Ideas for an "All X" Game Brainstorming Thread

[Man on Fire]

Some of my favorite games in 3.5 and Pathfinder were the "Everybody is X" games, usually of two kinds. Either "everyone plays the same race" game or a "everyone plays the same class" game, the latter sometimes with a Gestalt option to give people both variety and that unifing aspect of playing the same class. So I thought about maybe have people here brainstorm some ideas of it you would like to play or dm. Who knows, maybe we will even cause some recruitations to launch in Finding Players forums?

Personally I am pondering an all-halfling game lately. I player games where we are all Dwarves exploring the underground, Orcs defending their homeland or just Goblins goofing around, but I kinda want a game where we have just a group of Halflings living in their not Shire who suddenly have to defend their home against an upcoming larger threat, maybe a Goblin or Kobold Invasion or something like that.

Our of the Everyone is Class X game I kinda want to see a high-level all-wizards or other tier 1 classes game, maybe in vein of something decribed here - an ancient evil has awoken and it requires most powerful wizards or durids or clerics to overcome their animosities and past greviances and join forces together.

On a mid-level I'd like an all-meele class game, maybe a war campaing. An All-Paladin game, a Crusade or search for not-Holy Grail. All-Cavalier or All-Scout game that is a part of military unit sent to do specific missions during a war. All-Barbarians game...that one is probably self explanatory. I was kind of thinking of maybe trying to have a Banner Saga-like game using mid-level all the same class game, with all players being part of the refugee group travelling in search for a new home after theirs has been overrun by something evil, but I don't think it would capture really the feel of the game that inspired it - not every idea is good for an "All X Game".

For a lower-levels game I'd love to try an All Ranger party, where everyone are a part of the same group protecting local area and hunting monsters and maybe slowly moving up the ladder for more dangerous threats. Or maybe an All Gunslinger game in vein of Magnificent Seven or weird westerns.

What games would you guys like to play?

[Nifft]

Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting - Gestalt; one side must be a Swordsage or Monk or other similarly themed class. High-flying action on rooftops and ladder factories; you get a +2 bonus to every action by not wanting any trouble.


No Country for Old Mechs - Everybody is a Warforged, from the same military unit, and they're the last remnant of that unit which was buried under rubble during a fierce battle near the end of the Last War. It's taken the party 5 years to dig out. The world is very different from what they'd expected -- the story is basically about veterans who survived the war, but never came home because there's no home for them. A displaced people, without a place to belong any more.


My Brother's Keeper - Everyone is a half-human race (half-elf, half-orc, tiefling, half-giant, changeling, shifter, etc. plus maybe one regular human), brought up in an orphanage together. They are all half-siblings. Their father got noticed by some bad entities, and now the kids are on the run -- chasing a delinquent dad, escaping from the debts their father incurred.

[Falontani]

All Bard Band

All illiterate tribe (not necessarily barbarian, but you get the point)

All commoner campaign (commoner classes, no regular classes that aren't prestige classes)

All necromancer campaign (all the different types of necromancers discussing their differing philosophies of necromancy)

An all lawful stupid campaign

An all goblin campaign

An all rogue campaign

A pacifist campaign

And finally, an all barbarian campaign where no one can have more than 8 int, but no one can be pure barbarian

I'd love to see all of these go 1-20

[Kelb_Panthera]

Honestly never even considered an all <race> campaign but I can see some appeal.

As for the other, I prefer somewhat broader strokes most of the time; all martial classes, all skillful classes, all arcanists, etc. Although, some of the classes do lend themselves to the idea, bard being the obvious starting point.

I do -really- like the idea of making a fantasy wuxia campaign with an all martial adept, no casters party.

[Venger]

all of these sound pretty fun! post a link to your recruitment thread when you get to it.

I've always wanted to play in an all bard game. Have you thought of the answers to the big 16?
what kind of game are you interested in running?

[atemu1234]

I currently have a campaign where the only playable races are elves, named in the '-nesti' style used by the Dragonlance campaign setting. Originally it was a 3.5 campaign, but then we switched to Pathfinder. I'm still updating some of the races, altering their traits so that they're all (roughly) balanced with one another.

