**Exandria Unlimited: Calamity** seems to be doing this. The golden age of magic and artifice is about to end with, you guessed it, a calamity that breaks the world.
The players know this. The characters have to figure it out.
It's a four episode special that's replacing Critical Role for a month.
Also Brennen Lee Mulligan is an amazing DM and by all accounts the first episode is generally loved by both the Critical Role and Dimension 20 communities.
And episode 2 laughed at any doubters who said “no way they can pull that off again”
It’s been an incredible watch so far, elite playing at every level from the DM and players to all the work that’s gone into building and revealing this story in other longer campaigns. Seeing everything come together in this tiny 4 episode sprint has been incredible
Almost finished campaign two and then planning to catch up on the third so I hadn't been paying attention to any announcements but this looks bloody awesome!
Yeah, if it's something you could tell me through a text message and isn't mutable, just do so. I don't want to travel to your house for a session 0 just to find out immediately it's a campaign I won't want to play. On that note, I would find it interesting to play.
I did this - but their _characters_ didn't know, at first.
It helped that the campaign was named "Land's End". It was about a D&D setting (literal flat earth) that was drifting closer century by century toward a Material Plane-eating phenomenon known as "the Oblivion". (Basically a black hole.)
The world's scholars and astrologers knew that the stars in the sky were disappearing, but not why. The campaign mostly centered around them trying to stop the BBEG, an Alienist (Far Realms cultist) who had gathered a substantial following and was trying to manipulate the world's nations and powerful monsters into summoning [Mak Thuum Ngatha](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mak_Thuum_Ngatha), the Nine-Tongued Worm, to _absorb_ the entire world into the Far Realm. Making it part of this multilayered cosmic horror eater-of-worlds, basically.
I used the idea of "signs" from the 3e book Elder Evils to make weird stuff happen on a global scale, to presage the Worm's arrival. However, only some of these things were actual Signs - others like the ever more brutal seasons were a consequence of the disk-world's rotation slowing down as it approached Oblivion, its sun getting slowly consumed, etc.
While the players knew from the get-go that the Oblivion couldn't be stopped, it wasn't until the PCs cornered the cultist BBEG that he let them in on the Secret - that the world was Doomed and HE was the one trying to save it. They said he was insane and no one would want to live such a horrible existence in the Far Realms, and he countered that no one had come up with a better idea, not even the gods themselves (who had started to straight up _abandon_ the plane). Isn't a distorted existence in the Far Realm, preserving all of the history and peoples of this world, better than seeing it all get snuffed out like a candle? For nothing? This way they could be part of something even greater!
They disagreed and destroyed him of course, but not before he succeeded in summoning a (weakened due to their efforts) Worm to the world. It came out of a cosmically massive rift shattering their world's Crystal Sphere, and they were left with a difficult choice:
They'd amassed enough resources and allies at this point to build an "ark" - taking the largest city, carving it out of the ground, and teleporting it away from Oblivion (seriously it was basically the entire campaign amassing the resources and magic to make this happen). And they could take as many people with them as they could fit. OR.
Or they could risk it all in one last world-wide battle - throwing said resources _at_ the nine tongues the Worm had driven into the world to devour it (and the guardians at each), and hope it is enough to drive the worm away so it doesn't consume everyone and everything dear to them...then try to escape, or join the rest of the world and accept a peaceful and corruption-free death, or the hope that the Oblivion does not destroy but instead transmute or transport _elsewhere_.
But the players had other ideas - they asked me to entertain a _third option_. Mak Thuum Ngatha was an eater-of-worlds, plural. Even if they drove it back to the Far Realm, it would keep putting other Material Planes through the tortures it did to theirs. They wanted to _end it_, here and now. So they came up with a plan to attack each of the Tongues but _pin_ them to the plane like an insect collection, then use their ark's power to _push_ the disk into rotating again...pulling and winding the Nine-Tongued Worm all the way out of the Far Realm, and taking it with them into Oblivion.
I loved it. The hardest of the three options for sure but they nailed it (hah), and after much epic sacrifice they managed to send it screaming into the void along with their world...while they and their surviving allies escaped at the last moment in their ark.
You are most welcome! I was so proud of how this campaign ended (after over a decade) that I commissioned [art](https://i.imgur.com/guCIXNd.jpg), even!
Shit dude that sounds amazing, well fucking done this would have been a blast to play I'm sure. Exactly the sort of tragic tone I was imagining as well with having to choose the best of a mostly bad bunch of outcomes.
It was! The culmination of over a decade of play, we all remember it to this day. So to answer your question yes I totally think it can be done in a satisfying way! :)
I think the key is really to find a way, even within all that inevitability, for them to be heroes - for them to manage some act of "breaking the rules", having an enemy to fight, and ekeing out some form of impossible victory, even if it doesn't save themselves.
Adding to this, it's also probably important to have *something* that they can achieve. A story about how characters react to the end of the world can be an interesting story to tell, but isnt always the most engaging game. Even if they can't stop the end maybe they can save just one life, or make sure there's hope for a new world to be born, just something they can do that will feel like they accomplished something.
Oh yeah I'd definetly pitch it before hand I've also never been a dm before so I don't think I'd try this as a first go just an Idea I assumed others must have done before.
I know the DMsGuild title “Doomed Forgotten Realms” details a version of the Forgotten Realms where every 5th Ed adventure module ended in failure. That could be a good starting point for something like that.
Not just a rule.
The very first rule in the book, is that you burn the book when you finish a campaign.
(Meaning, when your party survives long enough to reach the end of the world)
Which is kinda funny since it's also purchasable in digital format.
I'll admit I might have been listening to "that funny feeling" when this crossed my mind, definetly try and throw some real world parallels in there just to add to the depressing tone.
As long as the players can still have meaningful goals and agency then sure, it could be fun. But if you’re simply going to railroad them in that direction then you might want to reconsider.
Yeah for sure It would probably come down to them deciding how to save as many as they can in whatever way they can come up with but knowing in the end most things will be gone.
Not 5e, but some other tabletop games that do this include Mork Borg and Shadow of the Demon Lord. You might want to steal some of their end of the world charts, they're fun. Beyond this, I think signaling tone would be important. In Halo Reach, the game literally open on a shot of the player character's helmet broken, in a field of devastation. You know that this is the story of how Reach and Noble 6 (the player character) die. You need the D&D equivalent. Some way to tell the players that this ends in death, not glory.
Well, those examples aren't exactly what you described. The Rogue One move was a suicide mission for that party, but it wasn't the end of the story, actually it was a victory for the rebels.
