I think I'm in the midst of a severe bout of quarantine-induced cabin fever. While I'm currently involved in four D&D campaigns (player in 3, DMing the other) I've been feeling a strong urge these past weeks to plan out another campaign.
It's tricky, though, as my original campaign sort of trailed off due to a bit of social drama, and while I get that these things happen, I'm also sad that some of my players (with whom I play other campaigns) haven't been able to play their old characters for so long.
So, on one hand, I feel a certain urge/obligation to continue that campaign, but I've also met so many new, fun players (many of whom are currently playing in my Ravnica campaign) that I'd love to bring them into my homebrew world at a fresh level, rather than jumping in at level 8 or 9, which is where things left off with the old campaign.
While I wrestle with the complexity of that issue, however, I've been getting home-brewy.
My setting is called Sarkon, and it's a world that is undergoing a rapid technological revolution, with social changes coming at the same time. While in the original campaign the world is still largely medieval in feel, but with trains and airships (not to mention super-futuristic technology from the long-dead civilization whose relics are spurring this industrial revolution) starting to shake things up.
Having never owned a PS1 (I seem to only own even-numbered Playstations) I did not previously have a great pop-culture reference for the kind of setting I want, but then, this year, we got Final Fantasy VII Remake, and I have glimpsed the encapsulation of my aesthetic - a magic knight riding down a freeway on an armored motorcycle. FFVII's thoroughly modern (or at least some weird blend of 20th-century and near-future technology) feel seems really close to where I want my adventures to be set.
To be fair, I've already hit that somewhat - for about a year in my original campaign, the players were in a region in the Shadowlands called Red Scar Plains, that, among other things, included the Taheen. Stolen from Stephen King's Dark Tower series (one of my biggest fantasy influences,) the Taheen are animal-headed people (think like an Egyptian god but in khakis and a cheap white button-up) who, in my setting, are native inhabitants to the Shadowlands. The Taheen in particular use a lot of modern technology, and so in that Red Scar Plains adventure, the party had a truck that served as their primary transportation, and also carried around a couple assault rifles (the rogue, who was the only party member who tended toward ranged weapons, already had an ancient laser pistol as his main weapon, so the rifles mostly fell to the strength-based fighter and paladin).
I love the idea of mixing magic with a bit of that open-highway, secret government facility out in the desert aesthetic, and so the Taheen in my world fill an archetype role of the working stiffs who guard Area 51.
Tying them in to existing D&D lore, I've determined that the Taheen are basically a people ruled by the Nagpa - perhaps the Nagpa are their creators or original ancestors of the Taheen (the Nagpa, which to be fair are kind of obscure, are these creepy vulture-people from the Shadowfell who are likely based on the Skesis from the Dark Crystal.)
Anyway, I came up with a set of resistances and immunities that define the Taheen (resistant to poison and necrotic damage, and immune to being frightened) and built a few stat blocks that emphasize their use of modern weaponry - all but the warlock-like spellcasters use modern firearms and sometimes fragmentation grenades.
All of this stuff is in the DMG, so I don't feel like I'm breaking too many rules.
I can envision an early adventure - maybe even a session 1 - that has the party chase after a group of Taheen who have attacked some secure location to steal a powerful artifact, and are now trying to get away with said artifact while the party chases after them. The inherent power of firearms (a modern pistol does the equivalent damage of a greatsword, while being a one-handed, ranged weapon) means that there could be some heightened threat from these creatures to raise the stakes early on.
Now, in order to have such a chase scene, I came up with some car-combat rules.
Essentially, the way I treat it, is that there are three speed categories - 1 is 30 mph - still fast enough to make crashes or falling out of a car pretty dangerous. 2 is 60 mph, and requires a more open road, and 3 is 90 mph, which is a crazy, desperate chase on an open freeway. (Damage for crashes or getting thrown from a vehicle is multiplied by the speed category.)
We then treat the vehicles like they're all going at about the rate of the speed category, but a vehicle has a maneuvering speed rather than a movement speed - though in practice this looks pretty much the same on a battle grid. Essentially, maneuvering speed measures not a vehicle's raw power but its ability to zip around on the road. A zippy motorcycle can blast ahead or skid to the side pretty easily while a massive truck is going to be slower to move into a desired position.
Because land vehicle proficiency in the PHB is, I believe, only granted by the soldier background, the way we handle the ability to use vehicles is that most people in this modern-ish world know the basics of driving, but those with proficiency in it have been specially trained in things like pit maneuvers and the like.
In addition to the Taheen, I made a couple stat blocks for the Reapers. The Reapers in my setting are an elite corps that answers directly to the Emperor (this all makes them sound like bad guys, but my setting's big empire is highly open to interpretation - you might balk at its imperialist, colonialist way of conducting itself, but also like its emphasis on civil liberties and personal freedom - and the Reapers, likewise, explicitly draw members of any alignment.)
The Reaper Knight stat block is something of a Cloud Strife impression - they fight with greatswords, wear plate armor, and have a number of paladin spells (also, they do a little extra force damage with their weapons) as well as having a generalized trait I've created for creatures that can easily fight while driving.
This trait, combat driver, lets them maneuver their vehicle as a bonus action and then also allows them to use two-handed melee weapons and firearms one-handed as long as their other hand is steering the vehicle. (The vehicle has to be Large or smaller, which I think would emphasize this as a trait to use while on a motorcycle and not while driving some massive truck or a tank.
Then, I took that trait and turned it into a feat for players to pick up, which includes land vehicle proficiency.
All of this meaning that I hope that I can some day, not too long from now, run a crazy freeway shootout combat encounter between players and a group of Taheen.
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