Brainstorming Potential Underworld Campaign

[Dannyalcatraz]

I wasn’t saying that. I was just saying that the murderhobos cliche is primarily the fault of players being too lazy to invest time in creating a different kind of PC background.

A hedge fantasy campaign/RPG might rectify some of that, or it may simply be complicit in causing a train wreck when such players:

1) decide not to play
2) try to play, and disconnect due to not meshing with the setting
3) design murderhobos anyway, causing predictable disruption

IOW, it comes back to how well do you know your player and what they prefer to play. I ran a supers game back in the 1990s that is still my personal gold standard as to how a campaign can come together with player buy-in, good story, etc. We had ONE player who joined the group for a single adventure, but his #3 style PC didn’t fit, so he left and never returned. (Plus, I didn’t handle it well in game, so some of the blame is mine.) I ran that campaign for [MENTION=6749508]18[/MENTION] months.

When I tried to run a campaign in that same world in a different city with different players a decade+ later, it completely fizzled after a half dozen sessions, largely due to problems #1 & 2, and one paricular player who fell into #3.

With the right storyline, I probably could have run a hedge fantasy campaign with that first group, and if I couldn’t, it would probably be my fault. But that second group? I can think of a couple who would go for it, but the rest would be disinterested or disruptive.

 

[Eltab]

3e Power of Faerun includes a chapter about claiming a chunk of wilderness and trying to civilize it (with the PCs becoming the local nobles of course).
You could work up the area around your 'hearth fantasy' campaign.

P.S. I usually design my characters as merchant wannabees, but being the Local Hero sounds interesting too - one of the first RPGs I bought was Gamma World.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

3e Power of Faerun includes a chapter about claiming a chunk of wilderness and trying to civilize it (with the PCs becoming the local nobles of course).
You could work up the area around your 'hearth fantasy' campaign.

Ah! A colonization-themed hearth fantasy could really work! Whether they’re pioneering souls or people imprisoned/abandoned on an island, there’s ample, concrete reasons why there’s little or no outside help coming, why no one leaves for the big city, why teamwork is still needed (even by murderhobos), etc., and a neverending source of new threats.

I usually design my characters as merchant wannabees...

Excellent non-murderhobo backckground, even at the hearth fantasy level. Merchants- even local ones- need resources and things to sell that the citizens aren’t necessarily going to be willing or able to gather on their own.

I mean, even the village smith needs ores to smelt. Everyone needs a variety of woods for tools, building materials and as a fuel source. People need their grains milled, their furs tanned and their textiles made or mended.

 

[Aldarc]

I wasn’t saying that. I was just saying that the murderhobos cliche is primarily the fault of players being too lazy to invest time in creating a different kind of PC background.

A hedge fantasy campaign/RPG might rectify some of that, or it may simply be complicit in causing a train wreck when such players:

1) decide not to play
2) try to play, and disconnect due to not meshing with the setting
3) design murderhobos anyway, causing predictable disruption

My apologies then. However, I only agree with you to an extent, and this time I find your thoughts unhelpful, if not counterproductive. And one reason may be you latching a little too hard on one sentence regarding hearth fantasy, namely where I myself overly simplistically described it as being somewhat anti-murderhobo fantasy. It's kinda missing the bigger description of hearth fantasy while fixating on something that I could have easily removed (and, in retrospect, probably should have) from my overview. But this is an issue of emphasis. The point of hearth fantasy is not to avoid being a murderhobo. The greater point of hearth fantasy is the localization and community engagement. The anti-murderhobo-ness is generally a by-product of play incentives.

That said, (1) saying that players can break the game can virtually come across as a meaningless platitude. Of course they can. Sheiße happens. Points #1-3 above could happen in any given game. So saying that a "hedge [sic] fantasy campaign/RPG...may simply be complicit in causing a train wreck" seems unwarranted.

Also, (2) blaming the players is too reductionistic, as it fails to take other agents and factors into account. This also rests on the GM and the ability of the system to support the play experience, especially in terms of incentives. This topic often arises in conversations regarding how various XP systems engender different playstyles. What sorts of play arises from XP rewarded from gold recovered versus XP rewarded from monster kills? Or XP generated from players making 'discoveries,' as per Numenera? That is more system-oriented, but it will influence how players engage the game.

