GobHag
Adventurer
My view is that WotC should have made a world that better allows putting in some weirdo species. Golarion does it by basically having several different genre settings as locations.
D&D General 5e System Redesign through New Classes and Setting. A Thought Experiment.
- Thread starter Steampunkette
- Start date
The only people who can do that are WotC because it's their intellectual property.All the more reason then for someone to make Toril's sister planet of Abeir into an actual setting.
And they're not going to do it because it would be direct competition for the Remembered Realms.
Ehhh... sure? But that requires forethought some 50ish years in advance for some settings. And for some settings it just doesn't work at all because the setting itself is genre-specific. Like the aforementioned Dark Sun. Having a fancy gothic horror portion of the setting with feasts and balls and vampires just doesn't fit in such a setting.
But it is, absolutely, a great way to handle a Kitchen Sink setting.
Corinnguard
Hero
Maybe? The Remembered Realms
has had something of a headstart. It's almost as old as D&D itself. The earliest version of the setting that I am aware of debuted back in 2e. Besides, isn't it the setting competing already with the newer kid on the block, Eberron? Also, a setting based off of Abeir would make for another good thought experiment.
What would it be like compared to the Remembered Realms? Abeiran Warlocks would have Primordials as Patrons. Magic would work differently on Abeir since there is no Weave for Arcane spellcasters and No Deities for Divine spellcasters.
Yes, it is! And also no it isn't. There's overlap, there.Maybe? The Remembered Realms
Any setting WotC puts out is going to result in -some- playerbase splitting. As people who want to play in an Eberron campaign and people who want to play in an FR campaign won't be sitting down at the same table to play together in Forgotten Eberron or something. But Eberron and FR have a lot of different niches for how they're designed and narrated, the kinds of adventures each has and the theming. So there's something specific to each that is unique and attracts a different crowd, drawing more people into D&D from different types of adventurers.
Abeir would be a specific expansion of the FR setting. Same as Maztica and Al-Qadim.
Also with a quick glance: AD&D 1e had the first FR adventures and stuff.
And you'd likely only see it, in the 5e model, if they completely rewrote it to take out most of what makes it different from Toril. Like the lack of a Weave or connection to Deities making Wizards and Clerics and the like not an option. Or the lack of Elves and Fae. All kinds of stuff that separates it out would just get wiped away in favor of making things as close to "Core" as possible.Also, a setting based off of Abeir would make for another good thought experiment.
Which means as close to Toril as possible.
And therein lies my big conundrum about WotC's current design strictures. They're going to make everything just a little worse to ensure the core structure of the game remains unchanged, rather than using changes to the core structure of the game to introduce differences and challenges. It truly sucks...
Corinnguard
Hero
Yet another reason for me to like Level Up.
The underlying general problems of internet discussion combine poorly with our tendency to over-specify our identities.
It occurs to me - you know how we find that actual long-term exposure to people of other nationalities and cultures tends to relieve people of racist attitudes?
Perhaps the same applies to gaming. Like, this year alone, I have played or run TTRPGs in at least a dozen systems, and that's not counting my live-action gaming, or my RPG-adjacent board gaming. Sure, I have my preferences, but I don't have any need to rip anyone's rhetorical throat out over different desires of play.
TwoSix
Bad DM
What would be nice is if people could treat their gaming preferences less like an identity and more like food preferences.
For most people, just because Indian food (as an example) might be your favorite, doesn't mean you won't go out with your friends to have Italian food.
I'm not saying you should play a game you hate just to play. But people should be more open to playing the game that's in front of them and simply embracing what it's good at, rather than being annoyed at its flaws.
Play more games, for shorter times, rather than trying to find the one perfect group for your one perfect game to run for 5 years.
As I roast a spatchcocked turkey in the oven, I am considering what kind of adventure would best suit such a setting and style. And I am forced to admit, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the episodic structure of the 80s shows would actually make a really great way to handle things and help to give the setting a Dark Sun sort of feeling.
Specifically:
Write the adventure as a series of smaller self-contained stories with lingering threads.
You go to X location which has a very specific style/feel. Whether that's pirate coves or bandit badlands or thick jungles or snowcapped peaks. You meet a fresh cast of characters dealing with a specific threat in that region which is tied to the overall plot in a fairly vague manner, and introduces important characters who can show up later to lend a hand in a bigger confrontation. The setting's traditional villains are also present as rivals with similar goals that you have to deal with. Whether by working together or racing to the objective or just fighting them.
