I’ve been toying with the idea of running a campaign that has a kind of doom system. And when I say that, it is in reference to World of Horror’s doom system.
For those unfamiliar, you are given 5 mysteries, and a final boss dungeon to complete. Every time you investigate a mystery, your doom percentage rises by 1-5%, with the occasional event that decreases it. Resting increases doom, as well as shopping, and other sorts of time taking upgrades. Finishing a mystery grants a small reduction in doom.
And there is a cult trying to bring an eldritch god to Earth, which will destroy and alter everything in lovecraftian ways.
Once the doom meter reaches 100%, the player loses the game. And I’m trying to think of ways to do something similar with a campaign.
The 5 mysteries and boss dungeon are easy enough to do. But tracking doom could be something which is dangerous to penalize players with. It would absolutely suck to spend several months on a campaign just to lose it because they took one too many long rests. But it’s also something that can be an empty threat of reaching.
So my current thoughts:
- Every session, doom rises by 10%
- Once doom reaches 100% it resets to zero, and an entire location gets wiped off the map.
- Completing a mystery reduces doom by 50%, min 0%.
In effect, it could severely hurt them, but not immediately kill the campaign. If the party was planning on going to candlekeep but it suddenly got sucked up by a demon portal, then they must change their plans. Alternatively, if a location they didn’t depend on gets destroyed, then it would at the very least still be a threat in terms of guilt tripping them to some degree.
Another difficulty with a system like this is keeping it balanced to the speed of play. Maybe 10% per session is too much, or maybe too little. And changing that rate mid game would feel a little cheap. Another option would be to go based on vibes from the get go. So any rate changes could be gradual. This would still feel cheap, but it would at least be more subtle.
So basically you want some kind of timer / escalation about some big bad evil thing. There are a few different ways you can do it. One you can do is have some kind of small script after every long rest about the breaking the seals or something similar so that the players can understand each rest means something. This can increase your doom (which you can track hidden) this can change how the world intereacts or can do nothing but bring tension narratively.
Another way to do this count down that feels more dnd is by decreasing dice as the doom get closer after each long rest. After each rest roll a 1d10 and on a 1 somethign bad happens. As their doom increases this dice goes down now to a 1d8 so the bad thing is more likely to happen. You can and should make a big deal about rolling this doom dice after each rest. Gives it a little random element and really drives player tension. That way you don’t have to track a percentage but still does that tension