Little Changes with Big Flavor

mmadsen · Apr 2, 2002

These are all excellent ideas.

Thanks, MancerBear.

Many humanoids...are fey. All fey are outsiders, from "Beyond the Veil"...They are more like our faeries than D&D creatures. Fey dislike church bells, can be held back with a true holy symbol, take extra damage from cold steel, and kidnap human babies to input new blood into their failing genepool.

I wonder why we don't see more of that style of play. I'm not opposed to "studded leather and a morningstar" -- the Tolkien Orc is certainly one way to go -- but it's odd that the fey of folklore play such a small role in D&D.

There are no female dwarves, centaurs, minotaurs, or satyres.

The notion of a female minotaur is udderly ridiculous!

Psion · Apr 3, 2002

mmadsen said:
[I posted this awhile back on the old boards, but I’m always interested in new feedback.]

I remember this thread. Added anything from the old thread to this?

Have all the players run characters of the same race and class: a troop of mercenaries, a band of outlaws, an order of knights, whatever. Not every party has to be the fellowship of the ring.

We've done this. Way back when the Cavalier class came out in a dragon in 1e, we made a troupe of knights. The whole thing was very Excalibur in feel.

I've often thought it would be fun to play an academy of wizards.

Have the characters either be a family or have families (or start families).

A good way to explain a party, but doesn't work too well if the party is of different races, obviously. Sometimes you can explain in friends of the family if you only have 1 or 2.

Eliminate monsters. Or keep them in the background awhile. Fighting human enemies should be plenty exciting, and when the evil sorcerer finally summons his demonic allies, it means something.

Unfortunately, since 2e didn't handle monsters as well as 3e does, that describes my whole 2e gaming experience.

I always ran humans or races that could be classes like Drow.

Have an enemy. Despite all the dark overlords in fantasy fiction, few of them last past an adventure or two in D&D.

Major villains that last only an adventure or two? Preposterous!

Don't give back spellcasters their full power after one night's rest and some study/prayer time. Make recharging require rare magical ingredients, or blood sacrifice, or a selfless act of piety. Or simply make it take longer. That way spellcasters won't toss spells left and right, but they'll have them for when they need them.

See the Twin Crowns campaign setting for an interesting spin on this. Spellcasters have to occasionally refresh their powers at specific sites.
Have the heroes be the only spellcasters in the world -- or the only good spellcasters in the world, hiding their powers from their evil enemies.

Auran's modules take this approach with divine spellcasters.

Have Knowledge (History) provide characters with the names of weapons, their powers, any magic words they need to activate them, etc. That way the wise wizard (who really should have plenty of knowledge skills) doesn't cast a spell to uncover an item's powers; he looks it over, mumbles to himself, then announces that this must be the long, lost whatever, used in the great wars against whomever's army, etc.

I was at one time working on a system to give players tidbits. Basically, each character with knowledge would receive on index card with an important fact on it per knowledge rank.

mmadsen · Apr 3, 2002

Suggestions from the Old Thread

Added anything from the old thread to this?

I forgot to add some ideas from the old thread to my list:

Remove the Arcane Spell Failure percentage for armor. In a campaign world like Elric's Melnibone, sorcerers freely cast in full armor.
Remove the distinction between Arcane and Divine magic. Is there a difference between an evil sorcerer and an evil high priest?
Increase the distinction between Arcane and Divine magic. Have quasi-Christian priests whose only real powers are dispelling fiends' enchantments, banishing demons back to hell, etc.
Remove alignments. Or just use Good and Evil or Law and Chaos. Or divvy up the world into two sides with each considering itself Good and the other Evil.
Dark Side points for spellcasting.
Have every spell force a Will save (DC 10 + 2 * spell level) or the caster gains a Dark Side point. Once the caster accumulates more Dark Side points than Wisdom, he goes mad with hunger for power. The Dark Side points can cause a cumulative penalty to later Will saves too -- wonderful for that downward spiral effect.
Fixed levels. Just start everyone as heroes (e.g. 7th level) and keep them there.
Runequest Magic. Just about anyone can cast minor spells: no multiclass penalty for a level of Sorcerer.
Night of the Living Dead. Don't disable zombies at 0 (or negative) hit points. Have them keep coming down to -10 hit points, but have each hit take off a limb. Graphically describe it, and give the zombie reduced abilities: leg, can't walk, can only crawl 5'; arm, grapple at -4; head, drops "dead" (a la Night of the Living Dead), or simply can't change what it's doing.
Base the game completely around non-combat advancement. E.g. XP for converting the "unsaved" to your religion, or for finding ancient tomes of arcane lore, etc.
Unique Monsters: one Pegasus, one Medusa (with two other gorgon sisters), one Minotaur, one Questing Beast, one Fenris Wolf, one Midgard Serpent, etc.
Different Magic for Different Races. Humans must learn magic as Wizards, Elves are naturally Sorcerers, etc.
Require that all Wizards specialize in one school, and they can only cast spells from that school
Use Call of Cthulhu Magic.

And a few more settings (suggested by kenjib), both largely armor-free and longsword-lite:

Mythic Africa -- the Nyambe setting should be coming out soon
Mythic Hawaii -- http://www.royalty.nu/America/Hawaii.html

KnowTheToe · Apr 3, 2002

Have all the players run characters of the same race and class: a troop of mercenaries, a band of outlaws, an order of knights, whatever. Not every party has to be the fellowship of the ring.

I have always wanted to do this. There are so many concepts that would work so much better if a group were to run this way. But alas, I can never sell my players on it. So they usually run a mission impossible style. Fighter, magic user healer and rogue. SOOOO BORING!!!

