The Year is 1806…
The Battle of Austerlitz, by François Pascal Simon Gérard. In December 1805, France decisively defeated Austria and Russia.
Fantasy roleplaying games, as a rule, are set in fictional medieval or early-Renaissance Europe. There’s certainly nothing limiting them to that setting, though; Dungeons & Dragons alone has featured settings derived from the ancient Middle East, China and Japan, and South and Central America. The ancient world, the medieval, and the modern era have all been covered.
What hasn’t been considered so well is the span of time between the early Renaissance and the 20th century. Aside from a few stabs at Victoriana (either gothic or steampunk-style) and a handful of Wild West-themed games, the pickings are fairly slim.
That’s a shame, because there are any number of potential settings in that span that would make for a gripping game. For instance… consider the year 1806.
Categories: Launching a Campaign, Philosophy and Rants | Comments (1)
Launching a Campaign: The Ground Rules Sheet
As I mentioned in my previous post, it’s important to inform your players about some of your assumptions before you begin your campaign. I find the easiest way of doing so is to provide a handout that summarizes some of the basic information about the campaign. A cheat sheet, if you will.
The sheet should cover the basic ground rules of the campaign in a reasonably compact form. The idea is to create something easily readable that conveys the basic information your players need in order to create their characters. You don’t want to rehash the character generation rules from the rulebook — just point out the specific variations you’re using, along with the general theme of the campaign.
The sheet can include anything you feel is important. Mine covers the following areas:
Categories: Advice, Launching a Campaign | Comments (0)
Launching a Campaign: Realism vs. Ease
As I prepare to launch a new campaign, I’m running into the early decisions that help shape one. They seem like useful candidates for blog posts, so today I’m going to consider one of those early decisions: How much should I emphasize realism (or verisimilitude, if you want to get semantic) in the game?
Most games will feature some degree of realism — their unreal elements will behave in a realistic manner. Magic will follow a reliable set of rules; super-science will mostly behave according to the laws of physics, and will break them consistently when it doesn’t. Even many humor games, like Paranoia, will build on a basic level of realism. (Toon, on the other hand, is one of the exceptions — it’s designed to favor cartoon illogic.) That’s not really what I’m talking about here, though.
The question is, rather, how much bookkeeping I, as a gamemaster, am willing to put up with in exchange for a greater sense of realism in various player activities. Do I track food and water, for instance, or do I just have the players deduct some cash from their characters now and then and assume they’re restocking when they can? Do I track ammunition? Encumbrance? Do I track supply and demand of given materials and change prices in various regions accordingly? Do I place craftsmen and other NPCs specifically across my map, or do I use the “say yes or roll the dice” method when a character goes looking for, say, a glassblower or a priest? Do I place all of my monsters, or do I rely partially on random tables? What about treasure? Do I map out all of my dungeons ahead of time, or do I just wing it if the characters go somewhere unexpected and stumble across one I hadn’t fully prepared yet? To what extent do I track weather? Do I draw up a timeline of events as they will happen unless the PCs intervene, or do I react on the fly?
Categories: Advice, Launching a Campaign, Philosophy and Rants | Comments (2)
