Eddings or Fiest D20

[Sandain]

Ah P-Cat, I didn't know you modeled Eversink citizens on the French j/k

Midkemia would make a great source book, as it has all the elements based on classic DnD. Eddings world which featured Sparhawk would be more portable into DnD I think.

I wonder if there would be money in publishing a 3.5 Midkemia PDF in conjunction with the folks at Midkemia press. Hrm.

 

[Samuel Leming]

Apparently Sandain finds something compelling in his work, so how about no more thread crapping?

I don't think I'm out of line, but venting about trash written over 15 years ago isn't doing anybody any good. I may as well tone it down.

I'm not actually trying to comment on the author's work itself, but on how well this sort of repetitive stereotyping lends itself to a nation in D&D. I find that the characteristics in the Belgeriad were emphasized almost to the point of parody, but creating regional feats with such a system in mind is a fantastic tool for a DM.

I do see your point and agree with it. Do you have any concern about how your players will react to blatant stereotypes?

Example: let's say that I want the inhabitants of one of the campaign cities, Eversink, to have aspects such as being political, gossipy, mercantile, knowledgeable about river gossip, and condescending to foreigners. I create a regional feat that adds a penalty (-2 penalty on diplomacy to foreigners) along with some nice benefits (+2 gather info, +2 knowledge (local), +2 bluff.) The resulting feat is somewhat stronger than normal without being able to cripple a campaign, and this will encourage local PCs from Eversink to take it... thus reinforcing the stereotype.

Is Eversink from your own campaign? They're sort of like Edding's drasnians.

I kind of like this idea when you want to characterize a particular race or culture. Sure, it's easy to just say "Everyone is like this," but if you don't create that behavior with game mechanics then I think you lose some verisimillitude.

It's never "everyone" though. The good thing about your regional feat system is that it allows some of your Eversinkers to be different by not taking the feat.

Here's a possible expansion on the idea. The regional feat could provide one standard +2 bonus and the player could then pick two additional bonuses from a set of three to five and select a penalty from a list of one to three choices. This would reinforce the stereotype in the long run without being so, um, stereotypical. Almost more of a kit than a feat. You could stick typical NPC's with the standard regional feat and allow players the expanded choice regional feat. I not sure if it's worth the added complexity.

Eddings world which featured Sparhawk would be more portable into DnD I think.

I agree, particularly in the case of magic. From what I remember most of the magic in the Elenium and Tamuli was of the divine category. Perhaps you could start with the spontaneous divine caster rules from Unearthed Arcana. You could simulate the Church Knights by relaxing the alignment restriction (and how!) on paladins and allowing them to take weapon specialization. Well, it's a start.

Sam

 

[dreaded_beast]

I've read both, but never finished the Feist series, plus it was a long time ago. I remember Edding's a bit better though.

That being said, I agree with Piratecat that the world presented in the Belgariad/Mallorean would be a good place for DMs to use and mine for ideas.

Personally, I enjoyed the whole "racial stereotype" idea presented by Eddings. Barak's people being "barbarians", Silk's people being "thieves", Mandorallen's people being "knights", etc. IMO, that could be translated into "favored" class for that particular race, regional feats, etc.

I've always liked the idea of a group of heroes who all have a particular speciality that serves a major purpose later on in the story.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Given that Midkemia originated in D&D (albeit OD&D) it's a pretty easy conversion. Perhaps someone will pick up Midkemia D20 one of these days.

As far as Song of Ice and Fire goes -- it was featured in Dragon a year or two back, though I can't remember which issue.

 

[BelXiror]

Feists Midkemia IS his homebrew.

Apparently it's a house ruled to the hilt 1st ed game, and that all the players get a commission from the books, as there pretty much what happened in game.

one guys who wrote Amber diceless went to a Con I attended, and stayed in the same house as I did. He apparetly worked pretty closely with Feist at times.

Feist likes to brag he has money, or so he said ;p

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I think material based on Eddings work would be great. I really think he has something of a cult following.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Feist had a couple of game books.

Jonril

Carse

Tulan

There is a website that talks about this stuff.

Start throwing rocks at them to remind them of the d20 license. Every time i mention it, I get told that d20 couldn't handle their magic system as opposed to licenses like Elric, Wheel of Time, Conan, Lone Wolf, etc....

 

[Piratecat]

I do see your point and agree with it. Do you have any concern about how your players will react to blatant stereotypes?

In truth, it's a lot like having "fighter" as the dwarf's favored class. It doesn't lock you into a character concept, but enough PCs and NPCs lean that way that it helps support the popular image of the race anyways.

