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ChrisMcDee
2007-08-09, 06:50 PM
I'm currently working on a setting that has no intelligent races other than humans. There are very rare instances of things like undead and constructs, but they're not common occurances. The human cultures have their differences but none are at out and out war with eachother.

This pushes your human enemies, beasts and proper monsters into the limelight. There are several different cultures of human, all of which contain good guys and bad guys, but I think I may have gotten quite used to having the Orcs, Kobolds and Trolls to fall back on.

Does anyone have any general advice for crafting adventures without any real evil races? My main concern is that the low intelligence beast and monster type enemies will wear thin. I already have some good ideas of what to do but I'm just trying you guys incase I've missed anything blatantly obvious.

Thanks in advance.

Zeta Kai
2007-08-09, 07:00 PM
Well, that depends. How do you feel about Outsiders? You can have a Demon/Devil vs. Celestial war on the Material Plane without anyone noticing that there are no gnomes.

NakedCelt
2007-08-09, 09:49 PM
Build up the variety with lots of classes instead. Cancel that part about "none are at out-and-out war with each other" — there should be some old enmities, and some current ones. Have magical threats that are not under the control of casters, but could be awakened by casters if they're not careful; then make one or two of these the focus of several competing world powers or would-be world powers.

Engine
2007-08-10, 12:20 PM
No evil race,you said?
And humans?I think that humans could be really,really evil.I don't have to remember you what have done (and what are doing) humans in their long history.Persecution,genocide,weapon of mass destruction's deployment,totalitarian government and so on.
With some changes,you could use the history of humanity to design your evil human race in your fantasy campaign setting.
Or.
Have you ever read "A Song of Ice & Fire" by George RR Martin?
Human reigns,at war each other.Some evil.Some less evil.No one really good,but only good characters.
Plenty of adventure.Plenty of stories to tell to your PCs.

nerulean
2007-08-10, 01:10 PM
All you have to do is make some of your humans evil, or at least at odds with the party. Not every BBEG has to be a lich or an orc or whatever, and planning-wise, whatever said lich could come up with, a sufficiently intelligent human could also think of. Bear in mind that you, the DM, are human. Any evil scheme you can think of, so could a human in your campaign world.

What you really want to do is push the differences between your different human cultures into bold prominence. You could give them stat changes as if they were different races (or sub-races, rather) or offer things like regional feats from FR that are only available to people from certain places, but the mechanical elements aren't too important. Give each culture an favoured style of dress that the PCs will learn to recognise from your descriptions, and give each a favoured style of fighting (these guys like mounted combat, these guys fight in melee but rely heavily on buffs, these guys like blasting with AoE spells). Set aside a lot of flavour differences in the ways you play different groups of people.

ChrisMcDee
2007-08-10, 02:11 PM
Some good advice here, guys. There are, of course, going to be some very very evil humans in this world. When the BBEG isn't some sort of monstrosity you can be sure it'll be a human.

Keeping the cultures distinct is definitely near the top of my list of priorities. The huge differences and ancient setting mean that the cultures will be able to have the odd clash now and then but full-on war is out as far as the base setting goes. Nothing is stopping the DM changing that, though.

I should probably note that this isn't using D&D, but if your character ties themselves closely to a region they will recieve certain bonuses that are characterful to the region in question. It's a classless, rules-lite system that aims to have a huge scope for creating different types of characters. It's actually based on the foundations of a superhero RPG.

I think going all-human with regards to intelligent races means that the campaign world will be a lot more political than normal. As an example, if you hear that Gnolls are raiding a village you'll go and straight-up kill the Gnolls without so much as a second thought. If you hear that the people of one village are raiding another you're probably going to at least try talking to those people, or trying to find out why, before hacking them to bits. I say probably... :smallwink:

Engine
2007-08-10, 03:04 PM
I have run a only-human campaign,a few years ago.Using the huge Rolemaster system that thaksfully has given me a lot of mechanical stuff to design my own human cultures (not races).
But the mechanical stuff isn't necessary,or almost isn't primary in designing the campaign world.I think that every culture must have a tagline.A single word that describe the base concept,for example "sailing" for a culture that's heavily based on all that concerns the navy.Or "feudal",or "wandering",and so on.
In my own campaign (I hope that someday I could use it again) there's a
huge empire based on the military power.If you want to advance in your career,you have to join the ranks of the military.The emperor himself (it's also a very masculine society,the women are ostracized from the public life with notable exceptions) is elected from the major representatives of the military.This empire has tried in the past to overcome the other cultures of the continent,failing.But has an aggressive demeanor,so it's trying again to conquer the other cultures of the continent to seize absolute control of *all* but more subtly,using spies and well trained military units that have to cause havoc pillaging villages,attacking small enemy units,destroying marchants' caravan and so on.
At the same time,there's much discontent in the civilian population,tired of the absolute power of the military.So there's a subtle rebel movement,that's trying to discharge the military and the emperor.
So there's a "evil race" instead of the classical Goblins and Orcs,with a Big Villain.But all very mundane,with only pure human stock.It's simple to dismiss the Orcs like "evil",but with humans?It's more difficult for players to see a entire human culture like a "evil race",and I think that's good.There's not only the Great Quest For World Saving,but also a more intimate quest in the comprehension of the human relationship.
Other cultures are vaguely based on Viking,Arabian,Ancient Greek cultures.Like the skill at sailing of the Vikings,or the proto-Democracy of the Greeks.All these cultures have their agendas,their combat style,their diet,their language and so on.They aren't point-eared,but if you describe them carefully the players will not feel the lack of elves or dwarves.

ChrisMcDee
2007-08-10, 03:11 PM
Some good stuff there, Engine, thanks.

