On creating a Doom system
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I’ve been toying with the idea of running a campaign that has a kind of doom system. And when I say that, it is in reference to World of Horror’s doom system.
For those unfamiliar, you are given 5 mysteries, and a final boss dungeon to complete. Every time you investigate a mystery, your doom percentage rises by 1-5%, with the occasional event that decreases it. Resting increases doom, as well as shopping, and other sorts of time taking upgrades. Finishing a mystery grants a small reduction in doom.
And there is a cult trying to bring an eldritch god to Earth, which will destroy and alter everything in lovecraftian ways.
Once the doom meter reaches 100%, the player loses the game. And I’m trying to think of ways to do something similar with a campaign.
The 5 mysteries and boss dungeon are easy enough to do. But tracking doom could be something which is dangerous to penalize players with. It would absolutely suck to spend several months on a campaign just to lose it because they took one too many long rests. But it’s also something that can be an empty threat of reaching.
So my current thoughts:
- Every session, doom rises by 10%
- Once doom reaches 100% it resets to zero, and an entire location gets wiped off the map.
- Completing a mystery reduces doom by 50%, min 0%.
In effect, it could severely hurt them, but not immediately kill the campaign. If the party was planning on going to candlekeep but it suddenly got sucked up by a demon portal, then they must change their plans. Alternatively, if a location they didn’t depend on gets destroyed, then it would at the very least still be a threat in terms of guilt tripping them to some degree.
Another difficulty with a system like this is keeping it balanced to the speed of play. Maybe 10% per session is too much, or maybe too little. And changing that rate mid game would feel a little cheap. Another option would be to go based on vibes from the get go. So any rate changes could be gradual. This would still feel cheap, but it would at least be more subtle.
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I’ve been toying with the idea of running a campaign that has a kind of doom system. And when I say that, it is in reference to World of Horror’s doom system.
For those unfamiliar, you are given 5 mysteries, and a final boss dungeon to complete. Every time you investigate a mystery, your doom percentage rises by 1-5%, with the occasional event that decreases it. Resting increases doom, as well as shopping, and other sorts of time taking upgrades. Finishing a mystery grants a small reduction in doom.
And there is a cult trying to bring an eldritch god to Earth, which will destroy and alter everything in lovecraftian ways.
Once the doom meter reaches 100%, the player loses the game. And I’m trying to think of ways to do something similar with a campaign.
The 5 mysteries and boss dungeon are easy enough to do. But tracking doom could be something which is dangerous to penalize players with. It would absolutely suck to spend several months on a campaign just to lose it because they took one too many long rests. But it’s also something that can be an empty threat of reaching.
So my current thoughts:
- Every session, doom rises by 10%
- Once doom reaches 100% it resets to zero, and an entire location gets wiped off the map.
- Completing a mystery reduces doom by 50%, min 0%.
In effect, it could severely hurt them, but not immediately kill the campaign. If the party was planning on going to candlekeep but it suddenly got sucked up by a demon portal, then they must change their plans. Alternatively, if a location they didn’t depend on gets destroyed, then it would at the very least still be a threat in terms of guilt tripping them to some degree.
Another difficulty with a system like this is keeping it balanced to the speed of play. Maybe 10% per session is too much, or maybe too little. And changing that rate mid game would feel a little cheap. Another option would be to go based on vibes from the get go. So any rate changes could be gradual. This would still feel cheap, but it would at least be more subtle.
You could also have each 100% doom involve the breaking of the god’s seal, leading to progressively worse global effects. Something like
- Bad harvests leading to food shortages and increased crime
- Waves of madness in the wilderness leading to frequent attacks by creatures of nature
- Other cults forming in response to the disasters that will try to target the players
- Each city has a 60% chance of being abandoned to cultists because of all the negative effects
- The god’s herald (some high level creature serving the god) is released to hunt down the party
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You could also have each 100% doom involve the breaking of the god’s seal, leading to progressively worse global effects. Something like
- Bad harvests leading to food shortages and increased crime
- Waves of madness in the wilderness leading to frequent attacks by creatures of nature
- Other cults forming in response to the disasters that will try to target the players
- Each city has a 60% chance of being abandoned to cultists because of all the negative effects
- The god’s herald (some high level creature serving the god) is released to hunt down the party
All very solid ideas, much appreciated
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I’ve been toying with the idea of running a campaign that has a kind of doom system. And when I say that, it is in reference to World of Horror’s doom system.