It started vaguely as a thought experiment on "well, there are like 50 subraces of elf in 3.5, what if there was a world with only elves".

[Uncle Pine]

I've always thought these kind of groups would be really fun to play in, especially considering how vast your options are in 3.5e. I haven't been able to put such a fantasy in practice, but we once had an almost "all Fine" one-shot (turned into two-shot due to time constraints) where every player had a normal character who was reduced to Fine size via the miniature template from Advanced Bestiary, except for the awakened badger drunken master. It was a blast.

Some "all X" games I've considered throughout the years:
- All dwarves: I like dwarves. They're gritty, stereotipically manly often to Hollywood levels, prone to wield weapons that are twice their height and at the same time lend themselves to a plethora of other interpretations: stealthy dwarves, crooked dwarven brawlers that are anything but honorable, wizard dwarves. You can also subvert many d&d tropes just by making a normal character (i.e. a druid) into a dwarf, because dwarves have a vastly different approach to nature and the world than most other races. You've all seen the tree-hugging druid, but what about the stone druid?
- All wizards: similarly to the OP, I'd love to try an all T1 wizards campaign. Contrary to them, I'd 100% have it start at 1st level. There's no fun in starting a game when everything just works by virtue of the fact you're all doing your job as T1 and as such you win, but starting at 1st level for casters means having to manage your resources extremely well while relying on the closest meat shield to buy you some time. When no meat shield is around (unless you summon one), zany shenanigans ensue and being on these boards should be a clear signal that I love zany shenanigans.
- Everyone dumps X: now this isn't exactly what this thread is about, as neither Strength nor Wisdom are a race or class, but it could be an interesting experiment. What would a group where everyone dumped Dexterity look like? Maybe you'd have a cleric in full plate, a rogue who'd max Intimidate to bully people in not seeing him and rely on invisibility to deliver sneak attacks, a rather reckless warlock who'd still hit on a 3 with his lazer beams because everyone who is higher than 7 ft. has 9 touch AC, and a clumsy X to Y dwarf who just stacked Constitution on everything twice? This is probably less fun than say everyone being a different kind of animal lord, but still worth thinking about in my opinion.

[BowStreetRunner]

Ever since Kung Fu Panda came out, I've wanted to do a 'Dragon Warrior' campaign where all of the PCs are Martial Adept classes from the Tome of Battle and one of them is destined to become the equivalent of the 'Dragon Warrior' - but no one knows which. With a bunch of prophecies lining up to predict the appearance of the legendary hero is imminent, masters from all of the schools of martial arts send their most promising students who fit the criteria of the prophecy to begin the quest to reveal the true 'Dragon Warrior'.

[Zaq]

I played the classic “all Bard band” game several years ago. It’s a classic for a reason, primarily because Bards are so good at shaping themselves into different roles. We had the caster Bard, the melee Bard, the crazy IC-focused Bard, the ranged Bard, the “I impress other Bards with my skillmonkeying” Bard . . . And of course, there was all kinds of creative problem-solving. Good stuff.

I recall long ago reading a campaign journal where all the characters were full-blooded orcs (playing as very stereotypical WAAAUGH-style orcs) with a minimum pre-racial STR of either 16 or 18. Including the casters, who had to get very creative with the rest of their point-buy. That was entertaining.

Any party where all the PCs are stealthy-type classes can open up some options that just aren’t available with a more “traditional” mix. Specifically, you can actually do stealth/infiltration missions without splitting the party. All Rogues could be interesting, now that I think about it, especially if you either handwave away precision immunity or just otherwise don’t throw in too many challenges that can straight up ignore the party.

A party of all Swordsages or all Warblades, each of whom focuses on a different school, could be very interesting. There’d likely have to be a little bit of overlap because I don’t think you can make a low/mid-level initiator who only knows maneuvers from one discipline, but the focus could be clear. (Crusaders don’t get enough schools to have a full party of this without houserules.)

