Season 1 --------
The big bad was Tutankhamen. The pharaoh died as child in mysterious conditions - the fact is he was sired, but then locked into his sarcophagus with no way of escape. During 2000+ years, he didn't die really but starved to the point where he almost left this world. Additionnally, he was greatly driven insane.
So Tuthankhamen's demonic soul, struck midway between our world and the hell dimensions, tries to prise himself free.
Over the course of season 1, the PCs experienced some "reality shifts", meaning they found themselves several times between dimensions, or in other ones altogether. "The barriers between the dimensions are thinning" warns Engoulevent Placide, a shaman NPC that was to take a lot of importance.
Appears Sandro's nemesis, an immortal conquistador (don Pedro de Castilla) Sandro spent his life evading.
Seems like he works under Tutankhamen's orders.
Approach the end of season 1. The PCs get clues as to a mysterious thing called "Rada".
The Acathla statue is stolen and arrives at Coascape: Tutankhamen intends to use it to open a passageway for himself. The plan was foiled, happily, thanks to the help of Batosai Imura, and - big surprise - with the help of don Pedro, who changed sides at the last moment.
He still doesn't side with the Slayer yet. What's his agenda?
Season 2
With the death of Tutankhamen, the whole dimension thinning should have ended. On the contrary: things get worse. don Pedro makes regular appearance and is s2's big bad (he's an awesome warrior combining immortal power with magic - he's able to wield a monstrous 2 meter long double handed sword with one hand to deflect bullets!!!). Rada is in fact Radament, an international conglomerate with lengthy ramifications (a la Wolfram and Hart). Their objective is yet unknown but they play a part in the dimension thinning business.
What's really going on
don Perdo works for Radament and Tutankhamen was just a pawn to help thinning the dimensions - he followed orders when he killed Tutankhamen. Radament's objective is truly to thin the dimensions to a point where they can do... er... what they want to do. Summon some hellish god, most likely.
Why it didn't work out
- The system was incomplete, especially in terms of magic. I designed spells on the fly, but not a lot and they were too much underpowered since I feared to have too powerful a magic. There was no real limitation to the number of spells you can cast...
- The PCs were completely out of balance, even though I had tried to put in some sort of Drama Point system before Unisystem to help balance the PCs. Sandro with his immortality was way too high, then Luna as a Slayer could take damage and dust vamps as she wished, and the white hats didn't have a lot of compensation.
- But all these problems you can deal with when you are an experienced player (hell, Amber works fine without dice). The two main reasons for the campaign dying down were:
- Unexperienced players. After my awesome experience in STRPG (we were in the middle of s4 at the time), I think I asked too much of the players. Throw in...
- Serious personal differences between the players that arose in the course of the game, to the point where the players were divided in two camps almost working against each other.
So, with the departure of Luna's player, we let things die down. I regret that, since it was the first time I had planned a campaign from the very beginning, and some characters had an awesome potential. We had succeeded in keeping the Buffy spirit in the beginning, even if the players made too much separate teams.
Next: Memorable quotes
