Sunday, July 19, 2015

Adventure Idea - Mirror Universe

 Remember that Classic Star Trek episode with evil Spock and his goatee? That was awesome. Lets steal it and make an adventure out of it. Since this is my first adventure, quest, or campaign for this blog I'm still working out the format that I will use. I'm sure many things will vary from post to post, but in many cases my adventures won't be detailed like you would find in a published book. There won't be maps or detailed combat encounters. The lack of maps is because I'm doing this for free. The encounters will be missing because I want to keep this blog as system/edition agnostic as possible and I want any of the ideas posted here to be viable for groups of a variety of different levels.

Again I'm not going into a ton of detail here, because this is mostly an idea. I'm sure many DMs will be able to tweak this until it fits their needs, but if you have any questions, or want to mention how this worked for you, please leave a comment.

I'm going to create the universe of Meer (Mirror, get it?!) as the setting and focus of this adventure. It will be a plane of existence similar to the Shadowfell or the Feywild. Sort of a copy of the material realm, but twisted to a theme. The Mirror universe in Star Trek was a more rough and rugged version of the primary universe. I think that will work for our scenario.

Travel to and from the Meer should be similar to the Feywild, magic and all of the existing forms of planar travel should work, but the way most travel between the worlds will happen is through portals, weak points between the planes. I think a great way to enter the plane would be to have the players stumble upon some laboratory or keep in the middle of nowhere, in it there would be a room covered with mirrors, something strange can happen, and when they come out they are in the Meer. It might be a fun idea to have your players not even realize at first that they've been transported anywhere.

One idea I've had is to have the Meer be a fairly new plane of existence. Maybe some powerful god or wizard did something wrong and created a twisted clone of the world. This would explain why no one has really heard of it, as well as explain why there aren't evil versions of everyone walking around.

My favorite thing about the Mirror universe in Star Trek was seeing a second version of my favorite characters. The Meer should be no different. There could be "evil" versions of NPCs that the players have met, or even "evil" versions of the players themselves. Deceased characters may still be alive in the Meer, or living characters may have passed away. The best part of having the players fight dark versions of themselves or other NPCs, is that you already have the stats for them. Just tweak the spells to be flavored a little more evil, weapons to be a little more menacing, maybe heals damage instead of heal, or horses become wargs and drakes.

The final boss or enemies of the adventure should definitely be an anti-party consisting of the evil versions of your party. Be careful, because as a DM with a firm handle on the rules, it would be very easy to completely wipe your party by using exact duplicates of them. You may want to have something happen to weaken the baddies or strengthen the good guys, or just see if your party has what it takes.

One last variant that I'd like to mention, could definitely make things interesting. In the Meer, it's possible that the rugged, alternate history has caused the "goodly races" like humans, elves and dwarves, to become evil. This makes me think that it is possible that some of the dangerous monsters that roam the world might not be as evil here. Maybe goblins, orcs, trolls and giants are actually the good guys here, incredibly discriminated against, and driven to the dark edges of society, hiding in caves and forests.

This was the first adventure idea posted here. I'd love to hear from someone who took these ideas and made it their own in some way. I'm not sure if I'll stick to a loose format like this, or get tighter with the formatting, but I hope you liked it.

And the evil goatees are optional.


1 comment:

  1. A good idea to buff up the PCs would be to introduce a Hag in this plane of Meer. A "Good Hag"

    Of course, based on the wicked nature of a Hag in the material plane, where they would assist NPCs or the PCs themselves just for seeing them suffer later on; the Hag in the plane of Meer should be the exact opposite, a Good Being that loves to help others.
    If given a good hook that leads to the lair of a hag, a smart player could think of giving it a shot.

    Whereas a Hag in the Material Plane would grant power to PCs through a Licantrophy curse, a Good Hag would grant another kind of Nature magic that would boost our adventurers HPs or give them luck or something

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