Vitruviansquid
2010-01-22, 07:23 AM
I'm at a point in the game I'm running where I have run out of ideas for what to make the players do or where to make the players go. This is rather embarassing because I came up for the format of the campaign specifically so I wouldn't run out of ideas. In any case, I'd like to hear what you guys make of this.
1. The game I'm running is in Savage Worlds, not DnD. Therefore, I basically have a carte blanche regarding what monsters I put in the game and what stats they would have because Savage Worlds is not really level-dependent in the same way as DnD is. I stat every monster to fit the players, I don't have to find monsters from a Monster Manual to match the players' levels.
2. The basic premise of the game is that the players work for a monster slaying guild (think the Ghostbusters) in a Renaissance Europe(esque) time period. The players' world is much like our Earth, except that monsters, fairies, and other such fantasies from folklore are real. When those malign supernatural forces threaten humanity, someone would pay the monster slaying guilds to take care of the problem. Each session, the players are sent to investigate an occurrence of supernatural forces, ending with the slaying of some sort of monster.
3. What I really want the game to be about, though, is the monstrousness in humanity. If the actual monsters are analogous to symptoms of a disease in humanity, then the evil in humans is the actual germs causing the disease. For instance, the players might be hired to exorcise a malevolent ghost. It would turn out that the ghost is malevolent because the person who hired to players was the person who killed the ghost in life. Thus, the players' morally correct goal is to bring their employer to justice, not to simply exorcise the ghost.
So basically, I guess what I'm asking is if any of you know some folklore monsters with moral significance or symbolism that I could harness for my campaign. Extra credit if you could take the folklore entity and then put another spin on them so that the moral decision the players end up making is not obvious from the start to a genre-savvy player.
1. The game I'm running is in Savage Worlds, not DnD. Therefore, I basically have a carte blanche regarding what monsters I put in the game and what stats they would have because Savage Worlds is not really level-dependent in the same way as DnD is. I stat every monster to fit the players, I don't have to find monsters from a Monster Manual to match the players' levels.
2. The basic premise of the game is that the players work for a monster slaying guild (think the Ghostbusters) in a Renaissance Europe(esque) time period. The players' world is much like our Earth, except that monsters, fairies, and other such fantasies from folklore are real. When those malign supernatural forces threaten humanity, someone would pay the monster slaying guilds to take care of the problem. Each session, the players are sent to investigate an occurrence of supernatural forces, ending with the slaying of some sort of monster.
3. What I really want the game to be about, though, is the monstrousness in humanity. If the actual monsters are analogous to symptoms of a disease in humanity, then the evil in humans is the actual germs causing the disease. For instance, the players might be hired to exorcise a malevolent ghost. It would turn out that the ghost is malevolent because the person who hired to players was the person who killed the ghost in life. Thus, the players' morally correct goal is to bring their employer to justice, not to simply exorcise the ghost.
So basically, I guess what I'm asking is if any of you know some folklore monsters with moral significance or symbolism that I could harness for my campaign. Extra credit if you could take the folklore entity and then put another spin on them so that the moral decision the players end up making is not obvious from the start to a genre-savvy player.