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Imagine A World...


Urlord

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I hope you guys can offer some assistance here!

 

This is the campaign I am developing.  I am a very experience GM and my players are likewise very experienced.  We have all been playing Table-Top since the 1980s and 90s.

Consequently, they all know my style, my tricks, and how I do things for the most part (I'm always the GM).  I am reaching out to get some fresh ideas - maybe I can surprise them a bit?

 

Campaign Concept

Imagine a world where the heroes failed to fulfill a prophesy and the evil bad guy won...

Imagine if this immortal evil bad guy ruled the world unchallenged for four centuries...

Imagine if even the concept of hope no longer existed among the enslaved peoples of the world...

Then, in a stroke of fate, a few slaves make a discovery that awakes dormant powers within them.

With enough good decisions, experience and luck, these new heroes might, just might, have a chance to overthrow the Overlord and restore hope, peace and balance to the world.

 

Here is the criteria I have gotten from my 7 players:

  • System MUST be Fantasy Hero (they have grown tired of Pathfinder in our last 2 year campaign).
  • Campaign MUST be gritty, deadly and very difficult (not just in combat) - to the point that a permanent character death every 2-3 adventures wouldn't be out of place.
  • Campaign MUST last 18-24 months with us playing 1 per month (we play from noon to midnight each game session).
  • Society MUST be detailed, political and oppressive so the characters will need to work within the shadows to get things accomplished.
    Even minor slip ups could result in them being captured and executed.
  • Characters MUST start out as normals, or just slight better, and grow through experience into heroes.
  • Not all adventures should be successes to show the difficulty of the world and plot. Kind of a 3-steps forward, 2-steps back feel.

I am just starting with world creation and could use any and all suggestions to feed off of. I have 4 months to build the campaign before our first adventure.

 

My biggest questions right now are:

  1. Starting Power Level - What do you think starting character points be?
  2. Ending Power Level - How many character points should they be near the end of the campaign?
  3. Experience - With the first two questions answered, I can calculate the number of XP to give out per adventure.
  4. Character Deaths - How to bring in new character (after a death for example) and not have them start completely over but at the same time have a penalty for dying?
  5. Races - I like the standard FH races, but they would be different after 400 years of living in slavery. Any suggestions on how to alter them?
  6. Powers - Should I use one of the Fantasy Hero magic systems or create a unique system for this game?  Suggestions?
  7. Optional Rules - What optional rules should be used (from FH or other books) to portray the hard, gritty, deadly world that my players want?

 

That's plenty of questions for now. I'm sure others will crop up as this discussion continues...

 

 

 

Thanks In Advance,

Edited by Urlord
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  • Races - I like the standard FH races, but they would be different after 400 years of living in slavery. Any suggestions on how to alter them?

 

They would? Why?

 

 

  • Powers - Should I use one of the Fantasy Hero magic systems or create a unique system for this game?  Suggestions?

 

Use two systems.

 

They can be similar, but there should be some distinctions. One is the Lost Way the player characters have rediscovered, that most people either have forgotten or think is just an old legend, and that the Tyrant thinks has been eradicated. The other is the Way of Loss that agents of the Tyrant use to inflict suffering and pain that is so unpleasant even to the power wielder that it is used sparingly even by those licensed by the Tyrant's regime to learn and use it.

 

Give each a slow acting gradual Transformation Side Effect. The Lost Way gradually turns the user pacifistic, picking up psychological Complications that start with things like vegetarianism and lead eventually to a refusal to fight - making over-use of it problematic for revolutionaries. The Way of Loss twists and embitters the user, changing them physically and psychically into a monster, eventually leading to death - and continuing service as a will-less undead minion unquestioningly obedient to the Tyrant and her representatives.

 

 

  • Optional Rules - What optional rules should be used (from FH or other books) to portray the hard, gritty, deadly world that my players want?

