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GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-09, 11:20 PM
I have an idea I've been kicking around for a couple weeks. It started when Darths & Droids mentioned rules for system shock when familiars die (http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/1710.html). They said that the same shock in reverse would have more effect on the familiar, meaning that if the master died the familiar would as well.
Thinking about this, I quickly realized that I couldn't think of RPGs with explicit rules for what happens to familiars when their masters die. This isn't surprising; as far as most game designers (or players) are concerned, the familiar is just another tool in the mage's toolkit. What happens to the mage's familiar after they die is about as important as what happens to the fighter's ancestral sword or the warlock's pact.
These thoughts bumped into something from a D&D/A Song of Ice and Fire fic I started a while back, where the wizard's familiar was separated from her when the party was scattered across Westeros, and I had plans for the familiar to break the link and start serving the Old Gods as a druid (while the rest of the party and their high-level class abilities and magic items mucked up the story elsewhere). I didn't figure out what I wanted that story to do, but I'm glad it helped inspire an unrelated idea.

The TL;DR of that idea is, of course, "An RPG where the PCs are masterless familiars". If that sounds interesting to you, I'd like to hear why it sounds interesting, including what immediately popped into your head. (This idea is still at the earliest stages, where things can be jammed in or radically altered without too much hassle.)

My own thoughts on how this RPG could work are roughly as follows.

First, we need to define the nature of a familiar; either they are a magical spirit who takes the form of an animal, or they are a normal animal given some kind of magical...thingy. The former category can be divided into minor independent spirits and go-betweens between the mage and the source of their power, which not only doesn't work for most fantasy RPG magic systems but also isn't too interesting for this RPG, since it would basically involve the spirit going home and doing supernatural office work until another field assignment came up.
In the remaining cases, we can assume the familiar directly benefited from their relationship with the master; the spirits might receive magical power (or just like possessing a physical form, and need the mage to keep that), while the animals receive sapience and a few other benefits. But what happens to these benefits when the mage departs? From a Doylist perspective, some of them would need to persist for at least a while; otherwise, their former status as familiars wouldn't much affect the game.

For the purpose of giving this RPG some structure beyond the mischief that minor spirits or little critters can get up to (which, admittedly, could be enough to sustain at least a few light-hearted one-shots), we'll also assume that the familiars can't keep running indefinitely off their own "natural energy" or anything like that. They have a finite amount of mana available to keep their special abilities running, and don't recharge it naturally. The "core existential" abilities, like a spirit's physical form or an animal's intelligence, would need to drain mana slowly enough to not be the primary mana drain but quickly enough to still be a concern.
They might also need a certain base mana reserve on hand to maintain other minor abilities or to buff their "base form"; they might need X mana to speak with humans or get a bonus to certain physical tasks at Y mana. Mana would also be used to fuel overt magical abilities, probably including some kind of ritual that consumes a lot of mana but gives a permanent boost (making them double as a sort of XP).
This would form a three-way trade-off with regards to mana; you could hoard it to bolster your physical form, invest it in new powers, or use it on powers you already possess. Obviously, balancing the mana costs/thresholds of individual mana uses would need to be a critical part of the game design; it wouldn't be much fun if, say, the game broke when a player just hoarded their mana and used boring natural attacks or whatever, and saving up for one specific, broken ability wouldn't be much better.
That specific problem (and possibly other related ones) could be made easier to solve by putting inherent limits on mana use; a maximum mana capacity, limits on how much mana you could use at once, locking potent abilities behind some additional "paywall," etc. For those three, I think a "maximum mana pool" and "maximum mana bucket" would be a pretty simple way to convey those, and the third would presumably be a leveling system where you couldn't buy high-level abilities until you had empowered your essence to a high level (spending a decent chunk of mana at each level).

