Shintoesque D&D

[gamerprinter]

I also have the inklings to build an Iron Age Celtic campaign setting, where fey have great importance, and looking at them as animistic spirits works well for that scenario as well.

However, already mentioned in my previous posts, this world view idea fits very closely to how I am currently developing Kaidan. I have contacted Jonathan McAnulty (lead designer, Wicht on these boards) who has been referred to this thread, and we'll be actively developing shaman/priests to serve locationary spirits as the primary spell-casting/powers acquisition mechanic for divine power.

Ideas from this thread are being directly ported into Kaidan as we speak. So you can expect a product available soon (early 2011) using this.

Incidentally the product name is now defined (I like it) as, Kaidan: the Gift and other Tales of Horror. Sounds like an anthology of Japanese horror stories, which in a way, that's exactly what it's intended to be - but stories in the form of adventures.

This thread is definitely helping its development. Thank you.

GP

 

[Zhou Yu]

Star Wars "the force" somewhat does this; spiritual power exists in all things and beings like the jedi and sith know how to use that ability instictively. It likewise can be augmented by areas aligned to the light or the dark side (like the magic tree on Dagobah).

If nothing else, its worth ripping off a few ideas.

The Force is based off of Taoism, however, and not Shinto.

And by 'based off' I mean that Lucas read about it once, got a bunch of the concepts wrong, and made the Force out of that result.

If the OP does D&D 4E, just remove Divine as a power source, like Dark Sun does, and everyone defaults to Primal for their worship. If you need a healer type, the Shaman or the Druid from Essentials makes a great "Primal Cleric Healbot" type.

Otherwise, yeah, pretty much what everyone said can be condensed down to: You're going to need to house rule a lot, or make your own setting.

 

[Shades of Green]

Otherwise, yeah, pretty much what everyone said can be condensed down to: You're going to need to house rule a lot, or make your own setting.

That is exactly my intention: house-rule a lot - maybe even modify Swords and Wizardry or BFRPG to fit my needs - and use my own setting (see my sig).

 

[Shades of Green]

An interesting question is where to draw the line between the Mortal world and the Spirit world. Are all monsters (i.e. creatures that do not exist and have never existed in the real world, not even in smaller versions) supernatural beings, or are they part of nature?

 

[Tuft]

You mean it's possible we can stop Hextor's reign of terror if we just ... give him a hug and get Heironeous to apologize to him? I like it.

There was a thread about guilty pleasures a few days ago, and I must say that a good "Grinch moment" is a big one for me; managing to reach the Big Bad and turn it. Redemption and forgiveness make for real good stories.

I played in a 4ed tryout campaign as a satyr bard ( satyrs replaced tieflings), and a local nobleman fell in love with her. Well, due to a family curse he slowly turned to a ghoul, and his attention got, well, creepier and creepier. To make a long story short, we broke into his
mansion and killed him. Dying in my bard's arms, the curse was lifted, he came to his senses, and he begged for forgiveness, which she gave him with a kiss on his now disfigured face. Then he died. Unfortunately, things went downhill for me after that, but I'll always remember that scene.

 

[Korgoth]

An interesting question is where to draw the line between the Mortal world and the Spirit world. Are all monsters (i.e. creatures that do not exist and have never existed in the real world, not even in smaller versions) supernatural beings, or are they part of nature?

For my Telluria project, I'm saying that the Spirit World intersects the mortal world at the sacred places where gods make their lairs. Spirits (gods, demons and undead) can walk 'sideways' from these places deeper into the Spirit World (I'm writing this for 4EE, so I'm using Eladrin as a race); when an Eladrin (here a half-god; Tieflings are half-demon) uses his racial teleport, he's actually sidestepping through the spirit realm.

If one vetures into the Spirit World (normally impossible for mortals; can be done with the aid of magic or artifacts) the world becomes increasingly extreme: the dark woodland becomes a dark fey realm, the caverns become the blackest pits, mountain peaks ascend into cloud realms, etc. All manner of spirit creatures dwell in these places (both gods and demons; though gods are not tied to locations in this realm) and they likely resent mortal intrusion.

I'm not going to use many humanoid races; I'll probably just use the goblinoids (goblin, hobgoblin and bugbear) and perhaps gnolls. These creatures would have come originally from the Spirit World, where they are lowly serfs. They are not accorded the honorific "Lord" or "Lady" as are the gods and demons. But pretty much all the other critters from the monster book, including "dire" animals, will be gods, demons or undead. The exception are the Far Realm beasties (beholders, illithid, grell, etc.), which are actually from outer space.

It's possible that some of the stranger gods (otyughs, ropers, etc.) are not native to the Spirit World of Telluria, but were able to come there when one or more of the alien beings arrived (such as the illithid, because they're cool).

 

[Meek]

An interesting question is where to draw the line between the Mortal world and the Spirit world. Are all monsters (i.e. creatures that do not exist and have never existed in the real world, not even in smaller versions) supernatural beings, or are they part of nature?

The conception of animism I use for my own setting is a bit weirder, in that the Spirit World and the Mortal World are the same. In fact one could say the mortals all live in the Spirit World, really. There are noticeable differences between what is a Transcendental Being (scholarly in-universe term for a Spirit) and what isn't, that the learned folk have observed. Something like an owlbear is someone schmuck's pointless biology project gone wrong, but all Dragons are Spirits, elementals would be Spirits, and the vast majority of Spirits are humanoid personifications of concepts, and they interact on a pretty daily basis with mortals since most mortals live in rural villages. If you've ever heard of the Touhou project games, it's sort of the same concept, you have people living a stone's throw away from a bamboo forest where a phoenix in human form fights a moon lady all day.

There's also a bunch of creatures that would be "magical beasts" or something in D&D, that in my setting just come from Nature like normal animals do. Stuff like, I dunno, blink dogs. Those aren't some dude's terrible science experiment, they're just the result of the world being so magical that this stuff just exists. The dividing line between "some dude's stupid science experiment" and "native creature" is whether I think it's stupid – owlbears rank pretty high on that .

I do this because in my setting I DO want there to be "mook creatures" that are cooler than normal animals, but aren't taboo to thwack. You don't (or at least I don't) want every single creature to have religious protection, sometimes you need to let players stab something in the face repeatedly and make amulets out of its bones. So in my setting there's clear and definite lines between what constitutes a Spirit, what's some dude's science experiment, and blink dogs, dinosaurs and other monsters.

 

[Shades of Green]

Spirits (gods, demons and undead) can walk 'sideways' from these places deeper into the Spirit World

Can spirits escape combat by fleeing into the Spirit World?

 

[gamerprinter]

Can spirits escape combat by fleeing into the Spirit World?

Why not? It would be like teleporting or something, though it might incur an Attack of Opportunity, if you have the feats for it. If the spirit land is the ethereal plane, than Wraith Strike and similiar could still hit the spirit.

GP

 

[Korgoth]

Can spirits escape combat by fleeing into the Spirit World?

Supposing that we're using a battle mat, I would say that they can run off the map and onto one that PCs can't get to (if they run off the same map edge they're back in the mortal realm). But the sacred area is like a nexus that exists in both the mortal realm and spirit realm at once, so the spirit actually has to hoof it to the map edge to get away (at which point it ducks behind a rock or tree or whatever and is just gone). Demons can do this, but only when they're in one of those areas. Though they're free to travel in the mortal realm, when they're there, they're there and just have to deal with it.

Good question.