 

Hit Locations. Impairing and Disabling rules. Don't allow Combat Luck to stack with armor (either flatly forbid stacking or make it a mandatory Limitation on Combat Luck.) Long Term Endurance. Check out environmental effects and make sure sometimes the characters get to be cold, hot, wet, or otherwise miserable. Find or generate some good rules for things like disease and infection.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

In a world where palindromedaries were long thought extinct, one man discovers otherwise - and chooses to risk everything for the hope of changing the world forever

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Defining how characters can learn NEW 'magic' in the campaign setting is just as important as setting mechanical hard/soft DC/Active Point caps.

 

Unless everyone enjoys the 'zero to hero' high power advancement curve used in that 'other game'* I would strongly recommend consideration of allowing for a higher than normal amount of starting points to allow everyone to build fully realized characters to a degree (300-400 points maybe).  You could still hand out 2-5 points of XP per monthly session to allow for some advancement. It would also allow you to roughly know about how powerful the PC's will be when they get to the 'big bad'.

 

*I am pretty sure that the XP that would need to be given out per Fantasy Hero session to match a typical D&D game is a LOT higher than most people would expect by default.  How many sessions does it really take for a spellcaster to reach the 'sweet-spot' of mid-level spells? How much XP would be needed to give spellcasters in HERO a similar jump? (this also puts a big importance on determiniing what types of spell systems and/or power frameworks will be allowed).

 

Remember that a BIG selling point for getting players to embrace HERO in any genre is to sell the idea that they can create any character they want (within reason).  Making that sales pitch and then forcing them to play characters that never reach the level of power that they envisioned can be a huge disappointment.

 

HM

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Defining how characters can learn NEW 'magic' in the campaign setting is just as important as setting mechanical hard/soft DC/Active Point caps.

 

Unless everyone enjoys the 'zero to hero' high power advancement curve used in that 'other game'* I would strongly recommend consideration of allowing for a higher than normal amount of starting points to allow everyone to build fully realized characters to a degree (300-400 points maybe).  You could still hand out 2-5 points of XP per monthly session to allow for some advancement. It would also allow you to roughly know about how powerful the PC's will be when they get to the 'big bad'.

 

*I am pretty sure that the XP that would need to be given out per Fantasy Hero session to match a typical D&D game is a LOT higher than most people would expect by default.  How many sessions does it really take for a spellcaster to reach the 'sweet-spot' of mid-level spells? How much XP would be needed to give spellcasters in HERO a similar jump? (this also puts a big importance on determiniing what types of spell systems and/or power frameworks will be allowed).

 

Remember that a BIG selling point for getting players to embrace HERO in any genre is to sell the idea that they can create any character they want (within reason).  Making that sales pitch and then forcing them to play characters that never reach the level of power that they envisioned can be a huge disappointment.

 

HM

In my opinion, and based on my experience, starting out with such high point totals will not tend towards the kind of game Urlord says his characters want: "•Characters MUST start out as normals, or just slight better, and grow through experience into heroes"

 

I suggest asking the players what they think their starting out characters should be capable of, try building a couple of characters that can do the things they describe, and figuring out from there what the starting totals should be.

 

Or take a look at the package deals for the types of folk you foresee being played, figure out how much that is, and add on something for customization. So if it costs 43 pts just to define a character as an Elf or Dwarf, and then 22 to meet what you consider minimal for a warrior or thief or ranger or whatever, that's 65 pts right there and you probably want at LEAST 10 pts free for stuff to make a character unique and personalized - so at least 75 total points. Find the most expensive "what I am" and "what I do" combination possible, and add 10 or 20 or maybe even 25 pts to it. I doubt you'll find that comes to 300 pts.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says if it does come to 300 pts, well, start there.

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I've run plenty of zero-to-hero campaigns (in fact, it's our preferred style). Typically I start at 75-100 points (total) with 50-75 base and 25 points of complications. For a grimdark campaign like this, it might be appropriate to start with 75 points and up to 50 in complications, both to boost survival chances (if these are slaves, they are unlikely to start out with much in the way of cool gear, so decent stat.s will help) and the higher complication burden also fits the fact that they are likely starting from severely messed-up backgrounds. On the other hand, I ran a gritty game starting with 25 point base and 25 points in complications and that also went really well.