Let's take a look at Blades in the Dark. Your characters have playbooks that connect them to people in the city. They have friends and foes here. Nothing inherently stops players from playing like murderhobos. They can even choose to be a crew of assassins or thugs. But there are several problems with playing this game play like your typical group of murderhobos. Your crew has a base in the city, and you are trying to expand your crew's influence and turf. If you "murderhobo" too brazenly, you will accumulate heat (and countdown clocks) from law enforcement, rival or even allied gangs (you're too dangerous!), and other groups within the city. And then your crew will mostly certainly be in a Sisyphean battle for survival. But this is obviously not catering to a hearth fantasy experience. It's an urban Regent-Victorian crime fantasy. But the point is that the system itself has tools that incentivze some forms of play while providing decentivizes for other forms.

Ah! A colonization-themed hearth fantasy could really work! Whether they’re pioneering souls or people imprisoned/abandoned on an island, there’s ample, concrete reasons why there’s little or no outside help coming, why no one leaves for the big city, why teamwork is still needed (even by murderhobos), etc., and a neverending source of new threats.

It most definitely could work. But it also veers too closely with a game run previously by another GM, which was a D&D game which centered on the party being dumped onto a fairly recent colony on a "new continent" that also served as a prisoner's colony. But it wasn't much of a hearth fantasy at all.

As I introduced before, my idea for a hearth fantasy game would be more akin to a "proto-Celtic" tribe of people living in a small hillfort village. It likely has some overlap in issues that a colonization-themed hearth fantasy would deal with. There is a similar "frontier spirit," though that term would be somewhat anachronistic. There is player/settlement vs. environment, player/settlement vs. supernatural, but also player/settlement vs. other settlements, cultures, etc.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The point of hearth fantasy is not to avoid being a murderhobo. The greater point of hearth fantasy is the localization and community engagement. The anti-murderhobo-ness is generally a by-product of play incentives.

I agree with all of this, but not this...

...blaming the players is too reductionistic, as it fails to take other agents and factors into account. This also rests on the GM and the ability of the system to support the play experience, especially in terms of incentives.

...because in my experience, players who play murderhobos tend to keep playing murderhobos.

And while hearth fantasy reduces the incentives towards murderhoboistic play as a byproduct, the byproduct of murderhoboistic play is extremely antithetical to the core of hearth fantasy.

So if you have players who routine default to playing murderhobos, the local constabulary and other citizens will always be loathe to associate with “Crazy Kev”, and may find it necessary to imprison him or run him off.

Remember the guy I mentioned who did a #3 in the supers game? He made a super sniper gadgeteer with a homemade super sniper rifle...for use in a campaign where the initial setting was an X-Men style private school in a resort town in coastal ENGLAND, a country with notoriously strict gun control laws. The setting was not a secret, but was in fact mentioned verbally and in writing. Yet he was pissed when the police confiscated the weapon while he applied for a license to carry it (which was an option he eschewed in character building). He didn’t even take steps to make the weapon concealable- another available option.

His overall PC build was predictable- he’d been playing setting-appropriate versions of it in D&D, RIFTS and other RPGs for more than a decade at that point. But he completely ignored setting and build options that should have shaped the PC. Nobody else did this. Even players who were known to be in bigger PC design ruts still managed to make characters that conform to the setting expectations. To paraphrase The Terminator, playing murderhobos is what he does. It’s all he does.

A player like that is going to #3 a hearth fantasy like a fish breathes water.

 

[Aldarc]

I agree with all of this, but not this...

...because in my experience, players who play murderhobos tend to keep playing murderhobos.

You make excellent points about how some players have that tendency to play disruptively. But I think that it also important to consider how GM, system, and setting (as per your illustration below) impact how players engage the game.

So if you have players who routine default to playing murderhobos,...

Which I generally do not. That's actually one reason why I pitched the Underworld game - and things connect to the beginning! - because it will give them a chance to play more liberally along those lines, if they were feeling so inclined. The Underworld campaign would also hopefully be a nice mini-setting for one-shots or mini-campaigns.

Remember the guy I mentioned who did a #3 in the supers game? He made a super sniper gadgeteer with a homemade super sniper rifle...for use in a campaign where the initial setting was an X-Men style private school in a resort town in coastal ENGLAND, a country with notoriously strict gun control laws. The setting was not a secret, but was in fact mentioned verbally and in writing. Yet he was pissed when the police confiscated the weapon while he applied for a license to carry it (which was an option he eschewed in character building). He didn’t even take steps to make the weapon concealable- another available option.

His overall PC build was predictable- he’d been playing setting-appropriate versions of it in D&D, RIFTS and other RPGs for more than a decade at that point. But he completely ignored setting and build options that should have shaped the PC. Nobody else did this. Even players who were known to be in bigger PC design ruts still managed to make characters that conform to the setting expectations. To paraphrase The Terminator, playing murderhobos is what he does. It’s all he does.