For example helping a group of Wod elves fight against the Wrought and dismantle an Iron Tower before the plague takes the entire village. Perhaps a few of those characters stick out but most of them are pretty traditional background and expository characters. Malevar the Eternal has sent some of his minions to claim the Iron Tower so he can take it apart and learn more about the Iron Plague. Whether he's doing that to specifically stop it or just take control of it for himself is up in the air. So you have to fight the Wrought, fight some recognizable NPCs who then retreat, and deal with the problem over the course of 2-3 sessions, each with 4-5 encounters (NPC conversations, exploration challenges, and environmental hazards. Not just combat encounters).
And at the end of the specific episode, you leave and head forward into the next adventure area: The Jungles of the Beastmen. There you deal with a different threat from the aliens. A Crashed Ship. And they're in the process of using the materials from the ship to build an Iron Tower so there's no Wrought present, but it's a potential threat. Malevar's minions show up to try and steal technology from the ship and you have to confront them. Again, 2-3 sessions with several encounters each, fighting against the minions to keep them from achieving their goals, and making some new friends among the Beastmen.
Episode 3 sees you head off to the west coast to seek the help of a group of Pirates who have been Wrought but have learned to stop the plague from taking their minds, introducing the Wrought as a player species template thing. The pirates, however, aren't -good guys-. And even though they're not in service to the aliens they're using their technology to raid along the coastline and kill people. So your goal for this episode is purely 'defeat the pirates'. And guess what? Malevar's minions are there, too. And -their- goal is just to defeat the pirates. So instead of fighting there's an opportunity to grudgingly ally to fight against the threat! And it's the same named minion from Episode 1. Woo!
Episode 4 is -just- about Malevar. With the scraps that he's gathered from his minions various defeats, and the pirates off his back, he specifically makes an attempt on the lives of the characters! While recovering in your home base you're suddenly placed into a siege situation by a small army of Malevar's minions. Including the ones you had to grudgingly work with in the last episode! Only now they're not -entirely- certain of their own loyalties and want to help you, maybe... or they could be luring you into a trap. Social encounters! Mass combat! Red and Blue Lasers! The siege, of course, is broken by the end of the episode, and heroes and villains are put back on the side where they belong. Cameo roles taken up by Pirates, Beastmen, and Wod Elves from the first three episodes.
And on and on and on. All the way exploring new lands, getting new allies, learning information, and building up towards some big confrontations!
This structure gives us some big benefits...
1) Explores the setting without just being a setting book.
You introduce new locations, new characters, and new cultures the entire way through. Players take on the role of both hero and audience in an episodic campaign as they're shown, not told, what the setting is like. You get to see how the Pirates of Murkwater work to fight against the other dangers of the sea and the Dread Pirate Wroughtberts or whoever. You get to know how the Wod Elves are different from the Eyre Elves when you have entirely different encounters with each.
2) Keeps the environments fresh and varied.
By moving around, sometimes massive distances, between the episodes we provide players with a new and fairly constant source of interesting changes and challenges. You don't get too used to one specific location, though you'll probably return to Castle LeadCranium at the end of every episode to tell people what you saw and take some downtime between adventures.
3) Loads the Cameo Gun.
Some of the best episodes of television involve the heroes calling upon people they've worked with, or even fought, in the past. That also applies to TTRPGs. Think of how important it is to the players and audience of Critical Role when someone they loved, or even hated, shows up months later to help or hinder the party. By having a variety of NPCs scattered across the world who will come when the heroes need their help, you've got that gun cocked and loaded for the final confrontation.
4) Brings -some- antagonists along for the ride, without them being the real threat.
Everyone either loves or hates the comic where the superhero has no choice but to team up with the supervillain in order to oppose some greater threat. And you've got that, here, as a fairly consistent piece of play. But you also get to play Redeemer if you want, and there's plenty of room for angst and even romance for the games that wanna go the Princesses of Power direction for it.
5) Allows us to play with modern topics through allegory.
Slap some material in about the Iron Plague using up copious amounts of water and turning people's brains to mush while taking out their artistic creativity and so on and so forth and look it's an AI Allegory through alien invasion. Yaaaaay! Some people will absolutely hate this, of course. Others will love it. And, of course, since it has nothing to do with minority portrayal there probably won't be a big backlash against politics in gaming. (Though since minority portrayal will be a part of the setting because obviously, there will probably be backlash about -that-...)
