Pretty often when playing in a game of D&D or another RPG, there’s a world or universe ending event that has to be dealt with, and this can be fun because it really ups the stakes for the end of the game. You get to have this awesome face off with a deity or something that has this power and fight it for the fate of the world, and then the campaign ends.

But what would happen if you lost that final fight, the world is now in shambles and everything is going to hell, or the abyss, and sometimes that means literally. Today’s campaign idea takes a look at what happens after the fact, but not to the planet but to those heroes who fought bravely and in the end failed at being able to save the world, they’re all dead, and now they are level 1 characters in the next life, the afterlife. But because the apocalypse has come to their world, this Crystalline Halls of what’s basically Valhalla are starting to crumble and there is evil seeping into a place that shouldn’t have had any.

The story that I’d run with for this game is that because the heroes were the last ones to die, they remember and no more about the actual world. So while there are massive wars between Aasimar and Demons/Devils around them, the players are going to be tasked to find some way to undo what has been done. This is going to be a game about fighting a few small skirmishes, but exploring and finding where in the Crystalline Halls the PC’s can find what they need to turn back time and win the fight against whatever being it was that destroyed the world.

I think that you have several different plot threads that you can have the players run through. The first part would be about finding where the Demons/Devils are coming through into the Crystalline Halls. This would be a stealth mission of sorts, but there can be skirmishes with lesser creatures. Then they would have to explore in the abyss to find out the weaknesses of the being that destroyed the world that they couldn’t defeat before. Finally, they’d need to find a way to turn back time, either from the abyss or in the Crystalline Halls.

That is a fairly standard, end the apocalypse, but you’re going to be running the story in a different setting. I think creating the setting is very important here, because you want the players to feel like what they are doing is because they have specific knowledge, not because they are going to be able to stop the battle that is happening in the Crystalline Halls, if they fail at their mission, they fail and everything is over, there’s no after-afterlife.

I’d even be tempted to play around with the rules of magic a little bit. Only radiant damage works in the Crystalline Halls, but healing is boosted, and as long as a spell doesn’t do necrotic or fire damage, it does radiant damage instead. Also in the Crystalline Halls, anything that brings someone back from the dead doesn’t work, same when travelling in the Abyss, because the characters are technically already dead. However, healing is doubled in the Crystalline Halls, so if you’d heal someone for 6 points of damage, you heal them for 12 instead. Just to keep the characters alive. Now, in the Abyss, healing goes back to normal and spells do their normal things.

Another thing I’d probably add in as well, is that the players at some point in time stumble across a subplot where an Aasimar has been corrupted somehow or has turned evil and they are turning other denizens of the Crystalline Halls into Devils or Demons. You could even, once the players know about this, kind of use it as a timer where if they don’t stop the Aasimar or go back in time by a certain point the Crystalline Halls will have been overrun and all will be lost. It gives a solid branching plot for the narrative, like if the players feel like they won’t be fast enough, they can branch off and solve this problem first. And I’d make it some sort of magical item that the Aasimar has on or something like that which has been corrupted, or it’s a denizen of the Abyss or Hell who is disguised and pretending to be a specific Aasimar and the players need to prove that. Give it a few options there as well and see what direction the players immediately go with. But don’t make this an easy encounter, make it something that the players are either going to have to really race against, taking more risks, or it’s a fight that they’re going to need to prepare for.

Eventually, when the players likely have taken care of it all, and are ready to head back in time to stop the apocalypse from happening, give them some knowledge of the weaknesses of the being and probably some sweet weapons. Make them powerful, really powerful, maybe even give them boons that they can call on. Then send in waves of smaller monsters plus the big being that ended the world before and have an epic fight. Let the players do epic things and let the waves of smaller monsters die and run out, so eventually it’s that big final battle.

Would you play or run a game like this? What sort of story do you have at your table now?

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