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  1. - Top - End - #1
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    RedWizardGuy

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    Default Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    I've been DM'ing for a while, and as much as I love High Fantasy, I'm running out of ways to try to destroy the world. I've had a Warrior-Lich kill an Empire with a magical plague, a world warped by the Far Realm try to pull a Majora's Mask, and the Cult of Elemental Evil try to free Tharizdun. Twice.

    It's been loads of fun, but I'm ready for something different. I'm thinking Heroic Fantasy- the classic, Gygaxian genre of selfish anti-heroes and decadent cities. 4E provided the beautiful imagery of "a grim, hulking fighter disemboweling the high priest of the serpent god on his own altar. A laughing rogue spends his ill-gotten gains on cheap wine in a filthy tavern." That's the vibe I'm looking for.

    Now, my group isn't that into dungeon crawls- they get bored if it's much more than 10 rooms. So, the classic megadungeon with a "minimum of twelve floors" the ancient 0E booklets call for is pretty much out of the question. I'm tempted to try my hand at running something with kingdom building, but at the same time, I'd like to try having one central city the players spend most of their time in. I've also always wanted to try something with dual-world gameplay (think Metroid Prime 2's Dark Aether.) Maybe I can do all three?

    I figured I'd ask the people of the worldbuilding forum for a hand. Any tips or ideas on capturing that classic, sword-and-sorcery feel? Any plot ideas that fit within the genre? And while we're at it, has anyone tried the dual-world thing?
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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    Just don't put the world at stake. Let profit be the sole motive of the adventure.
    That was the core motive of the party in The Hobbit. Get the dwarfs home and, more importantly, restore to them their awesome treasure hoard.

    Maybe the campaign's endgame is just taking over a kingdom instead of saving the whole world.

    • Step one, get some quick funds by looting a couple ancient cursed tombs.
    • Step two, raise an army from the countryside, gain their loyalty by defeating and or subjecting the monstrous races plaguing them.
    • Step three, march on the capital, perhaps bypassing the walls with your small strike-team through the underground dungeon so you can open the siege doors for your army to flood in.
    • Step four, hold the capital against any of the Kingdom's old allies you didn't already find a way to befriend up to this point.
    • Step five (optional), go through the day to day drama and struggles of maintaining a kingdom, especially in a fantastical world of strange dangers.
    • Step six, build new characters employed by your old ones to go shoot the kingdom's troubles.
    Last edited by DoomHat; 2014-11-23 at 11:45 PM.
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    PirateCaptain

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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    Quote Originally Posted by Freelance GM View Post
    I figured I'd ask the people of the worldbuilding forum for a hand. Any tips or ideas on capturing that classic, sword-and-sorcery feel? Any plot ideas that fit within the genre? And while we're at it, has anyone tried the dual-world thing?
    Everyone is Chaotic Evil. I mean it. The PCs are all CE. They shouldn't have morals or ethics. Those get you killed. The thing that separates a Hero from a Villain, is that the Hero has Standards. There ultimately is a line they will not cross, somewhere, over there, yes behind the Mountains of Imminent Peril and across the Burning Sea. But pillaging innocents and committing casual violence are not beyond the usual/mundane for these sorts of Heroes.

    Unless your Players realize this, you need to murder them. A lot. Until they realize that the entire world is grim and dark and out to get them so they may as well get the world first! Throw in some Fate-is-screwing-me-like-a-light-switch-fixture mechanics so the players really feel like the universe hates them and you're good!

    On that note: Get Riddle of Steel or Blade of the Iron Throne. These are GOD-Tier RPGS practically printed on the skin of a flayed Cimmerian. They are exactly what you want.

    Note: Magic is always evil. No exceptions. Even a good man will be driven INSANE by the awesome powers they seek.
    Quote Originally Posted by Zap Dynamic View Post
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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    If you're playing D&D, I would say everyone except demons and similar creatures is Neutral. In Sword & Sorcery, there are no spells that smite the wicked but leave the pure unharmed. Alignment has no place in Sword & Sorcery. Being good doesn't give you any benefit, and the universe doesn't punish any evil deeds. Everyone is suspicious, and everyone can get away with everything. Alignment serve no purpose in this genre.
    If you want to use it for "demon banishing" magic, that could work, but it does not apply to people.

