Terwox
First Post
This is just a little blurb of stuff I decided was the most important and fun from the way I designed my last campaign, where my defunct and short-lived story hour takes place. I'm curious as to whether it's marketable (thinking about selling a way to create a campaign in this fashion for next to nothing as a .pdf, or selling the specific world I created this way as a .pdf, or both, for basically nothing.) Both would be rather short documents. Was thinking of doing something like $2/apiece. Or just doing it free if publishing is too much hassle.
Dream Not-Dream is a very different way to run a campaign, while not using any non-WotC rules, although it does use UA quite a bit. The primary differences are all characters begin as amnesiacs, use an alignment scale that starts at true neutral, with their actions dictating their alignment. The characters begin naked, in the middle of nowhere, on a nearly featureless grassy plain, with next to nothing, except for five weird plot device things. (These "things" could be, for instance: a tattoo of a blue trident with lightning betwine the tines on your forearm, a half-drawn map to anything, an unattached bloody elven ear, a bag of glowing marbles, and a rotten red tabard with a crown on the chest.)
The characters go from there, and any other characters they meet will be similar -- including the NPCs.
At nodes (geographic locations, geography is non-sensical, more later,) people share their dreams when they sleep, assuming dream-selves, and the PCs will likely be a group of "something" in their dreams -- adventurers, dragons, liches, blackguards, paladins, halfling farmers, ogres -- anything. (Generally... something your PCs would have fun playing with a little bit.)
Upon waking, things dream-selves know may be used in the "waking" world -- if you dream of being a red dragon, you might be able to breathe fire -- although you'll take heavy ability burn. (Um, ability burn from the XPH is OGL, right?)
The characters also have their own strange abilities, which slowly come to light as they adventure for knowledge of what they themselves actually are.
It's a way of designing a campaign based on the ideas that your players give you after character creation, and during the first few sessions, and moving with your players in a direction of determining the destinies for their characters.
A couple other tidbits: no deities, clerics cast through philosophy and affinities to their chosen domains. Paladin is a prestige class -- you can't start as lawful good. (A cleric with an alignment domain would either move towards that alignment's domain, or change domains after play.)
Nodes are the system of geography in the world -- the world is a new world, the world is the consciousness and creation of the inhabitants, and the inhabitants are new as well. What put them there is the question, and the answer is generally "the PCs did, directly or indirectly" in the end.
Nodes are bits of geography that are being shaped by the inhabitants -- the world is a featureless grassy plain (or water, or ice, or dirt, or whatnot, of course,) and nodes are places where this is not true -- castles, tiny encampments, dungeons, caves, giant turnips full of formians -- anything is possible.
Ask questions if you want, I played through a campaign this way, and it was extremely successful.
The only problem is that I think what was fun for ME, would not necessarily be fun for someone else -- and also that it would not translate well into a product. I'm not even sure if it's a sound design strategy, and the way I designed the game was not for every player, (every encounter I designed involved ways to "win" besides direct combat besides a small minority, although direct combat certainly and enjoyably happened.)
It certainly worked for me -- a lot -- and I was curious if you ENWorlders would think it could work for you -- or could work for anybody.
I know it's basically a campaign setting book, except that it's really quite useless if you're not using the campaign full force -- in general -- except for maybe the rules about assuming the aspects of your dream selves. (I used recharging action points and ability burn from the XPH after some fiddling, it worked pretty well.)
I tried to fly in the face of a lot of design aspects -- also important is the fact that the PCs are always within a level or two of the most powerful thing on the world -- everything on the world is born new and weak, and though it is learning quickly, so are the PCs. (The world creates more power as the inhabitants create more power, etc.)
Or maybe I should simply release the rules for assuming the aspects of your dream-selves, and how adventuring through collective dreams as different people works... that was really incredible fun, and it gives the DM a reason to "try something a little extremely different" that can easily be forgotten if it isn't entertaining.
So, should I bother, or would it be wasted effort?
Please note if it wouldn't be fun for your to design/DM, or if it wouldn't be fun to play for you. And please ask questions -- it's a sketchy world, after all, and a little weird to describe in brief, I feel like I'm forgetting something important. (For instance, Umm, characters had to create all their items, including magic ones, components that were in affinity to their items had an increased GP cost -- there was also no gold in the campaign, dead creatures or pieces of willing live creatures provided the GP cost to create magic items, and "correct" implementation gave more gold. For instance, a cat's claw would be worth 10gp or so, but worth 15 gp if used in a dex boosting item. (cat's grace.) A firebreathing dire lion would be worth more, depending on its CR. That's part of the system that needed, umm, more fine tuning, although it could be decided rather easily from treasure tables and conversions.)
Chuckle, I have the sad idea that this is one of those zany posts people will look at, go "uhhh, yeah, it's another hairbrained idea, laugh" and go on their merry way.
But, I guess I'd rather know that before the fact, rather than after.
Like I said, any questions, fire away. I'm not too scared of revealing too much of the product or whatnot, I'm mainly considering releasing this for free, if people are interested. Otherwise, why bother, unless I plan on running a different campaign with this setup anytime soon? (I'm happy with my current setup, where the PCs ascended to be the greek fates, [that's the way the players pushed their characters, and it worked out pretty cool,] and I'm currently trying to figure out how to run something fun on this world with Divine Rank 0 characters, or whether I should just call it a finished campaign. But I'm moved away from the group, sigh.)