6) Brings back some Old School Feel
A lot of actual old school games were a DM either getting ahold of 5-6 different adventures and running them back to back in essentially a random order, or writing various little nuggets of adventures based on the TV shows or movies of the day, resulting in a fairly disjointed play experience with very rarely any kind of connecting thread. This was so popular, in fact, people would take the same character from table to table to play in various games and the adventures, there, before returning to a different table. Often going between campaign settings entirely. This wouldn't be a perfect recreation of that, but there'd be some of the feels.
7) It makes people creating their own material in the world infinitely easier.
With adventures treated like episodes, where you don't need a big continuing plotline because there is already an overarching plot of the world, making a new one is as easy as putting together 12-15 encounters in some new area you made up whole cloth and running with it. You wanna add a whole new species to the setting? Design an adventure where you meet them and they now exist as a part of the world.
And some big downsides...
1) Disjointed Feeling.
Without a consistent location or setting, individual episodes may feel disjointed or disconnected. You might be solving a problem for the Wod Elves, but you're not actually ending the fight against the Aliens or against Malevar the Eternal. In fact, it may result in the feeling that you're just running around trying to solve other people's problems instead of taking care of your own. Especially if Castle SilverDome gets attacked multiple times over the course of the campaign.
2) Lack of consistent NPCs
Sure, you're meeting a few specific characters in each adventure that stand out and may become relatively important at some later point down the line, but you don't really have a ton of time to get to know them and make deep connections along the way. That may be somewhat mitigated by the returns to your home base at Castle SlateBraincase or whatever, but it is a persistent problem that may need to be addressed by having some of the NPCs you meet along the way temporarily join the party, or even become permanent allies at Castle AshNoggin.
But since the turkey is done I'm gonna leave off, here, and deal with that.
Do you have any thoughts about this kind of thing? Pros, cons, things you love, things you hate?
Specifically:
Write the adventure as a series of smaller self-contained stories with lingering threads.
You go to X location which has a very specific style/feel. Whether that's pirate coves or bandit badlands or thick jungles or snowcapped peaks. You meet a fresh cast of characters dealing with a specific threat in that region which is tied to the overall plot in a fairly vague manner, and introduces important characters who can show up later to lend a hand in a bigger confrontation. The setting's traditional villains are also present as rivals with similar goals that you have to deal with. Whether by working together or racing to the objective or just fighting them.
For example helping a group of Wod elves fight against the Wrought and dismantle an Iron Tower before the plague takes the entire village. Perhaps a few of those characters stick out but most of them are pretty traditional background and expository characters. Malevar the Eternal has sent some of his minions to claim the Iron Tower so he can take it apart and learn more about the Iron Plague. Whether he's doing that to specifically stop it or just take control of it for himself is up in the air. So you have to fight the Wrought, fight some recognizable NPCs who then retreat, and deal with the problem over the course of 2-3 sessions, each with 4-5 encounters (NPC conversations, exploration challenges, and environmental hazards. Not just combat encounters).
And at the end of the specific episode, you leave and head forward into the next adventure area: The Jungles of the Beastmen. There you deal with a different threat from the aliens. A Crashed Ship. And they're in the process of using the materials from the ship to build an Iron Tower so there's no Wrought present, but it's a potential threat. Malevar's minions show up to try and steal technology from the ship and you have to confront them. Again, 2-3 sessions with several encounters each, fighting against the minions to keep them from achieving their goals, and making some new friends among the Beastmen.
Episode 3 sees you head off to the west coast to seek the help of a group of Pirates who have been Wrought but have learned to stop the plague from taking their minds, introducing the Wrought as a player species template thing. The pirates, however, aren't -good guys-. And even though they're not in service to the aliens they're using their technology to raid along the coastline and kill people. So your goal for this episode is purely 'defeat the pirates'. And guess what? Malevar's minions are there, too. And -their- goal is just to defeat the pirates. So instead of fighting there's an opportunity to grudgingly ally to fight against the threat! And it's the same named minion from Episode 1. Woo!
Episode 4 is -just- about Malevar. With the scraps that he's gathered from his minions various defeats, and the pirates off his back, he specifically makes an attempt on the lives of the characters! While recovering in your home base you're suddenly placed into a siege situation by a small army of Malevar's minions. Including the ones you had to grudgingly work with in the last episode! Only now they're not -entirely- certain of their own loyalties and want to help you, maybe... or they could be luring you into a trap. Social encounters! Mass combat! Red and Blue Lasers! The siege, of course, is broken by the end of the episode, and heroes and villains are put back on the side where they belong. Cameo roles taken up by Pirates, Beastmen, and Wod Elves from the first three episodes.