It’d take some bookkeeping, but a party where the rule is “all problems that can be solved with summons should be solved with summons” would be fun to watch. (Literally setting this in the Pokémon universe is optional.) You could mix up the classes here (Conjurer Wizard, Master of Shrouds, Druid, Shaper Psion, maybe even Savage Bard, etc.), since playstyle is going to be the big part of this one. This would, naturally, be a high-powered party.

If you want a low-powered party instead, you could see how many 4th level casters you could squeeze in. Ranger, Paladin, Hexblade, Sohei, Spellthief, Savant—definitely a weak party, but if that’s the point, it might be fun.

Some groups kind of play like this anyway, but there’s always the classic “zero downtime” party of sleepless races (warforged, neraphim, necropolitans, etc.) with no per-day class features (Warlocks, martial initiators, DFAs, Rogues, Scouts, etc.; Binders technically only need about 5 minutes of downtime per vestige per day, so even they might count). This one could lend itself to hardcore dungeon crawling, if that’s your jam.

You could look at ideology, too. Ever dig into the planar factions from Planescape? “We’re all Sensates” or “we’re all Hardheads” or “we’re all Fated” or something might be almost as entertaining as “we’re all orcs.”

If, and only if, every member of the group (player and GM alike) would be willing to put in the legwork, a full Artificer party could be ridiculous, but it’s a rare group where everyone would pull together on that.

Or, to cap it off, all-tibbet party.

[frogglesmash]

All x campaigns are a great opportunity to have everyone play a monster race carry since you don't have to worry as much about balancing out their LAs.
I personally like the idea of an all illithid campaign.

[NomGarret]

And finally, an all barbarian campaign where no one can have more than 8 int, but no one can be pure barbarian

I'd love to see all of these go 1-20

That remains me of Og, a caveman game I ran across a few years back. IIRC, your intelligence score determined the number of words you knew.

[Falontani]

It’d take some bookkeeping, but a party where the rule is “all problems that can be solved with summons should be solved with summons” would be fun to watch. (Literally setting this in the Pokémon universe is optional.) You could mix up the classes here (Conjurer Wizard, Master of Shrouds, Druid, Shaper Psion, maybe even Savage Bard, etc.), since playstyle is going to be the big part of this one. This would, naturally, be a high-powered party.

I would totally join a campaign like this, I think this type of campaign would absolutely NEED the Unearthed Arcana rules for summoning and have all the opponents ALSO only use summoning when possible (at least humanoid opponents)

Some groups kind of play like this anyway, but there’s always the classic “zero downtime” party of sleepless races (warforged, neraphim, necropolitans, etc.) with no per-day class features (Warlocks, martial initiators, DFAs, Rogues, Scouts, etc.; Binders technically only need about 5 minutes of downtime per vestige per day, so even they might count). This one could lend itself to hardcore dungeon crawling, if that’s your jam.

In a campaign like this I would make it so that spontaneous casters weren't X spells/day but a slow trickle regen, same with psionics. Example would be a sorcerer with a total of 20 spell slots (lets say cantrips count as half a spell slot, and level 2 spells count as 2 spell slots etc) you add up all your "spell slots" and then divide by 1440 (so in this case 72 minutes) and every 72 minutes the caster gets back 1 spell slot recharging the lowest ones first.
I would have items replenish themselves at a specific time of day in the game (so an eternal wand would recharge every day at dawn)

If, and only if, every member of the group (player and GM alike) would be willing to put in the legwork, a full Artificer party could be ridiculous, but it’s a rare group where everyone would pull together on that.

Another one that I would join

[Man on Fire]

Another idea, esp. for D&D games, is an "all aligment X" game, be it either everyone have the same aligment and the challenge is to show how many shades said aligment can have....or everyone are certain part of said aligment, say all-Lawful so we can have Lawful Good and Lawful Evil and Lawful Neutral characters struggling together and trying to muster some teamwork against forces of Chaos.

[Draconi Redfir]

i kinda got this feeling from playing Starcft 2; Legacy of the void.

for those who don't know, long story short, you play as a race of space-elves, the Protoss. and their home has been taken over by space-bugs for a very long time. No, with an even worse threat coming and taking control of 90% of the space-elf population, the remaining space-elves need to gather allies.

