Foundations: Defining the Baseline

Should we create a Hex-Crawl or a Point-Crawl?

  • Hex-Crawl

  • Point-Crawl

  • I'm fine with both


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Grützi

Should be playing D&D instead
So now we've got our own little subforum ... let's get to it people.

As laid out in the inital post we have a few steps to fullfill on our plan.

Phase I
Phase I is well underway ... we've got people on board, we've got our skills all sorted out (or at least stated :) ), we have our own forum and we've got a thread to find a name and a logo for our group.
So Phase I is covered pretty well.

Phase II
With Phase I nearly done we need to look into Phase II, namely the definiton of the foundations of our work.
We, as a group, need a common baseline, a point of reference, a lowest common denominator to work from.
I'm talking about the basic themes and genre of our work, some basic parts of our shared setting, the system we will be using for our works and some fundamental questions of usability here.
So in this very thread here we will brainstorm, discuss and define these things together.

The next steps in this thread
First we need to talk about which genre and which themes we want.
I think it's safe to say, that whatever we will be doing here will fall squarely into the realm of OSR-style fantasy RPGs. I mean we are all part of the OSR (each of us with his/her unique flavour ;) ) so I kind of see that as a given. (Please correct me if I'm wrong).

Still the realm of fantasy is a big one and we need to decide if we want to limit the scope of our work to any single subgenre inside this grand realm (dark fantasy, gritty fantasy, heroic fantasy, ... you get it). Maybe there are certain bigger themes (heroes journey, hope, fate, death,...) that might influence our work or that people want to have ... so we need to discuss this too.
To be clear: If everyone thinks this is superfluous, by all means say it, but I think it's worth talking about. Even then what we decide here isn't set in stone or the absolute rule. If we decide on dark fantasy we can still bring in funny or light-hearted elements ... always remember rule one: We are doing this for fun.

A common baseline we can all agree on will certainly help us get this all together quickly and will eliminate many problems before they become critical.

So heres how I think we should do it:

Each of us taking part in the project (we really need a name, I'm tired of calling it the project :p) posts his preferences for genre and themes in this thread.
Together with genre and themes each one of us will also post one "Must have" that he/she would love to see in our work and one "Do not" that he/she doesn't want to see in our work.
With this we will each know were the others stand in the most basic manner and will brainstorm, discuss and decide from there on.

"Must Haves" and "Do Nots"
Good restrictions help the creative process immensely I've come to learn over the years. So defining some broad borders with a few "Must haves" and "Do nots" is something I do in nearly all my creative work.
These Restrictions can come in any form we like for now: You can define something about the minimal setting we will later create together, you can define something about the workflow or the design philosophy, ... it's all pretty open at this point.
The goal should be to give us all an idea what each of us wants and doesn't want so we can work from there.
We all want to create something together so we need to keep an open mind about things we normaly wouldn't do or things that are outside our "comfort zone".
Another thing to keep in mind is to not "kill" too much possibilities with a poorly choosen restriction.

System
With a common baseline established we can then talk about which system we want for our works.
Do we want to be system agnostic or use a specific system? Do we write our own homebrew? With a clear understanding what we all want from this it'll be much easier to decide here.

First broad strokes of the setting
After we have our common baseline and our system we can then, as a final step in this part, decide on the most basic parts of our shared setting (which we will create in another thread ;) )
Some restrictions, the genre, the used system and other stuff thats going to come up will all inform our choice in how much setting we want and how detailed it should be.
 

Grützi

Should be playing D&D instead
Reserved for lists, summaries, links and other useful information that will surely crop up here :)
 

Grützi

Should be playing D&D instead
Preferences
Genre:
Fairy tails, mythic fantasy
Themes: Loss of knowledge over the ages (wisdom of the ancients)

Must Have
Classic monsters redefined

Do Not
No absolute, dark Overlord who defines and threatens the whole setting.
 

DangerousPuhson

Should be playing D&D instead
Preferences (3 of each)

Genre:
Free-form sandbox; Classic D&D Fantasy but with fresh ideas; Post-apocalyptic places

Themes: Lost civilization; Race against time/sense of urgency; Misery and suffering

Must Have: Non-linear plot approach; Grounded, realistic NPCs; A classic dungeoncrawl segment

Do Not: Overdone sexual stuff; "Crazy wizard"; Pop culture references (non-subtle ones, anyway)
 

Slick

*eyeroll*
Preferences:

Genre:
Small sandbox region with at least one dungeoncrawl-suitable location.

Themes: Corruption/ruination of an area/population. Paranoia and anxiety concerning the unknown that lies just out of sight.