 

If they are going to be taking on the dark, world-ruling warlord then aiming to end at 3-400+ points is not unreasonable if you want them to go mana-a-mano with him, but that's a pretty fast progression (my campaigns typically end up with around 300+ Xp characters, but run 4-5 years). One alternative is to slow the progression and make obtaining and using a McGuffin a central plot goal (carry this ring to the volcano in the centre of the Dark Lord's domain, for example :)) so that they can 'win' without having to have huge point totals.

 

As far as optional rules go, hit locations are a must, disabling seems appropriate, and as a good general rule don't allow items bought with points and mundane items to stack.

 

The biggest deal though, will be magic. You need to decide how that works, first and foremost. One really good way to enforce the Grimdark feel is to make magic difficult and dangerous. Some kind of side effect works, but you can choose to be more adventurous.

 

I actually ran one game where casting magic cost BOD instead of END (inspired by the wizard in the Golden Voyage of Sinbad, who got older and more feeble each time he cast a spell). This had some interesting effects - it ensured a low magic world, generally, making magic very powerful. Even a 5 point flight spell can get you inside a heavily-guarded fortress, if magic is rare enough that the world is not set up with magicusers in mind - but it might cost you 5 BOD to get your whole party inside. In a setting such as this, magic users tend to be more "sword and sorcery style" favouring one-shot spells with longer effects like summoning that give them minions or scrying to gather information rather than wading into combat casting firebolts from behind a magical forcefield. Magic is a support, and can be a game-changer, but combat is mostly about fighters. The exception, of course is eeeeevil magic-users, who can use other people's BOD (ie: sacrifice) to pump up their BOD before casting. In this case, casting is typically more a ritual thing than a personal combat thing. This also supports the grimdark feel and explains how at the end of the campaign a rag tag bunch of heroes can take down the dark lord .... IF they can get to him. If you do this, of course, you need to design adventures that don't assume the PCs will always have access to magic.

 

Last of all, if you have PC death as a real risk - and occasional occurrence - what I did was to allow the new PC to start at the same general level as the other PCs but with an XP penalty (10 points, in my case). In other words, if a 230-point PC died, the replacement would be built on 220. That was a significant hit, but not crippling. I also only awarded XP to players if they turned up for a session, and very occasionally gave bonus XP for brilliant ideas/play, so over time there was always some heterogeneity in the exact point totals. After a few months of play, the PCs were not all built on exactly the same amounts of XP, even if they started off the same.

 

cheers, Mark

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I think if you want zero to hero and you have a well planned campaign arc then you might have several points where the heroes undergo "radiation accidents" - localised events that lift their abilities acutely.  The way those jumps happen (and the abilities they provide) can build the integration of the characters and the campaign quite powerfully.

 

The jump in powers might also be associated with additional (or replacement) complications which can help to move the plot on and the characters into the next phase.

 

 

Doc

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Thanks for your comments.  I had a conversation with my players last night about Character Points and this is what they came up with.

 

Starting CP = 25 Base + 50 Complications = 75 (with a half dozen or so everyman skills)

Ending CP = 200-225 after 25-30 sessions.

Experience = This means each session should average 2-8 XP depending on how things go and what they accomplish.

 

Mark - I really like the magic costing BODY instead of END it adds a very good balance to things.  Kind of reminds me of Lay Healing in RoleMaster. And if you use an ability to draw BODY from others as a sacrifice, it has a gradual side effect that slowly turns one very evil or an undead as in Lucius' Way of the Lost idea above.

 

Thanks again and keep lets keep the dialogue going please.

Edited by Urlord
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Why would you want to penalize PC death? Why would I want to play in a game where my play experience becomes limited because my character chose to sacrifice himself to save the others, and my next one must be weaker than the rest of the group? It creates a metagame where I'm forced to weigh my future play experience against my character's psychology, and you don't want that. If the players are invested in their PCs, the loss of a PC is penalty enough. If the players aren't invested in their PCs, this won't make them and you still have that problem.

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Why would you want to penalize PC death? Why would I want to play in a game where my play experience becomes limited because my character chose to sacrifice himself to save the others, and my next one must be weaker than the rest of the group? It creates a metagame where I'm forced to weigh my future play experience against my character's psychology, and you don't want that. If the players are invested in their PCs, the loss of a PC is penalty enough. If the players aren't invested in their PCs, this won't make them and you still have that problem.

