The campaign I'm designing is your basic resistance group scenario. Peaceful city gets overrun by warring power, blah, blah, blah. Unfortunately, I've seen someone try this before and it got boring, fast. I was into it, but there was serious energy drain from the rest of the group. It wasn't their fault either, nor was it the DM's (per se). The group simply didn't have a reason to care about the people. The NPC's even had very well fleshed-out backgrounds and personalities, but the PC's basically had no reason to be inclined to help the conquered people, no motivation to spur them into action. I would have accredited it to top-down design of the campaign, but it was slightly more than that. The evil wasn't evil enough.
I wanted to take my own spin on this, since I game with a group that's never seen this style of campaign, and they really like the idea of the urban and stealth-based skills being more important than usual. Since I really wanted to keep the gritty, low-magic, low-fantasy feeling, especially one of a small group of heroes helping to lead a full-scale rebellion, I'm not allowing any magic. At all. No wizards, no sorcerers, no druids, or clerics. Paladins, Rangers, and Bards are all modified to be non-casting classes. Enemies would mostly be typical humanoids, mostly humans, actually. They really liked and wanted that because they feel like most of the races in D&D are culture cop-outs that could be applied to groups of people instead of, say, Dwarves or Elves or Orcs. To keep with that idea, I replaced Orcs with a barbarian horde and made them an advanced group, but one who has no regard for life other than their own culture.
I wrote a little blurb for them to see before they create their characters, so they have an idea of who they're fighting and why they're doing it. I want the PC's to hate the group they're after, but I'd like to know if it was a little too vivid or brutal.
"Children were touted as being useless. Each of them was mutilated, then put on display atop pikes and other polearms. Later, some of these were removed and thrown as javelins to cause widespread pestilence.
Men were forced to dig pits, at first. After it was deep enough to hold several graves worth in space, some amount of them had their knees broken and were cast into the pit. Later groups were to haul large boulders and drop them on top of the pit, the former group covered up by a thin layer of dirt. The first time anyone refused either task, an entire group was beaten with a cat o' nine tails. Upon the second refusal, the offender had his back ripped open until he could no longer move. His wounds were then covered in boiling water. If not dead by that point, they were trampled to death by the horse-drawn carts hauling more boulders. On the third refusal, the entire group was beaten to death with spined whips.
Women were taken on the first night, and used as trophies for the rest of the night. They were disemboweled the following morning."
Someone compared it to Nazi treatment of the Jewish people, but it really wasn't what I was going for. Something more like... Assyrian treatment of rebels. Too much? Any suggestions as to further barbarity?
I wanted to take my own spin on this, since I game with a group that's never seen this style of campaign, and they really like the idea of the urban and stealth-based skills being more important than usual. Since I really wanted to keep the gritty, low-magic, low-fantasy feeling, especially one of a small group of heroes helping to lead a full-scale rebellion, I'm not allowing any magic. At all. No wizards, no sorcerers, no druids, or clerics. Paladins, Rangers, and Bards are all modified to be non-casting classes. Enemies would mostly be typical humanoids, mostly humans, actually. They really liked and wanted that because they feel like most of the races in D&D are culture cop-outs that could be applied to groups of people instead of, say, Dwarves or Elves or Orcs. To keep with that idea, I replaced Orcs with a barbarian horde and made them an advanced group, but one who has no regard for life other than their own culture.
I wrote a little blurb for them to see before they create their characters, so they have an idea of who they're fighting and why they're doing it. I want the PC's to hate the group they're after, but I'd like to know if it was a little too vivid or brutal.
"Children were touted as being useless. Each of them was mutilated, then put on display atop pikes and other polearms. Later, some of these were removed and thrown as javelins to cause widespread pestilence.
Men were forced to dig pits, at first. After it was deep enough to hold several graves worth in space, some amount of them had their knees broken and were cast into the pit. Later groups were to haul large boulders and drop them on top of the pit, the former group covered up by a thin layer of dirt. The first time anyone refused either task, an entire group was beaten with a cat o' nine tails. Upon the second refusal, the offender had his back ripped open until he could no longer move. His wounds were then covered in boiling water. If not dead by that point, they were trampled to death by the horse-drawn carts hauling more boulders. On the third refusal, the entire group was beaten to death with spined whips.
Women were taken on the first night, and used as trophies for the rest of the night. They were disemboweled the following morning."
Someone compared it to Nazi treatment of the Jewish people, but it really wasn't what I was going for. Something more like... Assyrian treatment of rebels. Too much? Any suggestions as to further barbarity?
