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Gaming Stuff: Count of Monte Cristo
Jul. 30th, 2010 03:55 amSo it's the middle of the night and I'm rewatching Gankutsuou on my recently reconnected dvd player, and the thought hits me- I really want to make a D&D campaign inspired by the Count of Monte Cristo. I've loved the (admittedly few) adaptations, mentions of and sideflings to it I've seen, and it finally occurred to me how I could perhaps draw inspiration off of it without railroading players down a predetermined path.
The premise- all your characters are of noble or otherwise important families in a large and prosperous country. Each family would have some secret it was hiding, perhaps a level of which the character would know, and a deeper level of which they might discover in the course of the game as various dangers begin to unfold, family missions begin to take on certain themes to protect interests or ignorance, etc.
All these secrets, of course, lead back to the main big-bad, who's been manipulating things to get his vengeance from behind the scenes, and may or may not be publicly very friendly with the PCs.
While this goes on in the background, I want there to be plenty of swashbuckling, urban adventure going on in the forefront. Nights at the opera with daring highwaymen and saving people who fall from balconies, receiving invitations from various important nobles as the young players navigate their way through high society of a fantasy kingdom.
So- I need a setting, most likely homebrew but with heavy borrowings from things because I'm equal parts rebellious and lazy; a big bad who's screwing with people from behind the scenes (and perhaps hiring the PCs at some point to go to the island of lost treasure, just because I figure our Island of Monte Cristo-equivalent is going to be a cool location that should be seen and used); and a bunch of people in high places who could have done him wrong.
Edit- hnn. Perhaps I could use this to make use of that one campaign setting I kept thinking off back in the day, with the empire and the creepy fae and the orcs and such. And the halflings who were some strange fusion of Japan and Ancient Greece, who might have slaves, including orcs, on barges, which is where that orcish equivalent of Ching Xi could come from, whose descendants are all urbane and cutthroat and interesting in owning large portions of the coast and hanging on to that turf and market. Is a thought.
The premise- all your characters are of noble or otherwise important families in a large and prosperous country. Each family would have some secret it was hiding, perhaps a level of which the character would know, and a deeper level of which they might discover in the course of the game as various dangers begin to unfold, family missions begin to take on certain themes to protect interests or ignorance, etc.
All these secrets, of course, lead back to the main big-bad, who's been manipulating things to get his vengeance from behind the scenes, and may or may not be publicly very friendly with the PCs.
While this goes on in the background, I want there to be plenty of swashbuckling, urban adventure going on in the forefront. Nights at the opera with daring highwaymen and saving people who fall from balconies, receiving invitations from various important nobles as the young players navigate their way through high society of a fantasy kingdom.
So- I need a setting, most likely homebrew but with heavy borrowings from things because I'm equal parts rebellious and lazy; a big bad who's screwing with people from behind the scenes (and perhaps hiring the PCs at some point to go to the island of lost treasure, just because I figure our Island of Monte Cristo-equivalent is going to be a cool location that should be seen and used); and a bunch of people in high places who could have done him wrong.
Edit- hnn. Perhaps I could use this to make use of that one campaign setting I kept thinking off back in the day, with the empire and the creepy fae and the orcs and such. And the halflings who were some strange fusion of Japan and Ancient Greece, who might have slaves, including orcs, on barges, which is where that orcish equivalent of Ching Xi could come from, whose descendants are all urbane and cutthroat and interesting in owning large portions of the coast and hanging on to that turf and market. Is a thought.
