Little Changes with Big Flavor

To recap:

D&D makes a lot of tacit assumptions about how the game world works, and most campaigns naturally follow along. If you'd like a very different flavor, it might require only some tiny changes. Give a few of these a try.

Your fantasy world doesn't have to resemble England in the late Middle Ages. You can try:

• Primitive -- Imagine combat with spears, bows, hides for armor, etc. Dire Animals make great monsters.
• Ancient Greece -- Bronze age. If everyone's using bronze, you might not need any special rules for it.
• Ancient Rome -- Iron age, few long swords, lots of spears and short swords, soldiers in chain mail or breast plate (actually lorica segmentata).
• Dark Ages -- For most of the middle ages, plate armor was not available, and neither were the various reinforced forms of mail (splint, banded). Bastard swords and great swords weren't around, and many polearms weren't common. A soldier in a full hauberk of mail was a serious threat
• Arabian Nights -- You don't need the official Al Qadim setting to use rich Caliphs, desert nomads, caravans under attack from brigands, and wizards on flying carpets
• Mythic India -- Even a quick peek at the Indian epics reveals a world ripe for D&D-style adventure.
• Mythic Africa -- The Nyambe setting should be coming out soon.
• Mythic Hawaii -- Or any group of islands.
• Renaissance Europe -- Gunpowder, pikemen, halberdiers, lots of breastplates, but few full suits of armor.
• Age of Conquest -- It's eerie just how similar the Conquistadors were to D&D adventurers, going from place to place, killing (with "magic" weapons and armor) and looting, making some allies, then leading a big attack on the supervillain's castle (Mexico city, a metropolis of stone pyramids built on a lake in an extinct volcano).
• Age of Sail -- Pirates! 'Nuff said
• Age of Steam -- Everyone loves intricate brass clockwork, ironclads, and balloons.
• Modern -- D&D doesn't seem to handle this too well, but you can try any of the more modern d20 games, and you can mix in as much fantasy as you'd like.

Monsters:

• 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.
• Stick to just a handful of monsters. Choose either goblins or kobolds or orcs as your cannon fodder, and rely on class levels or different equipment to differentiate them. (What's Your Monster Palette?)
• Base your goblins and elves on folklore, not modern fantasy. Have them rely on magical deception (not studded leather and a morningstar) to get the job done.
• Have the monsters be something that can be dealt with by wits, such as with riddles or tricks. In folklore, magic is often just knowing the strengths and weaknesses of various beasts, knowing what they like and dislike, knowing how to talk to them, etc. The key to killing the dragon isn't having a stronger sword arm; it's knowing that the dragon has a soft underbelly, and if you dig a ditch, he'll crawl over you and expose it.
• Don't forget animals. Talking animals are a staple of fairy tales and fantasy, and some animals are natural predators of monsters the heroes might face (e.g. mongoose or weasel vs. basilisk or poisonous snake, giant owl vs. dire rats or were-rats, tiny mouse vs. elephant, etc.)
• Have an enemy. Despite all the dark overlords in fantasy fiction, few of them last past an adventure or two in D&D.
• 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.
• Unique Monsters: one Pegasus, one Medusa (with two other gorgon sisters), one Minotaur, one Questing Beast, one Fenris Wolf, one Midgard Serpent, etc.

Magic:

