The New Planet

Initial Notes, Modern Vehicle Combat, Plot Device, Race List, Adventures

New World Notes
This is a very ancient world. The time in which the characters will appear is in terms of technology about 2050, but where the earliest civilation of Earth is about 8000 years ago, there is arechological evidance of civilizations on this planet 80000 years ago! This is a lot of time for varient evolution and for the rise and fall of 5 major peaks of accomplishment (so far!). I have described the other civilizations this planet will have below, so all of this information applys to the time where the characters will first appear.

All evidance of evolution was erased by earlier civilizations who sought to "preserve" them only to have them destroyed when the civilization that gathered them together was destroyed. There are many theories accounting for the origin of species (and particularly to the sentient species) but an almost total derth of proof for any theory.

This world is Earth normal in everything except weather. It has a more pronounce axial tilt (35.3%) and thus a greater range of tempratures through a given year. It also causes more frequent windy activity. This is further accentuated by the constant pumping of heat energy into the weather system by the southern volcanos. The result is a stormy planet with common extremes of weather. The most noticable result of this is the solidity of the buildings on the main continants.

The year is 364 days long. The months and weeks are all of equil length; 7 days a week and 4 weeks to a month. The moons orbits no longer figure into these divisions of time since it was fractured into 2 pieces 40K years ago durring the 3rd Civilization.

2 Moons - Used to be one, but a comet hit is and knocked it into 2 peices and a debris field. The 3 are in very different orbits. The debris field intersects the planet orbit and the orbit of the larger moon. These times are known as bad omen times.

The Tree of knowledge is a plot device that will answer some of the thorny logistical problems faced by the DM.
The Tree of Knowledge is a device of unknown origin that exists in the legends and teaching of evey culture on the planet. There are more than 2 of them, but the exact number is not know. The are the great teachers of civilation. The fact they are shaped just like the obolisk of 2001 is just cooincedance!

The other major plot device are the Tunnels of Time or Time Tunnels. These are caves that will propel a group of people to any time or place. There are a great many of these. There is a lot of arguments regarding the source and purpose of these fantastic places among the minority who beleve they exist. The vast majority of the population of all times and cultures is that they do not exist.

Heres how the Time Tunnels work.
There are none above ground and are always found in natural caverns although many caverns have been extensivly modified by religious and technological parties. Some folks worship them, some are trying to discover their secrets, some guard them as tribal "JuJu".
They are very, very high tech. The mechanism exists outside of time and can't be touched in any way. They can malfunction, but have a self correcting mechanism that will fix problems given enough time (it may take milleniums).
When a party enters into an Time Tunnel area underground, the Artificial Intellegence programs become active. Sensors determine the number, race, armaments and so on. Defensive systems become active although there is no outward sign. The laser blasters are hidden in the rock and require a spot at a DC 32 to find. The visible part looks like a tiny round piece of glass. Laser BAB 20, slash damage 3d8
The room is always large and have room for from 6 to 20 (depending on the size) tunnels.

The party will ask what the tunnels are for and the AI will tell them how it works.
If they leave the Area, they are not a threat. If they stay they will die. The AI has no control over the times available. Questions about who does get the "I am not authorized ". The AI doesn't even know what time or place they lead to. This is another security feature. Only those who have a way of knowing where they go on their own have a real use for these devices!

If this was the only thing going on with the Time Tunnels it would be really stupid. How can you talk any sensable party into going on a random journey more than once?

PLOT DEVICE:
Although the technology of the Time Tunnels is far beyond anything this world will ever be capable of (and is unique in the known galaxy of Traveller), attempts to find a practical use for it have been going on since the first civilization. Only in the future of the party has some advances in the technology been discovered.

Here is one possible way the characters could be introduced to the situation.