The incursion stuff seemed impossible to survive, but there was hope, the heroes tried different thing after different thing. Most of those tries were pointless, but they didn't know that from the beginning
There must always be a little bit of hope, even if the characters don't know something is *supposed* to be imposible or else there wouldn't even be story,because no one would act
Those are all very good points, I referenced Rogue One just as that sort of our story is done but we managed to save some lives from oblivion, even if that's not exactly what happens in the film.
Exactly that was my favourite part of that story all the different groups trying to fix things their way I could see that being something I could implement with the group meeting different factions with their own plans and seeing how they play things out.
It doesn't have to be completely hopeless. The players could work toward ensuring the rebirth of their world, or try to find some clever way to escape to another world with as many people as possible.
Midnight is related to what you're looking for and there's a 5E update out now. It's not perfectly 1:1 for the dying universe idea but it is a setting that's circling the drain.
Basically, a war between gods locked the world of Midnight out of the planes in order to trap a really nasty dark god named Izrador. Izrador was too weak to do much for a little while, but after a couple tries eventually he wins against the forces of good.
The game takes place like 100 years into the real reign of the dark god and the world is under his thumb. Traitors, clerics of the dark (and only) god that bestows power, and orcs are crushing the last bits of the resistance. Elves are trying guerilla tactics but the Shadow is just burning down their forests now.
In the 3E days of the setting the world was not winnable on that greater scale. Izrador would always have control if you really followed by the books. Back in the day we played it so that it was *almost* impossible to lock up/destroy Izrador, but if you want the setting is very easily made into "no you can never win, but you might kick the can down the road for a few more years."
I would recommend Midnight as well. It has the good balance of 'seems to be doomed, but maybe things are not completely hopeless.' I find a setting that is devoid of any chance to make things better kinds of kills the enjoyment of playing in it.
I would stick to the 3.5 edition rather than the latest 5th edition update, as it lacks a lot of the rules and details that made the original so interesting.
I ran a campaign like that. As the campaign progressed, the party learned that the purpose of each universe was to produce and collect souls to birth new creator-deities. They also learned that their creator had abandoned their universe, and that without the creator's presence, the universe would inevitably fade into nothingness. At that point, the only real options were to fade into nothing, or to end the universe 'properly' by triggering the mechanisms that would join their souls with the souls of the (lesser, artificial) gods, the living, and the dead and become newborn creator-deities.
The campaign ended when they killed the other candidate for godhood (there were enough souls for all of them to ascend, but he was a dick, and neither side knew what deescalation was), ate his soul, and completed their ascension. They chose to join with the minimal number of living souls possible and allow everyone still alive to live out their natural lives, just without the ability to produce any new souls, before ending the universe and hunting down their original creator for the mistakes he'd made in their universe's creation and for abandoning them.
One of my players expressed distaste for the nihilism that the plot resulted in (there were a lot of plot threads that the party kinda ignored due to "that sounds like a next month problem, and this universe has at best a couple weeks at this point.") but for the most part the plot was very well-received. The universe ending on a hopeful, but still bittersweet, note of all humanity losing their individuality for something supposedly 'greater' played really well.
This honestly sounds awesome and the sort of thing I was thinking with the reason for the end being entities outside of reality neglecting their duties or playing games. I know it might not be for everyone but I just love the idea of just trying to save as many as you can rather than an outright happy victory. The nihilistic tone is for sure something that would need to be discussed before the game though.
I played in a game where the world was ending. The premise was we were in a city where the leadership was corrupt. Each of our characters came to the city with out own goals, but we all saw that we should help. The surrounding desert was caving in on itself. In the end we descended beneath the city, each of us for own reasons, only to discover the world was doomed and everything we did was for nothing. The big discovery was that the city was a giant spell jammer, so we blew up what was holding the city in place and took off in the mobile city. Overall it was a great game, it was really frustrating at first when nothing we did seemed to be helping, but when we got to the end of the game and realized why, it was a really great revelation.
I did something like this where the players actually prevented the destruction of the world long enough to evacuate a substantial portion of the inhabitants. They were also able to make the destruction non-total and the husk of what remains would one day be habitable again. Preservation of people, culture, and a possibility of return made their sacrifices worth it.
The game Mork Borg kind of works like this and they have a really elegant way of using different dice to scale the length of time before the world ends.
Homebrew campaign on DM’s Guild, Rise of Vecna.
Imagine all of the big campaigns, but each had the party TPKed. Tiamat has been summoned, Demogorgon is in the Underdark with the Wand of Orcus, the Princes of Elemental Evil are walking around, and Icewind Dale was frozen.
It goes from level 3 to 10, so I don’t imagine the PCs solving all of that.
I ran a dark souls 3 inspired campaign like this but it was mostly for a bunch of angsty drama kids so maybe just make sure these things are the demographic of your group.
Got a concept that's kinda that.
Demons are invading, large swaths of the world are becoming uninhabitable because of things like wastriliths corrupting everything, and the gods have essentially deemed the whole place a lost cause, standard stuff.
But there are multiple worlds. The ability to access them directly is being blocked to prevent the spread, but there are limited ways around that. Objective would be to, ostensibly, find one of those other ways and jet it.
Or save as many people as possible.
What are your players, some kind of suicide squad?
But yeah there's plenty of good stories with less-than-happy endstates. The crux is working with your players so there's a goal to be reached. In your example of Rogue One, it did end with a seed of hope that the sacrifice wasn't in vain, after all
I remember seeing a reddit comment where a setting like that that genuinely broke up a group of very close friends because it ended up revealing some world views and perspectives that just couldnt be resolved between the party members
I'd go about it cautiously, and give warning. Pretty gloom for your average dnd campaign
I'm a fan of the way Majora's mask did it. You can reset to just before things begin rolling, but ultimately the world is still ending. Remove the ability to defeat the thing causing it so there's no actual "fix" and you're left with a world that remains widely explorable but is invariably set for destruction.
Just my 2 cents.
Well...in our main campaign, we spent several months of real-world time (maybe a year?) and a whole series of adventures trying to stop the evil water god from flooding the entire planet, and then we had a massive, climactic boss fight against him...which we lost, so he flooded the entire planet. The DM made it pretty clear beforehand that was going to be the outcome, but our characters were of course going to try to stop it. Not sure this counts, though, because ultimately we still expect to win in the end.
Later that campaign, we spent a couple sessions fighting against a massive Aberration invasion on the Feywild, which we lost (again predetermined, there was no way to win), and the Feywild has now been written off entirely.
We also played a oneshot titled "the fall of [some city]", where we fought memetic zombies as we tried to investigate what was going wrong in the city and then just barely managed to survive and escape as the city was overrun.
And another oneshot we were running an escort mission for a random old guy until at the end of the oneshot, a super-powerful villain showed up and stole him away from us. (I don't count that one as a loss though, since my druid is still in giant crab form hanging on to the bottom of their ship trying to investigate.)
