[DL] Re: "Different" campaign ideas

[John Higginbotham <cloudshaper2k@yahoo.com>]

     One of the things I had planned for my
Mississippi Riverboat campaign was a parallel story.
My posse's characters were all Southerners and I
started the game shortly before the November
Offensives of 1876. One of the characters was a lady
huckster who was being blackmailed into spying for the
Union. She'd already intercepted orders for Gen.
Forrest to reinforce Louisville in a previous story.
Just before the tale I had planned, she'd been asked
to take a sealed tube to St. Louis.
     For the parallel characters, I created a group of
Union characters all in the Bull Run/Manassas area: a
private, a captain, a nurse, a messenger, and a
airship pilot. The Union characters story (entitled
'Hell') would have started a midnight on Nov. 1 and
was to go over several of the more important aspects
of the battle.
     The main characters tale (entitled 'War') would
have dealt with a number of groups trying to get the
tube. I had planned on having it start six days prior
to Nov. 1. When the lady huckster finally gets the
plans to the proper person, he opens the tube and lays
out the blueprints for the Confederate's gas dispenser
and the formula for the chlorine gas. By this time,
the battle has progressed several days.
     An immediate cut back to the Union characters on
the final day of the battle. The airship pilot is shot
down over Richmond. The private, captain and messenger
have to face the chlorine gas. And the nurse gets to
tend the dying survivors. (The nurse was supposed to
be a long term NPC.)
     I wasn't planning on doing the cuts to convey
clues to the main characters, I was simply going for a
thematic effect. Not to mention the look of horror on
my players faces when they realized what the Union
characters were facing and knowing there was no way
word could reach them in time.

=====
John Higginbotham 
Phoenix, Arizona, USA
cloudshaper2k@yahoo.com
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