Somehow, the party is directed to a ancient site burried in the mountains. The legends of the place go far back in time and it is sassumed that the clues lead to either greate treasure of possible to great knowledge. They are hired (or decided to follow the leades themselves) and delve into the mountain where they find some rocky tunnels. They lead to a chamber of rock that looks like a dead end.
When the party has gathered in a spot where all the party is within the area that will be cut off, a force field will appear. A womans voice will say
"Security protocols enabled. Time Tunnel Alice awaiting instructions. "
The Tunnels will then come on and display whatever sceins the DM wants. This is a chance to provide previews or imagination candy to the party. Mose of the scenes won't be interesting. Many of the tunnels end in areas that are completely uninhabited at the time the tunnel ends. Some may provide hints to adventurers the DM would like to run. How to convince the party to choose the tunnel that leads to the adventure is left up to the DM.

The AI will not be really helpful in terms of game information. There is a strict embargo about questions regarding the past or the future and will be answered with "I am not authorized to provide that information unless the Security Protocol Alpha 20 is envoked.". Shortened this becomes "I am not authorized to answer".
The party will soon realize that they are in a trap. Someone will ask someone what the wall of force is for. The AI says
"It is part of the system security. Unauthoried exit from this area is strictly forbidden. Under the Time law Chapter 3, section 48, paragraph 231 entry into a Time facility is strictly forbidden. AI systems are authorized to euthanize all animals remaining in the area for more than 48 time standard hours. You have been in the area for 63 minutes and have 46.9 hours remaining."

Obviously, this is a Hobbes choice. Eventually the group will decide to pass into one of the tunnels. When they do, the will encounter the living beings that are the "ghosts in the machine".

When the characters decide to chance one of the tunnels, they will experience what seems to be an eternity of darkness. When at last the darkness clears, they will be presented with a wholey unexpexted scene. They will come out of their blackness in a Hiver nest! The Hivers are very intellegent monsters from the Travaller universe. They are the taem of investigators who were sent from the far future to discover the secrets of the only time travelling facility in the galexy. Theiir objective is to discover as much as possible about the technology used to create the Time Tunnels in hope they can be adapted for use on the Hiver home planet to create a utopic enviornment there.

Although they have gained more knowledge of the Time Tunnels than any other race, they will admit to being infants in the advancement.

They have grabbed the party "from the buffers" and materialized them in the place where they are which is "out of time" i.e. not connected to the current time line of the system. They will explain the following to the party:

"We are not inimicablle to your race although we do not pretend to understand your psycology. The fact that it appears you have developed what appears to be a technology that even outstrips that of the Ancients is proof either of your superior intellect or of your discovery and understanding of their technology. This is far exceeding the accomplishment of other races in this area."

This being said, they admit they are still somewhat interlopers in the Time Tunnels which they invariably refer to as "the project":

They can use the buffers to capture parties and inject them into specific time streams after those persons have undergone an extended debreifing from the3 Hivers.
There are only 3 of them, but they seem to think this is enough to direct the groups seeking to guide the civilizations of this planets to 2 ends.

End 1, the Hivers want to create a time traveling utopia for their home planet. Ths will require a obviously clear explaination of all factors around the time projet, how it was implemented and how that may be extrappolated to the current "experiment".
End 2. To further end 1, they beleave that it may be that the time device would not have been created without their interfception.;  To their mind there is nothing unusual in participating in a system that impacts a result without clear knowledge of the intermediate outcome. 

The bottom line is that they pay groups of people real money to perform single tasks at their direction.

The simplest task is the placement of an "Obolisk". This is most often the first task they are sent out on and is refered to in Time Central as "a box job". This is a delivery service where one of the Hiver technology teaching machines is placed in an area frequented by carefully targeted individuals. Unfortunatly, while the target name and time is clearly known, the physical location of that pers is not know exactly. This sometimes requires the party to find him and then drop the obolisk off.