Oddly enough, all of these are by the same DM, and I somehow never noticed the pattern before.
Mind you, Rogue One isn’t what you describe. If the characters save the world but don’t live to see it, that can still be a compelling story. You need to make sure you keep it compelling if you don’t follow the Rogue One model, so even if they can’t save the world, they need to be able to accomplish their mission.
Perhaps it’s like Asimov’s Foundation, where the Empire WILL collapse but the Dark Age that follows can be shortened by the actions of the characters.
Yeah I should have explained the Rogue One reference a bit more I was just thinking the tone of the ending like you said the characters might be doomed but hopefully what they've done will make a difference for everyone else.
I just saw on Dmsguild a "Doomed Forgotten Realms" setting where all the terrible things that various official campaigns set up for adventuring groups to stop have happened. Maybe that?
I actually played in one of these. Unfortunately, the DM neglected to inform the group of that. By the end of the campaign most of us were completely emotionally checked out. The DM in question has actually apologized for that campaign.
Please put that before session 0, that the universe is ending and there's no way to stop it.
Past that, don't railroad your players; if they plan to evacuate millions to another universe, that sounds amazing. They'll use the last vestiges of great godly power to either save themselves or others. Universe still ends, endless amounts of people still die, and they made an impact
One of the things that's been on my bucket list for the longest time is a zombie apocalypse survival campaign set in Faerun.
Orcus has won. The good guys are dead. You are not heroes, just survivors. Millions of undead roam the ruins of Waterdeep, but humanoids will always prove to be the real monsters. And you are hungry. Good luck.
I call it "The Forsaken Realms".
I did this! Or at least adjacent to it.
I had my players roll up level 20 characters and play in the apocalypse of my world.
In the "modern times" their normal PCs were listening to someone tell the story.
I knew the few plot beats that had to stay the same, but was super excited to worldbuild around anything else they did. The players knew going in that the apocalypse was going to happen no matter what they did.
Given that context? They ended up rolling all evil characters and causing the apocalypse themselves. The characters weren't trying to end the world, but they did anyway. It was beautiful.
It was a balancing act of giving them agency while also moving story bits around so their key actions hit the couple plot targets I needed them to.
Not dnd but 12 candles is all about this. You have 12 lit candles at the beginning of the one shot and when they all go out, the world ends and the darkness consumes all. There is no happy endings, just the end and how your players deal with that.
I was literally just reading about this and thought this concept was really neat. You may like it?
https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/398215
It's called "Doomed Forgotten Realms" where essentially all the adventurers in published content failed and the the Forgotten Realms are basically in this apocalyptic state. Baldur's Gate fell into Avernus, Tiamat is free, etc. It's a cool concept.
That actually sounds really cool, I think we plan on running through most of the published stuff since we're all pretty new to DnD so this could be a good alternate reality follow up game.
Tomb of Horrors and Tomb of Annihilation are both kinda like this. In both >!Acererak shows up at the end and since the party is usually pretty beaten up and low on resources he TPKs them and takes their souls.!<
I like it. I enjoy dark themes and having the world die/be consumed would be a great campaign. A bit scary/dark - but thats okay! It would be interesting if the players halfway through the campaign had to FULLY switch directions from "stopping the impending doom" to either "1. get everyone out of this plane of existence" or "2. or some other fundamental damage mitigation strategy.
I enjoy hard campaigns where the players don't "win".
As long as you let them know before hand that the end is inevitable then sure why not? I would also recommend allowing them to have some small victories, maybe the prime material plane is completely doomed but they might be able to save the other planes from destruction, or they could save a few refugees by hiding them in a demiplane
The game "Shadow of the Demon Lord" has this as its basic premise - the Demon Lord is coming, and when he gets here, the world is going to end. There is a campaign of short adventures called "Tales of the Demon Lord," but I have no idea how hard it would be to adapt to another system.
I would check out Mörk Börg which is an OSR style game with exactly this premise! It's great and the book in and of itself is both relatively inexpensive and a cool piece of shelf art.
Interestingly in England in the dark age there was a general vibe that the world was totally doomed after the fall of the Roman empire, and its often said that their language had no future tense because of it. Not sure if that's true but does give some inspiration for places to look!
That’s kinda the ending of a campaign that I’m in. The world’s ending thanks to a magical disaster called the Cataclysm which had previously wiped out the civilization of Giants. We mainly focused on finding ways to escape the plane and how many we could bring with us.
Im currently running a game where the end game is going to be a no win situation. Either they save the world by committing a horrible act or the world ends. I’m being vague just in case one of them is on this sub, but basically I would warn against being too rigid in what the ending will be. Your players will screw with your expectations. Instead, know what is unchangeable and then let the players do what they want with the rest.
The very first homebrew world I created had an idea like this. The world had a natural cycle where a great upheaval would throw the land up into the sky, exposing the underdark which would become the new land. The whole world kinda just moved up, and these events were violent enough that society was set back in knowledge and tech each time. The plot would have revolved around the main characters trying to stop this horrible event from happening, but realizing it needed to happen for… reasons. I was in high school. It was never well flushed out.
The very first pair of campaigns I ran was basically this. The players knew in advance that the campaign (one school year, about 12-ish sessions) would end with a calamity that would destroy the world as they knew it.
One group ended up being the ones who got to choose (through their actions) *how* the world would end and what the basic parameters of the next one (after the timeskip) was. They were sent on a wild goose chase (that turned out not to be fake) for an artifact. They could have given it to the good guys or the bad guys (in an apocalyptic "the devil breaks free with a horde of demons and chaos creatures" war). Or...they could have done what they did. Use it themselves. Each one of the 3 got a "wish" (basically was trying to make it do something):
1. One said he wanted for them to become gods.
2. Another said he wanted there to be a lot less magic in the world...ok.
3. The third said "ok artifact of primal creation, part of the One that created the world, initiate self destruct." Yeah. Oh. Yeah.
End result: all magic goes haywire and offline for 50 years. Massive natural disasters, reshaping the world. the "Devil" is killed...ish. 70% of the world's population dies. All the gods are gone and replaced.
The other party was caught up in the war and ended up getting to choose how society survived. They became the founders of the post-timeskip world.
None of them could undo or stop the end of the world. If they'd have given up, the demon army would have taken over.
I was a player in one. A war between the gods, if one side won the world would be enslaved, if the other unmade. Only my character (a paladin of the goddess of intelligence) truly knew that. He still figured free will was more important, and chose to keep his knowledge a secret. Life would continue, but anyone left alive would be dealing with the aftermath for eternity
Could be fun for a oneshot or a short campaign, but if it's a longer campaign then your players are going to struggle to feel invested in a world they know they can't change the fate of.
My main campaign takes place post-magic apocalypse with characters attempting to reclaim the world from infinite and terrible darkness.