Must Have: Inter-faction conflict with grey-area morality, i.e. no clear cut "right answer" for which group(s) to side with. Substantial dungeon-ish complex.

Do Not: No grimdark murdergore but also no Forgotten Realms vanilla fantasy. No boring, humble-little-hamlet "starting village" location.
 

Yora

Should be playing D&D instead
also no Forgotten Realms vanilla fantasy. No boring, humble-little-hamlet "starting village" location.
As a comment from the audience, that was exactly the one thing I was thinking. If the setting is indistinguishable from thousands of others that already exist, I don't see why I should even bother with it.
 

DangerousPuhson

Should be playing D&D instead
As a comment from the audience, that was exactly the one thing I was thinking. If the setting is indistinguishable from thousands of others that already exist, I don't see why I should even bother with it.
Double-edged sword.

As a *Setting*, you don't want what's already been done a hundred times. That much is obvious.

HOWEVER

As an *Adventure*, you also don't want some thing that you're never going to be able to slot into your own home game because it requires too many changes, and because you have to sift through someone else's failed Discworld (or whatever).

So while you can say "I don't want another generic fantasy world because there are literally thousands of them out there", I see that and see "...there are literally thousands of them out there" - that is, there are already thousands of established games running in these types of settings that would presumably have to overhaul whatever we write because we went with some Frostpunk Winter Hellscape that needs special rules for Ice Mutants.

Just a thought...
 
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The1True

My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
Preferences:
Genre:
Contained sandbox with multiple side-quests radiating out from a central series of events (that could be a main storyline). At least one exploration-sized dungeon crawl.
Themes: Exploration, Unleashed (seemingly) Unstoppable Alien Evil, Impassive Gods, Cruel Nature, Consequences, Moments of Wonder
Must Have: Reskinned Humanoids, Complex NPC motivations, a (not necessarily climactic) boss fight, a Trial-by-Fire Shitshow to turn the novice PC's into veterans, Demi-humans, Background events that PC's may or may not get involved with.
Do Not: Write a railroad. Have no story at all. Cheap out on the art and maps. Severely limit the monster roster (it doesn't have to be a zoo, but their should be more than a couple of inhuman threats. It's boring fighting the same thing over and over again (I'm looking at you Gates of the Gann))
 

The1True

My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
I might be getting ahead of things here, but I'm thinking why not offer two or three starting bases with different pros and cons, different average alignments and group dynamics. The players could build their characters in one of these locations as a starting point or they could discover them as they explore.
I just have this image of a fortified bandit village as a starting point. General alignment Neutral; they murder strangers for their money but look after their own with fierce compassion. Add a couple of other communities to that; a savage demi-human tribal camp and a rigidly fundamentalist pioneer stockade or a no-nonsense, frontier industrial operation/company town, for example, all with their own bent alignment profiles, and let the players pick their best fit for a home base. It gives the players and the DM something to sink their teeth into and start to build on, I think.
 

DangerousPuhson

Should be playing D&D instead
I might be getting ahead of things here, but I'm thinking why not offer two or three starting bases with different pros and cons, different average alignments and group dynamics. The players could build their characters in one of these locations as a starting point or they could discover them as they explore.
I just have this image of a fortified bandit village as a starting point. General alignment Neutral; they murder strangers for their money but look after their own with fierce compassion. Add a couple of other communities to that; a savage demi-human tribal camp and a rigidly fundamentalist pioneer stockade or a no-nonsense, frontier industrial operation/company town, for example, all with their own bent alignment profiles, and let the players pick their best fit for a home base. It gives the players and the DM something to sink their teeth into and start to build on, I think.
I fucking LOVE this idea. Allows for a mixed bag of group playstyles. The party can run through the campaign as federal marshals, or bandits, or a barbarian horde, or whatever. Really builds the longevity of the place, and mixes versatility into the setting. Players want to do an evil campaign? Cool, they're a bloodthirsty horde now, and they're not recovering The Lost Weapon of McGuffin to protect the village from ghosts, they're recovering it because the ghosts are willing to ally with the tribe in return for the Weapon.
 

Malrex

So ... slow work day? Every day?
Just from reading everything above...makes me want to write about:

A past destructive terror, wiped out civilizations--leaving ruins and lost knowledge. This could be a monstrous humanoid war force or aliens....
New growth...new communities...three starting points for characters as suggested above. All gray areas.
Hints of a return of the past destructive terror and time running out for preparation to survive...

So I'm just musing here and thinking out loud....

