• 14 Dec, 2025 *

For this RPG Blog Carnival https://advantageonarcana.bearblog.dev/the-end-times-and-after/ I prepared for you something special. A report and comments about my fantasy preapocalyptic campaign that failed a few years ago.

Preparation

The overall idea was this - some generic fantasy world, mostly humans, not high not low on magic. Some wizard in a land far away cast a deadly spell and broke the heavens. The world will end in some amount of time (less than a year), souls of people who died don’t go to the regular afterlife but are stuck and cause the world to tumble into chaos. But there is a secret way to secure passing of yourself and others. Some old mad seer found it in the ways of oldest gods. In order to do it a person has to perform six simple rituals in six temples of these gods. And the only place where it is remotely possible, with six still standing temples close together is on the continent to the south. And so a few organisations send their representatives with tokens holding links to souls of those in community, so that performing the rituals would transfer to those linked to tokens.

I thought the premise is simple, understandable and actionable. You leave your community with tokens for their souls and if you or any hero of the group manages to perform the six rituals you all are going to be saved. Simple. At least I thought that but my players really didn’t care about the communities or background or anything. I guess I wasn’t presenting them well.

I made ready six backgrounds for heroes. These were Barbarian, Ranger, Monster Hunter, Paladin, Warlock and Astrologist. Each had their own fancy starting gear, Barbarian had a bone sword made from dragon’s finger bone, Ranger had three types of special arrows, and so on. Also each of them had a varying amount of retainers. I kept it so Paladin had three, martials had two each and Warlock and Astrologists each had one. These were help and also backup characters. Also mages were supposed to get less enemy attention because they are corrupted and Paladins were supposed to be magnets for enemies. All spells and powers were through magic items, so that magic wasn’t as enticing, considering all heroes are quite competent from the start.

I can clearly see now where I messed up. The classes presented were too complex for the beginning. I really wanted Rangers and Barbarians, they were simple and had great flavour but I underestimated how strong are archetypes in people. Of course no one took these losers. I got one Monster Hunter - class based on gimmicks, a lot of items and stuffs where you’d need to understand an enemy to exploit their weakness. And also two Paladins, who were complex in a way that you serve and take powers from younger gods but need to perform rituals for other ones, and also the whole clash of religiosity between the cultures and stuff. Last player took Warlock and wanted to cast a lot of combat magic but the class had two non-damaging cantrips and two spells that require a lot of preparation. My main goal was for all of them to require set up, recon, player creativity and I didn’t telegraph it well so my players went for archetypes and bumped into a wall.

In order to not need the improvisation I prepared a map. I took six regions from World of Warcraft map and redrew them so that they were useful for me and players. I changed most of them, kept the roads and points on map and shorelines. I wanted this campaign to have a slight feel of World of Warcraft, so that I could use some ideas and art from the game I played decade earlier.

I think telling players that I base the map on World of Warcraft made them feel that we’re going to play like in WoW, so high power high magic heroes fighting demons and stuff.

One thing I felt would really play into the whole theme of apocalypse was weather. I made simple weather tables and prerolled them before the game so that I didn’t need during the game. And first two rolls were the fun ones - Rain of Flesh and Evil Frost. Rain of Flesh was just that - random chunks of flesh falling from the sky, some small and insignificant, some whole organs. Evil Frost was terrible cold that painted cursed and corrupting runes on frozen surfaces.

The fact that two first days had enchanted weather really undercut whole theme. When I described the rain of flesh as the first thing happening at the start of adventure players reacted as if it was a curiosity. They weren’t settled in the world and didn’t know if it is something weird or just a part of apocalypse they live in.

Execution

We started playing. First a bit of exposition so everybody was up to speed with the background and then landing in a port. Players didn’t know what to do, went straight for the captain of the guards, learned that she can help them getting onto an island where temple was located if they helped her dealing with rebelling captain of a fortress on the other side of the region. So 12 hours away. Heroes got into a tavern for some drinks, watched flesh out of the sky and then went straight to the fortress.

I knew this is going to be a disaster from the moment I started. I put too much pressure on the adventure, they had seven in-game weeks to visit all six temples. In order not to waste time they decided to follow the most obvious questline, which was also potentially the longest one, considering long distance between the sites. Also I failed to present the dying world, there was some craziness when poor people started gathering and cooking flesh from the sky but it didn’t feel like apocalypse and more like some foreign land and it’s shitshow.

Characters went the main roads, had to step through a scar of undeath, and with two Paladin heroes and their six Paladin retainers it was pretty much secure they’ll stumble upon enemies. And yes, a group of zombies and skeletons followed them. Unfortunately such a large group of heroes was enough to destroy the undead easily. Then they went further.