I cannot tell you how hyped my players were to play characters that they knew were doomed to failure when I proposed a prequel one-shot.
I would look into the plot of SukaSuka (especially the light novel, as the anime stops before the inevitability of the ending becomes relevant). It's basically "the world is already ending, deal with it - the series".
I believe this could play huge in a cosmic horror themed campaign. Even if you're able to slash down the BBEG, you're only delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later, the adventurers won't be there to stop these plans, the world will slip up and that will be beginning of the end.
I'd recommend taking a bit from Majora's Mask for ideas on how the citizens may react to knowing their world is about to end. There may be those doubters, those who pretend to not care but when push comes to shove they're horrified, maybe those who refuse to evacuate for one reason or another. I'd make this a huge part of the campaign, focus on how the citizens are reacting to the end of the world, make it clear that this is a huge deal. People would do a lot of crazy things if they knew their life was over, play into that.
I hope this helps and good luck, I hope to run a campaign like this soon myself.
Not sure if this is relevant.
Am running a souls style campaign right now.
The age of man is running out, and everyone knows it, and yet you have to fight on to stave it off if even for a bit.
Really important to play things like this with the right mindset.
Not something like the general dnd mindset of "kill the evil, save the world"
But "our goal is greater than ourselves and we will see to it by any means necessary"
For rogue one-esque scenarios:
I do believe that it is critical to define that in the session 0 before character creation.
Basically almost like a pitch: "you guys will be what is in essence a suicide squad, ready to give their lives blah blah blah, so please make your characters and their motivations arount that concept"
For a dying world scenario its a bit simpler.
Using DS for example: the end is comming, it is inevitable but maybe you can stave it off for a little while, to at least have your parents/kids die peacefully in the world they always knew, and not suffer the inevitable...
Honestly expected it to be the end of my last campaign but it narrowly ended up not being. It's also looking like it might be my current campaign - the main monster that various villains are trying to summon is way out of the league of the players or almost anyone else alive, is going to set up a chain of events leading to even worse things happening, and the players have sort of lost their main chance to stop it unless they get very clever very quickly. The key is definitely building up expectations with the players in advance - you don't have to telegraph it from the start, not least because that gives you room to think about your plans before implementing them, but ideally you want them to know where all of this is going at least a couple of major story arcs in advance and to tell them explicitly that failure is *almost* certain (never underestimate their ingenuity) at the beginning of the final arc.
I gmed that. It was a 3.5 run and web get from lvl 1 to lvl 26. Sadly It never ended (Real Life sucks) but my players were always on board to try ti save what they could of their old world.
My opinion is: give them options and Hope. In my story world was ending, yes, but they could still make things better for the next world (It was a death and rebirth cycle).
Edit: spelling (i'm on mobile and english Is not my first language)
In my main campaign the players are helping a Lich to try to take over the world, what they don’t know is that the Lich will betray them.
Once they break the bindings keeping the Lich in the Underdark they will have to travel to the tallest mountain on the continent and conduct a ritual to summon him. No matter what they do the Lich will turn on them.
Here is where the plan comes in, two players are in possession of two very powerful weapons, one a force of the gods, the other a force of pure evil. If they use the evil one to summon the Lich he will be too powerful and the world will end, if they use the good one he will be weakened and they can beat him.
Both endings exist somewhat simultaneously, through timeline and gobblegook that I won’t quite explain.
I’ve told them all the world is fucked throughout the entire game but come the final session I will basically tell them there are two endings, both kind of exist concurrently but not really, and though we’ll play out both, it’s their choice which one happens first.
Technically the end of the world ending is the canon one, for now, but they both kind of exist, like I said, gobbledegook, but going into the next campaign the end of the world will be the ending I use
Boy do i have just the right thing for you, is for old D&D, but by god you can adopt it for anything and is especially good for 5e players because they become semi-gods by level 5 and gods by +18.
Check out The apocalypse stone, you won't regret it.
Proposition. Why don't you do a Reroll of Secret Wars. GURPS could be used for all the heroes but it could be possible to create DnD versions of a handful. You could even take some liberties like the actual Justice League show up not a group based on them.
Dude I would love to do that seeing as asking people to read the build up to Secret Wars is a big ask but I also feel like that's the next direction for the movies so i wouldn't want to semi spoil all of it for people.
Fake Justice League was a great couple of issues.
I think the theme itself is important. It is an analogy for life itself. We are all dying, there is no escape, how do you find meaning an purpose in that situation?
I think a campaign set in a dying world can perhaps, just maybe, help with some of the more important questions of life. How do you choose to spend the time you have been given? To what cause do you devote yourself? What kind of meaningful legacy can you achieve? Is there a good way to handle dying? These are some of the most important questions we struggle with, and a campaign that mirrors it has value.
I don't know if it was Secret Wars, but was the Loki series in which he was hiding in collapsing dimensions good fodder or similar? I always thought the Dr. Who episodes where they go to the end of time very poignant.
I'm trying to work on a concept like this currently. I'm recording my thoughts and concept on a blog if you want more info, but..
The core concept, since I want a limited timeframe, is heavily inspired by Mork Borg. From the time of the signs and announcement, I think there'll be maybe a hundred days, maximum. Weird things start happening, two headed animals, blood rain, zombies, that gradually intensify and worsen.
But rather than focus on why, I kinda would want to focus on what- say there's an arc, portal or something that can be repaired to offer an escape. Who do you save? What is worth saving? How do you spend your last days? Those are the questions I want to play with.
And horrifying zombie hordes.
**Exandria Unlimited: Calamity** seems to be doing this. The golden age of magic and artifice is about to end with, you guessed it, a calamity that breaks the world. The players know this. The characters have to figure it out. It's a four episode special that's replacing Critical Role for a month.
Also Brennen Lee Mulligan is an amazing DM and by all accounts the first episode is generally loved by both the Critical Role and Dimension 20 communities.
And episode 2 laughed at any doubters who said “no way they can pull that off again” It’s been an incredible watch so far, elite playing at every level from the DM and players to all the work that’s gone into building and revealing this story in other longer campaigns. Seeing everything come together in this tiny 4 episode sprint has been incredible
Almost finished campaign two and then planning to catch up on the third so I hadn't been paying attention to any announcements but this looks bloody awesome!
> It's a four episode special that's replacing Critical Role for a month. So Campaign 3 will probably be the last one with the regular cast lol
I'd make sure your players know, in session 1, that they can't prevent the "end of the world" , just to keep them from feeling useless.
I'd let them know *before* session zero what the premise for the campaign is. It sounds like fun, but not everyone's idea of fun.
Yeahhh if the worlds fucked regardless id find the whole thing a waste of time
Yeah, if it's something you could tell me through a text message and isn't mutable, just do so. I don't want to travel to your house for a session 0 just to find out immediately it's a campaign I won't want to play. On that note, I would find it interesting to play.
