#dm talk

World Overview: 

Centuries ago, almost a whole millennium, something shifted within the world to cause a black ichor to spread across the world. It infects the very soul of mortals but corrupts the minds of animals and animal folk (tabaxi, dragonborn, kobolds, leonin, etc). Overtime, even the dead would rise again, though malformed and now containing parts of different but specific types of animals (bears, foxes, snakes, goats, dragons, lions, and boars.).  

Due to this, animal folk have been eradicated out of fear or due to them losing their minds and thus being put out of their misery. 

The living world lives in perpetual darkness, the sun and moon rarely shining through the clouds. 

One-Shot

The opening starts off with each player reliving the moment that set their “sin” into their soul. Sin is used loosely because not all of them are fully that sin, it’s just the world’s balance is so corrupted that even the slightest act can corrupt the soul. 

A voice rings out to them as they “die” in the memory (even if that’s not how they truly died) and ask them if they would like a second chance, a chance to redeem themselves. After accepting, a small piece of light embeds itself into each player character’s palm and they wake up in the entrance room. 

[Picture ID: A map of connecting and winding tunnels, each labelled for GM assistance in knowing where the players are at. The rooms are Entry Zone, Purifying Chamber, Right Room, Puzzle Room, Puzzle Room 2, Nest, and End Goal. Scattered across the map are dead trees. End ID]

For a breakdown of each room and how they work, here’s a google doc I made: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N8Q7hk01v3X9-S81y9CBrdElVXo7hYyN0PsRwSqgJsw/edit?usp=sharing

If they survive (as this was a scenario in which it was incredibly easy to either to die or go insane) the players make it to the End Goal room and are presented one of two options: 

1- Continue on your path to redeem your soul with your spirit companion Lament, earning paradise or the chance to help the world as a champion of one of the goddesses

or 

2- Leave with the mysterious and bitter stranger Barley, who claims to be able to send everyone back up with the intent on solving the corruption issue from the world of the living

My players in this instance chose option 2, so here I’ll be going over option 1. 

If the players had decided to journey deeper into what was considered a purgatory, we still would have converted over to a 5e system (I had previously designed my own system for the oneshot). 

The path of redemption would have contained 7 arcs in total, one to symbolize each layer of the “sins” the party would have to overcome. If on a layer that corresponds to a player character’s designated sin, it will warp and distort to match that player character’s memories. Any monsters will also shift and form into those they once knew in life instead of being an amorphous and every-shifting black mass. 

I would have modeled the decent off of how Dante’s Inferno layers hell. 

This campaign route would have been a lot of puzzles, sneaking around, and managing your sanity to hold back your curse. Getting through a player character’s specific layer would significantly reduce that character’s curse as they have overcome their “sin”. These layers would also be inherently harder by nature. 

At the end of the campaign, they would be met by one of the Goddesses and given some different options. They could enter paradise after having proven their soul is indeed pure enough to push past all of the evil in the world, or, they could become a champion of the Goddess to be sent to the world of the living to fight against the Lost Ones (the people that reanimate after death).