Super Squirrel Posted December 28, 2005 Report Share Posted December 28, 2005 I'm still learning as I go how to run a Sword and Sorcery style campaign. There is one trick I have learned very early and it has requires a bit of cognitive efforts on my part. I will now dispense this valuable lesson and some tricks to work with it. "Villains are a dime a dozen" Villains are evil, they are ruthless, they are cunning, and they die in Sword and Sorcery. The first thing you need to do to run a successful Sword and Sorcery campaign is let the concept of reoccuring villains go. You can have a master villain that is sending minor villains after the PCs but that master villain will eventually be found and die. Valdorian Age Tricks You can't kill supernatural creatures. When you "kill" them, they return to there home. They can be summoned again and again. If you insist on having a reoccuring villain, your best bet is a supernatural creature. This creature will have to either be repeatedly resummoned by a sorcerer or will need to trick sorcerers (through favors perhaps) into means that allow them to roam free. But it can do the job nicely. And remember this... just because someone has died, doesn't mean they can't find themselves back once again. Souls wander aimlessly until they move on. Time also flows honky. They can be dead a week and be wandering aimlessly in the realm of the dead that have not passed on for what appears to be decades. I'll let you fill in the blanks yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markdoc Posted December 28, 2005 Report Share Posted December 28, 2005 Re: So You Want to Run Sword and Sorcery... "Villains are a dime a dozen" Villains are evil, they are ruthless, they are cunning, and they die in Sword and Sorcery. The first thing you need to do to run a successful Sword and Sorcery campaign is let the concept of reoccuring villains go. You can have a master villain that is sending minor villains after the PCs but that master villain will eventually be found and die. I've been doing sword & sorcery for many, many years and recurring villians can easily be used. They simply need a shtick. Eventually, of course all villians grow stale and you need to polish them off, but I like to recycle my favourites a few times. Useful tropes. "It wasn't actually me". No magic required - you just use a kagemusha - a guy who looks like the villian. Alternately you use shapeshifting magic. "I didn't stay dead". From pacts with demons, to hiding your soul inside an casket in an abandoned temple full of monsters, reached only by a mystic teleport, there are multiple ways to bring your master villian back to life. "Curses! Foiled Again!" The villian doesn't wait around to be shish-kebabbed. When the players arrive dripping in gore in the sanctum santorum, they find evidence of a hasty departure. "Ah! but you can't kill me because...." I have your DNPC hanging over a pit of hungry giant leeches. Let me go and I will swear on my honour as a villian to reveal her location. Or I'm the only one who knows how to stop the supernatural disaster that is looming - you must work with me or see the city turned to ashes. Bwahahaha! Or I have the mystic symbol of Tharsh tattooed on my chest - if a drop of my blood is spilt, a portal will open in it, letting demons pour through. So long, suckers! "Ha! Is that all you got?" He's tough. He kicks the player's asses, gloats and leaves (and perhaps steals their stuff if you want them to really hate him). They'll have to get back to him later, in the meantime foiling his plots and staying out of his reach. I'm sure there's more but that's what springs to mind right now. cheers, Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gamerz123 Posted December 28, 2005 Report Share Posted December 28, 2005 Re: So You Want to Run Sword and Sorcery... I've been doing sword & sorcery for many, many years and recurring villians can easily be used. They simply need a shtick. Eventually, of course all villians grow stale and you need to polish them off, but I like to recycle my favourites a few times. Useful tropes. "It wasn't actually me". No magic required - you just use a kagemusha - a guy who looks like the villian. Alternately you use shapeshifting magic. "I didn't stay dead". From pacts with demons, to hiding your soul inside an casket in an abandoned temple full of monsters, reached only by a mystic teleport, there are multiple ways to bring your master villian back to life. "Curses! Foiled Again!" The villian doesn't wait around to be shish-kebabbed. When the players arrive dripping in gore in the sanctum santorum, they find evidence of a hasty departure. "Ah! but you can't kill me because...." I have your DNPC hanging over a pit of hungry giant leeches. Let me go and I will swear on my honour as a villian to reveal her location. Or I'm the only one who knows how to stop the supernatural disaster that is looming - you must work with me or see the city turned to ashes. Bwahahaha! Or I have the mystic symbol of Tharsh tattooed on my chest - if a drop of my blood is spilt, a portal will open in it, letting demons pour through. So long, suckers! "Ha! Is that all you got?" He's tough. He kicks the player's asses, gloats and leaves (and perhaps steals their stuff if you want them to really hate him). They'll have to get back to him later, in the meantime foiling his plots and staying out of his reach. I'm sure there's more but that's what springs to mind right now. cheers, Mark There's always the classic (Use innumerably in Saturday Serials to explain how the heroes survived Certain Doom from last week's Epsiode.) "Different Camera Angle" The players thought the bad guy got it because of their viewpoint. If they would have been standing over THERE, then they would see that convenient outcropping on the side of the 1,000' cliff which just happens to have a tunnel providing a very nice escape route to the valley below Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curufea Posted December 28, 2005 Report Share Posted December 28, 2005 Re: So You Want to Run Sword and Sorcery... "Civilisation is bad" Cities are cesspits of sin. The more civilised the more evil a place is (ancient civilisations are the worst). This extends to people as well - the more intelligent you are, the more evil you are. The end point being wizards and sorcerers - all that book-learnin' has made them eeeeviiiilll.... "Anarchy is good" Power through strength, tribal remedies - and just plain toughing out any disease is always best. Anything from heresay or old wives tales is always true and more accurate than that darn book-learnin' stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Gillen Posted December 29, 2005 Report Share Posted December 29, 2005 Re: So You Want to Run Sword and Sorcery... From the 4th Edition FH- "A guy with a sword can always beat the guy with a spell." As in, spells may be powerful, in some ways more powerful than the quick-n'-ready combat effects of D&D, but they're usually rituals that can't be cast easily in combat. When it comes to speed, a swordsman can usually dispatch a sorceror before the sorceror can throw an effective spell. (As opposed to the High Fantasy trope, where they say 'an aged wizard vs. an army- no contest. Never bet on the army!') JG Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Squirrel Posted December 29, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 29, 2005 Re: So You Want to Run Sword and Sorcery... I want to address a point. Having reoccuring villains is possible. But the best thing you can do to give a better S&S feel to it is to let go of the notion of the reoccuring villain. It is great if you have a villain that you can get to survive and come back later. Or has a death that looks convincing but in fact doesn't kill them. You don't need to rebuild the character and back they come. But face it... S&S characters are not nice people. If you build an NPC that needs to come back in a later episode you are only setting things up for disaster. Your PC may just decide to take a swing of an axe into their head at the first sign of betrayal. But, as I said, villains in S&S are a dime a dozen. Just because a villain was killed doesn't mean his lackey didn't know every detail of the plan and decides to continue it. And rulers will either be corrupt or die quickly. For this, I quote The Phoenix and the Sword by Robert E. Howard. When I was a fighting-man, the kettle-drums they beat, The people scattered gold-dust before my horse's feet; But now I am a great king, the people hound my track With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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