Suikoden campaign

[DarkEternal]

So, I've been fiddling a bit on making my first campaign. Since I know for a fact that nobody from my group ever heard, let alone played a Suikoden game and it is one of my favorite game series, I thought of adapting the game story and setting to a campaign.

Not sure how many of you in the playground played it, but the game basically follows a young man who serves the mighty empire and was set up by it. He tuns rogue, establishes a base and does a whole lot of recruitment and missions to defeat the empire he once served.

It will follow the 3.5 makeup for most of the part(even though each of the main characters will get a True rune, which is sort of a staple of the series) to work with. The story will change in that way that it won't be a young man who is set up, but rather the group who served as soldiers of the Empire.

Eventually, the group will find and make a strong hold, in which they will basically have their own "town" to operate, with its own magic, armor and adventuring gear shops that will "evolve" with the characters. The big premise also are the Stars of Destiny, or basically recruitable characters that will add to the strength of the main party.

My problem currently is world building. Since this is the first time I've ever tried a campaign, I'm having some issues. The towns I can do. The shops as well. Dungeons are a problem. You know how all published adventures have various parts to the dungeon, encounters-riddles, things to progress the story until you get to the end? I'm having some issues there. In the game, a lot of the dungeons are very straight forward. You fight monsters, you open chests and that's it. Finding some way to add "flavor" to the dungeons, and to the rooms they find is somewhat of a problem. Do you have any suggestions on how to do it?

[SilverLeaf167]

The premise sounds a lot like Dishonored, with runes and everything O_o

That aside, I haven't played the Suikoden games, but apparently they're not the subject of your query anyway so I might as well try helping you. Making dungeons seem like something more than just a series of rooms can indeed be difficult. It's hard to teach anyone to describe things, but I'll try listing some things that you should consider. Going through the list usually gives you a pretty good idea of what the dungeon is like.


Who created the dungeon, for what reason and when? This can affect the room layout, decorations, the things within and the general wear and tear, for example.
What has happened since then? If the dungeon is no longer occupied, why? If it is, what do the creatures within do with the place? Has something dramatically altered the dungeon, like flooding it?
Why is the party there? If they're looking for an ancient work of art, there'll probably be more around the place. If they're trying to save a friend, what danger caused his accidental entrapment OR what are his captors doing to keep him there? A collapsed mine will probably have plenty of dust in the air, blocked passages, crumpled pillars...
What creatures are there? A ruin taken over by a cabal of necromancers will definitely have different sorts of undead around the place, probably profane altars and bones, incenses, that sort of thing. If the occupant is a red dragon, everything flammable will probably be burnt to ashes, the stone will be partially molten and the whole place might radiate a heavy warmth.
Try to incorporate the environment mechanically. In an ancient overgrown ruin, hide the answer to a puzzle behind some plants or have an encounter where the party can gain a benefit by climbing on vine-covered walls. In the mentioned mine example, give them slight penalties if they don't protect themselves from the dust and include the chance of further accidents if they damage any remaining support pillars. Make them seek out air pockets and dry land in a submerged cavern.

[Waker]

Y'know the funny thing is that one of my next homebrew projects was probably gonna be a class called "True Rune Master". Brought a smile to my face.

Since you are drawing ideas from the game, why not steal a few of the settings as well? Describe how opulent the capital of Gregminster is, though the scenery is somewhat spoiled by the odd number of soldiers. An island castle alone on a lake, surrounded by clouds of fog. The desolation of the once lush forest, now a field of ash.

[DarkEternal]

I don't have a problem with descriptions, more with making the flow of the dungeon in DnD terms, you know?

Let me use an example. I worked the campaign so far all the way until the party has to go on to a mountain to take care of some bandits. Up until then, there are no real dungeons(there is an island which is in games terms a dungeon, but since it's open there is no need really to make it as such in the game)

In the game, the party goes up the mountain and enters a cave which basically leads to the top of said mountain. Inside of it, the main enemies are some of the ant variety(which I won't really have many problems making, thankfully there are enough MM's out there). But it is fairly straight forward. You go up, you go left, you go up, fight a dozen of random encounters, reach the end boss and there you have it.

