Oz d20 - a world of Swashbuckling Adventure and High Weirdness

[tsadkiel]

Rules, continued.

Classes from Swashbuckling Adventures:

Alchemist - potions and the people who love them turn up from time to time in the books. The Alchemist is available - Dr. Pipt is an example.

Assassin - the purpose of the assassin is to flip out and kill people. Assassins don't really work in Baum's Oz, but they fit into my Oz pretty well. There's a society of Munchkin assassins in my game that call themselves the Lollipop Guild.

Courtier - yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Definitely in. Jellia Jamb is the "iconic courtier."

Highwayman - there are certainly guns in Oz, and they seem to be about on a level with the guns in Swashbuckling Adventures. So the highwayman is certainly possible.

Inquisitor - the lack of an Inquisition pretty much dooms this class. It's cut.

Musketeer - It's in. Omby Amby is my "Iconic Musketeer."

Noble - Absolutely in. Buckets of them. Oz is swimming in nobles.

Pirate - as Oz is landlocked and surrounded by a (theoretically) impassable desert, the pirate isn't a prime class choice. Still, exiles from Regos and Coregos would be pirates. And Cap'n Bill is certainly nautical. Potentially in.

Spy - see Assassin. Not really featured in the books, but certainly possible.

Swashbuckler - ideally suited for the type of cinematic action I like. Yay, swashbuckler!

Wanderer - the reason why I switched the game back to D&D. Sample wanderers include Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Shaggy Man . . . let's face it, practically every other character.

Witch - another obvious one. I'll comment more on the magic using classes later, I think.

 

[Angelsboi]

man this should Rock!

 

[tsadkiel]

Monsters!

I'm back. Let's talk monsters.

The concept of a "monster palette" comes from these here boards, and it's a good one. You can add a great deal of flavor to a campaign by restricting the types of monsters that appear. So, Oz's monster palette:

Go through all the monster books you have on hand. You know the monsters that you looked at and passed on, saying "I'm never going to use that?" The ones that are just too weird? They belong in Oz. The flumph is the king of Ozlike beasties. From the Monster Manual, the ravid and rast look like great candidates, along with shocker lizards, phantom fungus, krenshar, etc.

In addition to the "what the heck?" monsters, there are a few general trends to be aware of. Baum uses lots of Monstrous Humanoids, but they tend to be things of his own creation. There are no gnolls or hobgoblins or bugbears, but there are wheelers and scoodlers and and horners and hoppers and flatheads and hammerheads, etc. Omega World, in the new Polyhedron, looks like it will be invaluable for creating the right sort of humanoid for Oz. I may start putting together mutation packages for assorted Oz races and posting them here.

Constructs. Lots of constructs. Between Smith & Tinker and the Powder of Life, just about any sort of construct can be fitted in.

There are dragons around Oz, but they tend to b more over the top than the D&D varieties. They certainly don't fit into the standard chromatic/metallic categories. but theyshow up so rarely that I haven't had to worry about them.

Undead are generally out. When I ran "The Longest Night," the fact that undead were marching on the city was a big deal - that sort of thing doesn't happen in Oz.

same goes for most of the big families of outsider - demons and devils kill the mood. Mephits are great, though. You can't go wrong with mephits.

 

[tsadkiel]

More monsters

Some existing D&D monsters that can pass for existing Oz monsters in bad lighting:

Growleywogs are enormously strong and freakishly thin giant beasties from beyond the border - they look an awful lot like the 3E ogre, nowadays.

Phantasms - evil spirits with a mastery of shapeshifing and a penchant for illusion, or slumming rakshasa? You make the call.

Open your Monster Manual and take a look at the Archierai. Drop the black cloud of death, add a very high fly speed, and change the alignment to Lawful neutral, and you have an ork, described as "A very unique bird that has wings covered with featherless skin, four legs, and a head shaped like a parrot with a beak that is half bill, half mouth. It has a scarlet plume of feathers on the crest of its head, and its tail is shaped like a propeller."

 

[Mighty Halfling]

If I may revive this thread...
Has your campaign continued to this day?
What sort of players (male? female? age?) have you recruited?
Have you considered using Fantasy Flight Games' "Grimm d20" for this?

 

[Agent Oracle]

Don't Forget?

Though it drew it's inspiration from a wide field of sources: such as:

you've got a lot of sources to work off of.

Anyhow, Here's a great link for more Braum information The Royal Timeline of Oz (and yes, nobody in Oz is ever permanently dead, but anyone can be terminally inconvenienced: "Oil can! Oil can!"

 

[tsadkiel]

If I may revive this thread...
Has your campaign continued to this day?
What sort of players (male? female? age?) have you recruited?
Have you considered using Fantasy Flight Games' "Grimm d20" for this?

I was all excited to see an Oz thread, and then realized it was one I started.

Sadly, my gaming group have all moved away at this point. I run the occasional game via pbem, but haven't done anything with Oz via the intarwebs yet. I'm still tinkering with the rules, though - I've replaced the Mannikins with the Ironborn from "Book of Iron Might", and I'm using the anthropomorphic template from "Savage Species" for talking beats; in my mind they're not actually anthropomorphic, but the stats are more pc friendly.

There were three players, one female and two male, all in their thirties.

And I bought Grimm for just that purpose, but didn't end up using it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Great idea for a setting! I'd definitely check out Wicked as well: While I don't like it as much as the critics who probably never cracked a Baum book in their lives, it's nice to see an adult perspective on the events leading up to the first novel in his series and a little bit of a glimpse of life afterwards. Until the author gets way too in love with the sound of his own voice, we get to see some very interesting looks at what life is like for ordinary people (and the nobility, later) in every region of the kingdom.

Dragon was supposed to do an Oz setting more than a decade ago, but it never came to anything. With so many of the novels now in the public domain, I think the time is ripe for SOMEONE to do it.

 

[Remathilis]

Ditto. I WHOLLY Suggest Wicked and its Sequel, Son of a Witch for anyone interested in using Oz as a setting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_(novel)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_a_Witch

I recommends the books, but these summaries should give you some info on Maguire's Oz. Specifically, the faiths of Oz (Lurinism, the pleasure faiths, the Unnamed God), The politics of Oz (the holy emperor, the Animal isolation), and the peoples (Winkies, Quadlings, Elves, Munchklins, Animals, Tic-toks) are all rich for exploration.

 

[Garnfellow]

This is why I think thread necromancy is great -- I never saw this thread the first time out.

I always thought the Oz books would make a cool setting for a short-term change of pace. It's a weird, very American take on fantasy.

Eric Shanower's Oz graphic novels are a pretty good non-canonical extension of the Oz stories.

I've been meaning to check out Alan Moore's Lost Girls graphic novel, which is supposed to be a very trippy (and DEFINITELY, DEFINITELY NOT gramma friendly) take on Dorothy (as well as Alice from the Looking Glass and Wendy from Neverland).