How do I make a campaign revolving around the gimmick Arios Theoman's sword Escude revolves around work?To explain>Arios is the "hero" of the setting>He has a magical sword that gets more powerful the more humanity dies>It's a dilemma - he needs the sword to be at least 30 percent powered up to be able to even hurt the demons ravaging his world, but to do that he needs to allow humans to die - or even actively curtail their population himself so as to paradoxically save them It's a killer concept - but I feel like as a campaign it becomes hard to gamify since the players could literally just do nothing, allow the sword to get powered up, and kill the big bad without any moral dilemma at all
>>97284375>since the players could literally just do nothingsounds like a shit plot because thats all that must be done for the sword to become actually useful.if anything the sword should be the fallback option and the main characters focus on trying other methods to fight demons.
>encourage mass pregancies>immediately backpedal when everyone is pregnant, saying it isn't the right time>encourage mass abortions>the ratio of dead humans increases, therefore empowering the swordez pz gg no re
>>97284375Sounds like a bugman's pathetic excuse to justify genocide.I'd use it in an evil campaign, where players are expected to commit atrocities for personal gain, like Black Crusade.
>>97284375>you can't do anything until 1/3 of the population is deadThat sounds like a retarded gimmick in any context.And prone to cause arguments over how many people have died throughout history and should have thus already powered the sword, and the like.
>>97284375That's just Elric with extra steps.
>>97284375If he can't kill the demons until enough humans have died then what the fuck is he supposed to do besides wait until they have? This is dumb.
>>97284548There are plenty of evil humans he could take care of to fuel the sword.
>>97284394Hmm, you may have a point but nah - if it's the fallback option there's literally no cost to it feels like i'm just giving the players an out instead of forcing a dilemma on them
>>97284375>he needs the sword to be at least 30 percent powered up to be able to even hurt the demons ravaging his worldDoesn't sound like much of a dilemna if he can't actually do anything about it until it's too late anyways
>>97284570have it only activate if the 1/3rd population criteria is met, and if the pc has to go kratos on their own family/loved ones/important npcs to activate it and will also die due to its use if they manage to win against the demons anywaysjust layer on as many reasons to not use the blade as possible.
>anime thing>is retardedlike clockwork>there's literally no costBesides several millions of human lives and the personal moral compromise? if you NEED the sword then you NEED people to die by transit of properties, so you just do nothing. there's nothing else you can do.
>>97284570>feels like i'm just giving the players an outwhat is the sword just an auto-win? you made it sound like it only becomes a viable weapon at that point.
>>97284375>Rance plot pointOkay, I grant you that you've got balls to want to do this, OPThe simple answer is obvious. You don't play the hero trying to power up the sword to save humanity. You play the party of brave adventurers tasked by the kingdoms of the world to stop the hero that's clearly lost his mind and turned against humanity by going on a genocidal rampage across the land. Then when they eventually catch up to him, THAT is when he drops the bomb that he's not lost his mind and in fact trying to save the world, with all the possible signs showing he is fully cognizant and with an appropriately divinely ordained mission.That way, the party can decide whether he's right and join his efforts to sacrifice pieces of humanity to save it from the demons with the blessings of the rest of humanity or not, decide he's full of shit or otherwise insane/brainwashed/fucking evil and take him down at the cost of having to find another way to stop the evil demons, or convince him that the cost is too high and try to find an alternate way to stop the demons, whether that exists or not. Or decide this shit is too complicated for them and let the hero do what he's going to do, whatever.There. Clear goal, clear moral dilemma, and you get to let the players decide for themselves the morality of the situation. Not that complicated.
>>9728437530% calculated from what point? From when he picked up the sword for the first time? From when it was made? Since last Tuesday? Because if that period is long enough, it would take years, decades, or maybe even centuries for a diminished population to rebound enough that it weakens the sword. Plenty of time for one human with one human lifespan to do whatever he can do with it. If its counter resets regularly, then there's a real dilemma and it's just going to spiral out into doing the demons job for them. Go find a different source of power.
>>97284375This isn't even a dilemma because if he doesn't get the charge he needs, presumably the entire world dies. So it's either 30% die or 100% die, which means the 30% are just going to have to suck it up.I mean maybe we could kill everyone in Africa, North Korea and in the Middle East, that should be more than enough. It wouldn't even be an imposition.
>>97284394>if anything the sword should be the fallback option and the main characters focus on trying other methods to fight demons.I'd suggest a variation on this. Don't give the PCs the sword. It belongs to someone else who acts unwillingly as half the story's "threat". The PCs' job is to find a better way to win or at least stabilize the situation before either the enemy becomes overwhelmingly strong or a person or faction nominally on the same as the PCs decides it's time to use the doomsday weapon. Kind of like >>97284707, but I think I'd probably make the doomsday sword a well-known but controversial thing. Probably owned by a powerful and respected king or something rather than a rogue "hero". That gives lots of opportunities for intrigue where some allied factions want to use the superweapon right away and others reject it entirely. I'd also increase the cost of using it so it isn't a clear fallback option if things drag out too long. Not only does using it require lots of deaths, it also causes additional ones or does something similarly bad (maybe cuts humans off from magic permanently or something). If the PCs do their job, let them discover a bunch of other potential tradeoff options to choose from to fit with the campaign theme of selecting the "lesser evil", with maybe one ideal outcome that's really hard to discover or implement.
>>97284818fwiw, the original context would be that the whole demon king and hero shit are just a disguised form of population control on humanity by the gods, with the sword getting proportionally more powerful the closer humanity gets to total extinction. 30% of the population total is just an estimation of the arbitrary number of humans that the demon king would have to kill before the sword would be strong enough to do the deed.And it is meant to be a retarded system so that the protagonists can punch god in the face for implementing it.
You're missing the point of Escude, it's not a weapon, it's a failsafe to prevent a one-sided genocide. The entire reason for the existence of the Hero System is to have a single invincible force that can stop the demon king from wiping out the protagonist race (humans), growing in power the more souls are in the cycle of reincarnation.It's canon to my own setting that the entire thing is one big quasi-simulation (not in the Star Ocean or Matrix sense but more in the Disgaea or Rance sense where the game mechanics are part of the universe), to speak from experience; if you have to ask how to do this, don't bother, wait until you actually come to the idea naturally. It makes for interesting lore, but it's very difficult to write a game around it.My own setting has a plethora of "Admin Tools" like Escude and "Moderators" who function as godslayers in order to maintain the boundaries between the different worlds. It would be akin to a freeform roleplay forum user yelling nasty words at the site admin, or trying to shout down a banhammer.If you insist on it, take the advice of the anons who are telling you to have Escude and its wielder be a threat to humanity. It will make for a far more interesting game.
