LOW FANTASY settings/adventures: WHERE? WHEN?

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

Here is the Free official HARN d20 Conversion Guide for running d20 games in the HARN setting!

http://columbiagames.com/HarnPage/index.html

 

[Blacksad]

AEG plans to publish a book that features the 7th sea setting in d20. It might interest you (and you have already found a low magic only human setting with Rokugan as proven by your post in the General forum).

 

[Greatwyrm]

I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but how about Soverign Stone? It has some magic, but it isn't terribly powerful. I don't recall seeing anything even close to over-the-top in there.

 

[Erik Mona]

KK,

You'll not be disappointed. HarnManor is one of the finest RPG products I own.

--Erik

 

[Voadam]

I think Kantrip's point is that the "standard" d20 races are not, in fact, the "standard" races of most fantasy fiction. They fit within Tolkien and the very derivative folks who have been hacking out similar stories for the past 50 years, but I can't remember the last "fresh" story or novel I read that had anything to do with dwarves, for example.

The fantasy I read as a kid was mostly Thieves World and Lankhmar and Dune and other stories that centered on humans and used other races as needed for the story. I certainly wasn't interested in cookie-cutter "quest" fiction that stuck to a standard outline every bit as much as a Harlequin romance novel.

The fantasy I read now is Vance and Mieville and others who structure their worlds based upon the stories they want to tell, not the other way around.

I know that the derivative stuff (Brooks, Fiest, Jordan, etc.) is enormously popular. But it's not really "my" fantasy, and so long as I'm designing something for a home campaign, I'd rather build a world around the stories I'm interested in telling.

Elves, as it happens, don't have any part in those stories.

--Erik

Heh, I think I read every Thieves world and Lankhmar book as well. I enjoy Brooks, Jordan and Fiest, but also R.E. Howard and R.R. Martin. I've read some Vance Demon Princes series but I'm not familiar with Mieville, what has he done? Oh and Lynn Abbey has great fantasy books as well IMO.

I absolutely agree you should modify, include and exclude material in your game to suit your tastes, In about 20 years of gaming I have never had a halfling show up in any of the games I've run.

Elves, dwarves and humans, always seem to pop up in my character choices and in my games. For years every PC in my campaign was an elf. Nasty, evil, vicious dark elves and renegade Grugach but still elves.

But back to the core races in fantasy, I remember reading the Llyod Alexander Prydain series in grade school and that had dwarves, and Norse mythology had a lot of dwarven interaction. Of course that is not exactly recently written.

Many fantasy and science fiction stories do have some sort of "other" humanoid race whether it is tiger men Kazin (sp?) from ringworld or wookies from star wars. Even Conan and Kull had snake men to contend with. Any one that gets picked as a default example for gaming inevitably will not be seen in a lot of fantasy writing because of the diversity of fantasy visions given.

It doesn't bother me that the core races are tolkein derivative, the D&D Shadowrun, Warhammer, Earthdawn core races provide a fine fantasy gaming archetype base and individual gamers can modify to suit their tastes.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Most serious fantasy novels or short stories deal with humans only (Thieve's World, Lankhmar, Conan, etc.).

These are serious fantasy novels in your opinion??

Ye gods man, they are a goofy and wacky as you can get (at least Lankhmar and Conan are - haven't read a Thieves World book in 15 or so years). Remember Swords of Lankhmar? Tiny rat-people taking over the city and shapechanging all over the place?

Granted these didn't have any elves or gnomes but if that is all you are really looking for (the exclusion of demi-humans, powerful magic and DR monsters) is that really so hard to do with exsisting settings?

Just dump all classes except, Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian and all races except human. Maybe use one of many varient (non-magic using) Rangers, Paladins and Bards out there to give a little more choice.

Also WOT does have some of what you are looking for despite being based on Jordan's work it is surprisingly 'low-magic'.

And the CoC magic system (as some else stated) could easily be used in place of the 3E D&D one.

I guess what I'm saying is that most of the pieces you want are already out there - but I admit it would take a little work to pull them all together under one world system.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

Anybody know if the HarnMaster RPG system is any good?

Also looking for any recommended Harn products!

 

[HyrumOWC]

My 3 year old campaign is coming to a close and I've been itching to run something low magic as well. It's going to take some work, but I'm building a world set in the world of the Black Company novels by Glen Cook, with elements of his Dread Empire series and his stand alone novel "The Tower of Fear". (IMHO, Glen Cook is the *King* of low-fantasy.) I think I'm going to toss in some Conan elements as well, but we'll see.

There will be gods, but they don't grant spells of any kind, which means there are no clerics. I've also tossed out wizards, sorcerers, paladins, druids, and removed the spell casting abilities of rangers and bards. Magic items will be few and far between, and a +1 sword will actually mean something.

Rule wise I'm going to allow the players to roll 5d6 and keep the highest 3 for stats and the only PC races will be humans or half-elves, *maybe* half-orcs. There are no gnomes, halflings, or dwarves in the world, elves are a distant race that rarely has contact with the world and when they do it's usually to raid human settlements. (Which is where the half-elves come from.) There are also some orc tribes roaming around that will be partly based on the Mongols.

The only spell casting will be CoC d20 magic, and I'll let players pick a spell instead of a feat at character creation. I'm also going to toss out all of the skill lists for the classes and let everyone choose 12 class skills (ala CoC) and then start of with 6 skill points x Int modifier. (Which should make for heavy skill use.)

Oh, I'm also going to use Ken Hood's Grim-n-Gritty rules for HP's and armor. I'm really interested in seeing a 10th level fighter with only 20-something HP's.

These are just ideas right now, but it's shaping up to be a seriously low-magic, low-fantasy game.

 

[Psion]

Anybody know if the HarnMaster RPG system is any good?

To be honest, I think the skill system is rather lame, but I got some great ideas from its rather gritty combat system. Pretty colors... it will remind you or marvel SH RPG, but don't be fooled.

 

[HyrumOWC]

Anybody know if the HarnMaster RPG system is any good?

Also looking for any recommended Harn products!

I ran a game *years* ago using the HarMaster system and while parts of it are really cool (magic rocks, and the combat system is a lot of fun, and deadly as hell) I couldn't ever get past the Attributes for touch, sight, smell, taste, and hearing. You also roll up your astrological sign, and a few other non-standard ones as well. I remember the system being somewhat clunky, but it could have been trying to shove HarnWorld and Middle-Earth together.

Hyrum.