Might be cool for the sandbox area to be a huge, ancient city (post-apocalyptic? or fantasy..) now in ruins, perhaps near a lake or ocean or river. Different factions have entered different areas of the city--coming out from hiding underground from the marauding destructive terror (aliens or monsterous army of humanoids...undead?--people could of been hiding for so long and forgotten why), each claiming a territory, trying to survive and create order. Characters could come from these different factions as there may be a central zone where all factions meet to trade, intermix, fight... and its all chaotic and everyone knows that working together isn't really a option because of the faction's corrupt leaders.

Adventure groups are assembled to explore the ruined city, looking for resources and clues about the past destructive force and how to fight it. There is lost knowledge down in the ruins of the city...and lost gods. Clerics may be reborn as they discover holy relics and become infused to bring their holy order to fruition. Other adventuring groups may bring back great resources or unleash great evils deep below that may or may not affect the surviving factions above.

Leaving the city's ruins is a vast wilderness....completely dangerous with unknown creatures...but there may be more clues for weapons or resources that will help prepare the factions against another wave of destructive terror.

Hmmm..or maybe this was done already with Thundarr the Barbarian, but that was fun....anyways...carry on people!
 

squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
Hmmm..or maybe this was done already with Thundarr the Barbarian, but that was fun....anyways...carry on people!
Week after week I just kept watching that show hoping at some point it would be good.
Didn't happen, but man we were just plain starved for fantasy product back then.
 

The1True

My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
I've been working on a ruined city based on Hill Canton's Ruins Crawl ideas for a while now. City ruins are a monumental undertaking. A wilderness spotted with the occasional remnants of a huge city on the other hand might be manageable.
That Trial by Fire Shitshow I mentioned as a key part of the introductory adventure; I was imagining the characters unwittingly releasing some kind of humanoid race, long trapped in suspended animation, on the peaceful valley and some kind of almost hopeless battle to contain the ensuing infestation. And that would kick off later scenarios.
 

Ice

*eyeroll*
It seems like the common denominator so far is an open-ended area (a smallish hex crawl?) centered around a collapsed/lost civilization, with some kind of big compound hidden somewhere. I think a cool source of real life inspiration would be the Sacred Valley in Peru, near where Machu Picchu is. It's basically just this big valley that is filled with all kind of impressive ruins and farming terraces and other remnants of a highly organized civilization. It's also where chinchillas are native to. A funny and memorable enemy would be some kind of fucked up dire chinchilla.
 

DangerousPuhson

Should be playing D&D instead
OK, so here's a premise:

Picture a desolate valley, a badlands if you will - sharp unnatural rock spires, ash dunes, fields of glass shards, forests of charred trees, irradiated oasis waters - all evidence of some great catastrophe. Whatever was on the surface has long been obliterated or buried in the dust. There, the region's men have congregated into loose tribes, roaming bands, confederated clans: this is the Valley of the Banished.

Some tribes are bandits, cannibals and heretics cast out for their crimes, while others are missionaries proselytizing to the masses, treasure hunters digging for fortune, or hermits seeking solitude. All try to give each other wide berth, for when they gather in numbers too great, only bloodshed is found.

The situation is tenuous but stable, for these folk keep to themselves and do little to affect the world of civilized man.

Onto this scene enters The Conglomerate: a massive corporation of slavers, scooping up tribes and forcing them to work excavating the bones of the past in search of... something. Work camps spring up overnight, guarded by all manners of heartless beast and cold, uncaring overseers. Armies clear paths across the Valley of the Banished, putting those who refuse submission to the sword. The peal of iron into stone rings throughout the night for miles in all directions. No tribe dares go against The Conglomerate; to do so courts slavery and invites death.

Yet some are hopeful. In the shadows of the machine, new groups rise up, and old groups put aside their differences. Resistances form, rescues are mounted, sabotage hits hard, raids are planned and executed... the Banished are not going to be rolled over so quietly. From this morass of struggle, new leaders rise, new havens are carved out of old ruins, and new plans are hatched. Ruins hide the secrets of a lost people, and adventure beckons in every city uncovered by the tempest winds.

Yet hope breeds suffering; monsters previously unimagined pour from the sealed bunkers of the past, rampaging across the badlands in voracious hunger. Cults flay the unbelievers, and children are abducted in the night. Sinister factions scheme sinister plans. In the hotbed of machinations, there is much to do and to have done unto you.
 
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Commodore

*eyeroll*
Preferences:
Genre:
Sandbox with multiple ongoing plots and static sites. Strong NPCs and factions with their own plans that the PCs are dropped in the middle of.
Themes: Exploration, discovery, gritty realism and realistic grit, Lands of Opportunity. READ THE EXPLORER BY KIPLING.
Must Have: Dungeons. Dragons. Vertical/interesting geography both macro and micro. Living world with consequences for every action.
Do Not: Go completely gonzo. Make super-NPC-gods.