The obolisks come in many sizes but their dimensions are always exactly the same they are 1x3x7 in proportion. Some are 1' thick, 3' wide and 7' high. These are teaching machines. When a person comes within 3' of the object, the mechanism starts. First, it paralizes the person and then begins a process of determining the mental engrams which it uses to optimize the imprinting using natural idiom and cultural reference. After a few minutes, the person walks away with no memory of anything except sometimes finding a strange shaped object. However, the new information is there when they want it. Usually it will take years for the person to "stumble on" the imparted information which makes it look like independant inspiration and hide the participation of the hivers.

The obolisks are constructed of both hardware and wetware and both are programmed to disassociate themselves when their job is complete.

The black obilisk boxes are invisible to the tunnel scanning mechanism as long as there aren't to many going through and as long as they are small. Any box larger or any number greater than 3 boxes at a time will trigger the security system and they will be "deleted".

Another common task is called "a drop". It consists of taking something from one point in time to another. Only the Hivers know what is inside the containers and only they can open them without setting off the boobytrap that destroys the contents of the box completely. They are guarded by a genetic lock keyed to one of the hivers. The group is sent to a spot and instruced where to get the box and bring it back to Time Central. Often they are then instructed to take another box (that looks identical) to a different time.


When the party is brought before the Hivers, they will be given a choice.
The hivers will send them on their way to where ever they were bound for with all the food and drink they can carry.
They will send them back to the place they came from.
They can stay on as hosts or
They can do a job for the project. The group is given a task to perform. They are prepared for the time destination. They are given the location of the closest Time Tunnel besides the one they come through. They are sent to a Time Tunnel that is as close to the objective as possible. When the task is complete, whether it was successfull or not, they return to the Time Tunnel and are brought back to Time Central. If they successfully perform the task, they will be given a lot of money in what ever format is best for the time they came from and send them back where they came from. This is always a portable form of wealth ranging from an anonomous numbered bank account to untracable diamonds or a small, valuable work of art. The amount should always be enough to support each of the players for the rest of their lives. In D&D terms this would be something like 50Kgp worth of mixed gems or for modern day terms 1/2 a million dollars.

However, the Time Tunnels have another security system. It is selective amnesia. To prevent cross-time contamination, the Time Tunnel device will erase the memory of experieces or knowledge that might be damaging to the timeline that is their destination. This editing occurs between transport from Time Central to the destination. This knowledge may return if the person returns to a time where the information is no longer dangerous, but may forever deleted. As long as the players stay in Time Central they have access to all their memories. This is a large part of the attraction to the hosts who enjoy their memories of past adventures.

So part of the deal is that they may have edited memories of what they do in the field when they return to their own time.

The party will need to know where they are at any time. In order to accuratly find the caches and their locations of the objectives, they will have to have fairly accurate locators.
It is not possible to transport a physical object through the tunnel without using a box, so wetware technology is used to imbed a location system based on the location ability of birds was developed. This requires surgery to imbed the modification into the bodies of 2 party members. This enables those people to determine their longititud and latitude down to minutes at any time.

Naturally the Hivers will have a contingent of human is their large out of time facility. They refer to themselves as the "hosts". This will include members of every sentient race and are all volintires. Most of them are retired operatives. They will great the party, make them comfortable, answer most of their questions and prepare them for the introduction to the Hivers.

The facility, commonly called "Time Central" to the hosts, is about the size of a city block. 1/4 of this is occupied by the mysterious machines that create this space out of time and house the great computers that do the vast computational tasks necessary for the analisis of Time Tunnel sensors and buffer capture and insertion.

Their proof that everything is going wll is that the Time Tunnels contine to work. This is an almost tauntalogical argument from a human point of view, but they are convinced this is an acceptable risk for their meddling.

When they find a party with the AI Evaluation of their physical and mental profileindicating them  to be a usefull group of "Agents",  they will make an offer to that group. They may not disclose all the pertanant info to the party, but they not mislead the bgroup in any way.

There are ranks among those working for the project.
Agents - low level people. Level 1 through 5
Operatives - trusted Agents with multiple tasks successfully performed. Levels 6 through
Trouble Shooters - High level operatives with considerable autonomy.