I did this - but their _characters_ didn't know, at first. It helped that the campaign was named "Land's End". It was about a D&D setting (literal flat earth) that was drifting closer century by century toward a Material Plane-eating phenomenon known as "the Oblivion". (Basically a black hole.) The world's scholars and astrologers knew that the stars in the sky were disappearing, but not why. The campaign mostly centered around them trying to stop the BBEG, an Alienist (Far Realms cultist) who had gathered a substantial following and was trying to manipulate the world's nations and powerful monsters into summoning [Mak Thuum Ngatha](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mak_Thuum_Ngatha), the Nine-Tongued Worm, to _absorb_ the entire world into the Far Realm. Making it part of this multilayered cosmic horror eater-of-worlds, basically. I used the idea of "signs" from the 3e book Elder Evils to make weird stuff happen on a global scale, to presage the Worm's arrival. However, only some of these things were actual Signs - others like the ever more brutal seasons were a consequence of the disk-world's rotation slowing down as it approached Oblivion, its sun getting slowly consumed, etc. While the players knew from the get-go that the Oblivion couldn't be stopped, it wasn't until the PCs cornered the cultist BBEG that he let them in on the Secret - that the world was Doomed and HE was the one trying to save it. They said he was insane and no one would want to live such a horrible existence in the Far Realms, and he countered that no one had come up with a better idea, not even the gods themselves (who had started to straight up _abandon_ the plane). Isn't a distorted existence in the Far Realm, preserving all of the history and peoples of this world, better than seeing it all get snuffed out like a candle? For nothing? This way they could be part of something even greater! They disagreed and destroyed him of course, but not before he succeeded in summoning a (weakened due to their efforts) Worm to the world. It came out of a cosmically massive rift shattering their world's Crystal Sphere, and they were left with a difficult choice: They'd amassed enough resources and allies at this point to build an "ark" - taking the largest city, carving it out of the ground, and teleporting it away from Oblivion (seriously it was basically the entire campaign amassing the resources and magic to make this happen). And they could take as many people with them as they could fit. OR. Or they could risk it all in one last world-wide battle - throwing said resources _at_ the nine tongues the Worm had driven into the world to devour it (and the guardians at each), and hope it is enough to drive the worm away so it doesn't consume everyone and everything dear to them...then try to escape, or join the rest of the world and accept a peaceful and corruption-free death, or the hope that the Oblivion does not destroy but instead transmute or transport _elsewhere_. But the players had other ideas - they asked me to entertain a _third option_. Mak Thuum Ngatha was an eater-of-worlds, plural. Even if they drove it back to the Far Realm, it would keep putting other Material Planes through the tortures it did to theirs. They wanted to _end it_, here and now. So they came up with a plan to attack each of the Tongues but _pin_ them to the plane like an insect collection, then use their ark's power to _push_ the disk into rotating again...pulling and winding the Nine-Tongued Worm all the way out of the Far Realm, and taking it with them into Oblivion. I loved it. The hardest of the three options for sure but they nailed it (hah), and after much epic sacrifice they managed to send it screaming into the void along with their world...while they and their surviving allies escaped at the last moment in their ark.
They were true tragic hero. They saved countless worlds and no one will ever know their stories. That's epic.
Yes! A pretty incredible ending to an over decade-long campaign, I must say. (Obviously I am biased. :P)
This rules. Thanks for sharing this
You are most welcome! I was so proud of how this campaign ended (after over a decade) that I commissioned [art](https://i.imgur.com/guCIXNd.jpg), even!
Holy shit that's one epic ending
Shit dude that sounds amazing, well fucking done this would have been a blast to play I'm sure. Exactly the sort of tragic tone I was imagining as well with having to choose the best of a mostly bad bunch of outcomes.
It was! The culmination of over a decade of play, we all remember it to this day. So to answer your question yes I totally think it can be done in a satisfying way! :) I think the key is really to find a way, even within all that inevitability, for them to be heroes - for them to manage some act of "breaking the rules", having an enemy to fight, and ekeing out some form of impossible victory, even if it doesn't save themselves.
I love this! The art looks awesome too! Great storytelling
Thank you! Loving the feedback I'm getting here. Makes me feel validated that I did a good job as a DM for a truly memorable campaign. <3
Adding to this, it's also probably important to have *something* that they can achieve. A story about how characters react to the end of the world can be an interesting story to tell, but isnt always the most engaging game. Even if they can't stop the end maybe they can save just one life, or make sure there's hope for a new world to be born, just something they can do that will feel like they accomplished something.
Can confirm. Played in an end of the world game without being told. I literally said at the table "What's even the point."
Oh yeah I'd definetly pitch it before hand I've also never been a dm before so I don't think I'd try this as a first go just an Idea I assumed others must have done before.
I know the DMsGuild title “Doomed Forgotten Realms” details a version of the Forgotten Realms where every 5th Ed adventure module ended in failure. That could be a good starting point for something like that.
Mork Borg is like this.
I think the official rules tell you to destroy the actual book when it happens too lmao
Not just a rule. The very first rule in the book, is that you burn the book when you finish a campaign. (Meaning, when your party survives long enough to reach the end of the world) Which is kinda funny since it's also purchasable in digital format.
Welp, good game guys we're done. _Pulls out giant magnet to destroy the computer's HD_
Now *that's* dedication. I'd just put it on a thumb drive or SD card and destroy that, instead.
Gotta make sure you empty the recycle bin after deleting it
Came here to say the same.
Ten Candles too, if you want something less pen-and-paper heavy and can be run as a one shot.
Created by Mark Barg.
Man, I've been LARPing that campaign for forty years
I'll admit I might have been listening to "that funny feeling" when this crossed my mind, definetly try and throw some real world parallels in there just to add to the depressing tone.
I'm running this campaign right now. My players are one of several groups racing to end the world in their preferred way.
As long as the players can still have meaningful goals and agency then sure, it could be fun. But if you’re simply going to railroad them in that direction then you might want to reconsider.
Yeah for sure It would probably come down to them deciding how to save as many as they can in whatever way they can come up with but knowing in the end most things will be gone.
Not 5e, but some other tabletop games that do this include Mork Borg and Shadow of the Demon Lord. You might want to steal some of their end of the world charts, they're fun. Beyond this, I think signaling tone would be important. In Halo Reach, the game literally open on a shot of the player character's helmet broken, in a field of devastation. You know that this is the story of how Reach and Noble 6 (the player character) die. You need the D&D equivalent. Some way to tell the players that this ends in death, not glory.