 

In some settings an XP penalty is not appropriate - heck in my samurai game, I gave Xp bonuses to players  whose PCs who died in an appropriate fashion (including suicide!) Heroic death was part of the subtext.

 

But where you are looking for a dark and gritty feeling, an XP penalty gives players a strong "survive at all costs" motivation. I find that games work best when the metarules underlying a campaign support the feel you want. In this case, you're right: the metarules discourage the "My character chose to sacrifice himself to save the others" trope and that may be exactly what's wanted, going off the original discussion.

 

cheers, Mark

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Mark - I really like the magic costing BODY instead of END it adds a very good balance to things.  Kind of reminds me of Lay Healing in RoleMaster. And if you use an ability to draw BODY from others as a sacrifice, it has a gradual side effect that slowly turns one very evil or an undead as in Lucius' Way of the Lost idea above.

 

Thanks again and keep lets keep the dialogue going please.

 

A side effect would certainly be appropriate, but in my case, I did not bother.

 

PCs rarely had the luxury of dragging sacrifices around to pump themselves up, and in the few cases where it was possible, the whole "killing people to power my magic" has enough of an evil vibe that I did not feel the side effect was needed. The fact that PCs could not use this approach under normal circumstances while the evil cult could and did, meant that players wholeheartedly accepted the "magic is evil" trope without anything in the way of GM prodding and where PCs used it at all, it was in a limited  "fight fire with fire" way restricted to desperate circumstances.

 

However, in the last campaign, I allowed a form of magic that did warp the user, if abused. The players saw that as evil, but half of them succumbed to the lure of more power and ended up using a version of it anyway (just cautiously: none of the PCs magic-mutated too seriously) :). The climax of that game was confrontation where they had to choose to retain their newly-gained power or toss it away to allow the city they lived in to start rebuilding.

 

They did the right thing in the end, though their curiously evasive answers to the local worthies about what, exactly had just happened were hysterically funny to me as GM. :)

 

cheers, Mark

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Starting out as a nobody slave, and then growing into a badass is something that really only happens in D&D.  It's not common in other types of fiction.  Usually the nobody actually turns out to have a lot of potential, but not in a "gaining XP" kind of way.

 

Think Luke Skywalker.  From an in game perspective, the first session he buys some droids and then fights sand people, ending with him meeting Kenobi.  In the second session, he finds out his aunt and uncle are dead, fights a guy in the bar, and then hitches a ride into space.  In the third game session, he sneaks around the Death Star, shoots some stormtroopers, gets half-drowned by a sewer tentacle, and shoots TIE fighters as they escape.  Fourth game session he blows up the Death Star.  He goes from "normal kid" to "galactic hero" in 4 sessions.  And I'm being very generous with what he does in some of those game sessions.  Long story short, Luke probably started out as a fully fleshed out character, instead of gaining XP to get there.

 

Now it sounds like you don't want something nearly as action-adventurey as Star Wars.  But I think starting people at 25+50 is going to result in some very dead characters, very fast.  Fantasy Hero can be quite lethal, even with expensive characters.  The handful of times we tried it, characters died left and right.  We were built on 75+75, in 4th edition (when characters were cheaper), so that would be the equivalent of maybe 100+100 today.  A tiger came out of the forest and killed our entire party in under a turn.  While you say you want some amount of character death, if these guys are going to be able to actually defeat the evil overlord someday, then they have to live long enough to get there.

 

I'd suggest giving the characters a higher starting point value.  While the characters are supposed to be slaves, you probably don't want real slaves.  You want heroic slaves.  You probably want Conan, forced to push the wheel until he looks like Arnold, not Kunta Kinte, who had his foot chopped off so he can't walk.  Think Aladdin the street rat (Disney version), who is athletic and fast and slips away from the guards, not the fat merchant that he's stealing food from.  They don't have to be combat monsters, but a higher starting point level would allow for a lot more potential.  It's the reason why these guys are the ones to overthrow the dark lord, and not somebody else.  But that's just my preference.