Character Advances
Experience Points are the approved way to advance characters in level. However, this has a number of problems. First, it is not part of the SRD and so can't be freely used. Next, it is dependant on player attendance. Those who can't play as often are penalized and soon their characters become untenable as they are so much lower level than the rest of the players.
Adding to the difficulty of leveling the characters is the level cap. The tables for d20 Modern only advance to 10th level, but I think extending them beyond that using the same rate of progression will be OK. At 11th level, the d20 Modern charaters will be able to add an additional talent track. I can expand on that when the problem occurs.
The last campaign used a variety of D&D style EXP awards. When I switched to d20, I tried to use strictly monster slaying to advance and ran into the problem above and changed to a adventure completeion way of level advancing. This worked just fine, so I'll be using that in the new campaign with some modifications. EXP will not be used.

Another consideration specific to the campaign I plan on running is the longevity of the characters. Folks seem willing to accept slower advancement as part of the cost of running a lot of players for a long time. This indicates a slow level progression. To keep the levels of the group the same, everyone will go up levels at the same time regardless of participation.

Frequent Players VS Occassional Players.
While increasing levels for every one at the same time does penalize charaters that play frequently, doing anything else will penalize those who don't. They deserve some sort of reward for attendance. The other variable that is a part of game advancement is treasure. This includes money, equipment, control over specific party resources and personal contacts.
To reward frequent play, the players who are regulars will have first pick of anything they pick up in the game. In other words, frequent participation is rewarded with more funds and equipment during the adventure. If you miss a game where the treasure is obtained, the players at that game will get first pick, but there will be a percentage reserved for those who weren't there. For instance, a cache of weapons is found. The characters being played at that time will make their choices and the remainder will be set aside for characters who aren't there. Characters who aren't playing when magic items are obtained may not get one. It's possible that a frequent player will on occasion not be playing when a treasure is discovered and thus be left out, but this is a temporary condition as the penalty of loss will only last as long as the adventure. Also, characters who obtained an item that is perfect for a specific player may take that item as part of their haul and give to the absent character later. This will be a bit tricky for the DM as he will have to choose the treasure awards carefully to make sure everyone gets something. Most often this will be something like awarding something special for each player present and a monetary award for those absent. This will require providing a cost for the items found. This then will be used to determine how the treasure is divided.
This can't be perfect. Let's say the party overruns the outpost of an opponent. They find a cache of weapons and ammo which includes a bazooka. It's value is greater than the entire rest of the haul! In this case, the character that gets this item will not receive anthing else in that haul and will be outside the rest of the division of treasure. When the bazooka is discovered, there are 7 characters playing. There are a total of 10 characters pling in the adventure (3 are absent). The party will decide who get the item with the DM presenting it to a character if the party can not reach agreement. The value of the remainder of the the treasure is determined. This value is devided by 9  as the value of the large item(s) are not figured into the group award. Then the characters present pick what they want up to the limit of their portion including the equipment value. It will often be that the characters who aren't there will get a strictly monitary reward while the others will get cool stuff. Places where the party can buy stuff will be infrequent (and commonly in the middle or toward the end of the adventure. Those awarded moonty they can't spend will be bummed, and that is the down side of missing an adventure.

Task Based Level Advancement
How long do I want this campaign to last? Or more accuratly, how long do I want the characters created to be played? The last set of campaign characters obtained 19th level and it took about 20 years. I can't imagine the players will be able to stay together for more than 10 more years. Peter and I are 56 and I can't imagine us still playing regularly when we're 66! Planning for a 10 year arc for the story seems about right as some folks will being retiring and moving away. I don't want to ref characters higher than 12th with this campaign and d20 Modern really only supports up to 10th. This indicates a increase in character level just a bit faster than once a year. We have been playing about 40 or so times a year. This give me the metric I needed. An adventure that only takes 10 games to finish is a 1/4 level advancement task. An adventure we play for a year is a 1 level task. Or to put it another way, it will take 40 game sessions on average to level a character. The players won't be real keen on this as they want to play more powerful characters, but its a necessary part of a game where the party has lots of characters and lasts a long time.
At the begining of an adventure, the DM will establish its difficulty as a fractional value of level advancement. A quick and easy taks (like a simple drop) could be a 1/4 level task. If four similar tasks are successfully accomplished, the charaters will all gain a level.