Alright, that seems like a decent resource-management mechanic, which could serve as fuel for a wide variety of interesting decisions. But what would the ex-familiars do with those resources?
The most obvious is, of course, "acquire more resources". Since they literally require mana to live (or at least exist in a comfortable state), they'd have a pretty strong drive to do so. For instance, familiars might scour the upper levels of recently-cleared dungeons to find magical trinkets so minor that the first dungeon-delvers missed them, then drain them of their mana. Or perhaps local witches could summon them to send on little errands (like distracting someone at an appropriate time, or getting some component which humans are too big to easily retrieve) in exchange for mana-payment.
Another obvious motivation for ex-familiars might to become familiars again. Of course, succeeding at this would end the campaign, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing; I'm pretty sure some World of Darkness gamelines have entire species driven by a motivation to become more normal, so I might draw inspiration from that. (Alternatively, the quest to convince some mage that you'll make good familiars might be the default campaign endgoal, kind of like how most D&D campaigns end in defeating a BBEG.) Figuring out how to make this challenging and compelling would, of course, require a fair amount of work and worldbuilding; I'd need to explain why the PCs aren't enticing familiar options at the start, create clear obstacles the PCs would need to overcome, etc. It's worth considering as an option, but it's something I'd have to build the entire game system and world around, and not everybody is going to want to follow that particular path.
The standard RPG endgame of "saving the world" or whatnot doesn't really work; I'm trying to keep this game about familiars smaller-scale than that. It's not a story about little people doing big things; it's a story about little people doing little things, which still matter. So maybe I could try to identify some little things familiars could do to influence larger-scale events...but this would require fleshing out the setting more than I have at this early stage.
Another option would be to have some kind of mini-society composed of ex-familiars and other talking animals and/or minor spirits. This would give a new little thing to do (save the little world) and could open up standard adventuring motives (loot, prestige, saving the world)...but would also risk turning this into just another fantasy RPG with a fancy coat of paint. But maybe the players could work to create such a society, collecting scattered individualistc fairies, apprentice lab experiments, etc into a mutually-supportive community? Having "bosses" you try to recruit instead of fighting could be an interesting twist, potentially only slightly less so if you recruit them by fighting (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DefeatEqualsFriendship). Though not doing that would be a good excuse to flesh out some social-conflict-resolution mechanics I've had kicking around in the back of my head for a while...
And, of course, we can just have nasty threats to our characters, specifically. Cats probably wouldn't pose too serious a danger to supernatural rats (and certainly not the kind of danger you can plausibly resolve with any plot that isn't "get powerful enough that these cats stop bugging me"...which I guess could be a decent secondary motivation in any campaign)...but supernatural threats might have the power and persistence required to make them plausible antagonists, and could more plausibly have plot-worthy deterrents. A down-on-its-luck imp might try consuming local spirits for their mana, trying to get back up on its luck, forcing the PCs to find something that can kill it...or for something stronger than imps, perhaps just something that it has supernatural antipathy towards (like a holy symbol of some diametrically-opposed deity), so it tries to find some other edible spirits instead. This could also work well with the aforementioned community-building idea, either by letting you recruit imps (if you scour the land for enough enticing options to get appropriate persuasion buffs) or organize a community effort to kill the barghests or ghasts or whatever is threatening them.
Or, of course, the players might want to ascend the food chain, consuming lesser beings themselves to challenge minor monsters and even low-level adventurers. Not sure if I want to encourage this as a major motivation, but if I include the ability to "level up" to that sort of...level (if only to be able to build minor demons &c with the same rules as lesser spirits), I'm sure players will gravitate towards that option.

That about exhausts the ideas I have at the moment, so I'd like to open the floor. What sort of ideas can you think of that would be interesting? What problems do you see with these ideas, or with the core concept itself? Is this just kinda stupid and gimmicky?

Knaight
2018-10-10, 01:12 AM
I've seen this in a few places, both some fantasy literature (Kingdom of Light, by one Alan Dean Foster) and a Fudge module (Another Fine Mess). Often this lends itself well to particular structures - the great wizard left their business undone, and is dead, captured, or something else. Time for the familiars to finish the job.

That structure should fit with your requirements fairly well, though the business undone can't be too huge. Still, you could get in a good short comedy campaign based on a bunch of hapless familiars trying their best to handle the day to day business of handling their wizards' tower.