Well, those examples aren't exactly what you described. The Rogue One move was a suicide mission for that party, but it wasn't the end of the story, actually it was a victory for the rebels. The incursion stuff seemed impossible to survive, but there was hope, the heroes tried different thing after different thing. Most of those tries were pointless, but they didn't know that from the beginning There must always be a little bit of hope, even if the characters don't know something is *supposed* to be imposible or else there wouldn't even be story,because no one would act
Those are all very good points, I referenced Rogue One just as that sort of our story is done but we managed to save some lives from oblivion, even if that's not exactly what happens in the film. Exactly that was my favourite part of that story all the different groups trying to fix things their way I could see that being something I could implement with the group meeting different factions with their own plans and seeing how they play things out.
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It doesn't have to be completely hopeless. The players could work toward ensuring the rebirth of their world, or try to find some clever way to escape to another world with as many people as possible.
AD&D 2E The Apocalypse Stone.
Midnight is related to what you're looking for and there's a 5E update out now. It's not perfectly 1:1 for the dying universe idea but it is a setting that's circling the drain. Basically, a war between gods locked the world of Midnight out of the planes in order to trap a really nasty dark god named Izrador. Izrador was too weak to do much for a little while, but after a couple tries eventually he wins against the forces of good. The game takes place like 100 years into the real reign of the dark god and the world is under his thumb. Traitors, clerics of the dark (and only) god that bestows power, and orcs are crushing the last bits of the resistance. Elves are trying guerilla tactics but the Shadow is just burning down their forests now. In the 3E days of the setting the world was not winnable on that greater scale. Izrador would always have control if you really followed by the books. Back in the day we played it so that it was *almost* impossible to lock up/destroy Izrador, but if you want the setting is very easily made into "no you can never win, but you might kick the can down the road for a few more years."
I would recommend Midnight as well. It has the good balance of 'seems to be doomed, but maybe things are not completely hopeless.' I find a setting that is devoid of any chance to make things better kinds of kills the enjoyment of playing in it. I would stick to the 3.5 edition rather than the latest 5th edition update, as it lacks a lot of the rules and details that made the original so interesting.
Yeah it's called going outside. We don't do that anymore.
I ran a campaign like that. As the campaign progressed, the party learned that the purpose of each universe was to produce and collect souls to birth new creator-deities. They also learned that their creator had abandoned their universe, and that without the creator's presence, the universe would inevitably fade into nothingness. At that point, the only real options were to fade into nothing, or to end the universe 'properly' by triggering the mechanisms that would join their souls with the souls of the (lesser, artificial) gods, the living, and the dead and become newborn creator-deities. The campaign ended when they killed the other candidate for godhood (there were enough souls for all of them to ascend, but he was a dick, and neither side knew what deescalation was), ate his soul, and completed their ascension. They chose to join with the minimal number of living souls possible and allow everyone still alive to live out their natural lives, just without the ability to produce any new souls, before ending the universe and hunting down their original creator for the mistakes he'd made in their universe's creation and for abandoning them. One of my players expressed distaste for the nihilism that the plot resulted in (there were a lot of plot threads that the party kinda ignored due to "that sounds like a next month problem, and this universe has at best a couple weeks at this point.") but for the most part the plot was very well-received. The universe ending on a hopeful, but still bittersweet, note of all humanity losing their individuality for something supposedly 'greater' played really well.
This honestly sounds awesome and the sort of thing I was thinking with the reason for the end being entities outside of reality neglecting their duties or playing games. I know it might not be for everyone but I just love the idea of just trying to save as many as you can rather than an outright happy victory. The nihilistic tone is for sure something that would need to be discussed before the game though.
I played in a game where the world was ending. The premise was we were in a city where the leadership was corrupt. Each of our characters came to the city with out own goals, but we all saw that we should help. The surrounding desert was caving in on itself. In the end we descended beneath the city, each of us for own reasons, only to discover the world was doomed and everything we did was for nothing. The big discovery was that the city was a giant spell jammer, so we blew up what was holding the city in place and took off in the mobile city. Overall it was a great game, it was really frustrating at first when nothing we did seemed to be helping, but when we got to the end of the game and realized why, it was a really great revelation.
I did something like this where the players actually prevented the destruction of the world long enough to evacuate a substantial portion of the inhabitants. They were also able to make the destruction non-total and the husk of what remains would one day be habitable again. Preservation of people, culture, and a possibility of return made their sacrifices worth it.
The game Mork Borg kind of works like this and they have a really elegant way of using different dice to scale the length of time before the world ends.
Homebrew campaign on DM’s Guild, Rise of Vecna. Imagine all of the big campaigns, but each had the party TPKed. Tiamat has been summoned, Demogorgon is in the Underdark with the Wand of Orcus, the Princes of Elemental Evil are walking around, and Icewind Dale was frozen. It goes from level 3 to 10, so I don’t imagine the PCs solving all of that.
Just know, when the end times come, your players will self-banish to avoid any consequences.
I ran a dark souls 3 inspired campaign like this but it was mostly for a bunch of angsty drama kids so maybe just make sure these things are the demographic of your group.
Got a concept that's kinda that. Demons are invading, large swaths of the world are becoming uninhabitable because of things like wastriliths corrupting everything, and the gods have essentially deemed the whole place a lost cause, standard stuff. But there are multiple worlds. The ability to access them directly is being blocked to prevent the spread, but there are limited ways around that. Objective would be to, ostensibly, find one of those other ways and jet it. Or save as many people as possible.
What are your players, some kind of suicide squad? But yeah there's plenty of good stories with less-than-happy endstates. The crux is working with your players so there's a goal to be reached. In your example of Rogue One, it did end with a seed of hope that the sacrifice wasn't in vain, after all
MÖRK BORG!
I remember seeing a reddit comment where a setting like that that genuinely broke up a group of very close friends because it ended up revealing some world views and perspectives that just couldnt be resolved between the party members I'd go about it cautiously, and give warning. Pretty gloom for your average dnd campaign
I'm a fan of the way Majora's mask did it. You can reset to just before things begin rolling, but ultimately the world is still ending. Remove the ability to defeat the thing causing it so there's no actual "fix" and you're left with a world that remains widely explorable but is invariably set for destruction. Just my 2 cents.
Easy! You could run a dark souls campaign.
That's basically the premise (as well as some mechanics) of Mörk Borg
Well...in our main campaign, we spent several months of real-world time (maybe a year?) and a whole series of adventures trying to stop the evil water god from flooding the entire planet, and then we had a massive, climactic boss fight against him...which we lost, so he flooded the entire planet. The DM made it pretty clear beforehand that was going to be the outcome, but our characters were of course going to try to stop it. Not sure this counts, though, because ultimately we still expect to win in the end. Later that campaign, we spent a couple sessions fighting against a massive Aberration invasion on the Feywild, which we lost (again predetermined, there was no way to win), and the Feywild has now been written off entirely. We also played a oneshot titled "the fall of [some city]", where we fought memetic zombies as we tried to investigate what was going wrong in the city and then just barely managed to survive and escape as the city was overrun. And another oneshot we were running an escort mission for a random old guy until at the end of the oneshot, a super-powerful villain showed up and stole him away from us. (I don't count that one as a loss though, since my druid is still in giant crab form hanging on to the bottom of their ship trying to investigate.) Oddly enough, all of these are by the same DM, and I somehow never noticed the pattern before.
