I am currently working out how I want to frame my upcoming campaign, which will be a sandbox in a specifically wonderous environment relative to where the PCs come from. My initial thought was the Wild Beyond The Wall type scenario, but as I was driving home today I considered the idea of using Portal Fantasy. There are lots of flavors of Portal Fantasy, but I am specifically thinking of the Narnia/Magicians sort: people from our real world sometime during the modern era (though not necessarily "now") finding there way to FantasyLand.
I was thinking about how to model that with 5E and I kind of landed on "0 Level PCs" in the "real world" and the whole set of options and level advancement in the fantasy world. I thought I would ask here for some ideas, and see what folks think.
One thing is that Backgrounds can be rough approximations of real world professions or professional categories, providing skill, tool and maybe even weapon proficiencies. So you might be a construction worker and get Athletics, masons tools and simple weapons as a proficiency.
I am not sure whether to "hold back" some attribute points and have there be a little bit of a boost when they choose their class after an introductory foray or lifepath character gen (I haven't decided what works best yet). So if the construction worker takes his first level in fighter, they can take a +2 in either strength or con, for example.
Has anyone done portal fantasy in 5E, or D&D in general? How did you account for the "real world" background? id you have them be able to travel back and forth, or was it a one-way trip? How did you deal with character death, if at all?
I was thinking about how to model that with 5E and I kind of landed on "0 Level PCs" in the "real world" and the whole set of options and level advancement in the fantasy world. I thought I would ask here for some ideas, and see what folks think.
One thing is that Backgrounds can be rough approximations of real world professions or professional categories, providing skill, tool and maybe even weapon proficiencies. So you might be a construction worker and get Athletics, masons tools and simple weapons as a proficiency.
I am not sure whether to "hold back" some attribute points and have there be a little bit of a boost when they choose their class after an introductory foray or lifepath character gen (I haven't decided what works best yet). So if the construction worker takes his first level in fighter, they can take a +2 in either strength or con, for example.
Has anyone done portal fantasy in 5E, or D&D in general? How did you account for the "real world" background? id you have them be able to travel back and forth, or was it a one-way trip? How did you deal with character death, if at all?