Little Changes with Big Flavor

[mmadsen]

I'm enjoying your campaign description, Forrester. Let me see if I can distill down a few "little changes with big flavor" (and some more general DM tips) from it:

• Have no safe haven, no Village of Hommlet, to return to.
• Invert which races are good and which are bad. Play the Orcs, Goblins, and Kobolds against ruthless Elves.
• Have the enemy play rough and play smart. Have them use tactics and magic as PCs would.
• Don't match every encounter to the PCs' abilities. If the enemy's caught off guard, they should be vulnerable; if they know what to expect, they shouldn't be.

 

[mmadsen]

What's Your Monster Palette?

One easy way to alter your campaign dramatically without changing any rules is to just choose a limited monster "palette" and keep to a theme. I actually started another thread to discuss this: What's Your Monster Palette?

 

[Desdichado]

So, Forrester, are you playing Orkworld by any chance?

 

[Rune]

For those who haven't checked out Rune's Story Hour, here's a taste of the introduction:

Actually, I don't mean to be picky, but if you get around to it, I'd appreciate if you refered to the story hour in some other manner, as it's really not mine per se. It is true that I've done most of the work on the setting, run the games, and post the edited logs, but I'm not even the author of the logs (which is why updating takes too long ). A minor matter, I know, but I must give credit where credit is due...

The world: Ah yes, the world...

*snip for brevity*

That is the way things are. [/B]

So what are the chances that you'll be able to come up with a list of distilled "[not necessarily] little changes with big flavor" from this one?

 

[mmadsen]

Little Changes with Big Flavor (Organized)

[I thought I'd organize the suggestions a bit.]

D&D makes a lot of tacit assumptions about how the game world works, and most campaigns naturally follow along. If you'd like a very different flavor, it might require only some tiny changes. Give a few of these a try.

Your fantasy world doesn't have to resemble England in the late Middle Ages. You can try:

• Primitive -- Imagine combat with spears, bows, hides for armor, etc. Dire Animals make great monsters.
• Ancient Greece -- Bronze age. If everyone's using bronze, you might not need any special rules for it.
• Ancient Rome -- Iron age, few long swords, lots of spears and short swords, soldiers in chain mail or breast plate (actually lorica segmentata).
• Dark Ages -- For most of the middle ages, plate armor was not available, and neither were the various reinforced forms of mail (splint, banded). Bastard swords and great swords weren't around, and many polearms weren't common. A soldier in a full hauberk of mail was a serious threat
• Arabian Nights -- You don't need the official Al Qadim setting to use rich Caliphs, desert nomads, caravans under attack from brigands, and wizards on flying carpets
• Mythic India -- Even a quick peek at the Indian epics reveals a world ripe for D&D-style adventure.
• Mythic Africa -- The Nyambe setting should be coming out soon.
• Mythic Hawaii -- Or any group of islands.
• Renaissance Europe -- Gunpowder, pikemen, halberdiers, lots of breastplates, but few full suits of armor.
• Age of Conquest -- It's eerie just how similar the Conquistadors were to D&D adventurers, going from place to place, killing (with "magic" weapons and armor) and looting, making some allies, then leading a big attack on the supervillain's castle (Mexico city, a metropolis of stone pyramids built on a lake in an extinct volcano).
• Age of Sail -- Pirates! 'Nuff said
• Age of Steam -- Everyone loves intricate brass clockwork, ironclads, and balloons.
• Modern -- D&D doesn't seem to handle this too well, but you can try any of the more modern d20 games, and you can mix in as much fantasy as you'd like.

Monsters:

