Little Changes with Big Flavor

[mmadsen]

In my Middle-earth campaign...

Joshua, it's funny that you bring up Middle Earth, because my original train of thought that led to this thread was, what little changes can I make to D&D to get a more "Lord of the Rings" feel?

You can see the evidence of that in some of the "little changes":

• 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
• 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. (What's Your Monster Palette?)
• Have an enemy. Despite all the dark overlords in fantasy fiction, few of them last past an adventure or two in D&D.
• 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 distinction between Arcane and Divine magic. Is there a difference between an evil sorcerer and an evil high priest?
• 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treasure with a place in the world: armor once worn by the current king in his youth, works of art by a now-mad mage, historical documents, etc.
• 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.

(Let's not turn this into a Middle Earth thread though.)

 

[MythandLore]

Can you explain this? My first thought is, "huh?!?" so some elaboration would be nice.

I'd assume he's talking about the Sassanid Persians use of chain and scale mails.
The Byzantine Empire, India and many others of the time used the same things though.
But I think he was talking about the 'Hot' Climate and the use of heavy armor and how people still used heavy armor in hot climates.
Like the Indian armor in below, India is hot, but the armor is still heavy.

 

[mmadsen]

I'm not terribly familiar with all the alternate game worlds from D&D's past (and present), but most seemed to make "little changes with big flavor":

Dark Sun

• Magic destroyed the world and is now a capital crime.
• Psionics everywhere.
• Desolate desert terrain and climate.
• Variant races and classes.

Birthright

• PCs are "blooded" scions.
• Low magic -- but the "blooded" can wield high (normal for D&D) magic.
• Heroes don't just adventure; they rule the land.
• Variant races, a bit more "classical" in feel (except for Halflings).

 

[Psion]

Just out of curiosity, where do the old gods go, then?

Some say they become one with the universe, or merge with the being of their footstep followers. Others say that even gods have other realms. Alas, these are great mysteries...

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's cool to toss around ideas about feel and style and whatnot. Leads to a lot of cool inspiration and toyin' with campaign settings.

I'm not sure if it is just me (it could be...been known to happen), but there is a fine line between suggesting cool ideas, and suggesting that those ideas are nessecarily better than other ways.

No offense, of course. There's a lot of awesome ideas floating around here. But there's still nothin' wrong with doin' it the normal way.

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Hey Kamikaze! (SHARK chomps at the air, waving!) I don't think that anyone here is suggesting that "The Standard Way" is necessarily bad, or inferior, just that should *you* become bored with it, and desire to make something different, then here are some cool suggestions and tweaks that can add different levels of *change* to one's campaign. It just depends on what kind of changes that you would like to make, that composes the discussion. There is something here to appeal to everyone, at different times. For someone who wants to incorporate a little degree of change, a moderate degree of change, or a greater degree of change. It's all offered up, on tap!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yeah, it's been mostly okay. It's just a pet peeve of mine, and lines like "now bards don't suck!", however innocent, could be construed as meaning: "Now they do suck, and if you don't use my solution, they will continue to."

Not that they do, just that...I'm sensitive.

Nonetheless, they are cool ideas, and should continue to come.

 

[Desdichado]

MythandLore:
I'd assume he's talking about the Sassanid Persians use of chain and scale mails. The Byzantine Empire, India and many others of the time used the same things though. But I think he was talking about the 'Hot' Climate and the use of heavy armor and how people still used heavy armor in hot climates. Like the Indian armor in below, India is hot, but the armor is still heavy.

Well, yeah. The following quote from David Nicolle, a somewhat prolific author in medieval history said the following about Sughdian cavalry depicted on a plate in one of his books (painted by Angus McBride!):

The directly riveted segmented helmet with a full mail aventail, the long mail hauberk, spear, dagger and large round shield as well as the horse's advanced harness would form the basis of subsequent cavalry equipment in the Middle East. They would also be found in Byzantium, Russia and much of eastern Europe and probably lay behind the development of the heavy cavalry of medieval western Europe. In fact, this warrior represents the advanced cavalryman of his day and the future.

mmadsen:
Joshua, it's funny that you bring up Middle Earth, because my original train of thought that led to this thread was, what little changes can I make to D&D to get a more "Lord of the Rings" feel?

Click on the banner in my sig file (not to toot my own horn...) I don't have all the changes I used to make my d20 Middle-earth campaign, but I'm hoping to eventually detail them in the Story Hour file that link points to.

 

[pensiv]

another idea (from my own campaign):

Limit the amount of sentient races. This stresses intra-racial cultural differences more. Maybe, like our own world (?) Humans are the only sentient race. Maybe Humans (or one other race) are the only known sentients, but there is one out there, hiding.

 

[Ace]

[/color]
On Heavy Amor

Not necessarily. There was surprisingly little variation across the whole Eurasian Continent, from the Middle-east, to Northern Europe to China throughout most of the early Medieval period. In fact, a lot of the really heavy armor was first developed in either the Middle-east or Central Asia. The European knight was heavily influenced by Late Sassanian heavy cavalry. Southern California doesn't have too different a climate than eastern Mediterranean, or Fertile Crescent (although it's drier there now than in the past.)

MMPH. Time to hit the books for me.

I was thinking of Plate Armor and how hot it is to wear. I assume that Armor warn in hotter cultures had better ventilation.
If I tried to fight in Plate in a California summer I am pretty sure I would keel over after a while.
I remember reading of 12th century crusaders in "International" 4 link mail passing out from the desert heat.
I figured the the Mirrored Breast Plate and O'Yori (sp?) armors used in 14th century in India and Japan had better ventilation than Western armor of the same period.

Even if it isn't historically correct changing the weapons and armor list is a cool way to change the feel of the campaign.

One way to do it is to limit the weapons available to a narrow selection derived from social class or culture.
Or go Roman (No spiked chain, nunchuks etc)