So what do they do? Well it just so happens that there are sevral OTHER groups of space-elves with radically different cultures (and eye colours) that are also against the greater evil. So by the end of the game, you've got the blue-eyed "Light" space elves recruiting the green-eyed "Shadow" space-eleves, subjugating the red-eyed "Evil" space-elves, and re-activating and apologizing to the orange-eyed "Robot" space-eleves that they locked away eons ago.

and at some period in that game, the ship your characters are on gets attacked, and there is just this awsome scene where the leaders of each of the four factions are standing together, talking to a side-character before epicly walking off together to fight the good fight.

So... yeah. I've wanted to do that in D&D for awhile. You got one player who is desperate and looking for allies, but can really only rely on members of their own species/race. So they begin recruiting, subjugating, or hiring other characters, each who lead or can be made to lead their own culture of that race, each being radically different from one another. and then standing together as one unified race/species against a greater evil.

and i dunno, maybe while players A and B are going through the quest to get B's faction to join A, then players C and D can play as side-characters that could become cohorts or NPC's later or something.


it's not quite "All X", but i have also liked the idea of a bunch of mid-level holy-types such as paladins, clerics, and oracles all going on some kind of rescue mission into the plane of shadow or something.

[SoraWolf7]

Maybe it's just because I have Artificers on the brain as of late, but an All Artificer game sounds like hella fun. Each person takes on a different "archetype"; the Meleeficer, the Archerficer, the Hordeificer, the Buffificer, etc. And you're all perfect support for each other since you can all help with your little projects after/during the adventures.

[Man on Fire]

- All dwarves: I like dwarves. They're gritty, stereotipically manly often to Hollywood levels, prone to wield weapons that are twice their height and at the same time lend themselves to a plethora of other interpretations: stealthy dwarves, crooked dwarven brawlers that are anything but honorable, wizard dwarves. You can also subvert many d&d tropes just by making a normal character (i.e. a druid) into a dwarf, because dwarves have a vastly different approach to nature and the world than most other races. You've all seen the tree-hugging druid, but what about the stone druid?

I played once in an All Dwarf game, playing Dugear spy masquerading as a Dwarf to sabotage the mission. Sadly, the game didin't last long.

- All wizards: similarly to the OP, I'd love to try an all T1 wizards campaign. Contrary to them, I'd 100% have it start at 1st level. There's no fun in starting a game when everything just works by virtue of the fact you're all doing your job as T1 and as such you win, but starting at 1st level for casters means having to manage your resources extremely well while relying on the closest meat shield to buy you some time. When no meat shield is around (unless you summon one), zany shenanigans ensue and being on these boards should be a clear signal that I love zany shenanigans.

I guess it depends if you want a "Saint Seiya level crazyness" game or a "Harry Potter and Ricewind" game, while "you are Merlin, Gandalf and Dumbledore" would be mid level I guess.
How about a "from zero to hero" game where t1s start at level 1 and the goal is to advance all the way to epic levels. I would interest check such a game running on adventure paths/modules in Finding players but I doubt they are designed to not tpk an all wizard party at first encounter.

Ever since Kung Fu Panda came out, I've wanted to do a 'Dragon Warrior' campaign where all of the PCs are Martial Adept classes from the Tome of Battle and one of them is destined to become the equivalent of the 'Dragon Warrior' - but no one knows which. With a bunch of prophecies lining up to predict the appearance of the legendary hero is imminent, masters from all of the schools of martial arts send their most promising students who fit the criteria of the prophecy to begin the quest to reveal the true 'Dragon Warrior'.

I do -really- like the idea of making a fantasy wuxia campaign with an all martial adept, no casters party.

A party of all Swordsages or all Warblades, each of whom focuses on a different school, could be very interesting. There’d likely have to be a little bit of overlap because I don’t think you can make a low/mid-level initiator who only knows maneuvers from one discipline, but the focus could be clear. (Crusaders don’t get enough schools to have a full party of this without houserules.)