    One thing that works very well in Sword & Sorcery, but few other styles, is to start the adventures at the point where the action starts. You can skip the parts where the PCs meet and form a group, and where they meet an employer, and everyone come up with some weird reasonings why the characters would care about the employer, even though they don't have any reason to do so given the character backstories.
    In Sword & Sorcery, it is not only acceptible, but actually quite advantagous to start an adventure like "As you are ridining down the road, you come through a village". You don't need to bother with a setup why the PCs are traveling on that road. It doesn't matter where they come from or where they go to. Some people might say it takes away a major part of the players control over their characters, but in practice they didn't have any control to begin with. Even if the GM does not force them to do it, if the adventure is about going to a village, than the players will eventually go to that village, because they know perfectly well that nothing will happen until they go to that village. So just skip all of that akwardly dancing around the issue and just drop the players at the place where things get interesting.

    An important thing to consider is motivation, as Sword & Sorcery characters generally don't help people in need out of pure compassion. Offering them a reward always works, but it's a rather weak and impersonal motivation. What I discovered to work really well, is to have the villains of the adventure hurt the PCs pride in some way. If you tell the players they characters are total badasses and someone burned down their favorite tavern, you only have to ask them if they are letting those punks get away with it. Aim at the players pride. The villain does not have to be defeated to protect the innocent, out of justice, or any other noble goal like that. He has to die because he picked the wrong people to mess with! It doesn't have to be complex or clever in any way. If you can make the players feel insulted or humiliated by the NPCs, the players will work themselves into a furious rage and hand out righteous carnage.
    Don't make the motivations for an adventure about abstract ideals. Always try to make it personal and emotional if possible.

    I think another thing that is crucial about Sword & Sorcery is to always go larger than life. That goes for the PCs, for the villains, for the monsters, and even for the locations. When you think you might be overdoing it, add a bit more just to be sure. It doesn't have to be ourtight comedy. But when you are having a battle at the highest tower of the castle, also make it during a thunderstorm. There really is no need to have a battle on top of the highest tower during a slight dribble.
    Good example would be the movie 300: When that film comes to a point where things are starting to leave the range of what's plausible, it always goes a bit farther. Heads are flying, the Persians have a giant with huge spikes for arms, the greek traitor is a troll, and the Spartans build a wall out of boulders and corpses. Sword & Sorcery can be quite serious, but it's never mundane. Larger than life is important!

    During combat, encourage players to improvise. Start by always describing the environment at the start of a fight; when in doubt mention three things that are found in the room. If you just say there is a room, the players have nothing to work with. If you say there is a table covered in empty bottles and mugs, a big throne with two large stone statues of ancient warriors, and two large candle holders hanging from chains, then you got a place with lots of fun possibilities. Have lots of stuff to throw at enemies, push over to crush them, and most importantly to set on fire. Pits and ledges are always great. Any time a player asks if he can throw something at an enemy or push an enemy into something, say yes and give them a chance of success that is about as good as doing a simple standard attack with their weapon. If special attacks are just as good as standard attacks, but more fun, then that's good enough.
    An important thing to know is that you must always make sure you understand both what the player wants to do, and what he hopes to accomplish with that. If a player asks if he can swing on one of the ropes, you could answer with yes or no. But in almost all cases, the player will not be just thinking about swinging on the rope, but also doing something more complex after that. So unless you are completely sure what the player means, always ask what they are planing. Maybe the player wants to swing to the other side of the chasm, but maybe he instead wants to aim at an enemy and kick him into the chasm. Similarly, "can I flip over the table?" or "can I throw the mug at the king?" are not just that. The players will have a much longer chain of events in their mind and you need to know the full thing before you tell them if they have a chance at succeeding at that or not.