Charater Changes Across Time
Perhaps the most important are to the players is how their class abilities, skills and feats will translate when moving from one time to another.
Appearance (weight, height, age, skin color etc.), Race, Abilities and Senses will not change at all moving from one time to another.

Skills, Feats, Special Abilities and Talents
All other options are strictly according to class and level. When you are shifting to a new time, the DM will provide a list of classes that are used in that time/adventure. This wiull be one the most important tasks for the ref as it will involve also reviewing all the skills and feats to make sure they don't conflict with the time period. If a skill is called for in a class that isn't used in the time period, the class should not be allowed. Nothing will be transfered over. It will be like creating a new character using the level aquired and the ability and sense scores as rolled (naturally these are modified as levels are increased). Multiclass and prestige classes work the same as ever.

Religion
I have a very silophistic answer to the problem of multi-god pantheons brought into the future. It really doesn't matter in game terms if you worship a single god, many gods, or profess there is only 1 god. A characters devotion to a particular sect is ultimatly irrevelent with the exception that one church or another may be more in evedance (popular at a specific time). There is nothing that prevents a multiple diety pantheon even in the far future, but it won't mean much if clerical spells aren't used. Some religions will go in and out of fashion (the gods of good and evil for instance will be more or less powerful in some times).
Set up a very simple pantheon and keep is throught the time line.

There are 35 domains. There should be 7 gods and 1 Monotheistic god in all time lines. Each of them will get 5 domains from which to choose 2.

Pantheon
Twillim - God of Law - Protection,  Community, Law, Nobility, Glory
Rahsee - God of Chaos - Chaos, Knowledge, Luck, Madness, Repose
Maclewar - God of Good - Charm, Good, Healing, Strength, Community
Gloomera - God of Evil - Darkness, Evil, Fire, Destruction, Trickery
Yakmarta - God of Nature - Air, Earth, Water, Weather, Animal, Death, Plant, Healing
Fluumay  - God of Artifice - Artifice, Creation, Knowledge, Liberation, Travel
Wabah - God of Magic - Magic, Knowledge, Healing, Glory, Strength
The One God - Pick any 1 domain and any granted ability in addition.

Senses
The 5 senses house rule will be introduced. I want to use this as an additional plus or minuses connected to race.



The planet for the adventure
6 contanents, 4 island chains
  1. Ecompia - Main Continant - 3 main politial and cultural groups. Most of this continant is temperate with only the far southern area tropical.
  2. Arcoma - North Smaller - The Blasted Lands - This contanent is still contaminated with radioactivity, poisons, dangerous flora and fauna not to mention dangerous people!
  3. Bricoma - Southern Smaller - The Domed land. This has a plassteel partial globe covering the entire contanent to a distance of 3 miles offshore. It is heavily defended.
  4. Notafus - North Polar - The Frozen Land. Even the sea for 2 miles around is always frozen. A huge fresh water lake occupies 30% of the contanents surface.
  5. Selat - South Polar - larger than Notafus, it's pole is a source of constant volcanic activity that spreads in gradiet heat to the edges of this contanent. The beachs of this place are never cooler than 70deg. The heat comes from the winds that spread from the island center. For those not immune to high tempretures, it is unlivable.
  6. Fand - The Hidden Land - This is a continant hidden from all eyes and perception from the rest of the world. A powerful illusion protects an standard D&D culture and tech. Known by those aware of it's existance and the Land of the Fey.