It seems like the common denominator so far is an open-ended area (a smallish hex crawl?) centered around a collapsed/lost civilization, with some kind of big compound hidden somewhere. I think a cool source of real life inspiration would be the Sacred Valley in Peru, near where Machu Picchu is. It's basically just this big valley that is filled with all kind of impressive ruins and farming terraces and other remnants of a highly organized civilization. It's also where chinchillas are native to. A funny and memorable enemy would be some kind of fucked up dire chinchilla.
I was feeling Tibet, actually. Of course, Worldbuilding 101 says “Why not both?” A gigantic mountain setting; the middle of the mountain map (the peak) so high as to be almost airless and alien, the edges swampy and hostile to mankind (demihumankind).
 

Grützi

Should be playing D&D instead
All in all the process seems to be working as we're all heading roughly in the same direction.

Open Sandbox, some static elements, a lived in world that acts and reacts even without the PCs present, "realistic" NPCs.
Some post apocalyptic elements, Old ruins, hidden wisdom of the ancients ... all in all we are roughly on the same page all of us ;)

Some things I tought about while reading the thread:

Love the idea of multiple starting points that offer different advantages/disadvantages and "modes" of play. We should definetly do that.

How about a slowly changing setting?
So we've got a wild, untamed region with some camps, towns and the like in it. Around the cilvilized points the wilderness has been tamed enough to wander about in relativ safety and for live to unfold in a normal way.
The farther away you wander from these the more dangerous it becomes. Wild animals, monsters, ghosts all that stuff gets more powerful away from towns and camps.
All pretty standard up till now.
But then something happens/happened(?) ... Some ancient evil was awakened. Maybe they're aliens form another dimension, maybe the mutated Drow of the blacksilver clan venture forth from underground, maybe the feared dread chinchillas think it's time for the final reckoning with humanity ... matters not at this point ... the important thing is: They appear on the map and add another element of danger to the mix and begin to terraform the setting.
So at the start we'll have a big, but pretty normal (for OSR standards) wilderness ... then the Event happens andthe evil is awakened.
From then on the evil ones can appear on the map and begin transforming it.
Maybe the drow chant evil magic and transform everything into charred obsidian travesties of what it once was, maybe the interdimensional aliens build monuments to their elder gods that warp the landscape itself, maybe the chinchillas ... fuck if i know what the chinchillas will do ...

We could give our DMs a nifty mechanical system for incorporating this "corruption" (hi Slick🖐) into their ongoing campaigns. Where does it strike next, how does it spread, what are it's effects ... stuff like that.

A group could explore the region and have their hands full with "normal" OSR stuff ... then BAM ... terraforming and suddenly you fight the death of the land itself.

And at the center of it all lies the big dungeon-crawl location ;)
 
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Ice

*eyeroll*
How about a slowly changing setting?
This seems very neat

The DCC module Fate's Fell Hand does something like this. The pocket dimension that module takes place in is slowly collapsing. It adds an interesting dimension of urgency to the module that wouldn't otherwise be present. However, it's possible to not notice the hex map reducing and changing. The group I am currently running through the module hasn't figured it out yet and they've almost resolved the central conflict. As a DM, I've only run a couple of hex crawls, but it always surprises me that the players explore fewer hexes than I initially anticipate. Even in Fate's Fell Hand, where they can move like ~20 hexes per day.

How would we make this salient and noticeable. Counter point to my own point: Does it even have to be salient and noticeable?

Which brings up my next (likely resolvable) criticism: it seems like it could easily turn into a 3.5e style seven pages of mechanics-clarification-disaster-shart.

Do you think you could crunch it down into a few paragraphs and have to be relatively easy to use?

Here's a Dire Chinchilla


Chinchilla_Watcher.jpg

Dire Chinchilla

ARMOUR CLASS: 15
HIT DICE: 2 (HP 8)
MOVE: 150’ (50’)
ATTACKS: 1 bite (+0, 1d3), or special (corrosive urine spray, or create dust cloud).
NO. APPEARING 1d5
SAVE AS thief: 2 (or something, I dunno, depends on the system)
MORALE: 6
Nocturnal

Dire chinchillas are evasive, elusive, and highly sought-after creatures. They have soft, iridescent, immaculate fur. Separating them from their mundane cousins is their multicolored coats, their proclivity for making loud barking noises, and their blood shot, crazed eyes. They can be found among forgotten ruins, isolated mountain caves and in rocky deserts. Experienced Dire Chinchilla hunters know their lairs by the copious amount of perfectly formed fecal logs. Dire Chinchillas smell faintly of dust.

