Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 8339070" data-attributes="member: 7023840">By understanding the issue and the history, you answer your question.The first two are where I see some challenges pop up. When the PCs should have their own stakes in what is going on, but they also should be free agents and wildcards, how do you set up the hook to get them involved in the first place?Traditionally, S&S in D&D is accomplished pretty simply- to quote Goodman Games:The protagonists in sword-and-sorcery fiction are most often thieves, mercenaries, or barbarians struggling not for worlds or kingdoms, but for their own gain or mere survival. They are rebels against authority, skeptical of civilization and its rulers and adherents. While the strengths and skills of sword-and-sorcery heroes are romanticized, their exploits take place on a very different stage from one where lovely princesses, dashing nobles, and prophesied saviors are cast as the leads. Sword-and-sorcery heroes face more immediate problems than those of questing kings. They are cousins of the lone gunslingers of American westerns and the wandering samurai of Japanese folklore, traveling through the wilderness to right wrongs or simply to earn food, shelter, and coin.In the classic mode, the players are (as you put it) the free agents and the wildcards; put another way, they are mercenaries- sellswords. Their own stake is to continue to earn food, shelter, and coin, especially early on.The "hook" should just be that- the desire of the players to adventure, to make money, to gain for themselves. You don't need to shipwreck them. There is no requirement that they start out at a particular disadvantage.The nature of what they do (and want) provides the course of the campaign; if they take X adventure from Y petty noble, then maybe they anger Z noble, who will then endeavor to make like ... difficult for them. Or maybe Y noble doesn't want to pay them. Or perhaps their renown attracts the attention of others, higher up the foodchain, requiring a quick retreat away from the supposed-homebase that they are in.In other words, the difficulty in understanding your question is because this is already an established method of gameplay that goes to the origins of D&D; to ask "What hook could I possibly come up with for S&S campaigns," seems odd, but perhaps I misunderstand the question you ask. Who knows.</blockquote>

Verification