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Worlds of Design: How Original Is Your Homebrew?
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<blockquote data-quote="John Dallman" data-source="post: 9309910" data-attributes="member: 6999616"><p>I have several modes of adventure-running, depending on the ambition level and style of the campaign.</p><p></p><p>The last time I ran anything resembling traditional fantasy, the characters were in a police force in a large city. This was inevitably informed by the Night Watch sub-series of Pratchett's <em>Discworld</em> series, but I did not try to adapt any of those plots, because they would not have fitted the government or politics of the city, nor the characters and players. I'm somewhat proud of having had the police force employed by the Thieves' Guild several years before Pratchett published <em>The Colour of Magic.</em> (I've had the city since 1979, but started the police campaign in about 2012).</p><p></p><p>My basic source of plots was exploring the ways that crime would work in a D&D world. For example, someone was murdered, looking like an accident. The murderer expected the victim to simply be buried, and that to be the end of the matter. But the local lord decided to get him raised, which meant the murderer had to arrange for the body to vanish, and <em>that</em> made it look like a crime.</p><p></p><p>One of the campaigns I'm running is "Cold War Pulp" - transplanting some of the styles and idioms of the pulp era to the early 1950s. So far, the cases have involved a psychic who could teleport small amounts of material - which is a big problem when he works in a uranium extraction plant - and strange people from underground stealing wine from the vintners of Burgundy. There will be UFOs, mad scientists, and other things; it won't be as conspiratorial as the X-Files, but many of the strange things will be similar.</p><p></p><p>The other is WWII in India, with magic returning to the world after a long absence. This is a follow-up to a campaign that dealt with the same themes and was mostly set in Europe and North America. This is "secret history" and involves understanding the history enough to slip adventures into the cracks. The course of events will gradually change, and the PCs will get chances to influence that.</p><p></p><p>The genesis of the idea was the realisation by a PC in the Europe/North America campaign that the wide practice of mediative arts in Indian culture and religions meant the country was going to become a magical powerhouse post-war. Any ideas the British may have had about retaining control were laughably deluded. As a working-class Conservative, he wasn't best pleased with this discovery, but the conclusion was inescapable, and denying the facts wasn't going to work.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="John Dallman, post: 9309910, member: 6999616"] I have several modes of adventure-running, depending on the ambition level and style of the campaign. The last time I ran anything resembling traditional fantasy, the characters were in a police force in a large city. This was inevitably informed by the Night Watch sub-series of Pratchett's [I]Discworld[/I] series, but I did not try to adapt any of those plots, because they would not have fitted the government or politics of the city, nor the characters and players. I'm somewhat proud of having had the police force employed by the Thieves' Guild several years before Pratchett published [I]The Colour of Magic.[/I] (I've had the city since 1979, but started the police campaign in about 2012). My basic source of plots was exploring the ways that crime would work in a D&D world. For example, someone was murdered, looking like an accident. The murderer expected the victim to simply be buried, and that to be the end of the matter. But the local lord decided to get him raised, which meant the murderer had to arrange for the body to vanish, and [I]that[/I] made it look like a crime. One of the campaigns I'm running is "Cold War Pulp" - transplanting some of the styles and idioms of the pulp era to the early 1950s. So far, the cases have involved a psychic who could teleport small amounts of material - which is a big problem when he works in a uranium extraction plant - and strange people from underground stealing wine from the vintners of Burgundy. There will be UFOs, mad scientists, and other things; it won't be as conspiratorial as the X-Files, but many of the strange things will be similar. The other is WWII in India, with magic returning to the world after a long absence. This is a follow-up to a campaign that dealt with the same themes and was mostly set in Europe and North America. This is "secret history" and involves understanding the history enough to slip adventures into the cracks. The course of events will gradually change, and the PCs will get chances to influence that. The genesis of the idea was the realisation by a PC in the Europe/North America campaign that the wide practice of mediative arts in Indian culture and religions meant the country was going to become a magical powerhouse post-war. Any ideas the British may have had about retaining control were laughably deluded. As a working-class Conservative, he wasn't best pleased with this discovery, but the conclusion was inescapable, and denying the facts wasn't going to work. [/QUOTE]
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