Grim Tales? Anyone? Bueller?

[king_ghidorah]

Are their guidelines how to fit the standard monsters (like dragons) into a grim and dark campaign ?

Just looking at the rules, monsters should be fairly easy to use-- add a defense bonus like PCs get, and you're good to go. Plus, GT has info in the rulebook on building monsters and figuring CRs and ELs. However, remember that some monsters (like giants, dragons, demons, devils, etc.) will by nature be toughter in a GT game than in a D&D game due to the low magic levels.

Remember, players in a low magic campaign will probably not have access to huge numbers of spells and magic items, which should be used to guage the difficulty of an encounter.

Imagine a D&D party of fighters and rogues using non-magical weapons and armor to fight a dragon. And then add some house rules that make combat more dangerous. Sound like bad news? Youbetcha.

You need to provide alternative ways to deal with (or avoid) such threats, since combat would probably be suicidal.

 

[Psion]

I hate to off subject, but since you've stopped by...

Steve, is there any chance we'll be seeing the Rune Wardern any time soon?

Judging by some chat on the SWS list, no.

Though a while back, Steve put out some thoughts on a point system for the Rune Warden. When I get some spare time, I'll try to hammer it into a finished class.

In other news, I have finished a pattern warden class (liberally plundered from elements of magic) that I intend to put up on the SWS list when I finish the section 15 of the OGL. I can put it up on my site and link it here if you would like.

 

[Azizar]

You need to provide alternative ways to deal with (or avoid) such threats, since combat would probably be suicidal.

Great ! Knowledge skills and roleplaying to defeat monsters. Not just high Bab.

 

[barsoomcore]

The problem of balance is always going to be there with low-magic or low-power games. I've been running Barsoom for nearly a hundred sessions now, and I have to be careful with what I throw at my party. They don't have many magic items (nothing like what an average party "should" have) and magic is very different (and not lots of use to the average party), so DR can be a killer. And without easy resurrection, save-or-die effects are BAD NEWS.

But yeah, it's huge amounts of fun. And this is a great book.

 

[Piratecat]

Great ! Knowledge skills and roleplaying to defeat monsters. Not just high Bab.

Right. I'd also avoid some of the magic-heavy monsters; unleash a standard D&D demon and his unaltered complement of spell-like abilities on a GT party. and things will probably get fairly ugly. Most other monsters would be simple to use, and it's always easier to downgrade a foe than upgrade one. I'm not foreseeing any trouble in this regard.

 

[king_ghidorah]

Right. I'd also avoid some of the magic-heavy monsters; unleash a standard D&D demon and his unaltered complement of spell-like abilities on a GT party. and things will probably get fairly ugly. Most other monsters would be simple to use, and it's always easier to downgrade a foe than upgrade one. I'm not foreseeing any trouble in this regard.

Sounds about right. I would suspect that having lots of ability damage (through poison, disease, etc.) or lots of negative levels from undead would be pretty bad without magic to restore losses. Likewise, incorporeal creatures and flyers are much more dangerous without magic to counter those abilities. Some of these things can be balanced with the judicious use of action points. Others are just hard to include without risking TPK.

All that aside, though, I agree with piratecat. Easier to downgrade the foes, and frankly it should be relatively easy to include some version of MM monsters in a GT game. You may just need to remind characters that this ain't D&D, and that discretion is the better part of valor.

 

[2WS-Steve]

I created a homebrew setting with an almost exclusively pseudo-medieval technology level and a grim and realistic tone. It has lots of dark magic, but no flashy effects, no fireball slinging wizards but magic diseases and magic winds that kill and destroy or turn whole populations into undead and corrupt animals into monsters. I like humans to use magic but at a low level.

My setting has almost the same feel as the Warhammer setting, but the difference is that the races on my world have yet to cope with war.

I thought I saw somewhere that Ben has a bit of a background with Warhammer FRP and was trying to bring some of that feel to the d20 system--if so, Grim Tales does a nice job doing that.

For me, the Grim Tales book will easily cover all the non-magic using classes and allow for a wide range of different character types. Since it's low magic, skills take on a larger role and I'd import some additional rules to cover uses of the Craft, Knowledge, and Profession skills--"Experts" from Skirmisher Press is pretty nice in this regard, albeit difficult to find.

I think one of the problems with magic is that it's often such a defining feature of a campaign setting. For example, the difference between how I'd run a d20 CoC game and an Urban Arcana game (given that I'd use Grim Tales/d20 Modern for CoC) lies almost purely in the kind of magic that's available.

So, regarding what you want to do with magic in your game, I think there are a couple options:

(1) Pester Ben until he publishes Grim Magic.

(2) Import the magic system from another game (maybe Slaine or Conan would work well).