And on and on and on. All the way exploring new lands, getting new allies, learning information, and building up towards some big confrontations!
This structure gives us some big benefits...
1) Explores the setting without just being a setting book.
You introduce new locations, new characters, and new cultures the entire way through. Players take on the role of both hero and audience in an episodic campaign as they're shown, not told, what the setting is like. You get to see how the Pirates of Murkwater work to fight against the other dangers of the sea and the Dread Pirate Wroughtberts or whoever. You get to know how the Wod Elves are different from the Eyre Elves when you have entirely different encounters with each.
2) Keeps the environments fresh and varied.
By moving around, sometimes massive distances, between the episodes we provide players with a new and fairly constant source of interesting changes and challenges. You don't get too used to one specific location, though you'll probably return to Castle LeadCranium at the end of every episode to tell people what you saw and take some downtime between adventures.
3) Loads the Cameo Gun.
Some of the best episodes of television involve the heroes calling upon people they've worked with, or even fought, in the past. That also applies to TTRPGs. Think of how important it is to the players and audience of Critical Role when someone they loved, or even hated, shows up months later to help or hinder the party. By having a variety of NPCs scattered across the world who will come when the heroes need their help, you've got that gun cocked and loaded for the final confrontation.
4) Brings -some- antagonists along for the ride, without them being the real threat.
Everyone either loves or hates the comic where the superhero has no choice but to team up with the supervillain in order to oppose some greater threat. And you've got that, here, as a fairly consistent piece of play. But you also get to play Redeemer if you want, and there's plenty of room for angst and even romance for the games that wanna go the Princesses of Power direction for it.
5) Allows us to play with modern topics through allegory.
Slap some material in about the Iron Plague using up copious amounts of water and turning people's brains to mush while taking out their artistic creativity and so on and so forth and look it's an AI Allegory through alien invasion. Yaaaaay! Some people will absolutely hate this, of course. Others will love it. And, of course, since it has nothing to do with minority portrayal there probably won't be a big backlash against politics in gaming. (Though since minority portrayal will be a part of the setting because obviously, there will probably be backlash about -that-...)
6) Brings back some Old School Feel
A lot of actual old school games were a DM either getting ahold of 5-6 different adventures and running them back to back in essentially a random order, or writing various little nuggets of adventures based on the TV shows or movies of the day, resulting in a fairly disjointed play experience with very rarely any kind of connecting thread. This was so popular, in fact, people would take the same character from table to table to play in various games and the adventures, there, before returning to a different table. Often going between campaign settings entirely. This wouldn't be a perfect recreation of that, but there'd be some of the feels.
7) It makes people creating their own material in the world infinitely easier.
With adventures treated like episodes, where you don't need a big continuing plotline because there is already an overarching plot of the world, making a new one is as easy as putting together 12-15 encounters in some new area you made up whole cloth and running with it. You wanna add a whole new species to the setting? Design an adventure where you meet them and they now exist as a part of the world.
And some big downsides...
1) Disjointed Feeling.
Without a consistent location or setting, individual episodes may feel disjointed or disconnected. You might be solving a problem for the Wod Elves, but you're not actually ending the fight against the Aliens or against Malevar the Eternal. In fact, it may result in the feeling that you're just running around trying to solve other people's problems instead of taking care of your own. Especially if Castle SilverDome gets attacked multiple times over the course of the campaign.
2) Lack of consistent NPCs
Sure, you're meeting a few specific characters in each adventure that stand out and may become relatively important at some later point down the line, but you don't really have a ton of time to get to know them and make deep connections along the way. That may be somewhat mitigated by the returns to your home base at Castle SlateBraincase or whatever, but it is a persistent problem that may need to be addressed by having some of the NPCs you meet along the way temporarily join the party, or even become permanent allies at Castle AshNoggin.
But since the turkey is done I'm gonna leave off, here, and deal with that.
Do you have any thoughts about this kind of thing? Pros, cons, things you love, things you hate?
Last edited:
In case anyone's curious how the bird came out:
Everything under the wire grill is diced aromatics and turkey drippings.
Everything under the wire grill is diced aromatics and turkey drippings.
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