Looking for Hardcore, Realistic Medieval FRP Scenario & Module

[Auderon]

Greetings and hello to every fellow member of Giantitp.

I come before all of you experienced roleplayers with a question for help me.

Lately I gathered some of my friends and people who likes FRP such as Dungeons and Dragons to start a new campaign all together. With a party of 8 and one very experienced Dungeon Game Master we started to play Curse of Strahd. But instead of the dark and scary atmosphere of the Ravenloft world, it's scenario with a lot of fantastic creatures (zombies, vampires, werewolves etc) start to disturb me and some of my party members. I am a minimalist person and I do like pure, hardcore, realistic things so much more. So ultra fantastic things start to disturb me even we are at the beginning.

I have organized so many things for this Roleplayer Party to have a great experience such as ordering miniatures, DM Screen, Battle Grid Map and personal dice sets etc. And some party members nearly wrote 3-4 pages of backgrounds for their characters.

So I'm looking forward to find a hardcore medieval based module book or a scenario where my party can continue after the Curse of Strahd campaign.

Currently, my character is a young noble born Paladin from Cormyr. And in party there are 3 characters from Cormyr as well. We want to build castles, participate mass big battles, involve with diplomacy of kingdoms etc

I have heard 1 module, Kingmaker is something like this,

But is there any scenario book or a module out there which includes a lot more realistic kingdom or medieval theme? Maybe about Cormyr or like Kingmaker module, some medieval based Forgotten Realms campaign?

[Altair_the_Vexed]

It sounds like D&D might not be the right game for you if you don't want fantastic creatures, and count zombies, werewolves and vampires as "fantastic". Most scenarios published for D&D throughout the years have included lots of such creatures.

Maybe you should try "A Song of Ice and Fire RPG" (the RPG for the book series that the Game of Thrones TV show is based on).
So while it's fantasy, it isn't full of crazy monsters so much - the people are monstrous enough!

Also, there are quick start rules out there for free, so you can try it without investing any money, in case you don't like it. It even includes a short adventure.

[keybounce]

Realistic?

You died from an infection from your combat hit.
You died from a disease.
You will need three weeks to heal up from that small fight.
Someone didn't like you, and hit you with a crossbow. You are dead.

You lived? Great. Your family can't afford decent food, and you have spent the last several months off on an adventure instead of working the fields to help them. How did your spouse survive?

Realism? These are fantasy games to get away from reality.

[JeenLeen]

You might like Riddle of Steel. I heard the company is long gone, but you might be able to find copies of the books.

Combat is very gritty and realistic, such that one good strike can be fatal.
There's a play-by-post game that goes into some of the rules here. Some of it is houserules, but it gives the feel of the game. I also found a decent two-part video that goes over the first few chapters by typing Riddle of Steel into Youtube.

[jesterjeff]

Warhammer fantasy RP 2nd edition, grim and gritty fantasy where everything can kill you, even casting your spells is dangerous to you.

[Lacco]

You might like Riddle of Steel. I heard the company is long gone, but you might be able to find copies of the books.

Combat is very gritty and realistic, such that one good strike can be fatal.
There's a play-by-post game that goes into some of the rules here. Some of it is houserules, but it gives the feel of the game. I also found a decent two-part video that goes over the first few chapters by typing Riddle of Steel into Youtube.

Riddle of Steel and Blade of the Iron Throne (successor game) would be interesting for you if you wanted to try out a different system. However, they don't offer pre-made adventures... much. There are some, but mostly it's up to the GM to work with the world.

The good thing is, the preps are much less... tasking... than in other games.

It's correct that you can find copies of the books. From what I know, the game exists in certain... legal vacuum.

The only issue I foresee is, that Riddle of Steel has magic system that is not... applicable... to normal games. Divine spellcasting is possible - and quite interesting - but Blade of the Iron Throne has a rather interesting magic system, that can be ported to RoS (the Manor Chronicles game uses the ported system).

[Psikerlord]

I have a few non-magical adventures here that might be of interest to you (see link below).

Otherwise I think Iron Heroes would have non-magical adventures, or from memory the Dragon Age RPG intro adventure is non-magical. Hmm I might be mixing that up with the Conan intro adventure.

Secret of Saltmarsh, from memory, is a non-magical mytsery style adventure too I believe.

I do agree with an earlier poster that a more realistic/gritty game probably isnt 5e, esp if you are a paladin, even your PC for example will have lots of magic.