The Most Metal Game Ever

So I've decided to put Undermountain to rest for a bit, and wait for Ian to come up with the next encounter for us. This is supposed to be a collaborative process, and while I'm totally down for taking his idea and running with it, I'd prefer to give the idea some time to breathe and let Ian get some input going. He's got a couple of weeks to make that happen before I jack the idea entirely. ^_^

Instead, I'm going to talk a bit about the first adventure I want to run for the Bones of a Dead God campaign. I suppose it's too much to ask for that potential players of mine avoid reading this blog, so I can't exactly get into too much detail about the first adventure or anything, but I'd like to talk a bit about the theme, the flavor and the set-dressing of the thing.

There are a few ways you can take a game setting like this one. The first thought through my head was "gothic Cthulhu horror" as we try to stop the evil cultists from waking up the dead god that makes up our whole plane of existence. Which was pretty dope. But then I got to thinking about crazy cultists, and how Rasputin (the guy that lives in my head next to the heading "cultist") wouldn't look out of place at all on a metal album cover. Tattered black robes, wispy black beard shot with streaks of gray, long black hair blowing in the wind as he holds out his hand toward you, the heart of a small child, still beating, gripped within. Yes. Rasputin-cultist is fucking metal.

Which forced the whole thing to shift in my head to become this huge, over-the-top heavy metal rock opera about stopping monsters and cultists from waking this dead god and bringing about the End of All Things. There's a very metal edge to that. Huge, macho barbarians oiled in the blood of their enemies, streetwise elven rangers dressed in spiked leather, sultry witches that look more like suicide girls than Elminster... Love it. Impossibly high castles looming over intricate cave networks of doom. Long-haired, wild-bearded cultists destroying the world. Lots of pentagrams, blood sacrifices, images of skeletons in dark robes, piles of skulls, tentacles and pig heads, anything Brom ever painted. Yeah. That's goooooood.

I'm thinking the first villain is going to be a fully-statted out cleric a few levels above the main crew. She'll be based on Baba Yaga, using a broom as her holy implement and flying about in a cauldron forged from the skulls of the children she's eaten. She'll be the leader of this death cult. The first adventure will have something to do with retrieving a very important book that has been stolen from the cobbler of the town of Capp. There will be many fights with Rasputin-cultists, a boss-fight with someone who isn't Baba Yaga, and the shocking discovery that the world is going to end in three months if y'all don't stop that bitch. ^_^

Also, I'm thinking each player should have their own WWF-style theme song. Oh fuck yes.