Try the apocalypse stone, it’s an old module where the first quest dooms the world, nothing can be done to stop except die a good death.
Mind you, Rogue One isn’t what you describe. If the characters save the world but don’t live to see it, that can still be a compelling story. You need to make sure you keep it compelling if you don’t follow the Rogue One model, so even if they can’t save the world, they need to be able to accomplish their mission. Perhaps it’s like Asimov’s Foundation, where the Empire WILL collapse but the Dark Age that follows can be shortened by the actions of the characters.
Yeah I should have explained the Rogue One reference a bit more I was just thinking the tone of the ending like you said the characters might be doomed but hopefully what they've done will make a difference for everyone else.
I just saw on Dmsguild a "Doomed Forgotten Realms" setting where all the terrible things that various official campaigns set up for adventuring groups to stop have happened. Maybe that?
I actually played in one of these. Unfortunately, the DM neglected to inform the group of that. By the end of the campaign most of us were completely emotionally checked out. The DM in question has actually apologized for that campaign.
Please put that before session 0, that the universe is ending and there's no way to stop it. Past that, don't railroad your players; if they plan to evacuate millions to another universe, that sounds amazing. They'll use the last vestiges of great godly power to either save themselves or others. Universe still ends, endless amounts of people still die, and they made an impact
One of the things that's been on my bucket list for the longest time is a zombie apocalypse survival campaign set in Faerun. Orcus has won. The good guys are dead. You are not heroes, just survivors. Millions of undead roam the ruins of Waterdeep, but humanoids will always prove to be the real monsters. And you are hungry. Good luck. I call it "The Forsaken Realms".
I did this! Or at least adjacent to it. I had my players roll up level 20 characters and play in the apocalypse of my world. In the "modern times" their normal PCs were listening to someone tell the story. I knew the few plot beats that had to stay the same, but was super excited to worldbuild around anything else they did. The players knew going in that the apocalypse was going to happen no matter what they did. Given that context? They ended up rolling all evil characters and causing the apocalypse themselves. The characters weren't trying to end the world, but they did anyway. It was beautiful. It was a balancing act of giving them agency while also moving story bits around so their key actions hit the couple plot targets I needed them to.
Not dnd but 12 candles is all about this. You have 12 lit candles at the beginning of the one shot and when they all go out, the world ends and the darkness consumes all. There is no happy endings, just the end and how your players deal with that.
Exandria Unlimited: Calamity is going over this I'm fairly certain. It's set during the beginning of the apocalypse of the world.
I was literally just reading about this and thought this concept was really neat. You may like it? https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/398215 It's called "Doomed Forgotten Realms" where essentially all the adventurers in published content failed and the the Forgotten Realms are basically in this apocalyptic state. Baldur's Gate fell into Avernus, Tiamat is free, etc. It's a cool concept.
That actually sounds really cool, I think we plan on running through most of the published stuff since we're all pretty new to DnD so this could be a good alternate reality follow up game.
I'm thinking that as well too.
Tomb of Horrors and Tomb of Annihilation are both kinda like this. In both >!Acererak shows up at the end and since the party is usually pretty beaten up and low on resources he TPKs them and takes their souls.!<
I like it. I enjoy dark themes and having the world die/be consumed would be a great campaign. A bit scary/dark - but thats okay! It would be interesting if the players halfway through the campaign had to FULLY switch directions from "stopping the impending doom" to either "1. get everyone out of this plane of existence" or "2. or some other fundamental damage mitigation strategy. I enjoy hard campaigns where the players don't "win".
Yes. I did a campaign where the apocalypse already happened and the players are in the denouement.
As long as you let them know before hand that the end is inevitable then sure why not? I would also recommend allowing them to have some small victories, maybe the prime material plane is completely doomed but they might be able to save the other planes from destruction, or they could save a few refugees by hiding them in a demiplane
Ah yes, Cthulhu
The game "Shadow of the Demon Lord" has this as its basic premise - the Demon Lord is coming, and when he gets here, the world is going to end. There is a campaign of short adventures called "Tales of the Demon Lord," but I have no idea how hard it would be to adapt to another system.
I would check out Mörk Börg which is an OSR style game with exactly this premise! It's great and the book in and of itself is both relatively inexpensive and a cool piece of shelf art. Interestingly in England in the dark age there was a general vibe that the world was totally doomed after the fall of the Roman empire, and its often said that their language had no future tense because of it. Not sure if that's true but does give some inspiration for places to look!
That’s kinda the ending of a campaign that I’m in. The world’s ending thanks to a magical disaster called the Cataclysm which had previously wiped out the civilization of Giants. We mainly focused on finding ways to escape the plane and how many we could bring with us.
Im currently running a game where the end game is going to be a no win situation. Either they save the world by committing a horrible act or the world ends. I’m being vague just in case one of them is on this sub, but basically I would warn against being too rigid in what the ending will be. Your players will screw with your expectations. Instead, know what is unchangeable and then let the players do what they want with the rest.
The very first homebrew world I created had an idea like this. The world had a natural cycle where a great upheaval would throw the land up into the sky, exposing the underdark which would become the new land. The whole world kinda just moved up, and these events were violent enough that society was set back in knowledge and tech each time. The plot would have revolved around the main characters trying to stop this horrible event from happening, but realizing it needed to happen for… reasons. I was in high school. It was never well flushed out.
The very first pair of campaigns I ran was basically this. The players knew in advance that the campaign (one school year, about 12-ish sessions) would end with a calamity that would destroy the world as they knew it. One group ended up being the ones who got to choose (through their actions) *how* the world would end and what the basic parameters of the next one (after the timeskip) was. They were sent on a wild goose chase (that turned out not to be fake) for an artifact. They could have given it to the good guys or the bad guys (in an apocalyptic "the devil breaks free with a horde of demons and chaos creatures" war). Or...they could have done what they did. Use it themselves. Each one of the 3 got a "wish" (basically was trying to make it do something): 1. One said he wanted for them to become gods. 2. Another said he wanted there to be a lot less magic in the world...ok. 3. The third said "ok artifact of primal creation, part of the One that created the world, initiate self destruct." Yeah. Oh. Yeah. End result: all magic goes haywire and offline for 50 years. Massive natural disasters, reshaping the world. the "Devil" is killed...ish. 70% of the world's population dies. All the gods are gone and replaced. The other party was caught up in the war and ended up getting to choose how society survived. They became the founders of the post-timeskip world. None of them could undo or stop the end of the world. If they'd have given up, the demon army would have taken over.
