Gothic Fantasy Hero

[penemue]

Ok,

I need everyone's help here.

I haven't ran a Fantasy Hero campaign in years. I ran a few fantasy games using the Storyteller (WOD) system back in the 90s, but they don't really count.

Are there any good online resources for low points campaigns or characters? I'm thinking of a dark fantasy story where the characters are all sort of outcasts from the campaign setting. Monsters are real, but lurking in the shadows and more myth than reality. Magic works, but at a high, high cost. A plague has swept the land 10 years ago and the character's village has been spared, but the surrounding cities and towns are wastelands and very scary.

I want some kind of powerful leader that is ruthless, but loved because he somehow steered the town clear of the plague. He did, however make lots of enemies by making the tough decisions and a faction has formed to kill him and seize power. The village would have roughly 300 citizens additionally there would be 50 professional men at arms that guard the keep. Half of those are noble "knights", the others not so much. The leader has a family consisting of his wife, his mistress, his two children (boys) and his bastard son (somehow horrifying and scary). There are roughly 20 civil servants, staff, horsemen, etc. that tend to the family and the keep's needs. The noble family are mostly horrible examples of humanity; lazy, stupid and corrupt to the core. The main resource is fishing as the campaign setting is an island keep very similar to Mont Saint-Michel in France, except it is much further out to see (you can JUST see land from the keep on a clear day). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Saint-Michel

Some examples of what the leader (Baron?) did to avoid the plague:

1. immediately cut off contact with the mainland

2. burned a ship of plague victims (former island residents returning home) before it made it to port.

3. used the plague as an excuse to persecute the rival noble family in town.

 

I was thinking of the Decameron and Hamlet when considering the setting.

What do people think? Any tips or suggestions?

How many points is good for PCs?

I'm going to create pregenerated characters for the players as I may want to turn this into a comic at some point.

[Mirgos]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

There was an adventure in an old White Dwarf issue called "Terror at Trollmarsh" which had an isolated, gothic feel. If you can find a copy it could be of use.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

Sounds like you've got a pretty good start to a campaign cooked up.

 

For PCs, if you really want a low powered game, you could go with 25 base + 25 in Disads. I've played at that level before, and as long as you don't overwhelm the PCs with monsters, it shouldn't be a big problem...but it is easy to overwhelm them. You almost have to think of them as 1st to 3rd level D&D characters...a couple of orcs or goblins is about their level, an ogre will probably whip their collective tails.

 

It that's too low level, 50 + 50 is also good. The characters don't have enough points to be good at everything or to be the greatest man alive in one skill area, but they can be good at a lot or remarkable in one area.

[penemue]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

Mirgos, I have that adventure, thanks. I had totally forgotten about it. I like how the D&D monster (I won't spoil which one it was) was built up to be a horrific creature. I ran it as a Fantasy Hero adventure back in 1985 or 1986. It was a big hit.

 

Cpt. O., I like the 50 point idea. 75 points might work too. Really, they are supposed to be real people, not professional adventurers. I ran a Horror Hero one-shot with pre-gens a few years ago with 50 point characters, they loved it, even asking for a sequel (for the survivors).

 

Hmm... I may have to sit down and start writing this and mapping it.

[Curufea]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

Some links to gothic resources-

http://www.free-ebooks.net/?category=Horror-Gothic

http://www.ehow.com/how_2159740_write-gothic-fiction.html

 

Advice-

What makes a work Gothic is a combination of at least some of these elements:

• a castle, ruined or intact, haunted or not (the castle plays such a key role that it has been called the main character of the Gothic novel),

• ruined buildings which are sinister or which arouse melancholy,

• dungeons, underground passages, crypts, and catacombs which, in modern houses, become spooky basements or attics. They are all tomb-like.

• labyrinths, dark corridors, and winding stairs to suggest the claustrophobic feelings of nightmare.

• shadows, a beam of moonlight in the blackness, a flickering candle, or the only source of light failing (a candle blown out or, today, an electric failure),

• extreme landscapes, like rugged mountains, bleak moors, thick forests, or icy wastes, and extreme weather,

• omens and ancestral curses

• magic, supernatural manifestations, or the suggestion of the supernatural,

• a passion-driven, wilful villain-hero or villain,

• a curious heroine with a tendency to faint and a need to be rescued–frequently,

• a hero whose true identity is revealed by the end of the novel,

• Horrifying (or terrifying) events or the threat of such happenings.

• Overpowering antagonistic forces from within and without face the protagonists. (Alcoholism, addictions, paranoia, depression)

• Wild and ferocious animals

• Wide class differences between the hero and heroine

• Multiple points of view or varied narrative methods help give an air of uncertainty. Which narrator should we trust?

 

 

The Gothic creates feelings of gloom, mystery, and suspense and tends to the dramatic and the sensational, like gruesome death, diabolism, violation of purity, and nameless terrors. It crosses boundaries, truth and light versus the dark side, life versus death, consciousness versus unconsciousness, rationality versus irrationality, inhibition versus impulse. Sometimes covertly, sometimes explicitly, it presents transgression, taboos, and fears–fears of violation, of imprisonment, of social chaos, and of emotional collapse. Most of us immediately recognize the Gothic (even if we don't know the name) when we encounter it in novels, poetry, plays, movies, and TV series. For some of us safely experiencing dread or horror is thrilling and enjoyable.

Elements of the Gothic have made their way into mainstream writing. They are found in Sir Walter Scott's novels, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre , and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and in Romantic poetry like Samuel Coleridge's "Christabel," and John Keats's "The Eve of St. Agnes." A tendency to the macabre and bizarre which appears in writers like William Faulkner, Truman Capote, and Flannery O'Connor has been called Southern Gothic.