• Assume a more "primitive" (or secretive) level of magical knowledge. Have no known spells; all spells must be researched.
• Implement priests as Sorcerers or Wizards (with the Cleric spell list) so that they're wise men, not warriors. Same with Druids. Make Turn Undead a 1st-level Cleric spell, and have Druids cast Polymorph Self to shapeshift.
• Let Clerics turn any and all supernatural creatures not just the undead. In folklore, goblins and trolls can't stand the sound of church bells.
• Make the spellcasting classes prestige classes with prerequisites. After all, isn't it odd that a Bard with four skill ranks in Perform is good enough to enchant people with his music? And that a Druid that barely knows his way around the woods knows enough of nature's secrets to command it? Should every religious figure wield powerful magic? On a daily basis? 0-level Druid spells could all require, say, 8 skill ranks in Wilderness Lore and Knowledge (Nature). A 5th-level Expert on those topics could then take one level of Sorcerer and take only nature spells onto his spell list. Similarly, 0-level healing spells might require 8 ranks in Healing and Knowledge (Nature), and a high-level Ranger might take a few levels of Sorceror with a few healing spells (requiring rare herbs, naturally).
• 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.
• Remove spellcasting entirely. Have all magic through magic items.
• Make spellcasting always take a full round or more. Suddenly spellcasters aren't video game characters.
• Have magic transform its user. Over time, necromancers grow pale and withered. Fire mages start giving off sparks when angry; eventually their hair turns to living fire. Shapeshifters take on the traits of the animals they become.
• Limit all sorcerers to a strongly themed spell list. For instance, a "fey" list of just: daze, dancing lights, ghost sound, prestidigitation, obscuring mist, charm person, hypnotism, sleep, change self, ..., polymorph. Or a summoner list of just the Summon Monster spells. You can make an entire magics system out of just summoning (e.g. Elric).
• Eliminate all directly-damaging spells. It's not like wizards can't do any harm without magic missile and fireball, and they're certainly more interesting that way. Or just make all those spells more difficult. Besides, isn't a wizard supposed to turn you into a frog?
• Make all magic easy to "track" with Detect Magic, so covert spellcasters won't want to cast indiscriminately. Make flashy evocations (e.g. Fireball) particularly easy to track.
• 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.
• 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.
• Runequest Magic. Just about anyone can cast minor spells: no multiclass penalty for a level of Sorcerer.
• 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.

The Party:

• 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.
• 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.
• Have the characters either be a family or have families (or start families).
• Invert which races are good and which are bad. Play the Orcs, Goblins, and Kobolds against ruthless Elves.

Treasure:

• Have magic items be gifts from powerful allies, not loot from enemies (who have an odd penchant for leaving magic cloaks in the closet).
• 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.
• Have magic items' powers reveal themselves to the characters gradually, based on their actions and what they learn about them. Rather than having a Fighter find a +2 sword and ditch his "worthless" +1 sword, he can discover new powers in his original sword with the help of the wizard (or ancient elf, or crotchety dwarf, or talking animal) he rescued.
• Provide treasure with a place in the world: armor once worn by the current king in his youth, works of art by a now-mad mage, historical documents, etc.

Misc. Tips:

• Try a different set of combat rules, like Ken Hood's Grim-n-Gritty Hit Point and Combat Rules or any variant that doesn't keep giving extra hit dice ad infinitum. Instead of increasing hit points, you can increase armor class. This makes magical healing less necessary, even if you keep the heroes at roughly the same power level.
• 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.
• Place the characters in situations that require them to make moral decisions.
• Fixed levels. Just start everyone as heroes (e.g. 7th level) and keep them there.
• Base the game completely around non-combat advancement. E.g. XP for converting the "unsaved" to your religion, or for finding ancient tomes
• Don't assume N gold pieces will get you N gp worth of stuff. No one said you were in an efficient market economy.
• Have no safe haven, no Village of Hommlet, to return to.
• Have the enemy play rough and play smart. Have them use tactics and magic as PCs would.
• Don't match every encounter to the PCs' abilities. If the enemy's caught off guard, they should be vulnerable; if they know what to expect, they shouldn't be.
• Use evocative names -- for characters, places, and magic items. Rune's quasi-oriental setting uses Adjective-Noun-Verb names for men and Noun-Adverb-Verb names for women. Names like "Thorin" were evocative when they were new. Names like "Mad Stone Tumbles" still are.
• Tie the players to the world. If family ties and honor matter, the players will start to behave with filial piety and honor, not as thugs looting from weaker thugs.
• Don't be afraid to alter reality. This is a fantasy game. In Ravenloft, for instance, the Mist can alter time and space. If the seasons change daily, or the landscape moves when you're not looking, you're in a fantastic realm.
• Use fantastic elements to dramatic ends. A Black and White season has no in-game effect, but -- Wow! -- it packs a dramatic punch. What would your players do if it started raining blood? In a fantastic setting, you can go well beyond a mere dark and stormy night.

Great Stuff!!!! (Long Reply)

This is a great thread!

Here is my humble input.

1) All magical weapons are not a +X this this or a Flamebrand that. Rather, they have latent magic that will be shaped by the actions and intents of its bearer.

For example, one PC has an ancient family rapier that has awoken as +1 (he has doled out x amount of total HPs to foes in damage with it over several levels), and it has begun to develop some special properties against undead and outsiders (the PC is intentionally seeking these out, and using his rapier to try to destroy not only his adversaries, but their items--he skewered a symobol of an evil deity on a magical pouch that held magic crystals last time--this is all based on some dreams he had while healing from some nasty magic thrown by a sorcerer thought long dead).