    Another general tip, which I think is even more important in Sword & Sorcery, is to only roll dice when you need to. Say a player wants to break open a door. If you know it's impossible to do, tell him "you ram your shoulder into the door with a loud bang, but you are sure this is hopeless". Don't make him roll dice five times. Also, if you know that it can be done if he rolls a 15 or better, don't have him roll ten times until he gets that 15. Just tell him "after three tries, the door breaks open".
    Roll dice when an action could be done, but it would be bad if it fails on the first try. If the door can be broken open with a 15, but there is nobody in the house, the character can bash against it as long as he wants until it eventually breaks. But if the PCs want to surprise the guards that are inside the room, it's important that the character gets the door open on the first try. That's when you roll the dice. Or say there is a really big monster coming behind them and it will be here in three rounds, then it's also important that he gets it done on the first or second try, and you should roll dice.
    But rolling as often as it takes to get the right number on the die, or keeping rolling the die waiting for a 20, even though the GM knows a 20 will still be a failure, is just a waste of everyones time. And in Sword & Sorcery, it's particularly important to keep the game going and never become tedious. If the players try to climb a tree, throw a grappling hook, lift a boulder, and things like that, the same general rule applies. "Roll dice when the PC can succeed, can also fail, and failing would be really bad."
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    RedWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    Quote Originally Posted by DoomHat View Post
    Just don't put the world at stake. Let profit be the sole motive of the adventure.

    Maybe the campaign's endgame is just taking over a kingdom instead of saving the whole world.
    Ah yes, this! I figured the plot would either end with the players taking over a kingdom, or starting their own. In addition to the Hobbit, I feel like Dragon Age II might be a good source of inspiration, what with the moral ambiguity and all...
    Which brings me to the next point...

    Quote Originally Posted by Ninjadeadbeard View Post
    They shouldn't have morals or ethics. Those get you killed.
    What I'm getting from this is look at all the ways older editions tried to sucker Paladins into falling, and then pull stunts like that on a regular basis. I might include some semblance of a moral high road, or "less evil" choice, but it will inevitably require a lot more effort than the obvious, morally reprehensible option. Like just about every quest in the Witcher II. Give the elf accused of spying a fair trial, or just let her get lynched? (She turns out to be guilty anyways!)

    Blade of the Iron Throne looks like something I will have to pick up in the future, but for this game, I was thinking of running basic (albeit slightly tweaked) D&D:5E.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    If you're playing D&D, In Sword & Sorcery, there are no spells that smite the wicked but leave the pure unharmed...

    ...During combat, encourage players to improvise. Start by always describing the environment at the start of a fight; when in doubt mention three things that are found in the room. If you just say there is a room, the players have nothing to work with. If special attacks are just as good as standard attacks, but more fun, then that's good enough.
    Another general tip, which I think is even more important in Sword & Sorcery, is to only roll dice when you need to. Say a player wants to break open a door.
    It's a good thing I'm running 5th Edition- it seems geared for doing exactly what you suggested.
    First, all of the "alignment" spells only work on fiends, celestials and undead, so no more Paladins singling out every corrupt schemer at the noble's party. Alignment restrictions are out, and things like the Paladin's Smite attack work on any mortals of any alignment- but it's super-effective against Fiends and Undead.
    Second, the fast-and-loose, DM-empowering rules make it easy for me to make rulings on those "special attacks."


    Thanks for the advice. I know the sort of direction I need to be looking in, now, flavor-wise.

    DoomHat had the plot outline of this:
    • Step one, get some quick funds by looting a couple ancient cursed tombs.
    • Step two, raise an army from the countryside, gain their loyalty by defeating and or subjecting the monstrous races plaguing them.
    • Step three, march on the capital, perhaps bypassing the walls with your small strike-team through the underground dungeon so you can open the siege doors for your army to flood in.
    • Step four, hold the capital against any of the Kingdom's old allies you didn't already find a way to befriend up to this point.
    • Step five (optional), go through the day to day drama and struggles of maintaining a kingdom, especially in a fantastical world of strange dangers.
    • Step six, build new characters employed by your old ones to go shoot the kingdom's troubles.

