Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Half Baked Adventure idea

So while driving home from Gen Con I had this idea about running a multi-adventure mini series using all editions of D&D.  The plot hook is that the Great Librarian has died and the walls between realities have weakened (which one causes which? have to play to find out!) the character need to collect the Three Great Books and return them to Library or all reality is lost!

Part 1 where the characters are summoned and tested would be played using Basic/Original D&D.
Part 2 where the characters find the first Great Book would be played using AD&D 1st ed.
Part 3 the characters must seek out the second Great Book and would be run using AD&D 2nd ed.
Part 4 a new threat is found, but the characters also gain the support of a mysterious cabal of Wizards located in their rain soaked tower on the Coast.  They must find the third great Book and is played with D&D 3rd ed.
Part 5 the characters, now powerful indeed must return the books to the Library, but the dangers would be great.  This would be played with D&D 4th ed.

I would like to use the basic archetypes for this, a cleric, a thief (maybe a halfling here), a fighter, a wizard and an elf fighter/magic-user and feature something that highlights the benefits of each rule-set.

Could be great fun for a Gen Con based game where everyone plays every night.  Maybe even with the right crowd each person could rotate GM duties and pass their characters around.

Like I said.  Only a half-baked thought at the moment.

EDITED TO ADD: My son says that in each part the characters need to fight one of the five chromatic dragons.  So a white first and ending with a huge, ancient red.

7 comments:

christian said...

Oh man, that sounds so fun! I love your son's dragon battle idea.

Pulp Herb said...

This rocks...I'd say try to map it to about 5 levels/edition prior to Fourth so you transition to it just as you hit Epic Level.

Timothy S. Brannan said...

@Herb: Yeah, I want to run each Edition as just a regular weekend long adventure so we can do it all in 5 or so weeks.

@Christian: Of course! Liam love Dragons and really what is the best iconic D&D monster to fight? Well it has to be the one that shares its name with the game!

Rhonin84 said...

My first thought was that the three books represent three ancient dragons that need to be brought together to cast one more spell to re-seal the borders forever...

Just a thought though...

Timothy S. Brannan said...

Actually the three books are thinly veiled allusions to the three books needed to play D&D. ;)

I have not sorted out all the ideas yet, but when I mentioned that we need five people to play my boys immediately said we need to bring in your boys!

Theron said...

This is freaking brilliant.

So freaking brilliant that I plan on stealing it.

(I will, however, tell folks it's your idea.)

Timothy S. Brannan said...

steal away! Just let me know how it all goes.