2) There are no wizards. The Strictures of Known Magic, because of a great wizard who perverted formal magic in becoming A'Al'An, the Eater of Magic. From the Texts: Lesser followers, hapless renegade human wizards and Elves, were also banished from the Aelrith, transformed into the Roamers and the Lurkers. Known Magic and the Strictures were so perverted by A’Al’An that any formal Casting, any attempt at following Strictures of Learned and Known Magic left the Caster open to gateways beyond the existence of Aelrith, that could attract Roamers or Lurkers. Roamers pass through the Aelrith, hungering eternally for Known Magic to sustain them. It is their hope that in finding and devouring enough Known Magic they can form themselves once again into the Plane of Aelrith. The Lurkers are as the Roamers, but bound to the specific place where they were defeated. The Aelrith is ancient, so many such places are no longer recognizable, and may be now under cities, in groves of trees, under water, in ruins, or perhaps exist as stonework in standing buildings, waiting for the Hunger to awake at a Casting.
We know that Divine power through faith and practice is beyond the reach of the Roamers and Lurkers, as are those whose ancestry grants them the Talent. We too know that the elemental and basic forces summoned, directed, and melded by Runes do not seem to attract the Roamers or Lurkers. Formal Wizardry is thus a risky thing, but the blood gift of Sorcery is a different matter, as it is spontaneous and forms from different principles than the Strictures, as does the elemental foundation of Runic Casting.

This has led to some interesting specializations, and NPC sorcerer combos, as arcane magic is now much more limited in breadth of possibilities (strike team of sorcerers, each with different spell specializations). It has also led to some interesting scenarios when the PCs have stumbled across an ancient spell-book.

3) Spells are related to personality, and as such, each Caster has a unique utterance and presentation they must make, in campaign time, in order to cast the spell. We get some very vivid and theatrical role-playing here!

4) Divine magic's potency manifests itself in different times of the day, the season, or the moon, so clerics need to consider many factors in their spell selection.

This is a really great thread. I can't wait to read more of what everyone else does!

Ace32:
From my searches, I've found:

Elves - Norse fey

Dark Elves/Dwarves - Borse Evil elves, lived underground, turned to stone by sunlight

Gnomes - Greek elemental spirits, miners

Kobolds - Same as Gnomes

Orc - Sea beast (greek I think)

Giants - Norse barbarians and powerful conquerers

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This isn't really what the thread is about, but I'll indulge here for just a moment (besides, it's late at night for me, and I should be in bed: cut me some slack! )

I'd reorder those as such:

• Elves: just as much Celtic Sidhe as Norse Alf, although the word is very definately an English cognate of alf, and it is probably largely based on native Anglo-saxon elfin folklore.
• Dwarves: again, native Germanic, not so much just Norse. I don't recall that turning to stone was typical in any folklore I read, though. They were often more tricksters in later folklore as well, until Tolkien tried to redefine them based largely on older mythology.
• Gnomes: I don't know that they are elemental. In folklore there is little difference between elfs and gnomes. However, the word gnome is based on an old word meaning knowledge, so gnomes as sages of some kind is not unheard of.
• Kobold: just a germanic linguistic variant of the same word as goblin. Like the original goblins, they were trickster almost poltergeist-like creatures rather than lizards that lived underground. Certainly not much in common with gnomes, as you suggest.
• Orcs: nope, these are really invented by Tolkien in any recognizable form. Likely the word came from a Latin demon named Orcus (sound familiar?) and Tolkien's more immediate source was the use of Orc-neas in Beowulf to indicate 'death-corpses' or some such. Any connection to orcas is coincidental linguistics, not real useful roots searching.
• Giants: I can't think of a mythology or folklore that doesn't feature them. Norse barbarians have nothing to do with them, although jotuns did feature strongly in Norse mythology, at least.

Have no safe haven, no Village of Hommlet, to return to.

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Try the opposite of this - the party isn't a group of adventurers passing through to the next dungeon. The party is the Hommlet village militia suddenly faced with nefarious acts in their own hometown!

The Discworld 'City-Watch' series pretty much captures this style well.

Another variation is to give the PCs a fortress (and perhaps a ttile - Marquis) and then have the peasants start knocking on the door begging for protection from the marauding orcs even while the king is demanding his tax be collected and a dragon has been sited in the mountains to the north!