 

I'm imagining a world very much like a lot of the fantasy movies I grew up with.  Conan, Krull, Beastmaster, Ladyhawke, Sword and the Sorceror, etc.

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I'll disagree with Massey there. I've ran several low-point games during my time and, though they were indeed deadly, it was not so deadly as to make it impossible for a player to get invested in a character. The trick is balancing the world and the NPC opposition to provide a challenge to the characters. You've already stated that you want a deadly game, so that pretty much creates a lean towards lower points.

 

I will agree that you should probably lean the other way on the side of your formula (50 total with 25 in matching Comps). Reasonably capable characters can be built on that without them being too powerful or diverse. You also mostly avoid the Complication Hunt for the purpose of meeting the quota.  Just my $0.02.

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Starting out as a nobody slave, and then growing into a badass is something that really only happens in D&D.  It's not common in other types of fiction.  Usually the nobody actually turns out to have a lot of potential, but not in a "gaining XP" kind of way.

 

Think Luke Skywalker.  From an in game perspective, the first session he buys some droids and then fights sand people, ending with him meeting Kenobi.  In the second session, he finds out his aunt and uncle are dead, fights a guy in the bar, and then hitches a ride into space.  In the third game session, he sneaks around the Death Star, shoots some stormtroopers, gets half-drowned by a sewer tentacle, and shoots TIE fighters as they escape.  Fourth game session he blows up the Death Star.  He goes from "normal kid" to "galactic hero" in 4 sessions.  And I'm being very generous with what he does in some of those game sessions.  Long story short, Luke probably started out as a fully fleshed out character, instead of gaining XP to get there.

 

Now it sounds like you don't want something nearly as action-adventurey as Star Wars.  But I think starting people at 25+50 is going to result in some very dead characters, very fast.  Fantasy Hero can be quite lethal, even with expensive characters.  The handful of times we tried it, characters died left and right.  We were built on 75+75, in 4th edition (when characters were cheaper), so that would be the equivalent of maybe 100+100 today.  A tiger came out of the forest and killed our entire party in under a turn.  While you say you want some amount of character death, if these guys are going to be able to actually defeat the evil overlord someday, then they have to live long enough to get there.

 

I'd suggest giving the characters a higher starting point value.  While the characters are supposed to be slaves, you probably don't want real slaves.  You want heroic slaves.  You probably want Conan, forced to push the wheel until he looks like Arnold, not Kunta Kinte, who had his foot chopped off so he can't walk.  Think Aladdin the street rat (Disney version), who is athletic and fast and slips away from the guards, not the fat merchant that he's stealing food from.  They don't have to be combat monsters, but a higher starting point level would allow for a lot more potential.  It's the reason why these guys are the ones to overthrow the dark lord, and not somebody else.  But that's just my preference.

 

I'm imagining a world very much like a lot of the fantasy movies I grew up with.  Conan, Krull, Beastmaster, Ladyhawke, Sword and the Sorceror, etc.

 

They don't want Conan, Ladyhawk or Aladin - we've done campaigns like that many times.  They want to try a true Zero to Hero campaign. Starting off as 25+50=75 point slaves is exactly what my players want. They originally wanted 25+25=50 point characters but when I explained that you have to pay for racial templates in FH6, they agreed that 75 was better.

 

Here is what I am thinking of so far:

 

Campaign Name: Fragments of Hope

 

Initially, the characters will be skilled normals and have no magic or abnormal powers at all.  After the accidental death of their master, which would most likely be seen as their fault, the characters must flee for their lives or be executed. Sessions 1 and 2 will focus on running/hiding from slaver and pure survival.  In session three, the characters stumble/fall into the lost tomb of Anteele, a benevolent lesser deity who perished at the end of the last age. While hiding in and exploring the tomb, they find fragments of an artifact that still contain a tiny bit of the Anteele's essence.  These fragments, when willfully attuned to (a 12- EGO roll), are absorbed into the character's flesh becoming a Tattoo (IIF)  that imbue the characters with 10 CPs spend on powers not allowed by "Normals".

