Alien Invasion - unconventional campaign idea

General
#1

Working on a campaign right now (for the Gygax 75 Challenge) and looking for inspiration. I have a weird love for alien invasion scenarios, so I wanted to bring this experience to my players.

The PCs start in a fantasy setting. In the beginning only a few UFOs crash on the surface. They don’t know what is happening. This will be a precursor for things to come. Later on aliens start attacking villages and castles. PCs will have to choose who to defend and ally with. In the end the PCs will have to find a way to counterattack the invaders and defeat them. Magic vs Alien technology grand battle.

The only thing I know that rubs this itch is the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. I would really appreciate more resources and ideas to throw into this campaign. Thanks!

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#2

This sounds fun.

I don’t know if it could help, but I had this idea for a D&D apocalypse campaign involving the Tarrasque. (Not sure if a creature from 1e AD&D is old-school enough for you! :wink:) Maybe some of the ideas would contribute.

Why wouldn’t the heroes go about recruiting formerly enemy monsters, from orcs to lizardmen, to resist the aliens, as the entire fantasy world is invaded by much more powerful forces that care not whether it elves or ogres that they target with their disintegration rays? To the aliens, the creatures of this magical world are all the same, and they care not about alignment.

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#3

Did some digging and found this on reddit; https://reddit.app.link/Ch92xHmJl6

Outside of that discussion, I’m not aware of a whole lot of alien invasion into fantasy kind of stories. Harry Turtlesove’s World War series might be helpful to you though (just thought of it).

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#4

This is definitely not old school, may not be 100% what you wanted and is difficult as hell to find information about (I just played it once, like eleven years ago) but you should take a look at Exalted’s Locust Crusade.

While it’s described more as an extraplanar invasion, I remember the Autocthonians being described as an alien invasion force. The Crusade was first described as a single scenario in the book Time of Tumult and then expanded with the Autocthonians splatbook.

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#5

My other world, crimhuck has a “slow burn” alien invasion in it. Sorta based on the ancient alien theories. In that they were previously on the planet. In some cases there are good ones and bad ones. I believe there is a lotfp book with aliens. As well you likely pull inspiration from something in the dcc line, there’s gotta be a few alien adventures in there lol.

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#6

https://goodman-games.com/store/product/mcc-9-evil-of-the-ancients-pdf/

Filter thru this https://goodman-games.com/store/?s=Alien&post_type=product

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#7

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/171363/Warriors-of-the-Red-Planet also this might be helpful

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#8

A long while back I considered adapting the various devils and demons of normal D&D to an alien alliance along the lines of the Covenant / Tau / guys you fight in XCOM. Never really got off the ground but I adore the idea.

I think the best way to design it is that every member species of the invaders has a specific role, which then has its own weird interactions with the rest of the world.

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#9

Palladium Games had a game called The Mechanoid Invasion. The premise was that an Alien race of cyborgs have gigantic world eating spaceships and they destroyed the earth. Humans are surviving like rats in the bowels of the leviathan ship and your adventures are to survive and seek revenge in some way.

How about taking that idea and have a huge space ship envelop the world but this time they tried to eat a fantasy world and the dragons giants and demigod heroes and wizards fought back and defeated the invading cyborg ship in a sort of mutual annihilation but it’s huge mass still Surrounds the world. So the world is broken, most of the magical races are wiped out, most of the cyborg aliens are dead and the world is enveloped in eternal darkness lit only by eldritch fires and mechanical glow bulbs.

Maybe the party can make it to the ship in the sky. Maybe the party can find away to bring the light back to the world. The longer the world sits in darkness, the more likely it will be dead forever.

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#10

There is also the Nephandum book for D&D 3.5 which could be a good source of insipiration. The premise is an invasion from the Nephandum a plane which devours other planes, but the creatures and the omens are pretty interesting.

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#11

The Mechanoid Invasion! There’s a blast from the past. I ran the game with the two sequel books, the last of which was about surviving on their ship. It was a pretty cool vision.

That in turn was inspired by the original Metamorphosis Alpha, which may give some inspiration about a science fantasy combo, too.

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#12

Thank you everyone for all the links! It’s been a busy week on my end, so I will try to finish writing the pitch by Sunday, and start the creating campaign map and events ideas next week.

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