A player like that is going to #3 a hearth fantasy like a fish breathes water.

Point taken, but this is also pretty downright humorous, particularly the part where it gets confiscated. But when I read this, I can't help but ask why no one bothered to talk to him about this. If it's all he does, and he's disruptive doing it, then why is this recurring problem not being addressed in communication?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

To be fair, it’s not like his prior years of playing variations on a theme were disruptive. They fit just fine everywhere else. It just didn’t fit in THIS campaign,

I did talk to him. Other players did as well. Hell- he should have realized what would happen because he always probably the third most knowledgeable person in the game about supers behind myself and his best friend...because his family had owned a comic book shop.

It all just bounced off of him like water off an umbrella.

At some point, you just have to say okey dokey and let the chips fall.

 

[Aldarc]

Some follow-up:

Most of my initial pitches with my players were done over phone messages. But as of last Friday, I managed to sit down with two of them for more of a brainstorming session about the initial Underworld pitch. They like the Underworld idea, and have expressed an interest in playing it. When I pressed them about system concerns, they basically gave me a blank check to write, giving me the freedom to pick what I best saw fit. As this is not (initially) intended as a full, sprawling story campaign, but as dungeon crawling fun, I decided to have the setting as "system flexible." But there are two primary systems that I now think would work best for my purposes: Cypher System and Black Hack. I am leaning more towards one of these, but I may use both depending on how the group feels. Because it's meant to be a setting that is easy to return to with new stocks of characters for casual play.

Cypher System
The Underworld Campaign is partially built around a motif of dead heroes discovering their prior identities in life. To that end, the Cypher System has a number of neat tricks in its pocket.

Character creation entails an assertion of identity through its "I am a ______ (descriptor) _______ (type) who ________s (focus)" phrasing. This forms a rudimentary basis for an identity that is rooted in how they may initially see themselves as "fresh off the boat" inhabitants of Hades.

Experience Points are also rewarded not for killing monsters, but for discovery. This naturally works well with the idea that these PCs are trying to uncover who they were in life. XP literally represents an experience, or a glimpse thereof, they have uncovered from their lives.

Cyphers provide an opportunity to explore this concept of memory and experience even more by having them represent the players using the last vestiges of memories, experiences, or power from other inhabitants of the Underworld. They may find, for example, the skull of a mage or demon, and then draw upon that power to cast a single-use fireball. Or draw upon the actual memory of a dead legend of the "Off-brand Trojan War" to push their athletic or combat prowess.

Earlier in this thread, I mused about the characters discovering their True Names, and with the Cypher System, I would likely treat this as an Asset. An Asset lowers the difficulty of a task. So they could use this to benefit themselves or even against foes, should they discover their True Names.

The Black Hack
As of now, I am leaning towards Black Hack. The Black Hack is basically an OSR-styled fantasy heartbreaker with modern design elements, with particularly clear influences from the White Hack, 5e D&D, and Beyond the Wall. Character creation is a breeze. The typical six D&D stats, roll in order (switch any two), and pick a class (warrior, thief, wizard, cleric). All skills, saves, attacks, and defenses are an ability check where you roll under your stat to succeed. It also adopts the idea of the Usage Die for keeping track of supplies (e.g., arrows, torches, rations, etc.), which saves on bookkeeping by the players. Monsters are also ranked from level 1 to 10, which sets the difficulty for players. They add or subtract their level difference with the foe to the roll. So I appreciate the relative lightness of the rules. The "PHB" booklet is only 26 pages. And the combined PHB, DMG, and MM is only 124 pages. (Compared to the 293 pages of the 5e PHB alone.)

Much like with the Cypher System, the Experience system is congruent with the design principles of Underworld. To reach Level 2, you need 1 XP; to reach Level 3, you need 2 XP; to reach Level 4, you need 3 XP, and so on. But you only get XP for doing noteworthy things, such as defeating a named villain, recovering an artifact, completing a quest for an NPC, etc. But you also can't level up until you "carouse" others with tales of your exploits that establish you earned that XP. This makes it fairly easy to adjust to Underworld where I may require players to carouse other inhabitants (or some record keeper) about what they did for the XP and what they learned of their lost identity.

The other great thing about Black Hack here that wins it favors: a lot of random tables for encounters, environments, magical effects, traps, etc. This adds a lot of the randomness to the "play to discover the story" play that I am looking for in this game.