A Paladin in Hell



Premise of this thread: You are a DM, and you want to run a D&D game. You only have one dedicated friend who is able to play the game regularly, with possibly a bunch of other players dropping in and out of the campaign as time allows.

You look at this illustration of the First Ed PHB, and decide to create your own "Paladin in Hell" Sandbox.

How would you do it? What does it look like? What do you include in there?

You can post and discuss any ideas in this thread. Whether it'd be an encounter, a set of encounters, an hex map, descriptions of sample denizens of hell, interesting challenges and situations, dungeons and citadels, adventure seeds, whatever.

Shoot.

Aside from the obvious (Dante) one might wish to give this a read, for inspiration:

Well, there is this TSR module:



It could be a starting point for a sandbox type game of this type.

Quote from: Drohem;376254Well, there is this TSR module: (...)

It could be a starting point for a sandbox type game of this type.

For sure. I'm aware of its existence, but never checked it out myself (it's one of the rare game materials from Monte Cook I actually haven't read). I was thinking that it was a great idea for a solo-ish type of sandbox, and that we could throw ideas out there on the topic.

So. What comes to your mind when you're thinking "Paladin in Hell"?

I would first have to determine if I was playing a Paladin from a pseudo christian setup.  I would really have to go in depth to the religion of the campaign, so that the setting would have the proper depth.

Quote from: Benoist;376256So. What comes to your mind when you're thinking "Paladin in Hell"?

Cool, just pointing it out in case you didn't know of it.  

This is a damn fine question, and I need to give it some thought.  :hatsoff:

I mean, an obvious hook is some kind of spiritual imperative that takes the paladin into hell, but I'm kind of burnt out on the whole god commandments thing as a thin-veiled railroad technique.  I'll like to find some reason, or angle, for the paladin to go to hell other than religious context or blundering into some unknown open portal to hell.  

/thinking cap on

:hmm:

Quote from: Drohem;376261Cool, just pointing it out in case you didn't know of it.  

This is a damn fine question, and I need to give it some thought.  :hatsoff:

I mean, an obvious hook is some kind of spiritual imperative that takes the paladin into hell, but I'm kind of burnt out on the whole god commandments thing as a thin-veiled railroad technique.  I'll like to find some reason, or angle, for the paladin to go to hell other than religious context or blundering into some unknown open portal to hell.  

/thinking cap on

:hmm:

That's one of the reason I need to figure out the religion first...
Otherwise we could go with a Gilgamesh or Persephone angle...

I was building to something like this once...with the only good Paladin player I ever ran a game for.

*sigh*

Y'know, my roommate bought and played through 'Dante's Inferno' on the Xbox, and that would more or less encapsulate the core idea behind such a game for me.

Crusader heads to war against the scaracens, does a bunch of bad shit and the devil uses that to trick his innocent, virginal love into being his bride. Crusader steals Death's Scythe and goes to town, tearing apart Hell to get her back and redeem himself.

Translated to D&D terms: The Paladin goes to hell to rescue an innocent important to him that he condemned by his own moral weakness as part of his attempt to redeem himself.   This provides an alternative to just simply leveling to get more powerful as the quest progresses through the levels of hell (or an alternate reason to be leveling and gaining paladinical powers)... as he 'proves' his sincerity, as the challenges facing him rise, he slowly gains/regains his divine powers for the big showdown against whichever demon boss you pick as the big bad for the 'end game'... cause this sort of campaign calls for an end-game.

Putting a tempter in the end (asmodeus) is different than having a 'rawr-kill' (Geryon?) at the end.   Either way, for it to work the redemption of the lost innocent can't (shouldn't) be as simple as just whuppin' some demon tail and taking the next gate home.


Alternatively: The Paladin just wants to rid the world of evil, and what better way to do that then wipe out all of hell? So he's there to establish a beachhead to prove it can be done, one evil motherfucker at a time!

Quote from: Spike;376278Alternatively: The Paladin just wants to rid the world of evil, and what better way to do that then wipe out all of hell? So he's there to establish a beachhead to prove it can be done, one evil motherfucker at a time!

I like this, a paladin with a set of adamantine balls taking it to the source. :cool:

That was actually my original idea, going to the wayback time of when I first saw that classic art when I was but ten years old.  

Play a paladin. Go to hell. Proceed to wipe them all out.

Why more Paladins don't immedeatly start trying that I never could figure out given their supposed code.  I mean, where else can you find a concentrated collection of Evil that bigger and badder?

Seconding the "Ran out of bubblegum" idea.

Well, there's always the good, old-fashioned plot of "villain opens gateway to Hell, demonic armies pour out" -- and the only way to close the gate is to ride in, get a Demon Lord's attention, and make him close the damn thing.

Abslom Daak Dalek Killer ?

Mongoose publishing has a free download on rpgnow called "Infernum - Book of the Damned". This could give you some material.