I'm hoping to establish that each human culture (or race, I guess) will have good guys and bad guys. I want there to always be the feeling of doubt, running both ways. How do you know you can trust this seemingly helpful NPC and how can you be sure the guy you're trying to kill is really so evil afterall?

Of course, playing up to the ancient setting (and let's face it, humanity in general), the races you're most likely to consider as the evil ones will vary depending on which race you're from :smallwink:

Engine
2007-08-10, 03:24 PM
Of course, playing up to the ancient setting (and let's face it, humanity in general), the races you're most likely to consider as the evil ones will vary depending on which race you're from :smallwink:

Yeah,of course.
My Empire is based on the ancient Roman Empire (the emphasis on military power and egemonic objectives),and like the Romans they see the conquest like spreading their "superior" civilization.For the "Greater Good",you see.:smallbiggrin:

Nocte
2007-08-10, 03:29 PM
Maybe you can use Blood Lines for some diversity.

You can make your campaign like some historical conflict between nations, of course including magic and monsters. You can take a look at the new argonauts (http://www.seankreynolds.com/skrg/products/002TNA/) from Sean k Reynolds. It's free to download.

ChrisMcDee
2007-08-10, 03:36 PM
Aah, I downloaded New Argonauts a while ago and completely forgot about it. It sounds like it'd be great for inspiration for my setting, which has a somewhat Greco-Roman feel. I'll dig up the file and check it out.

Triaxx
2007-08-11, 03:38 PM
Open hostilities tend to tie players down for long periods of time. Instead, staging a good old invasion is my preferred method of creating foes. Try starting them in one country, and have it be invaded. Then let them find out while 'spying' on the enemy, that the country they're defending is the evil one. Then they can have the choice.

As for racial differences, why not make certain traits area specific? Sorcerors and or Wizards are generally associated with area A, due to a massive magical concentration, so it's a Magocracy. Area B is a harsh wildland, so it produces a lot of Barbarians, and is pretty tribal. So the Theocracy of Area C, might try to 'convert' the heathen hordes of A and B. Don't just rely on the players to give a backstory, give them some backstory to set in.

Now the humans from those areas accel in those sorts of fields. Area A get's bonuses to INT and CHA, with losses to STR and CON.

B gets a bonus to STR at the cost of WIS or INT.

C has bonuses to WIS and CON, with penalties to INT and DEX.

Hawriel
2007-08-12, 02:48 AM
you dont even have to have truely evil nation. you can have resourses, iron, gold, good farmland ect. be a sorce of conflict. Prolonged conflict over resourses would creat alot of bad blood making to countries historical enemies. Europ is a great example of this. Also religion, the Catholic / Prodistant fewed is one that plunged Europ into very distructive wars.

I recomend going down to your library and picking up one or two general history books of Europ, Greese, the middle east, and china. These are relitivly small places (exept china) witch are or have been made up of alot of conflicting states. No one was truely evil or good.

dr.cello
2007-08-12, 11:08 PM
The Thief series of games is basically all humans and works just fine. The easiest solution is to make your campaign primarily urban, so you're dealing mostly with humans instead of monsters.

Instead of monsters and dungeons, you can have cults, and organizations, and so on. Freaky religions are always fun.

ChrisMcDee
2007-08-13, 05:33 PM
you dont even have to have truely evil nation. you can have resourses, iron, gold, good farmland ect. be a sorce of conflict. Prolonged conflict over resourses would creat alot of bad blood making to countries historical enemies. Europ is a great example of this. Also religion, the Catholic / Prodistant fewed is one that plunged Europ into very distructive wars.

I recomend going down to your library and picking up one or two general history books of Europ, Greese, the middle east, and china. These are relitivly small places (exept china) witch are or have been made up of alot of conflicting states. No one was truely evil or good.
This is very much what I'm going for :smallsmile:

The nations/empires themselves are generally made up of individual regions, many of which aren't fully integrated in anything other than name. This means there can be lots of invasions between factions without forcing a gigantic empire war.

Many of the high-powered heroes will have their own agenda too, so there'll be no shortage of excuses for humans to get into fights :smallwink:

Matthew
2007-08-15, 07:51 AM
Are you familiar with Conan D20 at all? That pretty much is of the same theme.

MMad
2007-08-15, 04:36 PM
Does anyone have any general advice for crafting adventures without any real evil races?

Take a look at the news, or read a history book. There's plenty of conflict and heroism in the real world, which doesn't even have monsters, just humans.

I'd say you could easily lose the whole "good vs. evil" thing and just go with a nationalistic "us vs. them" kind of thing. Think Sparta vs. Troja, China vs. Japan, Angles vs. Saxons, Germany vs. France, USA vs. Iran, Romans vs. Picts, etc. There's lots of conflicts in the history of humanity that doesn't necessarily have one side being good and one evil that could still be adapted to a fantasy roleplaying scenario that could be interesting to play.

Hawriel
2007-08-16, 01:30 AM
afew years ago I picked up a D20 campain book published by green ronin. The book is The Black Company campain setting. Its based off of the novel series of the same name. Glen Cook is the author. There are no other civilized races in the setting, just humans. For added variety the writers of the campain setting took the bonus feat and skill points for a human and put it together to creat a background feat. This feat gave a special ability somthing like a bonus for a save or skill. 4 skills that are class skills the extra skill points for playing a human are used for the 4 extra class skills. It also gave you a choice between to feats.
what background you use determens or favored class. example background soldier favors fighters.
here is an example.

background: Prostitute

skills: 4 points at creation to use on bluff, perform, sence motive, slight of hand. 1 extra point per level to spend on one of these four skills. these skills are class skills.

feats: eather Iron will or skill focus for one of the background skills listed above.

Background trait: +3 save bonus to all saving throws against desease.

I recomend the book, it has a different magic system and very grim world.