Fantasy Apocalypse??

[Nightwulf]

The plan for my campaign is to have the PCs fight and think their way through the ancient dungeon.At the lowest level is a powerful artifact that brings about the end of the world.My plan is to have the PCs fight to end the apocalypse that they started.What sort of things should haappen during this apocalypse?Also has anyone else done a fantasy apocalypse if so what happened was it funny or scary?

[SmootRK]

I did a zombie apocalypse once. Everybody/everything started turning, all about survival. I let em survive (mostly), and the nice thing was that I got to basically hit the reset button on my game setting... and since it was Forgotten Realms at the time, it allowed me to remove all those major npc's and stuff, thin out all the city areas into ruins wherever I wanted them and otherwise just opened up the whole world to a new level of exploration without all the baggage (keeping all the stuff I actually liked to keep though).

[Dimirag]

Oh, you just made a mayor campaign spoiler
If the apocalypse didn't happen before the game then it could be like playing any normal campaign but with a time limit.
If the apocalypse is happening at game time then it depends on what occurs during your apocalypse, is an undead/monster invasion? are people going crazy? is the world falling?
If its set after the apocalypse it depends on how you want the world to work. There's no more civilization? People are gathering in clans? Society rise from the ashes as a new and better thing?

[Shenron]

I did a zombie apocalypse once. Everybody/everything started turning, all about survival. I let em survive (mostly), and the nice thing was that I got to basically hit the reset button on my game setting... and since it was Forgotten Realms at the time, it allowed me to remove all those major npc's and stuff, thin out all the city areas into ruins wherever I wanted them and otherwise just opened up the whole world to a new level of exploration without all the baggage (keeping all the stuff I actually liked to keep though).

Wouldn't have the notes for it by any chance would you?

[SmootRK]

I did a zombie apocalypse once. Everybody/everything started turning, all about survival. I let em survive (mostly), and the nice thing was that I got to basically hit the reset button on my game setting... and since it was Forgotten Realms at the time, it allowed me to remove all those major npc's and stuff, thin out all the city areas into ruins wherever I wanted them and otherwise just opened up the whole world to a new level of exploration without all the baggage (keeping all the stuff I actually liked to keep though).

Wouldn't have the notes for it by any chance would you?

Not really. It was mostly a winging-it sort of thing, mostly keeping just the maps in the end. It had an demon undead/death cult sort of angle, at least in the beginning.... a rivalry between followers of Orcus and Anthraxus that got out of control. I ended up doing a sort of fast-forward event moving the campaign forward several years so I could just get rid of most of the undead stuff (died off eventually).

[-1warrior]

I had one in one of my campaigns four or five years ago. I was using a home brew world, with spelljammers and sky-ships transplanted from other settings. Armies of orcs led by beholders swept over the land. They would fly around in huge floating pyramids armed with high-tech weaponry. The PCs managed to take down the hive mothership, and thus averted the apocalypse.

[Jandolar]

I've run two of them.

The first was a modern day fantasy government-has-collapsed-anarchy-has-emerged type. I pulled maps of the local area, got inventories from local stores, etc.. and we ran with it. The start was I had all the players show up at the house and the "game" started there. They were allowed to use what they had on them, what they had in their trucks and what they could get hands on quickly. It was fun for a while but quickly delved into interparty conflict.

The second was a twin party game called The Search For The Unholy Grail (I'm a Monty Python fan). It was twelve PCs at a table top game. One unholy group and one holy group that were both striving for the same artifact. One group wanted the artifact so they could control the rage of inhumanity and debauchery that is running rampant on the planet. The other wanted to artifact so that they could stop the apocalypse. It culminated in an amazing 12 person game weekend of combat of insane magnitude. You plant two teams of six characters of 15+ levels each on opposite sides of a table and let them go to war and it gets NUTS in a hurry. My God that was soooooo much fun.

[-1warrior]

That sounds awesome!

[Jandolar]

That sounds awesome!

Yeah.... it was a chore as a DM. A few of the characters were quai-powers (think just this side of a demi god). Others were so over the top powerful that it made the other side really have to think how to even enter into a combat. One of them, Martel by name, had been a 22nd level necromancer before being willingly turned into a vampire and then used his immortal time to become a Lich. Jesus that guy was a power to be reckoned with.

On the other side we had some 18+ level Paladins and some I-speak-Gods-word Clerics.

I wish I would have kept notes. It'd have made a great book.

[LibraryLass]

There's always demons, that's a classic apocalypse.

Or perhaps some kind of plague? That would be interesting since they can't fight it directly.