    Perhaps if I did something like this...
    • The players earn a reputation as talented adventurers during a long career of scummy mercenary work within and around the City.
    • The players are put in command of a special team/organization. (Since I just started DA:I, part of me screams "Inquisition!") Maybe one of them just succeeds the leader of the mercenary group they were working for, and keeps the other PCs around to help. If this is the case, competing for the leader's favor could be a large part of Step 1.
    • The City screws you over- using your organization as a diversion, using you to start a war, or otherwise uses you in an expendable way. A lot of your people die, and you decide that things would be better if your organization took over the City.
    • Opportunistic monster hordes and rival kingdoms use the transition between the old rulership and your rulership as a window to attack. (But not at the same time.) The players must defend their hard-earned city, and make some friends in the process. Instead of Steps 5 and 6 being separate things, this overlap with both- the original PC's handle the kingdom-ruling, while gathering allies and resources would probably be done with lower-level "agents" of the PCs.


    Now, I can do the worldbuilding necessary to pull of steps 3 and 4, but does anyone have some fun adventure hooks for the first or second steps?
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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    You can do good and bring peace in Sword & Sorcery. Benevolent heroes can make a big difference for the better. However, you can not change the world. You can only change the immediate area which you directly control. In Sword & Sorcery, you don't improve peace and safety with education and financial support to the poor, or by appealing to peoples better nature. People have no interest in equality of wealth or power. Everyone wants to be richer and more powerful than anyone else. The only way to make people get along with each other is to force them. You can't reform a city by exposing corruption and promoting cooperation between the benevolently minded lords. You have to make them submit to your rule by force or destroy them if they resist.
    In Sword & Sorcery, you can bend society to be safer and nicer. But you always have to keep the pressure on them. As soon as that pressure is gone, everything will spring back to the old ways of greed and violence.

    Bringing change to a land or city does not happen by protesting, debating, negotiating, and compromise. If you want to change things, you have to walk up to the king, cut of his head, and throw it down the palace stairs. All the other people in power are given the choice to take what you allow them to keep, or lose even that as well.
    Sword & Sorcery does have a place for good, but not for democracy or pluralism. Be it good or evil, the only form of functional government is dictatorship.
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    RedWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    You can do good and bring peace in Sword & Sorcery. Benevolent heroes can make a big difference for the better. However, you can not change the world.
    Bringing change to a land or city does not happen by protesting, debating, negotiating, and compromise. If you want to change things, you have to walk up to the king, cut of his head, and throw it down the palace stairs. All the other people in power are given the choice to take what you allow them to keep, or lose even that as well.
    Walking up to the king... Like this?
    http://youtu.be/jlACgYHtWCI?t=37s

    I agree, though- there will always be a good/righteous/benevolent option, but it will be more difficult and less rewarding. Not to discourage people from playing good characters, just to nail in the setting. You're doing the right thing because it's right, not because there's a reward.
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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    I have to warn your outline is super risky.
    Step 1: risks losing your player's interest because it starts off as every campaign ever. Without any particular star to reach for the PCs are likely to create some for themselves... or play a lot of Angry Birds whenever you don't have to spotlight directly on them.

    Step 2: it's rare that a group of PCs function well inside a standard military structure, what with their tendency to want to be special snowflakes. This problem is magnified several fold if they've had free reign up to this point. They're more likely to abandon the organization and strike out after their previously established personal goals.

    Step 3: there's no way to guess how a given table will respond a given stimuli. It might not even occur to them to take their vengeance against the kingdom proper, much less take that revenge in the form of conquest. What if one of them is a druid who'd prefer to see any bastion of civilization leveled to the ground? The reason "save the world" is so easy is that any group of special snowflakes will be on-board with it, because "the world" is generally where they keep all their stuff.

    Step 4: I really think you should just start here. It's a good hook to get the players interested and it encourages them to make characters appropriate to the campaign. But then again, I'm just biased against railroads. I prefer to give my players a mutual goal and provide a handful of ways to achieve said goal. Cat herding is a hell of a lot easier when you just dangle a bag of catnip in the direction you want them to take, rather then building a giant reinforced thin corridor and pushing them forward through it with a broom.

    Before they create their characters, have them all start with the same bit of back story. "You were all part of a mercenary band that was betrayed by the Kingdom. You are the only survivors and you've come together swearing to conquer the kingdom and rule it yourselves."
    ...with a vengeance!