Island Chains - These are balkanized chaotic places where utopian communities vie with Warlords to dominate each of the 4 chains. From largest to smallest they are
  1. Shamala - Mostly elf, low tech, high nature, low magic
  2. Penadi - Mostly apes, low tech, no magic, high chaos (warlords)
  3. Douia'loi - Mostly Octapeds, Merfolk and Locantha - High nature, low tech, high magic, low law
  4. Arlic- The Dragon Reservation - Dragons found outside of this island chain are imprisoned on sight -High Evil, High Magic, High Tech/High Chaos

Sentient Races

All of the major D&D races are present (Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit, Orc, Gnome, Human). These will have the standard effects on the characters per D&D rules.
In addition there are, sentient apes, cats, dogs, elephants, and Dragons. All of these are available as player characters except elephants and dragons. Elephants as a player character are impractical and dragon players would be a PIA.
I will steal freely from the T20 rules for the cat and dog races who will become the Vager and the Aslan. The reptile race are called Tenic. So the race list is:
Human, Elf, Dwarf, Midget, Ape, Gnome, Mapinguari, Tenic, Vargr and Aslan.
All of the races breed 'true'. There is no possible intermingiling of the races. They are NOT cross fertile.

They are all associated with allignments that are typical for that race. This is a generalization that will mostly be found in NPCs. Characters will be aware of their racial preference, but are not bound by it. The format for this information is:
Nature-Magic-Tech-Mental-Ballance-Profit, Good-Neutral-Evil, Law-Justice-Chaos

Player Character Races
Human  -  Any
Elf - Nature/Magic/Good/Neutral
Dwarf - Tech/Neutral/Law/Profit
Midget (as Halfling) - Magic/Ballance/Neutral/Justice
Gnome - Tech/Mental/Good/Chaos
Ape (as Orc) - Nature/Evil/Chaos/Profit
Vargr (Dog) - Law/Neutral/Ballance/Magic
Alsan ( Cat) - Chaos/Good/Artifice/Mental
Tenic (As Lizardfolk) - Magic/Good/Nature/Law

Non-Player Sentient Races
Locantha (Aquatic Lizard) - Justice/Neutral/Nature/Magic
Merflok - (Aquatic Humanoid) Law/Good/Nature/Mental
Octapeds - (New Amphibian) Chaos/Evil/Ballance/Technology
Mapinguari - (As a Giant Sloth) Law/Good/Ballance/Mental)
Dragon -  Profit/Evil/Tech/Magic
Morgoth (Evil Underground) - Law/Evil/Artifice/Technology
Deepers (Good Underground) - Justice/Neutral/Artifice/Mental
Farie Folk - Fey Races - SATYR - GRIG - PIXIE - SHAEDLING - NYMPH - DRYAD (They can not exist without strong magic, restricted to the Fand)