I don't really know ToB (or its PF equivalents) that well but I would certainly like to try this as well.

I played the classic “all Bard band” game several years ago. It’s a classic for a reason, primarily because Bards are so good at shaping themselves into different roles. We had the caster Bard, the melee Bard, the crazy IC-focused Bard, the ranged Bard, the “I impress other Bards with my skillmonkeying” Bard . . . And of course, there was all kinds of creative problem-solving. Good stuff.

Agreed, Bards are one of the first classes that come to mind in that type of game.

Any party where all the PCs are stealthy-type classes can open up some options that just aren’t available with a more “traditional” mix. Specifically, you can actually do stealth/infiltration missions without splitting the party. All Rogues could be interesting, now that I think about it, especially if you either handwave away precision immunity or just otherwise don’t throw in too many challenges that can straight up ignore the party.

It’d take some bookkeeping, but a party where the rule is “all problems that can be solved with summons should be solved with summons” would be fun to watch. (Literally setting this in the Pokémon universe is optional.) You could mix up the classes here (Conjurer Wizard, Master of Shrouds, Druid, Shaper Psion, maybe even Savage Bard, etc.), since playstyle is going to be the big part of this one. This would, naturally, be a high-powered party.

If you want a low-powered party instead, you could see how many 4th level casters you could squeeze in. Ranger, Paladin, Hexblade, Sohei, Spellthief, Savant—definitely a weak party, but if that’s the point, it might be fun.

Some groups kind of play like this anyway, but there’s always the classic “zero downtime” party of sleepless races (warforged, neraphim, necropolitans, etc.) with no per-day class features (Warlocks, martial initiators, DFAs, Rogues, Scouts, etc.; Binders technically only need about 5 minutes of downtime per vestige per day, so even they might count). This one could lend itself to hardcore dungeon crawling, if that’s your jam.

You could look at ideology, too. Ever dig into the planar factions from Planescape? “We’re all Sensates” or “we’re all Hardheads” or “we’re all Fated” or something might be almost as entertaining as “we’re all orcs.”

If, and only if, every member of the group (player and GM alike) would be willing to put in the legwork, a full Artificer party could be ridiculous, but it’s a rare group where everyone would pull together on that.

You have some nice ideas. I especially like the All-summoning and all 4th level casters.

All x campaigns are a great opportunity to have everyone play a monster race carry since you don't have to worry as much about balancing out their LAs.
I personally like the idea of an all illithid campaign.

That would also be a good game for Gestalt - you put mosnter levels, LA and HDs in one side and the class in the other and see what comes out of it. An all-Ogre or All-Lizardmen could be interesting in 3.5, next to your All-Illithid idea.

[Nifft]

(Crusaders don’t get enough schools to have a full party of this without houserules.)

They can PrC pretty well, though.

#1 - Crusader / Cleric / Ruby Knight Vindicator
#2 - Crusader / Wizard / Jade Phoenix Mage
#3 - Crusader / Bard (with Song of the White Raven)
#4 - Crusader / Crusader / More Crusader

Or, to cap it off, all-tibbet party.

* cat it off


Tibbits could be fun, especially if you try to optimize for cat-form utility.
- Dragonfire Adept
- Psion
- Totemist
- ... does Natural Spell apply to cat-form?

[BearonVonMu]

I have plans in the works for an All-caster game.
It will be set at Not-Hogwarts crossed with Tales of MU, and one side of your gestalt must be a casting class that progresses to ninth level spells.
Anyone less magically gifted would wash out by their fourth level, and some of the classes would be creating obstacles and adventures for other students.
Spontaneous casters would be like the lazy but gifted students.

[SwordChucks]

I've been running a Pathfinder supers gestalt game with one side of the gestalt being vigilante.

I would love to see an all changeling game where the players are told separately to keep their race secret from the other players.

[FelineArchmage]

A group of us are currently gestalting a high level campaign where we are all warforged rogues/something else. So far, it's really fun!