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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    I wouldn't go with long storylines at all. Slow buildup for a hypothetical payout in the future doesn't work for Sword & Sorcery very well, if at all.
    As I saw in a lecture by Brandon Sanderson, every story stars with a promise what kind of story it will be and what kind of things the audience/players are going to see in it. The promise of Sword & Sorcery is fast action with larger than life characters. If the players have to drudge through 10 sessions and 4 character levels before they can be those big damn heroes, it's a break of that promise and most probably won't go over very well. If you want to get the players excited for Sword & Sorcery, you have to deliver just that right from the start. The genre usually doesn't have origin stories or only super short ones, because nobody cares about the time when the great warrior was still some wee lad who did mundane things.
    In a game about hacking of heads and throwing sorcerers off their towers, you need to deliver just that early and frequently, and at least dangle it in front of the players faces right from the very start. Never ever have them kill rats in the basement and hint at them that there will be an interesting story once they have reached 4th level. If you want to try story arcs longer than two or three game sessions, have the players get a good idea of what is waiting for them at the end. Doing odd jobs to get more levels and better equipment is boring. Instead they could get the same combat experience and loot from messing up gangs of bandits on their search to find the slaver who took one of the PCs sister. At the end of the first session, the players should know that they are going to slaughter a lot of slavers, break some tavern owners fingers, and eventually tear the head of that slave master with their bare hands at the end. In a sword & sorcery game, every session has to be progress toward a goal known to the players.

    If you play something like D&D, consider starting at 3rd or even 6th level. In my own campaign, I started at 1st level, but that was a setting where almost all NPCs are 6th or 7th level at the most, and only enemy leaders and heroes had class levels at all. Even though the Conan movie did bother with an origin story, it goes immediately from child to famous gladiator. The part inbetween doesn't matter.
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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    Quote Originally Posted by DoomHat View Post
    I have to warn your outline is super risky.
    Thanks for pointing this out, I see what you mean. My current group is mostly newer players- the idea behind the build-up in steps 1-3 was to ease them into the larger scale. Step 1 is, yes, every D&D campaign ever. In Step 2, they're leading a small group, then a whole army in Step 3, and then an entire kingdom in Step 4. At least, that's the plan. As for starting at Step 4? That might drift a little bit too close to a "save the world" plot miniaturized to a single city. However, a bit more outside trouble at the beginning could serve as foreshadowing, while also creating several adventure opportunities. Assuming I stick with the plan.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I wouldn't go with long storylines at all. Slow buildup for a hypothetical payout in the future doesn't work for Sword & Sorcery very well, if at all.
    As I saw in a lecture by Brandon Sanderson, every story stars with a promise what kind of story it will be and what kind of things the audience/players are going to see in it. The promise of Sword & Sorcery is fast action with larger than life characters. If you want to get the players excited for Sword & Sorcery, you have to deliver just that right from the start.
    In a game about hacking of heads and throwing sorcerers off their towers, you need to deliver just that early and frequently, and at least dangle it in front of the players faces right from the very start. At the end of the first session, the players should know that they are going to slaughter a lot of slavers, break some tavern owners fingers, and eventually tear the head of that slave master with their bare hands at the end.
    Good advice. It's probably a good sign that I'm already doing the "save the PC's sister" stuff- I'm a huge fan of player-characters actually having relevant backstories, and a character's siblings make such wonderful hostages...

    Do you all think it might just be better to start working on a grainy, gritty, blood-soaked sandbox, and just see what happens when the game starts?
    Last edited by Freelance GM; 2014-11-24 at 03:19 PM.
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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    "Sandbox" in the strictest use of the word certainly not. You should give the players quests until they start telling you what expedition they want to start. Wandering around aimlessly and poking sticks into dungeons to see if something interesting happens is something that requires a very special type of group and works by very different assumption that sword and sorcery.

    I would call it an "episodic campaign". Each adventure is a self contained story covering two or three sessions of play with its own beginning and conclusion, but each new adventure has locations and NPCs from previous adventure make new appearances. That's how Howard and Leiber always wrote their stories. If a story ends with the villain getting away or the players never figure out who was the mastermind behind it, he would be a great villain for another adventure later on.

    For my campaign I created one large valley with half a dozen settlements and a map that showed all the forests, mountains, and rivers, so the players were able to chose what paths the party would take to travel between locations. I also had some general information on what creatures inhabited those places, and what the people living in the settlements were like. In that sense, it was a bit sandbox-ish. But I still made the campaign a sequence of distinct adventures. "Explore the countryside and clear dungeons" really only works for dungeon crawling campaigns, it doesn't appear to lend itself to telling stories.