(3) Look around on the net for a database or listing of all the spells--perhaps this could be extracted from the SRD. Then go down the list of spells and throw out all the ones that don't feel right for your setting. Other spells go through and adjust their level to what feels right--for example, maybe Cure Disease should be higher level in a low magic game. I'd probably try to find listings for all the spells in other books I own (3rd party, etc.) too since they're often more unusual and evocative. One added benefit is that in a low magic game some spells that players wouldn't normally use but that sound cool could become more appealing.

If anyone knows of a spell listing like that I'd love to hear about it since I think one could make a magic system with a very different feel by simply adjusting what's available and modifying levels.

********
Krieg:
I've got some material put together for the Rune Warden. Honestly, I never saw it as a big new thing like the Pact System but I've been wanting to have it more fleshed out. I'll do some polishing today and at least have something playtesty for posting to the Second World Yahoo group by tomorrow.

Psion:
Thanks for uploading that. I'll be checking it out today.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

So many questions, so little time... (And a crappy connection to boot...)

Using Monsters From Other Sources

Go for it. You won't need to do any converting of the monster statblock to use them.

Unless, of course, the monsters have class levels like sorcerer, and you are using Grim Tales' spellcasting. But for monsters which simply have spell-like abilities (usable at will or X times per day) just use them as is-- don't worry about spell burn.

Facing D&D Challenges with Grim Tales Characters

There's a fairly short list of stuff you have to worry about, but it's not really that different from the sorts of things a GM has to worry about when nobody wants to play a cleric or magic user. Healing is an issue, and lots of bad guys are an issue (the role of arcane spellcaster is dual: kill lots of little bad guys at once, and kill the big bad guys in one spell).

When push comes to shove, you can always expand the role of action points to cover a few things-- as I did with healing after combat, bypassing DR, and so on. There's no reason you couldn't allow a PC to spend an action point to recover lost ability scores faster, for example.

There will be a learning curve for your players, to actually get into the habit of USING their action points. Remind them. You want to use an action point to boost your AC against this bad guy's attack. You really want to use an action point to make this skill check, or this Fortitude save against disease. Or against this enemy spellcaster... And so on.

Action points are the "magic" of Grim Tales. They let the heroes do things that D&D heroes accomplish through other means. The main difference, of course, is that action points are an expendable, and very limited, resource.

The more "high magic" or "high action" you want your game, the more often I recommend refreshing Action Points. Starting each session of play with (5 + 1/2 character level) is an awful lot of action points-- plenty enough for defensive use only, maybe not enough for those who want to throw an AP onto every attack roll as well.

Making a Grim Tales / Low Magic Spell List

Errggh. My recommendation would be just the opposite, and a lot less work. Instead of going through all your spells and deciding which ones you want to use, I would very, very slowly decide which spells I want to allow in the game, adding one or two very occasionally.

And remember, just because a bad guy knows a spell, doesn't mean that whatever source he had for learning that spell is still around for the PCs to learn from. Your evil villain may very well have teleport, raise dead, or commune-- granted to him by his dark gods and still out of reach of your players.

The Importance of Gear

I don't think it's all that important, but of course that depends on the tech level of your game. The higher the tech level (technology = magic, remember!) the more your players will rely on technology as a crutch.

Why don't I think it's that important? Perhaps it's just due to the style of game I like to run with Grim Tales. They are story focused, not acquisition-focused, so the PCs pretty much start with every piece of gear they'll need to complete the adventure and/or enjoy themselves. Spycraft (James Bond) is a good example in this regard: Give them what they need up front, then just focus on the action. You don't see Bond getting out of Q Branch and then heading off to the shopping mall to beef up his equipment list. There's an assumption of trust that the PCs will have what they need (or find it quickly during play).

Wulf

 

[Krieg]

Krieg:
I've got some material put together for the Rune Warden. Honestly, I never saw it as a big new thing like the Pact System but I've been wanting to have it more fleshed out. I'll do some polishing today and at least have something playtesty for posting to the Second World Yahoo group by tomorrow.

Wow! That would be great, but don't go to too much trouble on my account.

(FYI - I went ahead & signed up for the SW group. I didn't know it existed previously, although it goes a long way towards explaining why the form on the SW home page is a ghost town! )

 

[Felon]

Got the book Friday, and have pored over it extensively. I'm impressed. My only criticisms so far are A) the "crumpled page" look is a major impediment to legibility (trying to keep people from scanning into a text file or something?), nor does it even look particularly "pulpy" (the crumpling is too crisp), and B) Strong heroes don't get the Rage talent (even though other Talents are shared between classes when appropriate).

I'd REALLY love to see some of D&D's core classes reverse-engineered into advanced classes. For instance, making rogues from smart & fast heroes, barbarians from strong & tough heroes, and monks from a trifecta of strong, fast, and dedicated heroes.