[Campaign] Idea for Campaign: Shade of Empires

[Sapprine]

Basic idea:
A custom world, divided in three mayor kingdoms:
Repubilca; Home of the humans
Val'Shyr highgrounds; Home of the Elves
Northern Icecaps; Home of (barbaric) Dwarfs

The mayor city of Imperia gets infected by an unkown disease.

Everything starts normal, but as days progress, weird things happen around the city.
Cultists screeching dark wispers at night, people getting Ill and desoriantated and the King of Republica has locked himself into his pallace.

As days progress, allot happens;
Villagers accuse each other of being infected.
Houses get burned down.
Infected get crucified.
The Regional emergency bells have been sounded within the city
The Legionary defenders barricade parts of the city to prevent spreadding the disease.
Inhabitants start showing weird signs of mutations and extreme aggression.

After 5, long days, the streets of Imperia are filled with scorced boddies, mutants and cultists.

Fortunately, the Elves from the Val'Shyr highgrounds heard the emergency bells of Imperia and an elite squadron of rangers was send out to investigate. They arrived at day 4 since the infection started.
Elves prove immume to the disease.

Feralda is the Princess of the Elven kindoms and skilled ranger. Upon entering the outskirts of Imperia, she gets encountered by severly infected, but consious villagers asking of help, but losing control.

There are several stages of Infection:

0: Villager
- Uninfected villager
1: Infected
- Ill and nausious Villager
2: Mutant
- Balding, pale, sharp mutated bones instead of hands, agressive and consiousless
3. Lurkers
- Poor sight at day, hide in dark places, come out at night and possess enless hunger for flesh
4. Gapers
- Fast moving predatory infected, often miss limbs, strike sudden and often hunt in swarm. Can sense targets if they stand still.
5. Amalgams
- Crafted by cultists, they are the juggenauts. They are sorn together from different individuals. They want to die and are heard crying at night.

 

[nedio95]

If only the human world is infected why do you have the other 2 ?
If they only for Lore purpose, alright, sure.
Otherwise, why would you have them in the map?
The elves prove to be immune, so... the 4 elite party fails to save the humans and the Elves get invaded by hoards of Z's ? Maybe deal with refugees and undercover cultist saboteurs ?
Where do the Dwarves come in ? The invasion of the Elves is successful and the dwarves are the last hope in the world, maybe with some lucky ragtag Human & Elf survivors ?

If the player plays as "Feralda is the Princess of the Elven kindoms" all of this:

A custom world, divided in three mayor kingdoms:
Repubilca; Home of the humans
Val'Shyr highgrounds; Home of the Elves
Northern Icecaps; Home of (barbaric) Dwarfs

The mayor city of Imperia gets infected by an unkown disease.

Everything starts normal, but as days progress, weird things happen around the city.
Cultists screeching dark wispers at night, people getting Ill and desoriantated and the King of Republica has locked himself into his pallace.

As days progress, allot happens;
Villagers accuse each other of being infected.
Houses get burned down.
Infected get crucified.
The Regional emergency bells have been sounded within the city
The Legionary defenders barricade parts of the city to prevent spreadding the disease.
Inhabitants start showing weird signs of mutations and extreme aggression.

After 5, long days, the streets of Imperia are filled with scorced boddies, mutants and cultists.

Fortunately, the Elves from the Val'Shyr highgrounds heard the emergency bells of Imperia and an elite squadron of rangers was send out to investigate. They arrived at day 4 since the infection started.
Elves prove immume to the disease.

is just Lore filling that you'd probably show the player as a text for a few seconds or on the loading screen.

Could split it in three parts with a bit different gameplay, and have the player start as a human villager or soldier or something. Villager gameplay could be totally powerless, no attack, alone, etc. like in a horror game to set up the mood and make the player a bit excited. The villager would, of course, have a "bad ending". For a warrior, you could have a city guard investigating wtf is happening around, encountering cultist and early-stage infected in dark alleys and basements, etc. He could either have a "bad day" or live long enough to meet the Elves and join the party ?

The Elf gameplay could be a bit tougher, like, they encounter the things for the first time, reaction: "WTF IS THAT CORPSE ATTACKING ME" and weapons could be not be very effective. They'd have to be careful while investigating around.

I am not 100% sure what to do with dwarves, if you are doing 3 Kingdoms on the map, you will have to somehow bring the Z's to the Dwarves.
Otherwise, with only 1 kingdom, they would also send a team to investigate the human kingdom, I guess the elves meet a "bad end" or manage to retreat to their kingdom exhausted and with a lot bunch on information.
Otherwise, with 2 kingdoms, you could have them send reinforcements for defending the Elvish kingdom.

Btw, this could also work pretty well as a multiplayer RPG for 3-5 players with scripted events & timeline (without save/load system).
Villager > Villagers - Could also have a player be a cultist
Soldier > Soldiers - I don't think that a lone medieval soldier gets paid enough to fight cultists alone in dark alleys & etc.
Elvish princess > Full Elvish party


Could split it into different chapters/maps so player(s) could od it in smaller sessions.


Looks alright, but you have not thought much on this, if at all.
Looks almost like the average Z apocalypse or Demon invasion.
Would be interested to give it a go though...

Regards
-Ned

 

[Sapprine]

The whole idea originally was that it will all be very dark, the lore and all.

Like, have 3 diffent endings in the 1st chapter and then 1 sequal chapter for each ending.

(None will end well)

One ending will be via a barricade and the path would be extremely long.
Another would be trough an abandoned mine, crawling with infected you need to cull before they turn.

And the darkest ending would be trough the Palace of the King.
- Countless villagers tried to escape trough his palace, since it was rumored there was an undergound exit.
- An entire catacomb is hidden under the pallace, dead villagers that tried to reach for the exit lie dead just inches from freedom. The duke would be infected and completely mad, but his lackeys (Loyalists) arent and they also slaughter innocents.
- The building itself would look like a cathedral, and like a churge from the inside. Crucified, hanged and slaughtered villagers everywhere. A stage is set a the end where he would speak to his people.
now, he just waits there for new survivors enter and slay them.

 

[Duke]

I don't like the idea of having three races with just three kingdoms. Looks artificial. I think you should think up few different cultures for each race.

 

[Sapprine]

Offcourse! But im only a terrainer, no really much of a programmer...

There will also be some kind of Deathlands and A Desert i think.

This idea isnt new, I had it in developement on my old PC that got fried some years ago..

But I had halted it before it got fried, because it was so dark i got sick at some point.

You probably cant really imagine how I designed this map, but it was... well... IDK how to explain it.

Really dark, thunderstorms, Corpses and wounded villagers asking you to end their suffering before they turn...

You got shared vision of some Survivors from time to time in certain areas, but you couldnt reach them and they would die a horrible death while all you could do is watch....

You also got seperated from your squad very early and they would be overrun by infected.

And the city of imperia was MASSIVE, it had like 2000+ citiscents, and more were alive as you might think... In the end you could only save a handful of them.

 

[Sapprine]

Oh! Cultures! Well...
The humans of imperia are proud, think they rule the world, properous and succesful.
Elves are disiplined and peaceful. They do trade allot with humans and are co-operative, but otherwise take their distance and arent really among them much.
Bwarves are humble, but not to be underestimated. Some dwarves in the north have gone barbaric and gives the rest of the clans a bad reputation.

 

[Duke]

You misunderstood me there. What I meant is that it is weird that whole race would have just one kingdom. Look at our world, every race is divided into a lot of states.

 

[Sapprine]

Hmmm... Look, there might be subraces, but these are the main ones.

Humans Dominate
Elves Co-Operate
Dwarves live their own life
The Infected consume all