    One thing I like to do is to put lots of important and valuable things into my adventures. If the PCs interact with it in some way, say sell it in town, keep it for themselves, accidentally kill a bystander, that could be a hook for a later adventure. Maybe nothing interesting comes from it at all, but if you do use it later, the players will be all "hey it's that guy from the castle" or "didn't we sell just such a thing last month?" and think this had all be masterfully planned.

    And one reality of RPGs is that most campaigns don't last very long. If you have three short and simple adventures and then stop playing, it was still three fun one-shots for everyone. If the campaign stops one third into a story the players havn't really learned much about it, it was kind of a waste of time.
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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I would call it an "episodic campaign". Each adventure is a self contained story covering two or three sessions of play with its own beginning and conclusion, but each new adventure has locations and NPCs from previous adventure make new appearances. That's how Howard and Leiber always wrote their stories. If a story ends with the villain getting away or the players never figure out who was the mastermind behind it, he would be a great villain for another adventure later on.
    Actually, all things considered, an episodic thing really would be more ideal than a traditional campaign for logistical reasons, too. There's currently 8 regular players in my group, 2 flaky players, and about 2-4 people who want to be players. (This is why you should make it very clear to your new players that when you are invited to a D&D game, you do not get to bring a +1.) Not only would an episodic game fit the theme better, but it would also allow players to drop in and out whenever it's convenient for them.

    There's also talk of splintering into 2 or 3 different groups- a few players want to try their hand at DMing. So, if we could get something episodic going, players could hop back and forth between them without much of a hassle. But that's a different problem I'll discuss with the prospective DM's. Back to the swords and sorcery.

    I think you guys have thrown out enough good advice for me to actually get started building something. This is already in the Worldbuilding thread- I might as well keep you all posted on how it develops. The campaign won't be starting until my other one ends- probably not until late February or early March, so I've got plenty of time to plan.

    Thanks again for the advice and the feedback!
    Last edited by Freelance GM; 2014-11-24 at 04:59 PM.
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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I wouldn't go with long storylines at all.
    I believe it was either Riddle of Steel or some other Conan RPG type game, but one of them built One-Shots into the mechanics. If you didn't spend all your money before everyone packed up at the end of an adventure, the GM takes what you have and all you can remember is a few flashes of how you spent it at that tavern/brothel one town over. The town that now wants your collective heads for running up a tab they realize you can't pay. Time to go adventuring again! If only to get beer and wenching money.
    Quote Originally Posted by Zap Dynamic View Post
    Ninjadeadbeard just ninja'd my post. How apt.
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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    TL;DR all the comments.