If encountered outside their lair, they will immediately flee. Chinchilla pelts are extremely valuable and may be sold for (SOMETHING). If a Dire Chinchilla pelt becomes wet, it becomes worthless.


CORROSIVE URINE SPRAY: Once per day (or per encounter or whatever), the Dire Chinchilla may spray corrosive urine at a target up to 10 feet away. (save) for half of 2d4 damage, and (system specific issue) happens (For example, in DCC, maybe your fumble dice are increase; maybe in Knave, your equipment quality is lowered; maybe in 5e you get disadvantage on charisma checks; maybe in Storygames, you have to story the urine off of your body).

DUST CLOUD: When in dusty or sandy areas, the Dire Chinchilla may begin to violently roll it's body around and take a 'dust bath,' creating a dust cloud. All non-chinchilla, creatures with eyes and anatomy for breathing with 15 feet must (save vs something) or begin coughing uncontrollably and become temporarily blinded. If a chinchilla is wet, it is unable to use this ability.

EVASIVE: Dire Chinchillas trigger attacks of opportunity (IF YOU EVEN USE THOSE).

My idea is to have them be little shits that the party really has to work to catch, with a big reward for doing so. Maybe one of the hooks could be some asshole hires you to get a bunch of pelts. What Murderhobo would say no to that? Also, maybe they could show up and start chewing on the support cables of a rope bridge at the worst possible time. I dunno. I haven't play-tested this yet. Let me know what you think.

Finally, if the dust cloud ability makes no sense, please watch.
 

DangerousPuhson

Should be playing D&D instead
I've been running a campaign for a few years now that somewhat encompasses this "shifted landscape" idea - the premise was that there's an island full of the usual feudal stuff, with the usual D&D problems, but the whole time there was this allusion to a looming apocalypse, and that the party would need to travel into a pocket dimension to find a super weapon that's meant to stop the coming of a great evil.

The twist was that the weapon is a lie; the evil was locked away in a dimensional prison, and when the party went to recover the weapon, they were actually being tricked into releasing the evil. The evil trapped the party in the dimensional prison (where they didn't age) and began transforming the whole island into a hellscape infested with demons. The party is eventually released from the prison to find their old adventuring island under a century of demonic transformation - allied towns were enslaved, druid camps were transformed into strip mines, elves were exterminated from the island, forests were transformed into twisted hellish things, castles were reduced to rubble, etc. The party also found a bunch of statues honoring them - built by the demons! So they had a traitorous reputation to overcome with the locals...

From then on, the adventure shifted from generic dungeon/fetch/mystery adventures into forming a mass-resistance and pushing the demonic incursion back into hell.

The fun part was designing two maps - one pre-apocalypse, and one post-apocalypse. Also figuring out what was happening to each faction on the island - the dwarves sealed themselves inside a mountain, the red dragon enslaved some demons and built his own min-resistance, the once-enemy goblins were conscripted as slave labor begging for freedom, etc.
 
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Slick

*eyeroll*
The evil trapped the party in the dimensional prison (where they didn't age) and began transforming the whole island into a hellscape infested with demons. The party is eventually released from the prison to find their old adventuring island under a century of demonic transformation - allied towns were enslaved, druid camps were transformed into strip mines, elves were exterminated from the island, forests were transformed into twisted hellish things, castles were reduced to rubble, etc.
(...)
The fun part was designing two maps - one pre-apocalypse, and one post-apocalypse.
That's a lot of fun, yeah. When I ran a post-apocalyptic game a couple years ago one of my favorite parts was taking the real-world maps I was basing the setting off of, choosing ground-zero sites for the bombs and then blasting the surrounding areas with radiation/mutations.

Also gives me another idea: Instead of a setting that changes over time, maybe two parallel worlds, one pre- and post-catastrophe. The players can navigate back-and-forth between them over the course of the adventure, with mysteries and secrets in each world that link into the other. Basically the Dark World from Link to the Past except it's actually my totally original idea and I didn't steal it from anywhere.

EDIT: Additionally, if jumping between them is too convoluted, perhaps just a single "Event" that triggers and throws the land into chaos all-at-once. A bit like the way Betrayal at the House on the Hill has a clear division between pre- and -post Haunt phases. We could even format the module in two halves, part one looking like a standard fantasy module, part two with darker imagery, gothic fonts, an updated map, etc.
 
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