Dream Not-Dream is a very different way to run a campaign, while not using any non-WotC rules, although it does use UA quite a bit. The primary differences are all characters begin as amnesiacs, use an alignment scale that starts at true neutral, with their actions dictating their alignment. The characters begin naked, in the middle of nowhere, on a nearly featureless grassy plain, with next to nothing, except for five weird plot device things. (These "things" could be, for instance: a tattoo of a blue trident with lightning betwine the tines on your forearm, a half-drawn map to anything, an unattached bloody elven ear, a bag of glowing marbles, and a rotten red tabard with a crown on the chest.)
The characters go from there, and any other characters they meet will be similar -- including the NPCs.
At nodes (geographic locations, geography is non-sensical, more later,) people share their dreams when they sleep, assuming dream-selves, and the PCs will likely be a group of "something" in their dreams -- adventurers, dragons, liches, blackguards, paladins, halfling farmers, ogres -- anything. (Generally... something your PCs would have fun playing with a little bit.)
Upon waking, things dream-selves know may be used in the "waking" world -- if you dream of being a red dragon, you might be able to breathe fire -- although you'll take heavy ability burn. (Um, ability burn from the XPH is OGL, right?)
The characters also have their own strange abilities, which slowly come to light as they adventure for knowledge of what they themselves actually are.
It's a way of designing a campaign based on the ideas that your players give you after character creation, and during the first few sessions, and moving with your players in a direction of determining the destinies for their characters.
A couple other tidbits: no deities, clerics cast through philosophy and affinities to their chosen domains. Paladin is a prestige class -- you can't start as lawful good. (A cleric with an alignment domain would either move towards that alignment's domain, or change domains after play.)
Nodes are the system of geography in the world -- the world is a new world, the world is the consciousness and creation of the inhabitants, and the inhabitants are new as well. What put them there is the question, and the answer is generally "the PCs did, directly or indirectly" in the end.
Nodes are bits of geography that are being shaped by the inhabitants -- the world is a featureless grassy plain (or water, or ice, or dirt, or whatnot, of course,) and nodes are places where this is not true -- castles, tiny encampments, dungeons, caves, giant turnips full of formians -- anything is possible.
Ask questions if you want, I played through a campaign this way, and it was extremely successful.
The only problem is that I think what was fun for ME, would not necessarily be fun for someone else -- and also that it would not translate well into a product. I'm not even sure if it's a sound design strategy, and the way I designed the game was not for every player, (every encounter I designed involved ways to "win" besides direct combat besides a small minority, although direct combat certainly and enjoyably happened.)
It certainly worked for me -- a lot -- and I was curious if you ENWorlders would think it could work for you -- or could work for anybody.
I know it's basically a campaign setting book, except that it's really quite useless if you're not using the campaign full force -- in general -- except for maybe the rules about assuming the aspects of your dream selves. (I used recharging action points and ability burn from the XPH after some fiddling, it worked pretty well.)
I tried to fly in the face of a lot of design aspects -- also important is the fact that the PCs are always within a level or two of the most powerful thing on the world -- everything on the world is born new and weak, and though it is learning quickly, so are the PCs. (The world creates more power as the inhabitants create more power, etc.)
Or maybe I should simply release the rules for assuming the aspects of your dream-selves, and how adventuring through collective dreams as different people works... that was really incredible fun, and it gives the DM a reason to "try something a little extremely different" that can easily be forgotten if it isn't entertaining.
So, should I bother, or would it be wasted effort?
Please note if it wouldn't be fun for your to design/DM, or if it wouldn't be fun to play for you. And please ask questions -- it's a sketchy world, after all, and a little weird to describe in brief, I feel like I'm forgetting something important. (For instance, Umm, characters had to create all their items, including magic ones, components that were in affinity to their items had an increased GP cost -- there was also no gold in the campaign, dead creatures or pieces of willing live creatures provided the GP cost to create magic items, and "correct" implementation gave more gold. For instance, a cat's claw would be worth 10gp or so, but worth 15 gp if used in a dex boosting item. (cat's grace.) A firebreathing dire lion would be worth more, depending on its CR. That's part of the system that needed, umm, more fine tuning, although it could be decided rather easily from treasure tables and conversions.)
Chuckle, I have the sad idea that this is one of those zany posts people will look at, go "uhhh, yeah, it's another hairbrained idea, laugh" and go on their merry way.
But, I guess I'd rather know that before the fact, rather than after.
Like I said, any questions, fire away. I'm not too scared of revealing too much of the product or whatnot, I'm mainly considering releasing this for free, if people are interested. Otherwise, why bother, unless I plan on running a different campaign with this setup anytime soon? (I'm happy with my current setup, where the PCs ascended to be the greek fates, [that's the way the players pushed their characters, and it worked out pretty cool,] and I'm currently trying to figure out how to run something fun on this world with Divine Rank 0 characters, or whether I should just call it a finished campaign. But I'm moved away from the group, sigh.)
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