Hot answers tagged campaign-development
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I've run a variety of tones of campaigns over time and some could be considered "evil"; in fact currently I'm running a three-year long Pathfinder campaign where the PCs are pirates - not all of them are technically evilly aligned, but murder, torture, rape, slavery, etc. have all come up in the game. Here's how you make it work.
Decide on Limits, Within ...
31
It depends. What are you trying to achieve?
As the author of the campaign, you have a tremendous amount of freedom to create whatever world you wish to. You don't have to stick with the world created in the books any more than you want to. In many years of playing I have spent far more time playing in "generic fantasy world populated from the Monster ...
27
Pacing
The key to a good horror game/movie is the pacing; if the characters are constantly in peril and exposed to horrific things then it will become bland. From my Cthulhu games I've found keys to this are:
Build up Slowly lead the players into somewhere dangerous, use mundane things to build tension like smashed glass, scrawled notes, lightning blasted ...
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Tell your player to suck it.
Your world works how you want it to.
Neither of the critiques you cited from your powergamer make a bit of sense at all. "That's a 1e monster it wouldn't be in a 3.5e world" makes me doubt his sanity - people have ported absolutely every monster forward, and what edition they have rules for is totally separate from whether ...
18
Use a very strong central theme and mood. Think of your campaign as if it was a TV series held together by these things, as well returning props, characters, places etc.
Use a strong, universal antagonist, possibly an organization that has agents from all the various supernatural factions as well. Even better if your party are members / helpers of the same ...
17
Any sensation, experienced in full without stop will eventually allow or force those who experience it to adjust to or move away from it. For a 'horror' campaign to be effective, memorable, and successful for a good duration of time it is necessary to have a solid understanding of two things, everything else is secondary and dependent on your performance ...
16
Question: How do you kill a vampire?
Answer: Any way you like: they do not exist!!!
So, provided you have an in-world reason for creature $critter to have either $ability or be at $location then you are right. Sure, vampires can be gay (aka homosexual) Chartreuse-drinking cretins. Sure, Dragons can be mindless evil creatures. Sure, Cthulhu maybe the ...
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Your level is about how much experience you have so far. It says nothing about where you are in the story.
Consider the Lord of the Rings. At the beginning of the adventure, Frodo is a beginner, level 1, just starting his career. Aragorn, however, has been in many stories so far (even if we don't see them ourselves). When he joins this adventure, the ...
16
I have tried this in two ways in the past. I think of the two, only one will be of use for your objective.
PC Villain in the Group
Create the villain with its player and discuss what their villainous goal actually is. Ensure the player can and will commit to being a villain. Their goal should require the villain to need to be close to or involved with the ...
15
Think about a horror movie for minute.
Pacing: most horror movies are pretty fast paced, and move from scene to scene quickly. This can help keep viewers (or players tense). But sometimes they slow dow
Mix it up: there isn't something gross in ever scene. Sometimes a chase is a chase and you get away. Sometimes there are moments for character development ...
14
You cannot sustain a horrific setting all the time. Thus pacing is key. Allow the players some normal and fun times -- both IC and OC. However, there are a few things you can do to always unsettle them. Mostly they boil down to alienation. You want a disconnect between nice comfy reality and the game world. You want to mess with players' minds -- just ...
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Building Tension to Build Horror
I’ve played RPG’s since I was a kid, but I’ve also written narrative as a hobby for years. RPG’s combine the intellectual stimulation of board games with the deep engagement of storytelling (books and films). When the players calmly intellectualize their attempts to WIN, they’re in board game mode. When players FEEL ...
13
In the past, I've developed histories, theologies, and factions with a combination of Microscope and Kingdom.
In the living history I've developed, you can see the records of a game of Microscope which developed the history of the world, and a game of Kingdom, which detailed the factions and history of one of the local towns they lived in. By setting givens ...
13
Evil can be just as "Heroic" as good!
Disclaimer: my experience is primarily drawn from RPG systems where alignment has no mechanical impact on the game or powers.
Starting out with some movie reference material... Obi-Wan: "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
Characters are already ...
12
I live in São Paulo and think it is a great city, and Brazil overall has been improving a lot these past few years. But as another poster wrote the negative aspects and exaggerations can be put to good use to provide a cyberpunk flavor. So here's a few select facts for São Paulo, followed by how you could use them in the setting:
the city is very vertical, ...
10
I was going to suggest mouseguard, but then you elaborated: "I mean class in the DnD v3.5 sense" on chat.