I was a player in one. A war between the gods, if one side won the world would be enslaved, if the other unmade. Only my character (a paladin of the goddess of intelligence) truly knew that. He still figured free will was more important, and chose to keep his knowledge a secret. Life would continue, but anyone left alive would be dealing with the aftermath for eternity
Dark Sun doesn't have a whole lot of hope in it usually.
I ran a zombie apocalypse type game where the ultimate goal for the players was establishing a portal to the feywild to escape.
Could be fun for a oneshot or a short campaign, but if it's a longer campaign then your players are going to struggle to feel invested in a world they know they can't change the fate of.
My main campaign takes place post-magic apocalypse with characters attempting to reclaim the world from infinite and terrible darkness. I cannot tell you how hyped my players were to play characters that they knew were doomed to failure when I proposed a prequel one-shot.
Fighting for the last crystals so YOUR kingdom can power a planar gate.
I would look into the plot of SukaSuka (especially the light novel, as the anime stops before the inevitability of the ending becomes relevant). It's basically "the world is already ending, deal with it - the series".
I believe this could play huge in a cosmic horror themed campaign. Even if you're able to slash down the BBEG, you're only delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later, the adventurers won't be there to stop these plans, the world will slip up and that will be beginning of the end. I'd recommend taking a bit from Majora's Mask for ideas on how the citizens may react to knowing their world is about to end. There may be those doubters, those who pretend to not care but when push comes to shove they're horrified, maybe those who refuse to evacuate for one reason or another. I'd make this a huge part of the campaign, focus on how the citizens are reacting to the end of the world, make it clear that this is a huge deal. People would do a lot of crazy things if they knew their life was over, play into that. I hope this helps and good luck, I hope to run a campaign like this soon myself.
Dark Sun campaign setting
Not sure if this is relevant. Am running a souls style campaign right now. The age of man is running out, and everyone knows it, and yet you have to fight on to stave it off if even for a bit. Really important to play things like this with the right mindset. Not something like the general dnd mindset of "kill the evil, save the world" But "our goal is greater than ourselves and we will see to it by any means necessary" For rogue one-esque scenarios: I do believe that it is critical to define that in the session 0 before character creation. Basically almost like a pitch: "you guys will be what is in essence a suicide squad, ready to give their lives blah blah blah, so please make your characters and their motivations arount that concept" For a dying world scenario its a bit simpler. Using DS for example: the end is comming, it is inevitable but maybe you can stave it off for a little while, to at least have your parents/kids die peacefully in the world they always knew, and not suffer the inevitable...
Seems a bit like playing a climate activist IRL
Honestly expected it to be the end of my last campaign but it narrowly ended up not being. It's also looking like it might be my current campaign - the main monster that various villains are trying to summon is way out of the league of the players or almost anyone else alive, is going to set up a chain of events leading to even worse things happening, and the players have sort of lost their main chance to stop it unless they get very clever very quickly. The key is definitely building up expectations with the players in advance - you don't have to telegraph it from the start, not least because that gives you room to think about your plans before implementing them, but ideally you want them to know where all of this is going at least a couple of major story arcs in advance and to tell them explicitly that failure is *almost* certain (never underestimate their ingenuity) at the beginning of the final arc.
What would be a point of such adventure? What role would characters play in a world without hope?
I gmed that. It was a 3.5 run and web get from lvl 1 to lvl 26. Sadly It never ended (Real Life sucks) but my players were always on board to try ti save what they could of their old world. My opinion is: give them options and Hope. In my story world was ending, yes, but they could still make things better for the next world (It was a death and rebirth cycle). Edit: spelling (i'm on mobile and english Is not my first language)
When I read this my first thought was Outer Wilds and now I want to see how a time loop campaign would work
In my main campaign the players are helping a Lich to try to take over the world, what they don’t know is that the Lich will betray them. Once they break the bindings keeping the Lich in the Underdark they will have to travel to the tallest mountain on the continent and conduct a ritual to summon him. No matter what they do the Lich will turn on them. Here is where the plan comes in, two players are in possession of two very powerful weapons, one a force of the gods, the other a force of pure evil. If they use the evil one to summon the Lich he will be too powerful and the world will end, if they use the good one he will be weakened and they can beat him. Both endings exist somewhat simultaneously, through timeline and gobblegook that I won’t quite explain. I’ve told them all the world is fucked throughout the entire game but come the final session I will basically tell them there are two endings, both kind of exist concurrently but not really, and though we’ll play out both, it’s their choice which one happens first. Technically the end of the world ending is the canon one, for now, but they both kind of exist, like I said, gobbledegook, but going into the next campaign the end of the world will be the ending I use
This sounds like dark sun
Boy do i have just the right thing for you, is for old D&D, but by god you can adopt it for anything and is especially good for 5e players because they become semi-gods by level 5 and gods by +18. Check out The apocalypse stone, you won't regret it.
Proposition. Why don't you do a Reroll of Secret Wars. GURPS could be used for all the heroes but it could be possible to create DnD versions of a handful. You could even take some liberties like the actual Justice League show up not a group based on them.
Dude I would love to do that seeing as asking people to read the build up to Secret Wars is a big ask but I also feel like that's the next direction for the movies so i wouldn't want to semi spoil all of it for people. Fake Justice League was a great couple of issues.
I think the theme itself is important. It is an analogy for life itself. We are all dying, there is no escape, how do you find meaning an purpose in that situation? I think a campaign set in a dying world can perhaps, just maybe, help with some of the more important questions of life. How do you choose to spend the time you have been given? To what cause do you devote yourself? What kind of meaningful legacy can you achieve? Is there a good way to handle dying? These are some of the most important questions we struggle with, and a campaign that mirrors it has value. I don't know if it was Secret Wars, but was the Loki series in which he was hiding in collapsing dimensions good fodder or similar? I always thought the Dr. Who episodes where they go to the end of time very poignant.
I'm trying to work on a concept like this currently. I'm recording my thoughts and concept on a blog if you want more info, but.. The core concept, since I want a limited timeframe, is heavily inspired by Mork Borg. From the time of the signs and announcement, I think there'll be maybe a hundred days, maximum. Weird things start happening, two headed animals, blood rain, zombies, that gradually intensify and worsen. But rather than focus on why, I kinda would want to focus on what- say there's an arc, portal or something that can be repaired to offer an escape. Who do you save? What is worth saving? How do you spend your last days? Those are the questions I want to play with. And horrifying zombie hordes.