• Eliminate monsters. Or keep them in the background awhile. Fighting human enemies should be plenty exciting, and when the evil sorcerer finally summons his demonic allies, it means something.
• Stick to just a handful of monsters. Choose either goblins or kobolds or orcs as your cannon fodder, and rely on class levels or different equipment to differentiate them.
• Base your goblins and elves on folklore, not modern fantasy. Have them rely on magical deception (not studded leather and a morningstar) to get the job done.
• Have the monsters be something that can be dealt with by wits, such as with riddles or tricks. In folklore, magic is often just knowing the strengths and weaknesses of various beasts, knowing what they like and dislike, knowing how to talk to them, etc. The key to killing the dragon isn't having a stronger sword arm; it's knowing that the dragon has a soft underbelly, and if you dig a ditch, he'll crawl over you and expose it.
• Don't forget animals. Talking animals are a staple of fairy tales and fantasy, and some animals are natural predators of monsters the heroes might face (e.g. mongoose or weasel vs. basilisk or poisonous snake, giant owl vs. dire rats or were-rats, tiny mouse vs. elephant, etc.)
• Have an enemy. Despite all the dark overlords in fantasy fiction, few of them last past an adventure or two in D&D.
• Night of the Living Dead. Don't disable zombies at 0 (or negative) hit points. Have them keep coming down to -10 hit points, but have each hit take off a limb. Graphically describe it, and give the zombie reduced abilities: leg, can't walk, can only crawl 5'; arm, grapple at -4; head, drops "dead" (a la Night of the Living Dead), or simply can't change what it's doing.
• Unique Monsters: one Pegasus, one Medusa (with two other gorgon sisters), one Minotaur, one Questing Beast, one Fenris Wolf, one Midgard Serpent, etc.

Magic:

• Assume a more "primitive" (or secretive) level of magical knowledge. Have no known spells; all spells must be researched.
• Implement priests as Sorcerers or Wizards (with the Cleric spell list) so that they're wise men, not warriors. Same with Druids. Make Turn Undead a 1st-level Cleric spell, and have Druids cast Polymorph Self to shapeshift.
• Let Clerics turn any and all supernatural creatures not just the undead. In folklore, goblins and trolls can't stand the sound of church bells.
• Make the spellcasting classes prestige classes with prerequisites. After all, isn't it odd that a Bard with four skill ranks in Perform is good enough to enchant people with his music? And that a Druid that barely knows his way around the woods knows enough of nature's secrets to command it? Should every religious figure wield powerful magic? On a daily basis? 0-level Druid spells could all require, say, 8 skill ranks in Wilderness Lore and Knowledge (Nature). A 5th-level Expert on those topics could then take one level of Sorcerer and take only nature spells onto his spell list. Similarly, 0-level healing spells might require 8 ranks in Healing and Knowledge (Nature), and a high-level Ranger might take a few levels of Sorceror with a few healing spells (requiring rare herbs, naturally).
• Don't give back spellcasters their full power after one night's rest and some study/prayer time. Make recharging require rare magical ingredients, or blood sacrifice, or a selfless act of piety. Or simply make it take longer. That way spellcasters won't toss spells left and right, but they'll have them for when they need them.
• Remove spellcasting entirely. Have all magic through magic items.
• Make spellcasting always take a full round or more. Suddenly spellcasters aren't video game characters.
• Have magic transform its user. Over time, necromancers grow pale and withered. Fire mages start giving off sparks when angry; eventually their hair turns to living fire. Shapeshifters take on the traits of the animals they become.
• Limit all sorcerers to a strongly themed spell list. For instance, a "fey" list of just: daze, dancing lights, ghost sound, prestidigitation, obscuring mist, charm person, hypnotism, sleep, change self, ..., polymorph. Or a summoner list of just the Summon Monster spells. You can make an entire magics system out of just summoning (e.g. Elric).
• Eliminate all directly-damaging spells. It's not like wizards can't do any harm without magic missile and fireball, and they're certainly more interesting that way. Or just make all those spells more difficult. Besides, isn't a wizard supposed to turn you into a frog?
• Make all magic easy to "track" with Detect Magic, so covert spellcasters won't want to cast indiscriminately. Make flashy evocations (e.g. Fireball) particularly easy to track.
• Remove the Arcane Spell Failure percentage for armor. In a campaign world like Elric's Melnibone, sorcerers freely cast in full armor.
• Remove the distinction between Arcane and Divine magic. Is there a difference between an evil sorcerer and an evil high priest?
• Increase the distinction between Arcane and Divine magic. Have quasi-Christian priests whose only real powers are dispelling fiends' enchantments, banishing demons back to hell, etc.
• Dark Side points for spellcasting.
  Have every spell force a Will save (DC 10 + 2 * spell level) or the caster gains a Dark Side point. Once the caster accumulates more Dark Side points than Wisdom, he goes mad with hunger for power. The Dark Side points can cause a cumulative penalty to later Will saves too -- wonderful for that downward spiral effect.
• Runequest Magic. Just about anyone can cast minor spells: no multiclass penalty for a level of Sorcerer.
• Different Magic for Different Races. Humans must learn magic as Wizards, Elves are naturally Sorcerers, etc.
• Require that all Wizards specialize in one school, and they can only cast spells from that school
• Use Call of Cthulhu Magic.

