Campaign Ideas

In the S&W group I am playing with, we are thinking about moving to a once-weekly schedule of play and then utilizing a rotational DM to switch up campaigns and game systems. This got me seriously thinking about what kind of campaign I would want to play.

Now, I had been thinking of a historical Renaissance style campaign set in 1618 or so, right at the start of the 30 Years War. However, I've started mulling around a new idea that I might end up running with instead...

The campaign starts off innocently enough. All PCs will notice that there is a new star in the horizon, quite bright and very visible to everyone. At first, it will be on everyone's mind, but very quickly will be common place. In the stead, I would run a simple site-based adventure or mini-dungeon crawl. This star would appear the next game day and be even brighter still... before the end of the day the star streaks towards the earth. Only, this is actually a planet-busting meteorite that crashes into the planet.

Now, that fact that this is a meteor will not be evident, but soon after impact, the sun will be blotted out by ash in the sky. Next, rocks and fragments of earth and flaming chunks of shit will be raining down on the ground. Obviously, pandemonium hits.

The game then becomes about survival on this doomed planet. Ultimately, life on the surface will die out and the only hope of survival will be to go underground. The underground areas of the world will not be able to support all of its usual denizens plus the surface dwellers, so the sandbox becomes a conflict about living space and scant resources and the competition between all peoples and monsters therein. This would allow the full range of character types from good to evil and back again, while shaking up old D&D conventions by making the dungeon home. Humanity will have to delve deeper and deeper in its frenzy to find resources to fuel its existence...

Not sure how it would all work out, but I just love the fact that the game starts off in a sleepy, typical fashion. However, that planned dungeon romp is quickly forgotten when it's the fucking end of the world...

So what do you think, my hypothetical, non-existent readers?