For those unfamiliar, you are given 5 mysteries, and a final boss dungeon to complete. Every time you investigate a mystery, your doom percentage rises by 1-5%, with the occasional event that decreases it. Resting increases doom, as well as shopping, and other sorts of time taking upgrades. Finishing a mystery grants a small reduction in doom.
And there is a cult trying to bring an eldritch god to Earth, which will destroy and alter everything in lovecraftian ways.
Once the doom meter reaches 100%, the player loses the game. And I’m trying to think of ways to do something similar with a campaign.
The 5 mysteries and boss dungeon are easy enough to do. But tracking doom could be something which is dangerous to penalize players with. It would absolutely suck to spend several months on a campaign just to lose it because they took one too many long rests. But it’s also something that can be an empty threat of reaching.
So my current thoughts:
- Every session, doom rises by 10%
- Once doom reaches 100% it resets to zero, and an entire location gets wiped off the map.
- Completing a mystery reduces doom by 50%, min 0%.
In effect, it could severely hurt them, but not immediately kill the campaign. If the party was planning on going to candlekeep but it suddenly got sucked up by a demon portal, then they must change their plans. Alternatively, if a location they didn’t depend on gets destroyed, then it would at the very least still be a threat in terms of guilt tripping them to some degree.
Another difficulty with a system like this is keeping it balanced to the speed of play. Maybe 10% per session is too much, or maybe too little. And changing that rate mid game would feel a little cheap. Another option would be to go based on vibes from the get go. So any rate changes could be gradual. This would still feel cheap, but it would at least be more subtle.
I think you could use this as a way to hurry the players up, useful if they like resting after every battle because there’s no motivation not to. You could have a big number that increases by a fixed or rolled number with every long rest, or you could just increase it arbitrarily based on what had happened in-game (or based on how much you want to hurry them). At that point it’s pretty similar to the “normal” way of running a game (to me, at least) of just telling them what else is happening in the world and how the baddies are progressing more with their evil plan every day you don’t stop them.
Your suggestion also seems quite similar to the “clocks” mechanic from Blades in the Dark, which in simple terms is a number of boxes that get filled in (or unfilled) based on players’ actions, and when completed something (usually bad) happens. The players know what the bad thing is, they can see the current state of the clock, and it’s usually obvious when a certain action will increase it decrease it.
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I’ve been toying with the idea of running a campaign that has a kind of doom system. And when I say that, it is in reference to World of Horror’s doom system.
For those unfamiliar, you are given 5 mysteries, and a final boss dungeon to complete. Every time you investigate a mystery, your doom percentage rises by 1-5%, with the occasional event that decreases it. Resting increases doom, as well as shopping, and other sorts of time taking upgrades. Finishing a mystery grants a small reduction in doom.
And there is a cult trying to bring an eldritch god to Earth, which will destroy and alter everything in lovecraftian ways.
Once the doom meter reaches 100%, the player loses the game. And I’m trying to think of ways to do something similar with a campaign.
The 5 mysteries and boss dungeon are easy enough to do. But tracking doom could be something which is dangerous to penalize players with. It would absolutely suck to spend several months on a campaign just to lose it because they took one too many long rests. But it’s also something that can be an empty threat of reaching.
So my current thoughts:
- Every session, doom rises by 10%
- Once doom reaches 100% it resets to zero, and an entire location gets wiped off the map.
- Completing a mystery reduces doom by 50%, min 0%.
In effect, it could severely hurt them, but not immediately kill the campaign. If the party was planning on going to candlekeep but it suddenly got sucked up by a demon portal, then they must change their plans. Alternatively, if a location they didn’t depend on gets destroyed, then it would at the very least still be a threat in terms of guilt tripping them to some degree.
Another difficulty with a system like this is keeping it balanced to the speed of play. Maybe 10% per session is too much, or maybe too little. And changing that rate mid game would feel a little cheap. Another option would be to go based on vibes from the get go. So any rate changes could be gradual. This would still feel cheap, but it would at least be more subtle.
