[Storyteller System] Dungeons of Darkness

[Lord Raziere]

I have an idea.

Basically, combine DnD with WoD. Each class gets a splat to themselves.

Warrior: The Bloodlust
You are a warrior. All your life you have trained to fight. You fought in a great war where you fought endlessly in a grand carnage. All you know is fighting.
And you can't stop.
The war is over, but now you still want to fight. You will seek out any opponent to keep fighting, bandits, duelists, barbarians, mercenaries, monsters, dragons, its all the same to you. But how long can you keep fighting before the world around you decides that you a mad dog that needs to be put down with a hail of arrows?

Thief: The Greed
There are great riches out there. Mountains of gold and silver, great jewels and diamonds. Riches beyond imagining in great palaces of glory.
You have none of that.
You are a beggar on the street. You are homeless, you have nothing, you are nothing. You don't even have food. So you steal. You mostly steal to survive, mostly food and water, dodging the guards along the way. However you are jealous of those who have it all. You want to it all. Why should they have it? You need it.
Your Greed is endless, and drives you to steal ever great treasures and wonders. In your envy you become spiteful and full of hate of all the people who have more than you. How long before your greed and envy drive you to try and steal the greatest treasures in the world- and fail when you bite off more than you can chew?

Wizard: The Secrecy
You are a Wizard, you have entered into their ivory towers and academic existence, hoping to learn great arcane secrets.
Instead you learn to watch your back. The world of wizards is full of backstabbing, politics and secrets. Wizards keep their spells as secret as possible from another and use their apprentices as mere pawns and tools in their dark conflicts. The only way for you to learn greater magic is to steal the secrets from those greater than you and betray them at the best opportunity- or turn to deals with demons and other dark creatures.
All wizards desire godhood, but they only desire it for themselves- and they are willing to betray and lie to anyone to get it, are you?

Paladin: The Crusade
You are a holy warrior anointed by your religion. You have vowed to uphold their tenets and fight for what you believe in. To seek out the dark creatures hiding in the shadows and bring down the justice of the light upon them.
However things are not as simple as that.
Such dark, evil things can be anywhere- or anyone. The evils in the night are smart and won't confront such holy warriors directly, assuming that they even exist, for you have never seen such things. The priests are corrupt, more concerned with the politics of nobles and taxing the peasants than faith, or are fanatical zealots willing to sacrifice anyone to their god.
Furthermore you are only a single sect, a single belief. There are many who may worship your same gods but not share your beliefs, and is therefore heresy. Others worship gods that you don't even share, and are heathens for spreading such false faith.
All this makes you paranoid. Anyone within the faith could be corrupted by money, darkness or heresy, or are spies from false beliefs. Are even your own comrades immune? All the while the politics of church and state drive into crusades for your god. Your enemies might be anywhere and all you have is your suspicions….

Ranger: The Survival
You love the hunt. You venture out into the wilderness to slay great beasts and bring back their trophies. However survival out here is hard. Supplies can run low, disease can strike, the weather can be harsh, unrelenting and unforgiving, the environment itself is a danger and furthermore navigation can be unreliable at times. That and more than just the beast you hope to slay are out in the wild, with barbarians, savage druids, angry spirits of the forest, and primal elemental powers hoping to kill anyone who trespasses into their territory.
Once you go into the wilderness, your hope of survival and coming back out is slim. You start to get lost, start to think pragmatically, and soon after that, start thinking about the survival of the fittest…..

Explorer: The Ruin
You are a seeker of secrets. You wish to plumb the depths of the ruins of the past, perhaps wishing to find treasure or some forgotten, hidden wonder.
However many things stand in your way: the traps of their long dead creators, the still functioning servants of their long dead masters, long forgotten monsters and horrors lurking in the nooks and crannies of such ruins.
and even if you get past all these dangers, there is still the question of whether if anything in these ruins is worth discovering. there might be nothing here,a group of thieves might have already taken what you seek long ago……or what you find might have been hid away for a reason.
doomsday weapons, artifacts of terrible power requiring sacrifices in blood, and other dark things are what you might find, things that if unleashed upon the world, would bring about its doom if you ever get out of there alive….

[super dark33]

I think its nice.
Makeing every class have a fixed backstory, great for campeigns you want to run smooth.

but also the freedom of players who want to have their own backstory.

[Lord Raziere]

super dark, don't comment unless you know anything about World of Darkness or Exalted, because this ain't DnD, this DoD, Dungeons of Darkness. :smallannoyed:

that said, you have a lot of background options- what was life like before you joined the army? why do you want to be a warrior? how did you become poor enough to steal? how did decided upon becoming a Paladin? what led you to your life as a Ranger? Why were deemed worthy enough to become a Wizard?

and so on and so forth. there are many paths to the same destination. Dungeons of Darkness wouldn't be about the standard DnD balanced party either- a Paladins game is only about Paladins, no Thieves, Warriors or Wizards , and no Paladins in a game of Wizards.

In short, it would be about what would truly like to be that class in a medieval world, not about heroics. if you want me to hammer the point in, I can also put a Noble, Mercenary and Barbarian splats…..

[Zeta Kai]

super dark, don't comment unless you know anything about World of Darkness or Exalted, because this ain't DnD, this DoD, Dungeons of Darkness. :smallannoyed:

Well, that was rather rude. He was just trying to contribute to the conversation. There's no need to talk to someone like that. :smallmad:

[Lord Raziere]

fine, I'm sorry.

though I may have misread the second part of his post, don't know what he means by that.

[super dark33]

the second part?
no you did not misread it.
i thought players might want to chose diffrent backstories, but then again, how can one become a warrior without particapateing in some fight?

i dont know what WoD is. can you explain?

[Debihuman]

Play nice, boys :-)

WoD is World of Darkness. These were games published by White Wolf such as Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse using the Storyteller system.

Debby

Psst: Superdark's first language may not be English (and/or he may just be relatively young) given his grammar and spelling.

[Lord Raziere]

well here is the thing:
white wolf games are more about very good settings, so well thought out that you CAN make any backstory you want- its just that you have to deal with the consequences thereof.

also, its more about the story and the themes are what the splat is all about- Thief the Greed wouldn't work at all if the Thief was a rich guy during play, because its supposed to contain the themes of greediness, envy, and stealing stuff because your desires for a better life.
but how you get to the point where you need to steal stuff to survive, is entirely up to you, what matter is the journey, not the destination.

and also Dungeons of Darkness is kind of supposed to be taking DnD and exploring the real consequences of playing those classes-the reality of a rogue is that they are greedy thieves with no money, who probably resent the world around them for having so much more than them.

and when you get right down to it- fighting really is all a Warrior knows. sure they might have been a peasant before this but war has probably destroyed their village and all the buddies they marched with, they are probably a long way from home, fighting under some distant lord among people they don't know. all the while they need to keep fighting just to survive.

the reality of a wizard is that they would be secretive, political, backstabbing and power-hungry. They don't actually come from any scientific background or anything close to our enlightened views. What they see, is that they have power, and that they should use it. that there are other wizards out there that they can take that power from and become more powerful themselves.

Dungeons of Darkness is about the stories these realities tell. You can try to be heroic, or just be whatever you want from the foundation that is set, but whatever you do you have to deal with the consequences and these realities