 

As the campaign progresses, the "Awakened" characters must research and travel to the locations of other ancient sites that may contain additional Fragments of Hope as they come to be called. Each fragment can be absorbed granting additional character points.  As they gain in power their exploits will eventually raise the attention of the Overlord who will send lackeys to dispatch the trouble makers. Hopefully, if the characters do thing smart, the Overlord will realize too late that they have amassed enough power to pose a threat.

 

Each session will only give 2 experience point on average, but locating fragments ever 3 sessions or so for 10 CPs will average things out to the 2-8 per session the players want.

 

When a character dies, the fragments that had been absorbed excise themselves from the corpse and are once again fragments that can be used by a replacement PC.  Only one Fragment of Hope may be absorbed from a single source (broken artifact, mystical pool, crystals of power, etc.).  That keeps the balance and the characters searching for additional fragments.

 

Thoughts?

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I'll disagree with Massey there. I've ran several low-point games during my time and, though they were indeed deadly, it was not so deadly as to make it impossible for a player to get invested in a character. The trick is balancing the world and the NPC opposition to provide a challenge to the characters. You've already stated that you want a deadly game, so that pretty much creates a lean towards lower points.

 

I will agree that you should probably lean the other way on the side of your formula (50 total with 25 in matching Comps). Reasonably capable characters can be built on that without them being too powerful or diverse. You also mostly avoid the Complication Hunt for the purpose of meeting the quota.  Just my $0.02.

 

I too have played/GM'd many low-point games in my day and the key is to create adventures that challenge the players and promote the flavor you are trying to get across.  If a lion has the potential of a total party kill, then i wouldn't place a lion there unless there were environmental advantages the players could potentially take advantage of.  If the players decide to stand toe-to-toe with the lion and all die, instead of use their environment, then perhaps they deserve to die.  But, my players would never do that - they are pretty smart old guys and gals in their 40's and 50's.

 

However, I do like the 25+50=75 build because 50 points in complications really helps promote the oppressive/messed-up nature of this world.  Character's will not be able to buy things common to everyone or are the key tenants of the campaign, such as "Hunted by Minions of the Overlord", "Slave", "Oppressed" or "Destitute/Poor".  They will have to come up with complications specific to their characters.

Edited by Urlord
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I suggest giving each player two characters, not necessarily points-equal, who have some kind of bond. That way when someone dies, there's no awkward "stranger shows up and somehow gets integrated with the group" process - there's already a trusted person who is a logical heir to the "fragments" right there. Of course, then the former "sidekick" can pick up their own sidekick in turn in some natural way without any player being out of the game for any space of time.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

I'm done for my old friend....take the palindromedary and go on without me...

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Thanks Lucius - I may consider that, but with 7 players it could get very crowded.

 

The substitute PCs do not have to be actually present: as long as they have a link, they can reasonably turn up (and also you have an in-game excuse for them to "inherit" the deceased PCs's gear). For example in our samurai campaign, when one samurai died a heroic death in battle, the next session, a ninja turned up with an important message for the group's leader. He was immediately adopted into the group, because he had been introduced to the campaign earlier as a spy in the far north, so the PC group already knew him as a trusted retainer. He also had an approved character sheet, so he could simply be added to the game with no delay.

 

In our current pathfinder campaign, our PCs are part of a larger group sworn to a particular task. Most of that group is somewhere else - but if one PC bites the big one, another of the sworn and trusted brethren will be magically informed in their dreams, and step up to fill the gap (and being magically informed will have a pretty good idea of what has gone down before their arrival). In fact, that has already happened once.

 

cheers, Mark

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Starting out as a nobody slave, and then growing into a badass is something that really only happens in D&D.  It's not common in other types of fiction.  Usually the nobody actually turns out to have a lot of potential, but not in a "gaining XP" kind of way.