Historic Overview
The adventure will beginin the age of the 5th civilazation of 7
First civilation was the Farie Folk, Apes, Mapinguari, Dragons - Magic Dominates
Second civilation Humans, Apes, Elephants,  Farie, Lizards - Law Dominates
Third civilization Humans, Apes, Lizards, Farie - Nature Dominates
Fourth Civilization Humans, Apes, Lizards, Frogs - Mental Dominates
Fifth civilization Humans, Apes, Aslan, Vargr  - Technology Dominates
Sixth civilization Humans, Apes, Cats, Dogs, Elephants, Dragons - Ballance Dominates
Seventh  civilization Humans, Apes, Cast, Dogs, Farie - Justice Dominates
I've been forgetting about one of the most important elements of any campaign; the villians! These are the guys that drive adventures and without them, history is dull.
In the case of the world I;m developing, they will change, but will always be threatening the life on the planet.
The Hivers are neutral as regarding the inhabitants of the planet as they only want the technology of the Time Tunnels. They do help humaninty, but only to force them toward technology as the solution to their research.
Early in the world's history the enemy of life was a group of aliens with god-like powers. They are most often known as the Intruders by their enemies and the Strong Ones by their allies. They are a fungoid? life form that regard any life outside of their own as a waste of space. Their fungoid nature enables them to grow creatures in any shape they want including humans. Other than this, little is known about them to mankind as they are secretive even with those who implement their will. They could be called Lawful Evil, but they use Chaos as a tool to reduce the population and try to replace it with their own kind of life.
They were defeated in a final apocolyptic battle and for a dozen years the planet knew peace and ultimate harmony under High Magic conditions. Then the Intruders retributive strike hit. They directed 2 giant asteroids at the planet. If both of them had hit, all life on the planet would have been distroyed. In the year between when the sootsayers of the idylic age determined the danger from the asteroids, the high mages were able to develop a protection from one of them. Through concerted efforts over months using specially devised magics, they managed to change the orbit of the moon enough to intercept one of the missles. This split the moon in two and rained small chunks down on the surface of the planet for decades.
The asteroid that did strike devistated the world. It destroyed one contanant turning it into a series of small islands. This started the Long Winter. This was over 400 years of cloud cover that froze the world. It also effectivly eliminated magic from the world by wiping out all knowledge of it.
From this point the history of the planet was a very gradual growth of life and a period of barbarism. During this time the secrets of magic lay hidden deep below the debris from the moon. This started the rise of technology.
As technology began it long climb to the stars, magic would occassionally be "discovered", but the Hivers will do almost anything to stop it as they need technology to continue to develop the Time Tunnels. They know from experience that they can not direct the magical powers so anything developed that relies on this force will not be transportable to their world.
But in the future a new force makes itself known.
These new enemies are constructed creatures that reproduce through construction not birth. Think cyborg Cylons. They have mental abilities and will teach this knowledge to their allies. They are from the far future and arrive in the system inadverdantly. Their world was on the brink of destruction through a solar flare that would bake their world. They did not have space travel that was practical for getting away. Seeking a way to escape, they found a way to create time rifts that were totally unpredictable in time or space. However it was cheap and easy for them to build. They changed their forms to remove their organic parts becoming sentient robots and sent everyone on the planet to random places in time and space.
They happened to land on the largest of the moon pieces and set up shop. They observed the planet for centuries and collected their resources to develop a way to get to the planet below and replace the current life with their form of life.
Mental (psionic) abilities requires an addition to the human brain. It is the part that allows the mental energy to be collected. Without it, no psionic abilities can be used. This requied delicate surgery that killed 80% of those attempting to get the ability. One of the cyborgs discovered a genetic manipulation that allowed the trait to be regressive and bred a handfull of humans with psionic ability to be Superbrains who trained their entire lives and acheived awesome powers. However, despite their best efforts the gene enter the human pool and the ability became available to an ever increasing (but never large) percent of the populace to use them.
Sometime man greatest enemy is himself. On two occassions, they succeeded in almost wiping out the races. An atomic war destroyed one contanant rendering it a mutant wasteland and a plague turned another into a baren ruin.


Classes:


Initial Classes

Advanced Classes

N ew Skills
Smell
Touch
Taste


For every advantage given by technology, ther is a cooresponding spellthat can neutralize that advantage. For every advantage given by magic, there is a corresponding technological negation possible.

For instance the spell Expend Powder causes gunpowder and dynamite to explode and the device the Antimagic Gernade dispells all spells in the area of the explosion.
Prot. F. Normal Missles negates bullets while the Oil of Magicial Explosion causes  all  spells of a particular level to be expended  without result.

In the current age of Justice, there are groups  de oted to stamping out all extremes. There is a cult devoted to eliminating all those who manufacture explosive weapons while a guild of Technocrats seek to eliminate schools of magical knowledge.

There is almost no coal, petrolium or heavy metals like Uranium. The small amouts of these materials that existed were exhausted in the tech ages. which prevents cars, planes and neucuolar power from being widely used. Thuse ther are no cars, planes, a locomotive is made of mostly ceramic and natural materials are far more common. There is no plastic.

All metals are very rare and items made of metal are worth far more than on traditional wolds.
Ceramic blade weapons are common, but break when a 1 is rolled to hit or on a 1 or 2 when used against metal or rock creatures.