LibraryOgre
2018-10-10, 11:51 AM
I started on something called Advanced Dungeons and Kittens. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z6FxUvmyTb8rv4qV8RLLoK9rsQFD2gV-61ER1ITkTZg/edit?usp=sharing) Haven't made the scenario, yet, but there you are.

em.
2018-10-14, 08:23 AM
That about exhausts the ideas I have at the moment, so I'd like to open the floor. What sort of ideas can you think of that would be interesting? What problems do you see with these ideas, or with the core concept itself? Is this just kinda stupid and gimmicky?

I think it's a fantastic concept, and as a player I'd be signing u[ for a one-shot or small arc of something in that vein in a heartbeat.

There's already been some attempts at similar things before: it brings to mind a one page RPG about being the familiars of a deceased witch by Grant Howitt, called The Witch is Dead (I can't link it due to postcount, but just use your search engine of choice, and it'll be in the top ten). It was pretty well received by the RPG community at large, I believe.

I've personally run Monstorous campaigns before, with low level PC 'mooks', where folks take on the role of various dungeon minions (ala Tuckers Kobolds) and it's been great fun.

I think having the slightly more human-centric viewpoint of Familiars would make for a little less black comedy and deconstruction (though that might just be me and my playgroup :smalltongue:).

The main issues would be player buy-in (not everyone's up for this sort of thing!), keeping the scope focused (though wild tangents might prove for amusing stories) and getting the right tone: making 'normal' human things seem difficult and strange, without a frustrating experience.

System-wise, I'd probably gravitate towards FATE or Pathfinder - the first for the narrative freedom and the second for the familiar (if you'll pardon the pun) crunch.

noob
2018-10-14, 12:56 PM
In dnd 3.5 when the master die the familiar have no actual changes applied to it: it stays a familiar with all its powers (and it can progress by class levels but familiars could already do that when they have a master as long as they adventure without player characters or are player characters because in those cases the generic rule that hirelings does not gains xp stops applying).

I believe that in the hirelings section(in the dmg guide which says stuff such as "hirelings does not takes their share of xp" and other stuff like that) they even mention that the familiars can go on a quest to save their master.

And in dnd 3.5 it is clear that familiars are normal creatures altered by a ritual.


A familiar is a normal animal that gains new powers and becomes a magical beast when summoned to service by a sorcerer or wizard. It retains the appearance, Hit Dice, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, skills, and feats of the normal animal it once was, but it is treated as a magical beast instead of an animal for the purpose of any effect that depends on its type. Only a normal, unmodified animal may become a familiar. An animal companion cannot also function as a familiar.

So basically a familiar before the summoning event is a normal animal.

The fact familiars can gain class levels(because now the familiar can do stuff without his master easier and therefore gain xp easier) and go around indefinitely after its master death is clarified in a campaign where one evil familiar after the death of its evil master gains some wizard levels.

So as far as we know getting your master dead allows to learn easier because you are no longer a hireling and thus can gain experience normally so in fact a familiar can become powerful faster after the death of its master than before it unless the master was using a build dedicated to boosting its own familiar

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-14, 11:10 PM
There's already been some attempts at similar things before: it brings to mind a one page RPG about being the familiars of a deceased witch by Grant Howitt, called The Witch is Dead (I can't link it due to postcount, but just use your search engine of choice, and it'll be in the top ten). It was pretty well received by the RPG community at large, I believe.
Ooh, that is pretty neat. Definitely something to use to try


System-wise, I'd probably gravitate towards FATE or Pathfinder - the first for the narrative freedom and the second for the familiar (if you'll pardon the pun) crunch.
FATE is in a bit of a bad zone for me; it doesn't have enough rules for when I want rules, but it has too many rules for when I don't want rules, if that makes sense. (I can't think of a time when I'd rather use FATE than GURPS or Roll to Dodge, barring player familiarity or me not being the GM.) Pathfinder is a possibility, I suppose, but by default it's not granular enough. I suppose I could just increase the numbers by an order of magnitude or so and rewrite everything...
I've also considered making a half-GURPS, half-homebrew sort of system.