 

Think Luke Skywalker.  From an in game perspective, the first session he buys some droids and then fights sand people, ending with him meeting Kenobi.  In the second session, he finds out his aunt and uncle are dead, fights a guy in the bar, and then hitches a ride into space.  In the third game session, he sneaks around the Death Star, shoots some stormtroopers, gets half-drowned by a sewer tentacle, and shoots TIE fighters as they escape.  Fourth game session he blows up the Death Star.  He goes from "normal kid" to "galactic hero" in 4 sessions.  And I'm being very generous with what he does in some of those game sessions.  Long story short, Luke probably started out as a fully fleshed out character, instead of gaining XP to get there.

 

Whereas I see him going from barely competent hick farmboy to decent fighter pilot with a few funky powers and some minor combat skills, as he gains XP. In the second film, his powers and control get greater, he starts to gain renown, a bit of charisma and some social skills and improved combat skills. In the third film he has developed further, gaining greatly improved tactical abilities, greatly improved force powers and greatly improved combat abilities. It's literally impossible to imagine the slightly bumbling character from the first film, pulling off the competent force-powered rescue of his friends from the third. To me, that is in fact a pretty classic zero-to-hero progression.

 

Really, D&D just formalized what was already a common trope in fantasy literature, whether it is the 13th century Saga of Gunnlaugr Serpent-Tongue (he goes from familial shame and useless layabout to skilled craftsman, famed poet and finally renowned warrior before dying a heroic death over the course of the saga) or the more recent Prydain series (From assistant pig-keeper to warleader and High King). Bilbo, Ged of Earthsea, Jack the Giantkiller - even if you restrict yourself to pre-D&D literature, the examples are numerous - and of course they exist outside of the fantasy genre as well. The idea was common and famous enough that Campell formalised (perhaps over-formalised) it in his mythological analyses.

 

cheers, Mark

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They don't want Conan, Ladyhawk or Aladin - we've done campaigns like that many times.  They want to try a true Zero to Hero campaign. Starting off as 25+50=75 point slaves is exactly what my players want. They originally wanted 25+25=50 point characters but when I explained that you have to pay for racial templates in FH6, they agreed that 75 was better.

 

Here is what I am thinking of so far:

 

Campaign Name: Fragments of Hope

 

Initially, the characters will be skilled normals and have no magic or abnormal powers at all.  After the accidental death of their master, which would most likely be seen as their fault, the characters must flee for their lives or be executed. Sessions 1 and 2 will focus on running/hiding from slaver and pure survival.  In session three, the characters stumble/fall into the lost tomb of Anteele, a benevolent lesser deity who perished at the end of the last age. While hiding in and exploring the tomb, they find fragments of an artifact that still contain a tiny bit of the Anteele's essence.  These fragments, when willfully attuned to (a 12- EGO roll), are absorbed into the character's flesh becoming a Tattoo (IIF)  that imbue the characters with 10 CPs spend on powers not allowed by "Normals".

 

As the campaign progresses, the "Awakened" characters must research and travel to the locations of other ancient sites that may contain additional Fragments of Hope as they come to be called. Each fragment can be absorbed granting additional character points.  As they gain in power their exploits will eventually raise the attention of the Overlord who will send lackeys to dispatch the trouble makers. Hopefully, if the characters do thing smart, the Overlord will realize too late that they have amassed enough power to pose a threat.

 

Each session will only give 2 experience point on average, but locating fragments ever 3 sessions or so for 10 CPs will average things out to the 2-8 per session the players want.

 

When a character dies, the fragments that had been absorbed excise themselves from the corpse and are once again fragments that can be used by a replacement PC.  Only one Fragment of Hope may be absorbed from a single source (broken artifact, mystical pool, crystals of power, etc.).  That keeps the balance and the characters searching for additional fragments.

 

Thoughts?

 

I'd play that. :)

 

cheers, Mark

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Whereas I see him going from barely competent hick farmboy to decent fighter pilot with a few funky powers and some minor combat skills, as he gains XP. In the second film, his powers and control get greater, he starts to gain renown, a bit of charisma and some social skills and improved combat skills. In the third film he has developed further, gaining greatly improved tactical abilities, greatly improved force powers and greatly improved combat abilities. It's literally impossible to imagine the slightly bumbling character from the first film, pulling off the competent force-powered rescue of his friends from the third. To me, that is in fact a pretty classic zero-to-hero progression.

