story of the game Deaths Gambit. In it you are an undead, granted a free pass by Death to basically go to a place where immortality lies to basically undo the beings who are defying the natural order. Kinda a fun hook, death is not an imposition and your players die alot but just respawn and get back out their so the problem can't be solves with brute force.
Logan would love Kira's one shot as a ghost detective if he hasn't read it
I think a fictional afterlife that would be fun to play with is the river of Death from Garth Nix's Abhorsen series.
have a friend be peter pan, you're his shadow. its a classic
The more you reference One Piece, the more I want you to make or modify a One Piece DnD module. Maybe work with Pointy Hat and Tulok the Barbarian to work out the details.
Shortcuts I recommend: use islands and devil fruits from the movies and make it during Roger's time.
There's a One Piece DND game stream by Rustage I would recommend. They have completed those first campaign and are currently in their second series One Piece DND: Marines.
Referencing King's Quest 6 is wild
This is how Tyrants Grasp in PF1e starts!
Can also offer up the Eastern concept of Jigoku and the realms of Samsara for locations!
Every One Piece reference you make makes me love your stuff even more.
I recommend checking out the Adventure Time episode "Reunited" to see another way how this sort of thing cam play out.
I cannot say just how fucking jazzed I am to see King's Quest 6 in here. I downed *so many* hours of my young life playing that game
There’s definitely a lot of slap stick comedy potential that comes with being dead and it could allow your party to be a lot more reckless given the worst thing that can happen is something that’s already happened and that they no longer have to fear
Prime Defenders Campaign has a ghost player who''s a autism an homo coded wimpy fella who had died multiple times an the other players exploit his corpse while carrying it around as he fallows them in incorporeal form
No-Face. Easy option for the morph suit. Either make/buy a mask or paint your face.
Leaving a like purely for the fact that this is the first video I've ever seen that used a clip from Grimm. I love that weird, very silly show.
I’ll just put it very simple. I’m making a tabletop RPG horror campaign and it’s probably around 80% different than most of the games out there with the dynamics of how it operates and the way the game is made. It’s closely similar to a couple RPG‘s out there but totally unique on a town, it’s only similar a few mechanics here and there which are basically neutral mechanics. I will eventually send you most definitely a free copy of the game when I’m finally done and I start doing a GoFundMe and getting more of a fan base.
The ideas... so many ideas... thanks!
This would be fun to spring on the group after a TPK 😂
Please don't tell me if Stibbles is dead in cannon I've had enough deaths this decade
(insert Wraith: the Oblivion reference here)
Next up: Running a D&D adventure in Avernus.
I always liked the idea of undead in a marriage of mixed races. Sure you knew that your elf wife would outlife you. But dying of old age before your son could utter his first word? How about lichdom instead?
Story of comics Requiem Vampire Knight is great example.
During the pandemic i made a one shot. Each player is bring back to life by a cleric who wanted to resurrect the old heroes to save the city that is under siege. But the spell failed and bring back the bunch of level 8 player as a ghoul, a squeleton and a ghost who have until sunrises to save the city before the spell end.
The player loved that so much that i used the "well, the spell was supposed to bring powerful people for a night... So with your mediocre capacity you might have more time on your hands." to continue the game
Yu Yu Hakishu has the "protagonist is dead" hook for the first arc. Hell, he finds out about it in one of the first scenes. Though, to be fair, that first arc ends with him coming back to life (though he does go back and forth between the Spirit World and the Material world for the rest of the series, so it's KIND OF the same)
No way, i wanted tu run an afterlife campaign but didn't have any guidance. Neat.
Bless the RuneSmith
Im surprised there was No Wraith: The Oblivion mention, tbf i have World of darkness brainworms atm
Genuinely love playing Wraith, it's so dark and broody
I think you could pull of a Warhammer Witch Hunter quite well.
I had an idea for a campaign a while back. Where Eldritch horrors punch a whole into the mortal world, aiming to conquer. The gods of the mortal world shroud the area in colorless fog, to protect mortals from the madness of SEEING the Lovecraftian forces at work. Then get everyone together to beat back the invaders.
They fail, and everyone dies or goes mad and joins the Eldritch forces. Including the mortal champions of each of those gods, who now act as siphons for their power and thematic boss fights.
Having no other options left, the gods of death throw open the doors of the afterlife and allow the dead to return. But just in the fogged-up area. If heroes of sufficient power can put down the captured champions and banish the Eldritch evil, they can come back to life for real. But entire armies of dead have thrown themselves in the Lovecraftian meatgrinder, and large portions of them have lost their Sanity and become threats themselves. Because when you can come back as many times as needed, your Sanity is the operative limiting factor to your effectiveness.
The PCs are the latest round of poor bastards drafted to the cause. Their bodies dug up and carted to the fog-lands (which are steadily growing) and transplanted to the graveyard base camp. Dark Souls-ass hijinks ensure. Can they win their freedom from the undead war with their Sanity intact?
Nooo, they killed Stibbles! :(
Eyy King's Quest reference! nice
Great idea
Oh boy, wait until you hear about MAGNOGOTHICA: Maleghast
You could just play wraith the oblivion?
I love the show Ghosts (both BBC & US). It's very funny and could be a great dnd game.
2:16 Hey, Mr. Rune Smith, what are you implying about Stibbles?
WHAT ARE YOU IMPLYING ABOUT STIBBLES?!