There was not enough of the world. The patrols on the roads didn’t care about this armed group enough. The guards protecting the path through the scar were too uninterested. People weren’t interacting and players also didn’t. Warlock player couldn’t do much during a fight because he didn’t have time to prepare. Monster Hunter also couldn’t think of doing much so eight full plated Paladins just hammered through enemies. Characters felt somewhat competent. Players not at all.

The group went to the fortress, gave the captain the letter and he said he won’t subordinate himself again unless his requests are followed, as he felt this part of the region was overlooked due to isolation caused by scar. The group didn’t push or anything, just slept and took the letter with captain’s request back. On the road they felt the Frost, went there unprepared, suffered due to eight people in metal armour, decided to push through so they can do the quest quicker. The amount of mistakes and failures they subjected themselves to was really astounding. They came back to the port city and the captain of the guards said she won’t help with the requests because she doesn’t have enough resources.

Again I didn’t telegraph the dangers and the need to prepare and so players just did the worst things they could. "There is extreme cold outside" "We’re still going to get eight metal-clad people outside for 12 hours, what could go wrong?". Also part of the quest was they were supposed to convince the fortress to cooperate and they just gave them the letter, ate, slept and came back. At this point I started dismissing the problems because we wouldn’t move the game at all. My players thought it will be simple Trad campaign and really tried to move as suggested by first plot point, they didn’t investigate, didn’t interact with the world, never asked for gossip, intel, anything OSR really. And I had prepared a ton of factions, clues, peoples, and ways to "solve" the region.

We came to our third session. Weather became regular rain. With hard "no!" from the guards the group didn’t know what to do. Finally they started asking around in the town and came up with an idea to just steal a boat, swim to the island at night, climb to the temple, do a ritual and go further. I said "yes and" to their ideas but at this point I knew this is the end of the game. We played through some tense situation with crossing the sea, the epic moment of performing a ritual in ruined tower made from white marble that shook the sea and skies. It was epic, apocalyptic and totally undeserved XD

I’ve seen my players were checked out at this point. They got a lot of tools and no idea how to use them. Neither at any point addressed their retainers to do anything other than to follow. Paladins never used healing to help sick locals and get any reputation. Warlock never summoned a demon to learn anything about the region. Monster Hunter never used his bag of tools (basically whole B/X miscellaneous equipment). On one hand I feel like I gave them so much tools and stuff to play with, on the other maybe it was too much at this point of adventure and they were just overwhelmed.

End of this End

A lot of things went wrong with this whole mess. But I don’t want to address all of it but the elements connected to Carnival’s topic.

First thing is that I overdid the apocalypse. Sad people in a dying world, clinging to the remnants of order, fighting the weird weather, all sound cool but I did it all at once, from the start, so that players never tasted the world as it should be - all they knew was this weird shitshow so they didn’t feel weirded out by any of it. "Oh, people here are sick and dying, I guess it’s a living" and went on with their quest.

Second thing was the setting I prepared. All points were far away from each other, hours of walking from one to another. Which meant factions were far away and so couldn’t easily "present" themselves to the group. The plot of Water Temples and merfolk who could help the group (and potentially destroy the port city) was totally untouched, same as the Necromancer’s tower (which unlocked potential new class of Necromancer if someone wanted to switch).

Third thing was the timer. I set the apocalypse for seven weeks in the future. It didn’t feel that pressing to me, considering the group could do first temple in three-four days. If kept the tempo they’d have like three weeks left after doing The Quest to mess around with the world knowing of their salvation. But I guess the players felt impending doom so much so they just focused on the racing to the goal.

Dishonourable mention of tokens - I really wanted some themes to emerge at various points in time. Paladins held a lot of tokens of their church hierarchy and I wanted them to encounter various creatures and mages willing to help them for a price of someone’s token. I wanted the scenes of Paladins selling their archbishop’s tokens to demons for a safe passage. Or seeing dwindling amounts and finally having to deal with selling close family tokens. Or a hero getting away from the group and getting themselves killed and the dilemma - should we go and retrieve the tokes from their dead body or don’t care and follow through? Some tokens belonged to people who weren’t really nice to them so it would entice to sell. I wanted the emotions, the drama of deciding someone’s salvation but whole topic went unnoticed.

When I look at it from this perspective this campaign was something I didn’t like as a player when we started playing Mork Borg. It’s just that the apocalypse is so much and so common in the setting that you don’t feel the vibe. There is no contrast with normalcy and so much is happening that you don’t now where to look. And these are my lessons for the future. For the next time I want to play apocalyptic fantasy campaign. Because I will. Soon.

#RPGBlogCarnival