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View Full Version : What do I need to know to turn the French Revolution into a campaign?



MonkeySage
2015-03-30, 07:10 AM
I've got my homebrewed Pathfinder setting, Estion, and I was wondering whether I could get satisfying results trying to adapt it to the general era of the French Revolution, since I personally love the French Revolution... One of my favorite historical periods to read about.

My players don't necessarily need to be active participants; the way i had planned, they would be experiencing a revolution as outsiders.

So, my setting is a kingdom located a large desert island, a member of a once powerful confederacy. The era would likely be a late preindustrial era.

Solaris
2015-03-30, 08:24 AM
Unless it involves the players somehow, it's just background noise.

Anonymouswizard
2015-03-30, 08:46 AM
Which French Revolution, 1, 2, or 3?

Berenger
2015-03-30, 09:05 AM
You need to know what the prevalent gods think about the god-given sovereignty of the aristocracy.

MonkeySage
2015-03-30, 09:09 AM
Solaris: I think you're right. Wouldn't be right unless the players were in someway directly involved in someway.

1789-1799 Time Frame. :)

Maglubiyet
2015-03-30, 09:18 AM
All sorts of opportunities for adventurers in that type of background -- military, espionage, intrigue.

Solaris
2015-03-30, 10:31 AM
Solaris: I think you're right. Wouldn't be right unless the players were in someway directly involved in someway.

1789-1799 Time Frame. :)

Now that I'm slightly more awake, I think I can come up with something slightly more constructive.

Background noise isn't necessarily a bad thing, mind. It can contribute to the verisimilitude of the world, and it lays the groundwork for future adventures while contributing to the consistency of the setting. Like Maglubiyet said, there are a lot of opportunities for the players to get involved in the revolution. Powerful people tend to attract; the power players in the revolution may well come to take an interest in the PCs in an effort at swaying the course of events one way or another. This could provide an opportunity to explore the Great Man model of history, and reputation would definitely play a role in both the PCs and the NPCs swaying the masses. You can model reputation organically, or perhaps import over the Unearthed Arcana or d20 Modern rules on it.

However, if your players really aren't at all interested in getting involved with the revolution, that's when the background noise gets to be disruptive and distracting.

Zyzzyva
2015-03-30, 11:34 AM
For the planning ahead type DM, you need to skin your quest hooks for a whole bunch of different possible PC decisions on "who's in the right" - Royalists, Girondins, Terrorists, Bonapartists, etc. (Obviously those won't be the actual names but "against", "for, moderately", "for, hardcore", and "whatever lets me climb to the top of the heap" all seem likely possibilities for PCs to take.) "Escort quest the Marquis de Carabas out of the country" and "escort quest this important Republican out of the Vendee" are mostly the same adventure, but you'll need to put a little thought into how each would work differently.

On consideration, I can totally see becoming Napoleon "Player Character" Bonaparte being the goal of a lot of teams. :smallwink:

Aedilred
2015-03-30, 11:47 AM
It certainly was an interesting period, although how the PCs respond to it will obviously largely depend on their own preferences as players as much as anything else. (For the sake of expediency, I'll refer to things by their real names throughout, albeit I gather the setting will be changed; still, I imagine there could be analogues to them).

From a campaign perspective, the background causes of the revolution are pretty boring, and it's unlikely the players will seize on them as something to get worked up about: they're just not all that "epic". So I'd be tempted to have the storming of the Bastille happen either before the campaign starts or as the opening event, allowing you to get stuck into the murk of the Revolution thereafter.

Much will probably depend on how socially high-powered the characters are. Do they start out as known persons, or nobodies? likely to get involved in the politics in Paris, or are they going to be more affected by events than affecting them? Or will they start out as minor bourgeois or the like with the chance to rise high in the Committee or the Directory as time goes on?

If they're "somebodies" at the start of the period, they could be called on to assist with the flight to Varennes, say, or defending the Tuileries. Perhaps they would be engaged as assassins to take out Marat, or as agents to bring down Danton or Robespierre. Maybe they're officers sent to the front to defend the homeland, with the chance to build reputations and glory and end up returning in triumph and taking over the government, like Napoleon. Or maybe they join the Jacobins and rise high, taking over the Committee themselves.

If they're going to start out as peasants, then perhaps a setting like the Vendée or Lyon would work better than Paris, where the PCs have to decide whether to side with the central government and the revolution, or try to get a counter-revolution moving, or whether to stand aside from politics and only step in to prevent atrocities. There would of course be plenty of room to push the characters in one direction or the other if they seem disengaged, by having their friends and families killed (or arrested pending execution, prompting a rescue).

There would be room for quite an interesting clerical campaign dealing with the religious aspects of the Revolution, but that's not safe for forum consumption.

Or you could go full Scarlet Pimpernel and have them trying to rescue victims of the Terror.

There is room for plenty of interesting campaigns, although I suspect it's not possible to do it all. I think it's also important to keep the focus on the PCs themselves, and not to make the campaign all about what's going on in the Revolution at the expense of what makes sense for them. If they end up distanced from main events there's still Revolution-stuff going on that they can be involved with, but at ground level - the politics will end up being quite remote and largely irrelevant. You could keep them updated, I guess, on what was going on by having newssheets arrive every couple of days in each settlement informing them of changes in government - or perhaps just a death-list each day of execution victims, to remind them that they're part of something bigger and keep that in their minds.