Something has been on my mind recently. A possible setting that inspired me to compile a truckload of books, myths, ideas, random-ass PDFs, and a vague impression of a game I'd like to run in the future. Now, this is always the kind of thing that crops up with me right after I get a game going. That makes me nervous. It's hard to get buy-in on a steady game with a particular system, much less bouncing from game to game, rules to rules. But, I do get that "looking to the next thing" feel pretty often.
To be fair, my current setting The Bright Spans was originally an exercise on making a somewhat vanilla D&D setting to launch some Old-School adventures (particularly since it's basically the 50th anniversary of the little brown books). And actually it's not too bad. I can run stuff out of there for quite a while. In fact, I hopefully will continue to be able to run dungeony goodness in that setting. I would definitely like to keep running OSD&D with at least one of my groups for the foreseeable future, and I have some tentative plans to do a focused online meetup thing with friends missing from the immediate vicinity (and any of my homegame players who want to get some extra gold hopefully). If for some weird reason I do any pickup games, or *gasp* eventual Cons, I think The Spans and whatever BX-OSRish system my players like work very well for me.
But, my danged brain-box does think about things, and for some reason I've got an image in there of sun-drenched fields, and deep-blue seas, and bronze, and weird smoke coming out of ancient censers, and the gods literally interfering in the affairs of mortals. I'm actually not sure how I got glommed onto the idea*, but I do know a few weeks ago I was suddenly watching tons of Tube-you vids and reading wikis (and a few actual sources) on the Iliad. Which translation was favored by various people and teachers, which was clearest for a modern ear, which kept the sense of the original Greek.
Since then, I've been gathering books and game-stuff.. And I have much of a region already mapped out: Filios. Granted, Filios was originally made to be more Anatolian, trade routes, and much much later, but it also was only historically accurate in the vaguest sense of the word. Indeed, most of it is only sketched out in broad strokes. It feels right as a jumping-off point for the Late Bronze Age of Heroes sort of setting I'm contemplating. That may very well be because it's the only map I've made with vaguely old-fashioned-y sounding place names, but nonetheless, I believe I'll be using it as a jumping-off point. I may extend out the area to the East, Kexos (as the name of a caravanserai outpost near the mountain pass into the main desert), and there is definitely jungle jungle jungle to the north on the other side of the sea there, but I think this will be workable for now.
Originally, I was going to use something something OD&D-clone, like Whitebox from Matt Finch and pals, or The 7 Voyages of Zylarthen, Mazes & Minotaurs, or one of a few other rules-sets I have lying around. (Ok I bought Swords & Wizardry -Whitebox but I've had others hanging around, and besides, I've played and run a bit of Swords & Wizardry Complete you might say. Heh.) I noticed there wasn't a huge amount of Greek-inspired material in the OSR. I picked up the pdf from AD&D 2nd edition's historical series. Some random things here and there to peek at later. I started noticing material in other systems. I started thinking about specifically what system I wanted to use. If I wanted to kit-bash, houserule, hack, build anew, use whole-cloth old-ass D&D, or do the same with something like Dungeon Crawl Classics (no; after a long thought, I mainly wanted to use it for 1) Lankhmar, 2) the fighter's Mighty Deeds die, 3) funnels, but this loses the appeal of the kitchen-sink sci-fantasy feel I get from it, so it still lingers on the shelf).
Something else? There's a few "bespoke" games out there that deal with the right time-period, and lend themselves to a *ahem* story-focused approach, but I always bounce off those, even as creepingly, long-fingers grasping, and eye-balls widening at the allure of some some of their mechanics. But, no, I can't do it. Anyhow, if I'm going to play something weird, it'll probably be my own thing, or something from like Rowan, Rook, and Decard (I'm looking at you, Heart).
Then, I looked back at my book shelves. And sitting there, neatly stacked away were those heroic, high-powered, character-y, combat oriented black and red spined D&D books. The thought crept in: maybe, just maybe....
* I just remembered why I got on this kick. I was reading old blog-posts from In Places Deep about a Hollow Earth setting with ancient cultures and city-states and like dinosaurs! And probably building the game up from OD&D! Of course, her inspirations are like 100% more original than what I am duffing about with, but, nevertheless my delving into 13 year old blog-posts is where this whole thing originated from, so if my players need to blame anyone, they can blame her.
And now, BEHOLD, the repost from whenever WotC tried to revoke the OGL I guess. I am unsure what the specific uselfulness of all of this will be, but at least it's a small snapshot of my previous thoughts on hacking up and starting a new modern-D&D game. Maybe I can scrape some of the relevant thought-residue from it for my current build-up of idea slop.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
So, I did say there'd be at least one Fiveeee post. And then, there was the fiasco that is this OGL stuff on like every RPG-adjacent site. Also, my players chose Symbaroum and Mothership as the games of choice for the foreseeable future, so there didn't seem to be as much of an urgency for me to fix up my houserules.