 

Really, D&D just formalized what was already a common trope in fantasy literature, whether it is the 13th century Saga of Gunnlaugr Serpent-Tongue (he goes from familial shame and useless layabout to skilled craftsman, famed poet and finally renowned warrior before dying a heroic death over the course of the saga) or the more recent Prydain series (From assistant pig-keeper to warleader and High King). Bilbo, Ged of Earthsea, Jack the Giantkiller - even if you restrict yourself to pre-D&D literature, the examples are numerous - and of course they exist outside of the fantasy genre as well. The idea was common and famous enough that Campell formalised (perhaps over-formalised) it in his mythological analyses.

 

cheers, Mark

He doesn't do enough, in either D&D or Hero terms, to gain any worthwhile XP in the first movie. While the intent of the film is to show him growing as a character, in game terms he's gonna gain like maybe 5 XP in Hero before the end of the film. Not enough to go from zero to hero. So he needs to start with a better character sheet.

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He doesn't do enough, in either D&D or Hero terms, to gain any worthwhile XP in the first movie. While the intent of the film is to show him growing as a character, in game terms he's gonna gain like maybe 5 XP in Hero before the end of the film. Not enough to go from zero to hero. So he needs to start with a better character sheet.

 

Eh. He fights Tuskan raiders, evades stormtroopers, gets into a bar fight, escapes stormtroopers again, is captured by bad guys, evades them again, penetrates a high security prison, escapes again, shoots up some tie fighters, then takes part in a giant space battle. Depending on how they played it, you've got enough material there for a year of gaming sessions and plenty of Xp.

 

In our last FH campaign, the PCs started by taking part in a religious festival that lasted a week, during which they caught a murderer. Pretty straightforward right?  No significant XP? That turned out to cover 6 months of regular play (detailed here) and a fair amount of XP.

 

Deciding how much XP was gained in the course of a story is purely a matter of perspective. You think that in Star Wars, that it's not very much and that's cool. I think it's a lot ... and that's equally cool.

 

cheers, Mark

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I like the Fragments mechanism, as it allows them to level up their magical special-ness more quickly and separate from "regular" character advancement. The challenge will be balancing how fast their fragment powers grow without completely overshadowing their innate abilities. Will players get to decide how their 10 CP are spent, or will they be pre-determined? The latter ensures more campaign consistency, but may be less fun for players and may make PCs less distinctive from each other.

 

[sidebar: I don't normally allow the Focus Limitation for tattoos, as they can't usually be removed in 1 Turn short of cutting off a pound of flesh. (Unless you want to go there...) I did allow it once, with the sfx that being hit with a Dispel damaged the tattoo, preventing the player from reactivating the power until they could repair the tattoo between scenes?]

 

I love the idea of each player having a backup character waiting in the wings, but already integrated into the story in some way.

 

Races - I like the standard FH races, but they would be different after 400 years of living in slavery. Any suggestions on how to alter them?

I'd suggest letting your players' character concepts help establish this: if one player wants to play a dwarven slave, then maybe all dwarves are slaves in this world. Or conversely, most dwarves are free and he's the exception. If another player wants to play the Last Surviving Wood Elf, then obviously wood elves have been hunted to (near) extinction. Etc. It sounds like you know & trust your players pretty well, so this is a good opportunity to let them share in the world-building.

 

I actually ran one game where casting magic cost BOD instead of END

I did a one-shot game last year where spells all had a Side Effect that the target takes 1d6 Normal Damage NND for every 10 AP in the spell, although I allowed the BODY to Recover at REC/Day instead of REC/week. Worked really well and forced players to use their spells wisely.

 

Another idea: my current campaign is a Champions game set 1 year after alien invaders conquered Earth and killed off most of the superheroes. One of the things I did that made the aliens a bigger initial threat was to make all their weapons AP vs Earth defenses. Later on, the PCs worked out (at speed of plot) a way to successfully Harden their defenses against the alien weapons, which was a huge level up and allowed them to stand up to the aliens more openly. And/or you could do the reverse, where the PCs eventually figure out the Bid Bad is Vulnerable to "X".

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