We've got:
- Warforged rogue/artificer
- Warforged rogue/fighter + lots of prestige classes that involves him being able to be really good at knives and sneak attacks. Aptly named "Knives". He uses his knives as fidget spinners all the time basically.
- Warforged rogue/wizard + prestige classes (Myself)

Not super optimized since we're missing the classical cleric of the group, but we might gain an NPC for funsies. We're getting around the whole not being able to heal thing by just... doing craft checks on ourselves... (And my repair spells).

[FelineArchmage]

I would love to see an all changeling game where the players are told separately to keep their race secret from the other players.

Totally going to suggest this next time we start a campaign. This sounds so fun!!!

[Kelb_Panthera]

I've been running a Pathfinder supers gestalt game with one side of the gestalt being vigilante.

I would love to see an all changeling game where the players are told separately to keep their race secret from the other players.

Wouldn't that amount to pick a race but don't use its stats unless you have them acting in secret from each other -all- the time?

[SwordChucks]

Wouldn't that amount to pick a race but don't use its stats unless you have them acting in secret from each other -all- the time?

Pretty much, the fun would be seeing how long and to what lengths the party would go to hide their race from each other, especially if you tell them before hand that changelings are hated/feared in the region they're in.

Not great for a long campaign I admit, but I've gone farther for a joke in D&D.

[frogglesmash]

Pretty much, the fun would be seeing how long and to what lengths the party would go to hide their race from each other, especially if you tell them before hand that changelings are hated/feared in the region they're in.

Not great for a long campaign I admit, but I've gone farther for a joke in D&D.

Raise the stakes by running the campaign in a setting where changelings are a prosecuted race.

[Nifft]

Raise the stakes by running the campaign in a setting where changelings are a prosecuted race.

So... a game about court intrigue?

[Kelb_Panthera]

So... a game about court intrigue?

Oh yeah. That sounds great to me. Cloak and dagger is my bread and butter and a trial is a perfect reason to put that skill-set to use. That or a court intrigue campaign.

Heh. Just realized that lends itself pretty nicely to an all rogue or at least all skill-monkey campaign too.

[Eldariel]

I guess it depends if you want a "Saint Seiya level crazyness" game or a "Harry Potter and Ricewind" game, while "you are Merlin, Gandalf and Dumbledore" would be mid level I guess.
How about a "from zero to hero" game where t1s start at level 1 and the goal is to advance all the way to epic levels. I would interest check such a game running on adventure paths/modules in Finding players but I doubt they are designed to not tpk an all wizard party at first encounter.

Eh, I wouldn't worry. An all-Wizard 1st level party essentially comes with 16 loaded bazookas that allow them to more or less obliterate 16 even nearly level appropriate encounters per day. Their defense isn't amazing barring Abrupt Jaunt or higher tier trickery, but their offense is so strong that as long as one of them wins Init, they probably smash the encounter.

Clean-up with Coup de Graces, Longbows/Crossbows and such isn't pretty but it gets the job done. Wild Cohort, Animal Companion ACF and hirelings can also give you brawlers if desired.

[tadkins]

Had a weird idea a while back. I'm not sure how feasible this would be for an actual game, but it'd be interesting if done right. It would be a game of about 20 players, divided into 4 groups of 5. It would be a massive Drow focused campaign with each team representing a different house vying for power within their metropolis in the Underdark. The players would for the most part all be playing Drow, with maybe one or two players playing a slave/mercenary race, if they wanted. But enough to really call it an "All Drow" campaign, in the spirit of this thread.

[SwordChucks]

So... a game about court intrigue?

Yeah, I totally meant that. I'm not just a dope, nope not me.

[Draconi Redfir]

Had a weird idea a while back. I'm not sure how feasible this would be for an actual game, but it'd be interesting if done right. It would be a game of about 20 players, divided into 4 groups of 5. It would be a massive Drow focused campaign with each team representing a different house vying for power within their metropolis in the Underdark. The players would for the most part all be playing Drow, with maybe one or two players playing a slave/mercenary race, if they wanted. But enough to really call it an "All Drow" campaign, in the spirit of this thread.

i and a few friends of mine would TOTALLY be on board for that