    What about a bloodthirsty gangwar style setting in one city over limited resources? Medieval Akira.
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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    Quote Originally Posted by Ninjadeadbeard View Post
    I believe it was either Riddle of Steel or some other Conan RPG type game, but one of them built One-Shots into the mechanics. If you didn't spend all your money before everyone packed up at the end of an adventure, the GM takes what you have and all you can remember is a few flashes of how you spent it at that tavern/brothel one town over. The town that now wants your collective heads for running up a tab they realize you can't pay. Time to go adventuring again! If only to get beer and wenching money.
    In Conan d20, GMs are encouraged to make players lose all their gear between adventures, starting each new one with just the stuff the GM considers appropriate for the situation.
    Why I personally wouldn't go that far, I would still put some thought into the handling of money and treasure. Sword & Sorcery usually doesn't have much, if any magical gear, and if you go with a game like D&D, characters tend to have the best nonmagical gear money can by by 3rd level at the latest. And here an old D&D oddity might actually work out well: XP for treasure. At the end of an adventure, when it comes to calculating XP, I add a considerable bonus depending on how much treasure the PCs got back to town with them. When treasure has barely any monetary value, there is no point in picking up anything. Collecting gold to have it all gone when you next return to the game would be pretty pointless. But in Sword & Sorcery, you usually want the players to be greedy and loot what they can. Instead of turning the treasure into equipment, let them turn it into some additional XP. I think Barbarians of Lemuria bases the advancement points every character gets on how well the players describe how they waste all their treasure.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Valefor Rathan View Post
    What about a bloodthirsty gangwar style setting in one city over limited resources? Medieval Akira.
    I'm not sure I want to limit it to one city... Some of the surrounding area will be explorable. Somehow, Akira actually wasn't on my radar. Looks pretty cool, though. I'll check it out.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ninjadeadbeard View Post
    If you didn't spend all your money before everyone packed up at the end of an adventure, the GM takes what you have and all you can remember is a few flashes of how you spent it at that tavern/brothel one town over. The town that now wants your collective heads for running up a tab they realize you can't pay. Time to go adventuring again!
    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Instead of turning the treasure into equipment, let them turn it into some additional XP. I think Barbarians of Lemuria bases the advancement points every character gets on how well the players describe how they waste all their treasure.
    Ninjadeadbeard's idea is hilarious. As for making it worthwhile? When I tried Dungeon Crawl Classics, our DM granted characters 1 XP for every gold they spent- as a result, blowing it all on senseless debauchery was encouraged- especially if you're close to leveling up. Normally this wouldn't work in D&D, since you could buy a magic item or something and get a free level out of the deal. However, this game would be in 5E, where magic items are few and far between, and can't simply be found taking up space in markets across the Realms. As a result, the houserule might work well enough to be worth trying.
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    This was a pleasant surprise. "Ask, and you shall receive."

    http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/DMG_128.pdf

    The 5E DMG has a whole table full of ways to make players lose their hard-earned money in creative and entertaining ways.
    Last edited by Freelance GM; 2014-11-25 at 08:31 PM.
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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    Quote Originally Posted by Freelance GM View Post
    This was a pleasant surprise. "Ask, and you shall receive."

    http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/DMG_128.pdf

    The 5E DMG has a whole table full of ways to make players lose their hard-earned money in creative and entertaining ways.
    This is now my favorite thing. Ever.
    Quote Originally Posted by Zap Dynamic View Post
    Ninjadeadbeard just ninja'd my post. How apt.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ninjadeadbeard View Post
    This is now my favorite thing. Ever.
    Seconded.

    This is brilliant.
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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    In Sword & Sorcery, it is not only acceptible, but actually quite advantagous to start an adventure like "As you are ridining down the road, you come through a village". You don't need to bother with a setup why the PCs are traveling on that road. It doesn't matter where they come from or where they go to. Some people might say it takes away a major part of the players control over their characters, but in practice they didn't have any control to begin with. Even if the GM does not force them to do it, if the adventure is about going to a village, than the players will eventually go to that village, because they know perfectly well that nothing will happen until they go to that village. So just skip all of that akwardly dancing around the issue and just drop the players at the place where things get interesting.
    In my group we call these "elf with a gun" adventures. "An elf pops up out of nowhere, pulls a gun on you, and tells you you're going to go to this place and do this thing, then teleports you to the place. Let's get started."
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    RedWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    After what, a week or two of deliberating on what kind of adventure to write, and what kind of setting to write it in, I woke up this morning and got smacked in the face by inspiration.

    "Why not Treasure Island?"

    Not so much the "long ocean voyage on a boat with a mutinous crew" part, more of the "A drunken ex-pirate passes on the last copy of an old treasure map before crazy other ex-shipmates kill him and burn down the tavern you're in" part at the very beginning.

    The "old treasure map" thing seems sufficiently Sword & Sorcery- it also opens the doors towards Hobbit-style secret riddles (and side-quests to get them translated), and a Dragon that has claimed the old hoard for himself.

    Plus, it's a grand, globe-trotting adventure (like I'm used to running), but rooted with a very S&S theme (endless treasure!). It even starts in a tavern, which gets burned down before the players are given the opportunity.

    Also, I've never tried a swashbuckling campaign, either, so setting the game in a Wind-Waker-esque island chain could be fun.

    What do you all think? Any ideas/suggestions on doing what could very well become a Swashbuckling and Sorcery campaign?
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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    Swashbuckling and Sword & Sorcery goes very well together. I think it can be very much described as swashbuckling with dark magic.