My alternative (ie the one I use imc) is to have the PCs as leaders of a group of settlers moving into new wilderness.
They have to explore, build a village, fight wild monsters, make sure the harvest comes in, ensure the settlement is protected and the population growing, and decide whether the pig Sporky belongs to Farmer Piper or Farmer Brown.

Gnomes & Orcs

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Gnomes as elementals was an idea put forward by Paracelcius (the Alchemist) - gnomes were far more like brownies and other small barnyard spirits

The Great Sea Ork is actually an old English sea monster (probably a Collusal Abberation)

Mr Gygax also claims that Orc is a word meaning Ogre

NB Tolkien says that Orc is the Hobbitish word for Hobgoblin - so who knows...

Great thread guys. Lots of interesting ideas being passed around.

To me this thread is a breath of fresh air. It is very proactive, seeking to help out fellow gamers. It is a change from the usual General RPG chatter, which seems to revolve around questions.

It is nice to see a thread offering knowledge and advice rather than asking for it.

Good work, this is definitely going into the archives.

Here's a suggestion, if it's not too late:

Instead of having the large, classic gods, use small gods that take the frm of huge beasts, terrain features, or monuments. Clerics can only cast spells if they're in a certain mile raidus of the small god.

I will add a few more:

• Use the barter system. Eliminate currency. This will allow for more role playing interaction and the use of CHA based skills more oftern.
• Have the player characters all be of aquatic races. This makes for a great ocean based campaign.
• Do not have any land masses on a world composed entirelry of ocean. The only floating settlements are constructed by materials found ages ago when land and wood did exist.
• This one I got from my precious Necro board, Have a tavern built on the entrance of the dungeon. Have the bartender charge admission for entering.
• Allow only all weapons of the same type, be it slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning.
• Allow that only certain genders can be spellcasters. fighters, etc., (blatantly stolen from WOT )

Suggestions:

* Travel. Eliminate teleport, whispering wind and such. The easiest way to travel from one village to the next is on horseback. Messages are delivered by the Pony Express.

* Ethereal. Make most magic connected to the ethereal plane. Invisibility won't make you invisible it merely makes you ethereal.

* Status. Introduce the Reputation statistic from Dragon Magazine. Rep=Lvl+Chr bonus+Bluff+Diplomacy+Intimidate.

* Honor. Use the Reputation statistic from above but substitute Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate for more (in your world) honorable skills. Such as Ride, Profession (Painting) and Perform (Poet).

In my Middle-earth campaign (and my homebrew that I'm developing) I use Wheel of Time classes, and homebrew Star Wars based spell-casters. I include Vitality Points and Wound Points, and include the Star Wars and WoT style defense bonus. Armor is restricted to "Dark Ages" stuff, so splint, banded and plate are out. However, you can get heavy armor by adding an extra scale or mail cuirass over your other armor, in a move stolen from Oriental Adventures. Advancement in level is not based on XP, but rather something similar to The Wheel of Time in which "adventure completion" is the yardstick of advancement, rather than creatures killed. All of these add up to a less super-heroic, darker and slightly grimmer feel.

As for non-mechanical changes, I rarely have my players fight "monsters" per se; their opponents are almost exclusively classed human(oid)s, I almost never go into dungeons, and I like to remove the paradigm that PCs are free-lance "adventurers" instead making them agents of some kind of the local lord, magistrate, church, guild, etc. with some responsibilities as well as opportunities for excitement.

I think those qualify as "little changes with big flavor."

I thought I'd flesh out alignment a bit more. Consider these "little changes":

• Remove alignments.
• Use Good and Evil or Law and Chaos.
• Divvy up the world into two sides with each considering itself Good and the other Evil.
• Track alignment as carefully as hit points. Use Pendragon-style trait pairs, but just use two: Lawful/Chaotic and Good/Evil.
• Use all 13 Pendragon trait pairs (Chaste/Lustful through Valorous/Cowardly), and divvy them up between two mega-trait pairs: Lawful/Chaotic and Good/Evil.
• Use alignment only for Outsiders, Clerics, and Paladins.
• Don't tell the players that their characters' Detect Evil powers are purely delusional. Let them play religious fanatics who feel justified by their "divinely revealed" knowledge. Optionally, after enough wholesale slaughter, let them know the truth.