When new groups meet I try to encourage everyone to bring their character, but they, no matter who they have been are always more interested in what others peole are going to play. Gutless peckers are too afraid to go on without a cleric or rogue or even a fighter. Don't they realize the DM will adapt the encounters to fit the group.

mmadsen · Apr 3, 2002

Allow the enemy to have more resources than the party.

C'mon, Forrester, the enemy always has more resources; he just keeps them all locked in a chest.

In my current ("Against the Elves") campaign, the elves outnumber the party, outmagic the party, and outresource the party. And the party started at a lousy 1st level -- they've had to act like guerillas (the elves would say "terrorists") since Day 1. No cushy inns to stay in, or magic shops to buy potions or weapons in -- nope.

Ah, the city's no safe haven. Very "Robin Hood".

Hell, the party has had to brew potions from *scratch*, and that's included potion-ingredient hunting. Because sometimes, you can't go to the Local Magick Shoppe and buy a generic 150gp worth of ingredients for your 300gp potion. Sorry.

Yes, that's another idea: don't assume N gold pieces will get you N gp worth of stuff. No one said you were in an efficient market economy.

A month ago they had their strongest ally (a clan of 60 orcs) wiped out...

Nice twist.

...because the elves cast Speak with Dead on a pair of dead orcish lackeys the party had left behind.

Also nice. Smart enemies are more fun -- once you're done cursing the bastards.

Forrester · Apr 3, 2002

mmadsen said:
Also nice. Smart enemies are more fun -- once you're done cursing the bastards.

Certainly more fun for *me* . . . and I think the players are enjoying it. One of them has developed an ulcer, and two more have the shakes, but it's all in good fun.

By the way -- there *is* no city they can go to. They are playing humanoids whose land has been encroached upon by a rather large group of elves (500+). The closest thing they have to a "city" is a refugee camp of about 150 goblins and kobolds (most of them noncombatants/women & children).

A couple sessions ago the PCs decided to try to ambush a patrol of 20 elves that they suspected was trying to hunt *them* down. The Alarm spells gave them away, though, and they ended up running away like kobolds. Lost one party member to a Sleep spell. Elves didn't capture him, so that he could sneak away later, or be rescued. Nope. Orcs don't torture well . . . coup de grace time.

Even if the party had had surprise, I don't know if they would have won; the elves knew that the party had successfully managed to bring down a 30-elf caravan two weeks previous, and was damn well prepared. Of course, when the party brought the caravan down, they had the help of eight other NPCs.

The elves didn't know that though

. I told the players after the patrol debacle that if they had been nice enough to let the elves know that there were now only five of them, the patrol could have been nice enough to make sure that its ECL was low enough to "challenge the party, but not kill them".

Yeah, right!

Which brings me to *MY* biggest rule: Make things as "realistic" as possible. Things should make logical sense -- as much as they can in a fantasy world.

If the bad guys' patrols get attacked, they'll send out bigger patrols, and try to get reinforcements.

If they have spells/items that are useful, they'll use them (and not keep them locked up in chests or stuck in the eyes of stuffed bears!)

If they can bring overwhelming force to bear, they'll do it. If they can flee to fight another day, they'll do it.

Cause and effect . . . cause and effect . . . it's what makes a good story, and I think it's what makes a good campaign.

Rune · Apr 3, 2002

mmadsen said:
I remember first reading your Story Hour awhile back as an example of a foreign-flavored "oriental" campaign. I'm still recovering from that first brief perusal. "Significant changes to flavor from the norm" is a serious understatement.

Er...sorry about that. I didn't mean to traumatize you!

And the Sundered Sky campaign forced that last Sanity Check that landed me in Arkham.

More seriously, those are both wildly inventive campaign settings. Kudos to you and The Sunderer.

Thanks! Here's a link to the Sundered Sky Story Hour for those interested.

Rune · Apr 3, 2002

Damn, Forrester! I want to play in your campaign!

Frostmarrow · Apr 3, 2002

About the unified party idea. We did this once, and with two DM's to boot. We played a local militia group on a quest far away. It was very nice. I played the old man whose job was to support the leader in all things. Sort of like an American sergeant I guess. The only trouble was that since we went abroad (to Ravenloft in fact) we didn't know the language. However, the captain had a helmet of tongues so he could talk to strangers. The rest of us couldn't. That meant that the captain player was our only link to the outside world. We had no idea what was going on.

I still have mixed emotions about that DM-call. On one hand it was neat to be confined to ourselves alone. On the other hand it was very frustrating not being able to communicate with the world.

mmadsen · Apr 3, 2002

For those who haven't checked out Rune's Story Hour (as written by one of Rune's players), here's a taste of the introduction:

The world: Ah yes, the world...

It is flat, but not really.

There is no sun; there are no stars, nor moons. Day and night do exist, however.

There is seasonal change (how could we have haiku without it?), but that change is sporadic.

Reality shifts are not uncommon, and even mortals within the world may trigger them.

And there is only one god(dess), but there are a great many interpretations of who and what (s)he is. This is, in part, because the alignment of the deity changes with some degree of regularity.

And since we speak of that deity, we shall now refer to that god(dess) by the name that all mortals know, The Dreamer; for all of existence is The Dream. And I mean that literally.

The Physics:
There is land, and above land, the sky; above the sky, the ocean. On a clear day, you can see the largest ships sailing for destinations unknown (upside down, of course) far above you. More oddities in the landscape later.

Physics are more or less normal, but certain things can happen to alter the state of reality, namely the...

Reality Shifts:
These are triggered at certain times within the REM cycle of The Dreamer, and, much more commonly, through the use of magicks, and psionic manifestations. Even more commonly, certain events trigger reality shifts, such as birth and death. More on this later in the campaign.