Would you rather... (Game Style)

[Empirate]

In a homebrew Stone Age-y campaign I will shortly begin DMing, I put the following restrictions on my players:


Everybody must come from the same small village and have some prior relation to each other.

E6 rules are in effect.

The only playable race is Humans. There may be other intelligent races in the world, but they're not for players.

Playable classes are only: Barbarian, Bard, Druid (Shapeshift Variant only), Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue (no Trapfinding), Sorcerer, Favored Soul, Spirit Shaman, Scout, Warlock

Every PC gets 1 extra skillpoint per level (4 at 1st), which must be used for Craft or Profession skills.

PCs are illiterate by default. A rune script exists and can be learned for 2 skillpoints. For PCs, only 1 language exists, bonus languages are lost.

The following skills don't exist: Appraise, Decipher Script, Disable Device, Forgery, Open Lock.

The following spells don't exist: Align Weapon, Arcane Lock, Blink, Chill/Heat Metal, Comprehend Languages, Create Water, Detect Chaos/Evil/Good/Law, Detect Secret Doors, Erase, Find Traps, Floating Disk, Illusory Script, Knock, Know Direction, Locate Object, Mage Armor, Magic Circle against Chaos/Evil/Good/Law, Make Whole, Mending, Misdirection, Mount, Obscure Object, Phantom Steed, Phantom Trap, Plant Growth, Protection from Chaos/Evil/Good/Law, Read Magic, Rope Trick, Secret Page, Sepia Snake Sigil, Spiritual Weapon, Tiny Hut, Tree Shape, Undetectable Alignment[FONT=&quot][/FONT].

Spells require no material components. However, every spell requires a special focus made of a material called Moonscatter, which is only rarely found in this world and is not normally sold. Higher level spells require larger pieces of this.

Metal equipment generally doesn't exist. Everything made of metal is automatically considered a masterwork item and requires the Feat "Smith" to craft at all. Weapons and Armor tables have been changed to reflect this.


So what do you think? Too much restrictions for having fun - or will my players have fun because of the restrictions?
I'm of the opinion that choices are the interesting part of playing an RPG. However, I'm also of the opinion that too much material to choose from makes the choice meaningless. IMO, restriction of options makes choices more interesting. This may sound paradoxical, but for some reason my group seems to agree - everybody seems really enthusiastic about the new campaign.

I'd be interested in your opinions on this.

 

[kitcik]

Every PC gets 1 extra skillpoint per level (4 at 1st), which must be used for Craft or Profession skills.

PCs are illiterate by default. A rune script exists and can be learned for 2 skillpoints. For PCs, only 1 language exists, bonus languages are lost.

I would actually be ok with your setting, as it seems flavorful and not overly restrictive on the development of the allowed classes.

I would make 2 comments:
1) For some reason, the above annoys me. How about allowing them to spend their bonus points on Craft, Profession OR rune script? Otherwise, you are forcing to use base points on this and for some reason that bugs me.
2) If someone comes up with a really good reason for playing another race, you should consider it - maybe there could be a half-orc slave or something that joins up.

 

[CuRoi]

Sorry not to answer your question, but...

---Play a dungeon-crawling, mission-hopping campaign with no real plot but complete character build freedom.

^
|
Is there room in here....
|
^

---Play a limited setting, specific focus campaign (Monster Tribe, Assasins, Pirates, etc.), with reacurring plot themes and where characters need to be created to certain specifications or roles.

I think if players choose option one and the DM fails to provide any sort of plot, the game can drift into aimless wandering unless you have an extremely focused and cohesive group of players that want to work on something pretty specific together. I've rarely seen that happen. Unless your DMing for a single player...

If you choose option two, you may alienate a sizeable number of players which would prefer something with at least the trappings of option one. It may also start to quickly resemble a not-so-interactive Novel written solely by the guy who made all the starting restrictions (i.e. the DM.)

So, I abstain simply because I don't think either choose is sustainable as a "campaign". A few strung together sessions? Sure. A full blown campaign where you carry PCs through 10, 15, 20 levels? I don't really think so. And my guess is if you played for that amount of time, you'd very much end up with elements from both choices.

 

[Alexander123]

So what do you think? Too much restrictions for having fun - or will my players have fun because of the restrictions?
I'm of the opinion that choices are the interesting part of playing an RPG. However, I'm also of the opinion that too much material to choose from makes the choice meaningless. IMO, restriction of options makes choices more interesting. This may sound paradoxical, but for some reason my group seems to agree - everybody seems really enthusiastic about the new campaign.

I'd be interested in your opinions on this.

I don't think that this would be a fun campaign. Too many restrictions. My idea of a fun campaign is Eberron so based on that you can figure out why I don't think your campaign would be fun.

 

[CuRoi]

Empirate's idea -

Sounds very creative to me. I think this maybe falls under option number 2 as proposed by the thread?

I like it, of course, I like low magic ideas with story driven mechanics (it's not just "I banned this and that" its the fact that those things simply don't exist in the campaign world...i.e. Clerics and early Dragonlance campaigns.) While many people might balk at the idea, as long as you are a decent DM, most people learn to enjoy the specific campaign "quirks".

