Mundanity for Adventure/Campaign Inspiration

[Ralif Redhammer]

Apparently, it's true. I'll need to find an excuse to have another in-game dress-up event (probably a good thing right now - heck, I haven't had to tie a tie in over a year now).

Everyone loves a dress up! :-D

 

[aco175]

I would think you need player buy-in first. Remember 2e where you rolled for background and you could get 'no skill of measurable worth'. All these people were farmers and dung sweepers and such that could not roll smith or jeweler. Today, you could make a background called "no skill of measureable worth' or maybe 'nobody special' and have that s your background. It may not be as cool as criminal or soldier, but still, someone needs to be a former farmer.

 

[GMMichael]

So I'm thinking it might be fun to have adventure concepts that are grounded in mundane aspects of life. . . There's got to be a ton of normal slices of life that can be used for excellent adventure fodder. Any ideas?

I would think you need player buy-in first. Remember 2e where you rolled for background and you could get 'no skill of measurable worth'.

This. The game can be as exciting as peeling potatoes for a horde of hungry cooking convention attendees, and the players will love it - if they like that sort of thing. I would enjoy a game about an election, but I would want an entertaining element like being the thief who steals the speeches after they're written, or possibly the assistant in the earpiece who messes with the politician during his speech until he interrupts himself to say "now let me finish!"

I guess my minimum fantasy requirement is that a game must include the risk of incarceration or bloodshed. Not necessarily on a session-by-session basis.

 

[Umbran]

So I'm thinking it might be fun to have adventure concepts that are grounded in mundane aspects of life.

Well, the TV show Leverage is mostly based on entirely mundane abuses of power in the real world. There's already a role playing game for it (Cortex-based), but it can be inspiration for all kinds of shenanigans.

 

[Bilharzia]

You could run a satisfying game of Night's Black Agents without the vampires, you just need to create a non-vampire conspiracy setup that's interesting enough.

The "Mythic Britain" campaign is almost low-magic enough to run as a purely historical campaign as it is, the same could be said for much of the Mythic Earth series for Mythras.

 

[embee]

That would actually be a great way to start off low-level characters.

I imagine that there could be an adventuring season for just the standard run-of-the-mill person who doesn't have a grimdark origin story.

Like, there's the planting and the plowing and the harvesting. But there are also long stretches where there's nothing doing. Who's to say that there aren't a bunch of Luke Skywalkers out there who are bored to tears with farming and spend their free time taking on mundane quests for a pouch of silver pieces.

Not everything has to be trying to be stopping an invasion of slaadi. Those rats in the tavern cellar aren't going to get cleared out on their own.

 

[pemerton]

In most role playing games the PCs are doing something rather fantastical like investigating eldritch horrors, exploring ancient dungeons and relieving the current inhabitants of their possessions, or tooling around the galaxy defeating evil empires. Boot Hill lacked the supernatural or fantastic that were common in most game settings at the time so that does help explain why something like an election could serve to drive the action of this module.

<snip>

So I'm thinking it might be fun to have adventure concepts that are grounded in mundane aspects of life.

There was an election scenario ("Vote for the Goat") in the City of Greyhawk boxed set.

When we played Wuthering Heights much of the action took place in a book shop.

In a recent Traveller session one of the PCs had to write a report that would inform an Imperial officer's decision about whether or not to implement First Contact protocols.

In the Burning Wheel game where I'm a player, sparks from a cooking fire set a wizard's tower alight; my character wasn't able to extinguish the flames.

The sample scenario in The Dying Earth rulebook involves a cooking/eating competition.

One of the knight PCs in our Prince Valiant game is hopelessly in love with a woman (the Countess of Toulouse) who is not his wife (the daughter of the Duke of York).

The stakes of RPGing don't need to be exaggerated, provided that the actual game play is reasonably compelling.

 

[pemerton]

Not everything has to be trying to be stopping an invasion of slaadi. Those rats in the tavern cellar aren't going to get cleared out on their own.

If the main payoff from playing the game is imagining my character defeating foes, I think rats may be a rather non-compelling foe.

If I'm being invited to imagine my character in such an ignominious context, I need something else at stake in the fiction to make it compelling.

 

[BookTenTiger]

If the main payoff from playing the game is imagining my character defeating foes, I think rats may be a rather non-compelling foe.

If I'm being invited to imagine my character in such an ignominious context, I need something else at stake in the fiction to make it compelling.

I would argue the main playoff is "overcoming obstacles."

Sometimes those obstacles are compelling foes. Switching it up, of course, keeps things interesting!

Asking a bunch of adventurers to, say, clear out rats or help get someone elected or plan a feast allows the players an opportunity to use their abilities in new, fun ways!

 

[aramis erak]

That's certainly true. I've always though it odd that the majority of role playing games feature the supernatural or science fiction as key elements of their settings.

I think that there was an early divide in the industry...
Cutoff date of about 1983...

The TSR games (including D&D, AD&D, BX, Star Frontiers, Boot Hill, Gamma World) generally lacked social skills, but did have Charisma. Cutoff placed to exclude FASRIP Marvel.
GDW had a significant number, but their use as social skills instead of paperwork skills varied widely from group to group.
ISTR that RuneQuest (by Chaosium) had some as well; Later editions certainly do.
SPI's Dallas was pretty much nothing but social skills. It also was a total flop.
FBI's Tunnels and Trolls lacked skill-like abilities, but had a robust system for testing Luck, which many GM's used with the other attributes. Given that some of the solos have charisma checks to influence NPCs...
Palladium's Mechanoids trilogy and Palladium FRP have an appearance attribute, and a sort-of-social attribute, but provides no means for using them in the mechanics, and derides the use of game-stats over in-character dialogue, it's pretty clear where Siembieda falls.
Victory Games' James Bond RPG has social skills.
FASA: STRPG has social skills. Mods for RP advised.

GDW¹, Chaosium, Victory Games, SPI: Social Skills modified by RP.
TSR, Palladium: No social skills, limited use of social attributes.
FBI, FASA, GDW¹: present but not emphasized.

We know which one was the "winner"...