However, I needed to post something within my self-imposed 7-day window, and a brief table, along with a bit of a blah blah ramble was sitting in drafts, almost ready to be called into action. Now I don't know if it shouldn't just be the initial stages of a whole d20 based D&D-like thing to suit my own uses. Obviously based on mechanics from that pretty popular version that one or two people played the last few years. But JJ-ified. And trimmed way back. And like dragged through various unmentionable substances, and dirt and oil and whatnot. Then wiped off and voila! Something that I'm pretty sure I won't be able to (oooh-so-amusingly to just me) call Fiveeee.
Anyhow, BEHOLD, very little of anything!! A table:
Stat Class Adv Class
STR: Fighter Barbarian
KNO: Bard Monk
PER: Ranger Duelist
DEX: Expert Gunwitch
CON: Sorcerer Brawler
CHA: Warrior Spy
Alright, so first things first, those aren't the normal stats one sees in 5e, or standard D&D at all are they? I went back and forth for a while, since it didn't seem D&D enough to me, but since I've peered squintingly at them, I decided I like this array more and more. Knowledge replaces Intelligence, and just becomes sort of exposure to education or how much your character has absorbed if that's what you want. Not necessarily book learning, not necessarily some kind of cap on what the character can know. And I'm putting Perception there instead of Wisdom, since I don't really care how wise you think your character is. Now everyone can be smart and wise or not if they want, but a natural enumeration on PER may be beneficial for me in my game. (I do realize that stock skills may have to be slightly reorganized if some of this doesn't make sense, but Medicine? Seems pretty knowledge-y to me but why not PER, and other than that...Animal Handling? Sure, I suppose perception will overlap with a kind of intuition, but again this feels ok to me.)
The second thing is: what's with those classes, huh? Well, if i do this overhaul, I'll start with that first column. There's really not too much that needs to be completely overturned, just deciding what to keep and how a different prime requisite will change things. I mean "Bard" is not the tutti-frutti song-and-dance bs that people have weirdly gravitated toward, but actually takes the place of Wizard, or Sage. Some kind of keeper of knowledge, lore, yes maybe spells. I mean I recently re-read the Prydain books. Also, fucking Merlin right? (Not caring about your First Druid of Britain or whatever. Not listening!) Maybe some kind of bad-ass Skald from some bleak seeming setting. And "Warrior" is there alone, because putting "Holy" in front of it sounds like it's taking itself too seriously or something, Paladin is used up, and Templar has a pretty specific meaning usually. But I think you get the idea there. Clerics gotta clerk, and I feel like swaying the masses can well queue off of Charisma, baby!
Okay, and that second column, well, that's where things get harder for your friendly anticipated home-brewer. Monks can learn techniques. And with a bit of perseverance, even the shittiest student will have the power to avenge their Master or whatnot. Just gotta KNO those wicked arts up, riiiight? The Duelist is maybe the finesse-fighter, or maybe the melee equivalent of the Ranger wanting to go off first, or maybe it'll get scrapped for something that fits there better. I nearly want Duelist, or whatever it should be called, to go under KNO (taught by the greatest swordsman in New Latinum! sort of thing), so maybe that will be folded into Monk. Have to give that a thunk. Gunwitch is honestly just Warlock, only if you just embraced blasty-blast. It'll take some polishing. Brawler already exists. And hell yeah "Moxie" to fuel their bare-knuckled bs! Finally spy, is....well I don't know yet. That looks like a class that will have to be built from the ground up, using a mix of pre-existing class features. Something of a mix of assassin, actual Bard class, diplomat, and perhaps enchanter wizard. That sort of thing. We'll see.
Conveniently for me, not only is the "Advanced" Classes in the future for the brew, the whole thing is kicked down the timeline since there ain't no D&D in my future for a while. But I do have ideas, if you can call them that. Listening to Sean McCoy speak about quickly on-boarding new players, got me thinking that much of the decision making about one's character could very well be done after getting the framework up and running. So, simplifying skills, bundling the types into the attributes at first, but allowing growth within specialization is an idea. For example, the player says, "I want to be awesome with social things!" so takes something like "Social" and adds in their CHA (bonus). Then, as they figure out their character, they could get further increases in, say, Persuasion if they turn out to be a smooth-talker, or Intimidation if they're a bully. And do that with all of the attribute-skill bundles at first. Either that's a terrible idea, or I'll be able to do something with it, but the idea remains, to get players smoothly into the game a bit easier if not faster. I already use Exhaustion a lot, so I'll want to codify in the extra rules for that. (Inspiration? Nope, but I've been experimenting with a thing that lets players choose to spend points from a CON and Insp-type pool to gain Exhaustion-type effects and injuries outside of the 6-level-to-die standard. But, like I said, I use Exhaustion a lot, and for various things.)
So, there's a little look into some prospective ways I'm thinking about going forward with my Fiveee stuff. Most of it is subject to "Oh gawd why did I think this was a good idea?" and scrapping. But I've already implemented a few things that are working well for how I want to run it, and cut fairly big swaths out of the base rules. My better half likes playing it, and it's fun to do the epic thing, and a bit of tabletop grid-combat sometimes, so I could see getting back to it sometime later. Ugh, and I need to figure out a better name for my ruleset. But, mainly it looks like I've got a buuuunch of detail work that I'd like to get noted, so I don't forget halfway through a random session what exactly did I decide such-and such does? Ahh well, WING IT! (Like usual! Yay!)
No comments:
Post a Comment