So basically you want some kind of timer / escalation about some big bad evil thing. There are a few different ways you can do it. One you can do is have some kind of small script after every long rest about the breaking the seals or something similar so that the players can understand each rest means something. This can increase your doom (which you can track hidden) this can change how the world intereacts or can do nothing but bring tension narratively.
Another way to do this count down that feels more dnd is by decreasing dice as the doom get closer after each long rest. After each rest roll a 1d10 and on a 1 somethign bad happens. As their doom increases this dice goes down now to a 1d8 so the bad thing is more likely to happen. You can and should make a big deal about rolling this doom dice after each rest. Gives it a little random element and really drives player tension. That way you don’t have to track a percentage but still does that tension
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I’ve been toying with the idea of running a campaign that has a kind of doom system. And when I say that, it is in reference to World of Horror’s doom system.
For those unfamiliar, you are given 5 mysteries, and a final boss dungeon to complete. Every time you investigate a mystery, your doom percentage rises by 1-5%, with the occasional event that decreases it. Resting increases doom, as well as shopping, and other sorts of time taking upgrades. Finishing a mystery grants a small reduction in doom.
And there is a cult trying to bring an eldritch god to Earth, which will destroy and alter everything in lovecraftian ways.
Once the doom meter reaches 100%, the player loses the game. And I’m trying to think of ways to do something similar with a campaign.
The 5 mysteries and boss dungeon are easy enough to do. But tracking doom could be something which is dangerous to penalize players with. It would absolutely suck to spend several months on a campaign just to lose it because they took one too many long rests. But it’s also something that can be an empty threat of reaching.
So my current thoughts:
- Every session, doom rises by 10%
- Once doom reaches 100% it resets to zero, and an entire location gets wiped off the map.
- Completing a mystery reduces doom by 50%, min 0%.
In effect, it could severely hurt them, but not immediately kill the campaign. If the party was planning on going to candlekeep but it suddenly got sucked up by a demon portal, then they must change their plans. Alternatively, if a location they didn’t depend on gets destroyed, then it would at the very least still be a threat in terms of guilt tripping them to some degree.
Another difficulty with a system like this is keeping it balanced to the speed of play. Maybe 10% per session is too much, or maybe too little. And changing that rate mid game would feel a little cheap. Another option would be to go based on vibes from the get go. So any rate changes could be gradual. This would still feel cheap, but it would at least be more subtle.
It’s not exactly the same, but I would set it up so that once the players hit 100% doom, the final boss encounter happens. The big bad puts his final plans into motion, and the players have their one shot to stop it. Then the game is more about how much they can prepare, figure out, and break the BBEG’s plans before that final confrontation.
Also, I’d roll for how much doom accrues each session, potentially with a variable die depending on how much the players accomplished. That way it’s rolling dice and affected by the players actions, but ultimately you can still influence the the pace as you go.
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It’s not exactly the same, but I would set it up so that once the players hit 100% doom, the final boss encounter happens. The big bad puts his final plans into motion, and the players have their one shot to stop it. Then the game is more about how much they can prepare, figure out, and break the BBEG’s plans before that final confrontation.
Also, I’d roll for how much doom accrues each session, potentially with a variable die depending on how much the players accomplished. That way it’s rolling dice and affected by the players actions, but ultimately you can still influence the the pace as you go.
Also, I’d roll for how much doom accrues each session, potentially with a variable die depending on how much the players accomplished. That way it’s rolling dice and affected by the players actions, but ultimately you can still influence the the pace as you go.
As I’ve been thinking about it the last few days, this has crossed my mind as well. Rolling for this makes a lot of sense.
I’d probably do something along the lines of:
- Wasteful session --> 1d20 doom
- Mid session --> 1d10 doom
- Decisive session --> 1d4 doom
But I think I definitely want to avoid instant end game/death scenarios, such as BBEG boss encounter type stuff. Especially because I like the idea of the BBEG being a literal god, with the best case scenario being that said god is not resurrected. They still exist, ready to start plans anew. The best the PCs can hope for is a few more hundred years of no lovecraftian apocalypse.