Is Eversink from your own campaign? They're sort of like Edding's drasnians.

Eversink is indeed; a two year highly political section of my campaign was set there. It's a swampy city similar to Venice that is always sinking by a few inches a year. Most buildings add on to the roof when the lower story gets inundated, and their style of architecture is largely unique. I filed the serial numbers off WFRP's Marienburg (by Anthony Ragan), but none of my players mind.

Here's a possible expansion on the idea. The regional feat could provide one standard +2 bonus and the player could then pick two additional bonuses from a set of three to five and select a penalty from a list of one to three choices. This would reinforce the stereotype in the long run without being so, um, stereotypical.

I really like this idea. You don't have to assign the feat to many NPCs as long as you play some of them with the typical traits of the area. Meanwhile, PCs have flexibility in customizing their character. In order to minimize power gaming you'd have to make sure that all the penalty skills were "created equal," but otherwise this could work quite well.

 

[Samuel Leming]

I think material based on Eddings work would be great. I really think he has something of a cult following.

Looks like I've been out-voted. Hope that's the last time that happens today.

In truth, it's a lot like having "fighter" as the dwarf's favored class. It doesn't lock you into a character concept, but enough PCs and NPCs lean that way that it helps support the popular image of the race anyways.

Sure, but your regional feats are good for representing the cultural influences on a character and the racial favored class seems geared toward modeling the innate talents of that race.

I really like this idea. You don't have to assign the feat to many NPCs as long as you play some of them with the typical traits of the area. Meanwhile, PCs have flexibility in customizing their character. In order to minimize power gaming you'd have to make sure that all the penalty skills were "created equal," but otherwise this could work quite well.

I can see at least four additional ways you can go with this.

First:
Your regional feat is a standard skills feat with an extra +2 bonus & -2 penalty. You could just cut off the extras and apply them separately as a sort of cultural mini-template. This allows you at least two advantages that I can see initially. The more exotic cultures could have two or three bonus/penalty pairs. Piling more than one bonus/penalty pair into a feat would get crufty, but it's no problem for a template. The second advantage is it frees up that starting feat and still allows you to add that cultural flavor.

Second:
Same as above, but add variety as per my first suggestion in the other post. Pick one to three from cultural bonus list A and the same number from cultural penalty list B.

Third:
Take this to it's logical extreme and introduce an advantage/disadvantage system like in some other games. You can give each merit and penalty a point value for balance purposes. If you take some combination of advantages that add up to five point you have to match them with some combination of disadvantages worth five points. This way the number of bonuses and penalties don't have to match, just their values. You can aggregate these to create cultural packages or kits. Using the cultural packages you can give the players a one or two point bonus on the merit side and balance it against something like "Known Eversinker." Or give them an extra penalty if being a know Eversinker is a good thing. I'm not that warm on this entire option, since it adds an extra layer that can be handled in other ways. It's just not D&D, but maybe it's right for some games.

Fourth:
For NPC's only you can make a special first level cultural character class that packages up the stereotype. Instead of first level commoners you could have first level Eversinkers. If they need more than one level slap on additional commoner or expert levels since they've already received all their cultural traits at first level. I suspect this is really a degenerate case of the mini-template approach since you could build this by applying the template to an existing NPC class. But maybe not, since you're dealing with NPC's you can go with a slightly non-balanced approach.

So now we have at least six (untested) ways to handle applying cultural stereotypes.

There's always going to be some min/maxing but in many ways that will further promote stereotypes. Rangers and barbarians will come from areas that allow survival bonuses, rogues will come from regions that give sneaky bonuses, etc...

Of course, none of this really represents how things work in an Eddings Bubbaworld, where the right side has mainly bonuses and the wrong side has mainly penalties.

Sam

 

[Umbra]

The shallow racial stereotypes mentioned by Piratecat didn't appeal to me.

Eddings and Eddings have always said that they took character archetypes and used them in the Belgariad and Mallorean. Knowing that, I can have fun reading the books. It's like going into a movie knowing certain types are going to be played with (Kill Bill, Unbreakable, etc). That's what makes the movies fun.

I think I've posted before about GURPS Uplift, a source book set in David Brin's Uplift universe (some great sci fi books). They have a range of continuums you can use to determine alien species generic 'personality types'. So a species falls somewhere on the continuum of xenophobes to xenophiles, passive to aggressive, etc (I'll check the details once I'm home and post later). They can be very useful for the broadstrokes of race/culture design.