Initial Notes

The Dungeons and Dragons Campaign has grown in levels beyond the point where a reasonable adventure can be constructed to challenge a group the size and level of the Local 509. The time has come to retire that campaign and use it as a pickup campaign with the action centering around the House of Stone and not going any further with the Quest of the Fifteen. It is with great reluctance and regret that I make this decision, but after my Evil Tree taking almost 1800HP of damage in a single minute, I feel am forced to!

For about 18 months I've been working on combining the d20 rule vaients (D&D, Modern, Future, Past, Arcana, FX, Menace) to form a cohesive system that can be formed into a new game. Also, I've always wanted to ref a time travel game where all these varients can be used. I've thought about a single planet with different conetnents being on different time streams, different planets where each is at a seperate point in it's development (a la Traveller d20) and so on. Here are some of the decision points:
It a large party and this make intimate games that rely heavily on role playing are impractical.
Time travel where they start in one time period presents realism/practical problems as the skill set of the characters (and their race) will be initially limited to that time period. When they go to a new time, how do they learn the skills necessary to that period? A solvable problem, but a consideration.
With different planets you run into the Dr. Who problem of language, customs and such. A difficult but not impossible problem to solve.
At this point I think the best bet is to keep them on a new, alien (not Earth) planet where they can travel (but not alwys at their will!) through time.

The planet should have a wide a selection of climates, terrains and other features as possible.

A simple way of controling game balance is to limit knowedge to specific classes making advancing in a class beyond a certain point impossible. Travelling to a different time may change this and I'll wait until the problem arises as to wether you get to keep levels you gain in one time when you go to a more restricted time!

An interesting thought for an approach to this new campaign is to use the "mini game" concept. A specific varient or extension to the d20 rules are used to support a particular kind of adventure. The first example is extending the vehicle combat rules to support an adventure taking place in a "Mad Max" like post apochliptic landscape.
The adventures would be short (target around 10 or 15 game sessions) with little or no emphasis on role playing or in depth local color, but heavy in cinematic action and new wrinkles on familiar game elements and rules.

On one Saturday night, I cheated the crew into helping me with this effort instead of doing the regular game. It was really handy as they gave me a lot of ideas and things that need to be worked on before I presnt the rules to a larger audience. It was great!
One important thing was the means I would use to compensate character classes with special abiloities (like clerics and wizards) with corresponding feats or skills.

Although the party will be travelling through time, you have to start somewhere! I've called out the ages of the planet that are suggestions of a consistant succession of moral and philophical periods. The time I'm starting the players in is ... still somewhat in the air. I originally wanted to start in the near future, but I may not to cushion the transition from the old campaign for the players.

If I don't start the characters in the future, I will somehow get them to that period I want to target the the technology of the first adventure for about 2050 our time. The time period is The Sixth Age of this world (see below) Balance rules and the various factions of the battle for powrer is in a period of detante. The culture however is very different than ours.
For starters, there are many different races instead of just humans that are senteint.


Yesterday, I looked into the kind of planning and detail I would need to kick the campaign off. Everywhere I looked I found detailed middle age cities but I couldn't find a single detailed modern city. I'm sure they are out there somewhere, but their absence made me wonder why.
I came up with an interesting theory. Most D&D campaigns have a considerable amount interaction and have a fairly stable location with the characters interacting with the same merchants many times. Modern campaigns are much more mobile in nature and de-emphasize role playing in favor of rapid action.    Added to this is the complexity of the modern city and the rapid transportation. Creating a modern city is a daunting task. However, I think I can overcome most of these problems and create modern cities with the detail of medevil cities.
In modern cities, an overview of the terrain, a display of the city layout by district and details of main streets in the district will be all that is needed outside of any special plot driven locations.
Each of the districts should have shopping malls, strip malls and some small mom and pop locations. Beyond that, the flavor will be given by the details of the shops and not their location beyond their district.


Make a page of tables describing the effects of modern drugs including battle drugs.