    Hunting for a treasure sounds like a reasonably solid campaign goal. However, I would try to make each step towards that goal an adventure that can stand on its own leg. Getting the map is an adventure. Finding a ship and leaving the port is an adventure. Making a quick stop in a port is an adventure, because it just happens that half the crew goes missing and the PCs have to rescue them from something before the journey can continue. In a "classic" campaign, these would often be just two or three connected encounters. In Sword & Sorcery, I think they should each be a full Adventure!
    Talking to a captain to get passage to an island isn't exciting. Finding your crew lying drunk in some tavern isn't exciting. Asking around for a captain, getting lured into an ambush by a gang of thiefs who think the PCs have money, helping their actual new captain to get out of the tavern with a band of pirates waiting in ambush just out the front door, and then having to steal the ship from the port authorties who confiscated it is exciting. Descending into ancient catacombs beneath the sewers and fighting a cult of fish people who want to sacrifice the sailors to a giant squid is exciting. If in any way possible, each play session should end with a victory.
    Having checked some more items from a long list of chores that need to be done before they can go the Temple of Doom where legions of devil worshipper guard a solid gold stature they want to turn into an avatar of their dark lord is not exciting. A sword & sorcery campaign is not like a big novel where you have some chapters with action and some chapters with all talking. Every session needs to end in some awesome battle. Or if it really is getting too late to keep going on that day, the players need to be all giddy about the awesome battle they already know is comming next session.

    Another thing I would recommend is not getting too attached to the idea of finding that treasure as GM. It's a good goal to get the party going, but it's quite likely that the players will latch on to something random they had a run in with, which has them a lot more excited than finding that treasure. You really want to avoid saying anything like "unfortunately you don't have time to contact the pirates from two months ago and convince them to hunt the ship of the admiral who had tried to send you to prison, because there is still that treasure you need to find". Finding that treasure is the excuse to get on a wackey journey over the high seas. It is not really the purpose of the journey.
    Something way to many GMs keep forgetting about campaigns is that in an RPG it really is about the journey, not the destination. In a book it can be very entertaining to be confused for 400 pages and then see everything come together and make sense at the very end. RPGs are not like that. Most probably you won't ever get to the end anyway. It's all about playing together and the interactions. If the great journey ends with something not really that special, it was still huge fun.
    Last edited by Yora; 2014-12-05 at 12:05 PM.
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    RedWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Swashbuckling and Sword & Sorcery goes very well together. I think it can be very much described as swashbuckling with dark magic.

    Hunting for a treasure sounds like a reasonably solid campaign goal. However, I would try to make each step towards that goal an adventure that can stand on its own leg. Getting the map is an adventure. Finding a ship and leaving the port is an adventure. Making a quick stop in a port is an adventure, because it just happens that half the crew goes missing and the PCs have to rescue them from something before the journey can continue. In a "classic" campaign, these would often be just two or three connected encounters. In Sword & Sorcery, I think they should each be a full Adventure!

    Another thing I would recommend is not getting too attached to the idea of finding that treasure as GM. It's a good goal to get the party going, but it's quite likely that the players will latch on to something random they had a run in with, which has them a lot more excited than finding that treasure. Finding that treasure is the excuse to get on a wackey journey over the high seas. It is not really the purpose of the journey.
    Awesome advice- as a huge fan of Aboleth, I'm particularly fond of the part where sailors get sacrificed to a squid-monster. I also really like the "one more thing" sort of mentality of it- what at first appears to be an easy task spirals out of control into something, well, exciting.

    I can already see the shifty pirate captain pinned to a wall by a furious PC as he shrugs, "Eyyyyy, let's calm down a bit. I didn't lie to you exactly, but it might've slipped my mind to mention that the ship is, well, confiscated. That's not a problem, is it?"
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    Default Re: Getting That Sword-and-Sorcery Feel

    have them join a thieve's guild. or be freelance like fafhrd and gray mouser. give them jobs...bank heist , stop a supply caravan. have them tangle with a rich merchant or sorcerer. and of course slavegirls aplenty :D.

    fafhrd and gray mouser wiki is a pretty good start for hooks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fafhrd_and_the_Gray_Mouser
    Last edited by Selkirk; 2014-12-07 at 01:00 PM.
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