 

[Empirate]

[MENTION=98256]kitcik[/MENTION]: I'll definitely pick up your point about the skills - good idea. Half-Orcs etc. will not be possible, as there are no Orcs in that world. The campaign revolves heavily around Medusas though, so maybe I'll come up with some half-Medusa homebrew race, or adapt some Yuan-Ti themed races (Tainted One, or Extaminaar, maybe). At the moment, Humans it is though.

[MENTION=98794]Alexander123[/MENTION]: I can understand that. However, after an "anything goes" Red Hand of Doom campaign, I'm looking forward to something with a more unique feel, which is the reason I adopted all of those restrictions. Maybe I'll be doing a really open and weird planehopping campaign next, who knows?

 

[Herzog]

[MENTION=78958]Empirate[/MENTION]:
I play in a campaign that started out somewhat like that.

Your E6 and the requirement for spellcasting focus will probably help you against the problems we ran in to, but let me spell them out for you anyway, so you can avoid them:

The restrictions on equipment hurt your 'fighter' PC's the most.
Make sure (as you have already started by banning some spells that would otherwise let the casters outshine the fighters) that your 'fighter' PC's don't end up with lower AC and weapon dmg than the casters.

Keep a lid on your druid. The restriction to shapechange variant from PHII is a good start.

I'm not sure if you also have prepared a restriction on books, but a more generic 'ban' on spells might be in order.
(like: you can't have spells that improve your AC, otherwise you'll end up with better AC than the fighter.)

For example, I noticed you didn't ban 'Barkskin'...

In our campaign, most problems resulted from the different expectations the DM and players had. Some were expecting all magic to be removed eventually from the campaign, others expected magic to become more available (as other inventions like iron etc. also became available), while I personally expected the restrictions mostly to be about having a 'semi-reasonable' explanation for your magic use. (like blowing sand in someone's face as part of a 'sleep' spell....)

Make sure you and all players have a good understanding about the restrictions you enforce, why you enforce them (I expect both low magic AND balance) and how this may change (if at all) during the campaign.

Good luck!

 

[Empirate]

Thanks for your great suggestions. I do plan to make magic more widely available over the course of the campaign, although mostly in the form of magic items. The PCs right now are a Ranger, a Warlock, and a Druid, and all plan to stay single-classed (to grab those juicy E6 capstone feats later on). I don't foresee any balance problems - the Druid is limited to the Shapeshift variant, the other two are fine with that.


I think I'll explain my setting a little, if you'll forgive the wall of text:

The story revolves around another, alien species of Humans (who call themselves post-Humans), who are genetically and nanotechnically engineered to be generally better than 'normal' Humans (mechanically, Aasimar, but not so nice). These use high tech to ease their lives - it's basically standard D&D magic reflavored as nanotechnology. All of them have at least one level in the Wizard class, and all of them are well equipped with wands, scrolls, and wondrous items.

These post-Humans have long ago colonized the game world through portals. They used a specially modified breed of Humans to live and work there as slaves - the game world has high radiation levels and can't support post-Humans for long, but the colonizer race has adapted. The post-Humans wanted to colonize that world to gather Moonscatter (actually pieces of a former moon-come-ring system, which periodically rain down onto the surface), an endlessly useful material that isn't found in any other world.

From the early slave colonizers mining this Moonscatter, the PCs have sprung, born into a world that is intentionally kept low on technology (and magic, obviously). However, the slaves have over the centuries adapted their own form of native, intuitive nanotechnology - hence Druids, Warlocks, Favored Souls, and Sorcerers. This is very rare though, inherited through various recessive strains of DNA or whatever.


The campaign's idea is that the players start in a stone age fantasy world low on what they perceive to be magic, and very low on technology. Over the course of the campaign, they'll discover that the campaign is not, actually, a fantasy campaign, but a SciFi game. Also, they'll discover that their whole people are slaves in a world that functions as the universe's largest labor camp.

So the main reason for limiting options was the story. Balance came in as a secondary consideration, but I soon decided that I wanted no Wizards (at least, at first), and absolutely no Clerics or Archivists. I'll see whether I'll introduce Artificers later - in E6, it should be manageable.

 

[Herzog]

Be careful.

A radical shift like that (magic is actually technology) might seem like an interesting twist, but make sure it doesn't screw over the PC's ideas of his background.

Players tend to write things into their background based on how they expect the world to work. If your technology works EXACTLY like magic, this is not a problem. If, however, you plan to introduce subtle differences as clues they are not exactly the same, make sure to discuss the character backgrounds to find out if any of your changes would have an impact on how the character perceived the world.

A simplified example: If 'magic' is inherited, it makes no sense that a character has learned magic from someone else. If, however, a player has written this in his character's background, you might have to inform him that he wasn't tought magic per se, but merely was tought how to control the magic within him.

I have VERY bad experiences with these sort of player expectation vs DM knowledge things. I'm not saying your players would have the same problems, just sharing my own experience.

 

[Empirate]

Thanks for the warning. In fact, I've already decided to leave in some inexplicable 'mystical' elements just for this purpose. For example, there will be Undead in my campaign. Even the post-Humans don't understand everything about the strange world they have been colonizing. Who knows what Moonscatter really does?