[penemue]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

Woo Curufea, good resources there.

Going to map out that castle and village.

[Curufea]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

I reckon if you can throw in some key elements and possibly have the occasional mood piece - you can really paint the setting as gothic properly.

 

The trick (in my opinion) is to step back from "roleplaying game with adventures" and look at "this is gothic fiction, with scenes and characters". Break the formula up with cutscenes or narratives the PCs aren't involved with at all, just to set mood.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

Your "villian" reminds me of Baron Klaus von Wulfenbach, ruler of m,uch of Eurpoe in the steampunk fantasy comic Girl Genius. The Baron keeps Europe in relative peace, but is viewed as an evil tyrant as a result. And he is the prinipal antagonist of the heroine, whose very existence poses a threat to his peace (that his son is in love with her doesn't help in the slightest....)

[penemue]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

Yeah, I want some of the characters to really support the Baron, but I don't want him as campy as GG's Baron. I would like to think that if the characters were in his place they would have done the same thing. I'm considering having him haunted by his decision, wandering the ramparts of the castle late at night, confronted by the ghosts of the innocents he had to order killed.

His "Villainy" will be the subject of some debate also considering some of the characters will have had close relatives killed by his order.

Plot Update:

I was thinking that after 10 years of isolation, the islanders are in need of some supplies, specifically firewood as the winter approaches. An order is given to send a barge and men to chop wood on the mainland. What will they find? Well, they certainly won't be coming back and it will be up to the characters to go and find out, against the orders of the Baron, they'll have to do it in secret because if the Baron finds out he might order them killed as well. They find one salty sailor who will do it, turns out he does it all the time and runs quite a nice little smuggling operation, making trips to the mainland to gather delicacies all the time. He is a little mad, of course, so his description of what he encounters leaves much to be desired. I think involving a wide range of characters in this "conspiracy" will allow for characters who normally wouldn't work together to become quickly "guilty by association" and build a team with a shared secret. Of course one of them will be a traitor.

[Maelstrom]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

Ten years of isolation on an island? Must be a big island, to support all those people. Can't live on just fish -- are there smugglers?

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

Ten years of isolation on an island? Must be a big island' date=' to support all those people. Can't live on just fish -- are there smugglers?[/quote']

 

Probably, though they probably meet a girsly fate once captured.

 

The people survivied for ten years, but they didn't neccesarily enjoy it. Perhaps life has been hard to the point of being nearly unbearable for many of them -- everyone who depended upon legitimate trade being denied a livelihood (and in most cities that's a heck of a lot of people....), being told that the friends they had in other parts of the world were dead by definition, art and culture stagnant without fresh ideas. It could be very much like a prison for many of the people.

[penemue]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

I'm thinking that the smuggling would be the island's dirty little secret. People coming back from the mainland with trinkets, supplies and stories of the island's further isolation. Abandoned cities, scattered with skeletons, victims of the plague, unburied, covered in vegetation. Packs of feral dogs and something else, an oppressive presence, out there, just out of sight. Something monstrous.

[Markdoc]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

Your "villian" reminds me of Baron Klaus von Wulfenbach' date=' ruler of m,uch of Eurpoe in the steampunk fantasy comic [i']Girl Genius[/i]. The Baron keeps Europe in relative peace, but is viewed as an evil tyrant as a result. And he is the prinipal antagonist of the heroine, whose very existence poses a threat to his peace (that his son is in love with her doesn't help in the slightest....)

 

If and when I finish my current game, I've been thinking I'd really like to run a Girl Genius game, with the PCs as a set of minor sparks or nobles. I'm hoping SJG finally gets around to getting their Girl Genius game out so I can plunder it for maps and places.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

I'm thinking that the smuggling would be the island's dirty little secret. People coming back from the mainland with trinkets' date=' supplies and stories of the island's further isolation. Abandoned cities, scattered with skeletons, victims of the plague, unburied, covered in vegetation. Packs of feral dogs and something else, an oppressive presence, out there, just out of sight. Something monstrous.[/quote']

 

Sounds pretty damn good to me. I'd be inclined - just for gothic feel - to make the "island" a very large castle/fortified town, with a wretched town up against it's walls. The castle itself is largely empty, since the garrison marched away in plague times, full of empty, echoing halls, and the town has fallen on hard times due to the abandonment of trade, and the disappearance of people who have maybe just up and left, against the Baron's orders .... or who have vanished for other reasons.....

 

cheers, Mark

[penemue]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

Well, i have some plans, maps and many photos of Mont Saint Michael in France and the place really captures my imagination.

[DusterBoy]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

I've always thought of "Northanger Abbey" by Jane Austen as a gothic novel. It also seems she was poking fun at them a little. Certainly Catherine Moreland isn't the usual simpering, fainting "heroine", even though she enjoys Gothic novels and makes the mistake of applying their gestalts to "real life".

[Mirgos]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

The island of St Kilda in the Scottish Hebrides might give some inspiration - abandoned in the 1930s it was one of the most isolated parts of the British Isles with a population of about 180 - 200.

[penemue]

Re: Gothic Fantasy Hero

 

Well, I conferred with the players and got some character input.

It looks like there will be:

-a former novice trained in medical skills who is maintaining a secret library of books from the abandoned monastery. She's one of the few literate people on the island. Lost her family in the plague ship incident.

-a Celtic Warrior, Highlander Fusilier. Tired of hiding on the island.

-a Smuggler, probably a crewmember of one of the smuggling ships.

-a Merchant, most likely someone who has traded with the smugglers.

 

These characters will be the ones going out to find out what happened to the officially sanctioned supply barge sent out to the mainland to gather firewood, water and food for the island in preparation for winter.