The Party:

• Have the heroes be the only spellcasters in the world -- or the only good spellcasters in the world, hiding their powers from their evil enemies.
• Have all the players run characters of the same race and class: a troop of mercenaries, a band of outlaws, an order of knights, whatever. Not every party has to be the fellowship of the ring.
• Have the characters either be a family or have families (or start families).
• Invert which races are good and which are bad. Play the Orcs, Goblins, and Kobolds against ruthless Elves.

Treasure:

• Have magic items be gifts from powerful allies, not loot from enemies (who have an odd penchant for leaving magic cloaks in the closet).
• Have Knowledge (History) provide characters with the names of weapons, their powers, any magic words they need to activate them, etc. That way the wise wizard (who really should have plenty of knowledge skills) doesn't cast a spell to uncover an item's powers; he looks it over, mumbles to himself, then announces that this must be the long, lost whatever, used in the great wars against whomever's army, etc.
• Have magic items' powers reveal themselves to the characters gradually, based on their actions and what they learn about them. Rather than having a Fighter find a +2 sword and ditch his "worthless" +1 sword, he can discover new powers in his original sword with the help of the wizard (or ancient elf, or crotchety dwarf, or talking animal) he rescued.
• Provide treasure with a place in the world: armor once worn by the current king in his youth, works of art by a now-mad mage, historical documents, etc.

Misc. Tips:

• Try a different set of combat rules, like Ken Hood's Grim-n-Gritty Hit Point and Combat Rules or any variant that doesn't keep giving extra hit dice ad infinitum. Instead of increasing hit points, you can increase armor class. This makes magical healing less necessary, even if you keep the heroes at roughly the same power level.
• Remove alignments. Or just use Good and Evil or Law and Chaos. Or divvy up the world into two sides with each considering itself Good and the other Evil.
• Fixed levels. Just start everyone as heroes (e.g. 7th level) and keep them there.
• Base the game completely around non-combat advancement. E.g. XP for converting the "unsaved" to your religion, or for finding ancient tomes
• Don't assume N gold pieces will get you N gp worth of stuff. No one said you were in an efficient market economy.
• Have no safe haven, no Village of Hommlet, to return to.
• Have the enemy play rough and play smart. Have them use tactics and magic as PCs would.
• Don't match every encounter to the PCs' abilities. If the enemy's caught off guard, they should be vulnerable; if they know what to expect, they shouldn't be.

 

[Rune]

since mmadsen opened the floodgates and set a precidence, I'm going to save everybody a little bit of link-following and post a brief excerpt from The Sunderer's Sundered Sky Story Hour.

What is the Sundered Sky?

Imagine a world destroyed, a Sundering that tore the land apart. Now what remains of once proud and noble kingdoms and empires is a myriad of floating islands. Floating in a fathomless void, or maybe falling, as some academics and mages have conjectured, nobody knows. These islands orbit one another slowly, languidly.

What caused the Sundering? This is also unknown, some think that the gods punished the evil ways of an ancient and lost people, others think that a magical artefact destroyed the world and still others believe that demons ripped the land apart trying to find the heart of their defeated tyrant king. Most just accept the world as it is and just try to survive.

Skyships ply the void between the islands allowing trade and travel. They are not alone, Pirates prey upon the weakest ships and dangerous creatures roam the void. Barbarian tribes inhabit the colder altitudes, their communities clinging precariously to artificial islands constructed from captured Skyships that have been tethered together. The void is infinite (as far as any one can discern), who knows what other wonders and terrors it holds?

Resource starved islands sponsor "Scavengers", adventurers willing to risk the dangerous ruins of towers and cities that can be found on some of the more remote and smaller islands. Terrible beasts, traps and ancient undead haunt these ruins protecting the precious iron, steel and other metals.

The powerful Trade Council (see below) has banned open warfare, but this does not stop many islands waging clandestine warfare on one another, hiring small bands of mercenaries to undertake covert missions of sabotage or assassination.

Mysterious secret societies plot against one another or strive to uncover arcane mysteries hidden within the long abandoned ruins. Some are in the thrall of demonic or Celestial avatars, others (it is rumoured) seek to destroy or restore the Sundered Sky once and for all.