Don't try to hack this into D&D 3.5. You'll run into abstraction problems. If you want a system designed for this level of abstraction try Ars Magica, GURPS, or Mouseguard.
You're operating at the wrong level of granularity, both in action and in ...
10
Sounds fine, go for it.
DMs get to make up special magic items and determine exactly how they work. That's how all the existing "standard" magic items started – a DM just said "this is what it is, and this is how it works."
There is no rule that says you can only invent magic items that use the rules players have to abide by. In fact, to make unique, ...
10
There is an established technique for avoiding "too" distasteful things when playing a dark game: building lines and veils into your social contract. Then you can all agree on the stuff to fade-to-black with (veils), and what stuff just will never appear in this story (lines).
When you have lines and veils, you can push hard into nasty territory because you ...
9
I have played "PCs as villains" in various ways. The more you want a long, traditional campaign play with all the PCs "in the group," the more constrained you will be in options - a one shot or a planned several session adventure, you can accomplish this all sorts of wild ways.
Covert Bad Guy In The Group
In a long Night Below campaign (AD&D 2e), I had ...
9
Well, there's any number of systems like BRP that improve specific skills based on use, but there are fewer that use classes (mainly because classes are fairly rare outside D&D derivatives and other super old school games).
I can think of two relevant games. The first is the zero-level rules for AD&D 2e, published in Greyhawk Adventures and used ...
9
There are a lot of different types of "Evil Campaign" out there, so let's find a type that suits your needs. It's more of a spectrum than a list of types, but I'm going to run you through some pretty staple, commonly done flavors of Evil Campaign. Feel free to settle between 'genres' or on something not even mentioned in this list, though I've done my best ...
8
Solution 1: Harlequin
Have an extra player play NPC's. At start of scene, give them a card with their goals for the scene, and the NPC's sheet. If needed, give them also some information about what that character knows about the bigger picture. (But note that what they know may or may not be true.)
Solution 2: Expand the structure to 2+ Teams
Split the ...
8
(Disclaimer: I'm a Brazilian)
Most fictitious representations of Brazil exaggerate on some of the negative aspects, specially relating to the violence and corruption (which are quite high, but not as much as seen in some movies). This exaggeration can be used to your benefit if you consider that in most cyberpunk settings, the worst aspects of a society ...
8
One main source: History.
Two great sources spring to mind: the Thirty Years War (The Thirty Years War by C. V. Wedgwood) and Byzantium (Early, Apogee, and Decline and Fall by John Julius Norwich). The Thirty Years War was a massive conflict that span the whole of Europe and masqueraded as a war of religion. Byzantium gave us such terms as Byzantine which ...
7
Create Contrast
(Preventing Desensitization)
I have found that the most effective way of showcasing horror is to contrast it with comedy or general happiness. À la Disney's Cars, "Sometimes you have to turn left to go right", the easiest way to set up a horror is with a bright and sunny scene with happiness and joy, then crush it to a pulp in front of ...
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I learned most of my lessons on this topic from action and drama films.
I've found that one of the best ways to introduce comic relief in an otherwise tense campaign is to introduce sometimes hilarious events into combat descriptions. For example, let's say one of your party member's gets a critical success on his attack roll and obliterates an enemy. All ...
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It's a great idea to get your players involved in building the setting. Make sure that everyone wants to be involved in this stage of course. It can do more harm than good to force people to create something if they aren't feeling it.
The Dresden Files RPG lets players cooperate in building the city they will be playing in. There are City Creation Rules in ...
7
Medieval politics should involve marriages, assassinations, bastards, fleeting alliances, long-lasting enemies, blood feud, coups. There is little notion of investigation and justice lies where power is. Who has the biggest army usually wins, who has the biggest wits stay on power.
George R. R. Martin's "A song of ice and fire" is a great inspiration on ...
7
If I were you I'd go for one of these options:
a) The Megadungeon is a city.
Either someone decided that building underground was a sensible move due to unfavourable conditions on the surface (ice age? magic fallout? a desert world like in Dune?), or your party is a group of outsiders among a race of underground dwellers (Dwarfs, basically - have you ...
7
Decide to not play an indefinite campaign. Setting out to aim for an end is the best way to avoid a campaign from wandering aimlessly and ending with a wimper. With an end in sight, you'll be less worried about padding the game with "suitable" challenges and more attentive to allowing/helping the power level of the game drive toward a climax.
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