Also, rootbeergnome's Seas of Fire could be mentioned here, because it is very similar to the Sundered Sky setting (which is probably no coincidence, as I helped rootbeergnome hash out the setting!)

Here's the introduction to that:

Nine hundred and ten years ago, the gates to the Elemental Empire were sealed. In the sealing was the sundering of our world. Now we live on the broken pillars that climb to the sky far above an endless sea of fire.

There is transportation in the form of airships, but the Guild holds an unbreakable monopoly. No one else knows how to make the ships. As the gnomes have control of the guild, this puts the little buggers in control of most trade—and the military fleets. As a consequence, they have what amounts to an empire. Locally, the gnomes have recently instituted a human council, but, of course, the Guild ambassadors hold great sway over the decisions of this ruling body.

And, of course, there is resistance to the stranglehold. That’s where we come in.

Hope you all can find some inspiration in these mad ramblings! Speaking of which, mmadsen, I see your point about the introduction to The Dream causing insanity, now that I'm forced to reread it! Maybe I'll rewrite it someday!

 

[mmadsen]

Rune's Story Hour (as written by one of Rune's players).

Hmm...let me see what "little changes with big flavor" I can distill from Rune's Story Hour (as written by one of Rune's players):

• Use evocative names. Rune's quasi-oriental setting uses Adjective-Noun-Verb names for men and Noun-Adverb-Verb names for women. Names like "Thorin" were evocative when they were new. Names like "Mad Stone Tumbles" still are.
• Tie the players to the world. If family ties and honor matter, the players will start to behave with filial piety and honor, not as thugs looting from weaker thugs.
• Don't be afraid to alter reality. This is a fantasy game. If the seasons change daily, you know you're in a fantastic realm. If some of the seasons don't exist in our world, then you really know you're in a fantastic realm. (In Ravenloft, for instance, the Mist can alter time and space.)
• Use fantastic elements to dramatic ends. A Black and White season has no in-game effect, but -- Wow! -- it packs a dramatic punch. (What would your players do if it started raining blood?)

How's that for a start?

 

[Desdichado]

Hey, that Sundered campaign setting is eerily similar to something I once developed for a different game system (but never ended up running.) I wonder if I even have those notes still on my old computer's hard drive...

 

[Rune]

Re: Rune's Story Hour (as written by one of Rune's players).

Hmm...let me see what "little changes with big flavor" I can distill from Rune's Story Hour (as written by one of Rune's players):

Thank you for the distinction; my conscience is at ease.

• Use evocative names. Rune's quasi-oriental setting uses Adjective-Noun-Verb names for men and Noun-Adverb-Verb names for women. Names like "Thorin" were evocative when they were new. Names like "Mad Stone Tumbles" still are.
• Tie the players to the world. If family ties and honor matter, the players will start to behave with filial piety and honor, not as thugs looting from weaker thugs.
• Don't be afraid to alter reality. This is a fantasy game. If the seasons change daily, you know you're in a fantastic realm. If some of the seasons don't exist in our world, then you really know you're in a fantastic realm. (In Ravenloft, for instance, the Mist can alter time and space.)
• Use fantastic elements to dramatic ends. A Black and White season has no in-game effect, but -- Wow! -- it packs a dramatic punch. (What would your players do if it started raining blood?)

How's that for a start?

I like your list! It helps to quantify something that was sort of shapeless before (like the continents, but that's a different matter altogether )

Raining blood, by the way, would (will?) probably freak my players out, as my campaign is slowly spiraling into horror. Thanks for the idea!

 

[Rune]

Hey, that Sundered campaign setting is eerily similar to something I once developed for a different game system (but never ended up running.) I wonder if I even have those notes still on my old computer's hard drive...

There's much more background information on his setting in the story hour, if you care to follow the link. It's worth it. A lot of his ideas were gleaned from various works of fiction, I believe.

Also, to set the record straight, rootbeergnome had yet to discover Sundered Sky when we created the Seas of Fire setting and I wasn't really thinking of it. But when we took our basic premise (inspired by a great deal of random rolls in the World Builder's Guide) out to it's logical conclusions, a lot of similarities between the two settings became evident to me. I don't think that's a bad thing, however, just that both The Sunderer and the rootbeergnome/Rune team came to the same realizations. Of course, I have no doubt that I was influenced and inspired by Sundered Sky, as well. I am, after all, still planning on running it for my next campaign--with added peculiarities, of course.