In D&D(at the very least the modules I read and played) it would be more like "You enter the cave. The path goes to the north. There is dim light here where you entered, but the further you go in, the darker it gets".

So the party follows. They would follow some sort of a path, but sooner or later there would be a fork. Now, it could lead to some dead end, or it could lead to a "right" direction. Let's say they take the dead end. In most campaigns it would end in some room or other where either an encounter, or something fluff filled would be apparent. For instance "You come to the end of the passage. From your knowledge(dungeoneering) skills or being a dwarf you know that it probably went further in, but you think that there was a cave in. Most probably man made"

You see? Things like that. Encounters. Something that would make dungeon crawling matter in the way that there is stuff happening. What I'm saying basically, I sort of lack the imagination in putting things in that would be "fitting". Maybe one of the rooms serves as a barracks, or another room was the latrine. Things like that.

Not to mention that mapping the entire thing with tiles is also much more complex than I originally thought.

[Phaederkiel]

Since suikoden 1 and 2 take the number two and number one slots in my list of favorite games (even coming in before chrono trigger), I feel compelled to help.


a) I would not give the party members true runes. There are only 27 and you would lessen their importance by giving each member one.
Also, I loved the modularity of the rune system. You could for example give certain feats when a rune is equipped. Or you give each class some (useless) sorcerer casting, which they only get spells known for when they equip a rune.

Admittedly, this is a lot of hassle, which might be the reason why I never tried to run it, although i thought about it a lot.

b) The main secret in building a good dungeon is: Why was it made?
For example: your guys will be attacking a lot of towns, with varying defense systems. They will have to sneak through forest and severs to reach places unnoticed.
The classical dungeon crawl is not really needed for a d&d adventure. And you will have one anyway: liberating your castle. And if you put in neclord, you will have another 2 when getting the sword and crawling through his castle.

As you already noticed, putting in Knowledge checks is a great way to enhance the feeling of your dungeon. Look at each knowledge and think: in what way are you tied with my dungeon?

In d&d, you need less encounters by far than those which are in the game. Remember, even short encounters can take half an hour to solve.




I hope I could help some. If you ask for more specific things, I try to help more specifically :smallsmile:

[DarkEternal]

But that's the point of being a hero, right? It would be utterly unfair if one character got a True Rune and others didn't. So, I was thinking of giving the Soul Eater to one character, and maybe the runes from Suikoden 3 to other three characters(I think four of them will play), meathing the True Fire, Water and Thunder rune respectively.

Aside from that, with the exception of major characters, the rune system will not really be used. As far as the characters are concerned, only certain characters can use Rune magic. So it won't really be a Suikoden setting in the true sense of the word. It will still use the magic that we all know and love, but certain characters will be able to use Runes. Think of it like a class that has all of its special abiltiies(spell casting, maneuvers, what have you), with a special ability t cast a few rune spells.

What I mean is that mapping is a big problem for me in terms of dungeon, especially with the group I lead that really like to have a good feeling of the place where they are in. Where to put what loot, will it be just in some chest as it is in Suikoden, will it only be on enemies, or the like? They will be given a similar task to asemble the Stars of Destiny(considering there are a few of the main characters that are all considered Stars of Destiny, they will take spots of some other characters, usually the ones that are less than important for the entire story, like the guy shouting the name of your castle, or the guy running the bathtubs or the farmer guy and so on).

Teleportation magic will be severely limited(which is where Viki will come into play with her abilities), as will resurection magic(I'm thinking of house ruling it only the characters with True Runes can be ressed, and even that follows certain limitations).

I'm watching a Let's play of Suikoden 1 on Youtube to get a good feel for the game since it's been some odd 15 years since I last played it, but I think it's got good potential to be pretty fun, once I get up to speed of how to play it out.

[danzibr]

Just the other day (in fact, yesterday I think) I was thinking about this game series. I checked PSN to see if I could download Suikoden 2 but alas, I could not. Played the first one several times through, wanted to continue with the second, could never find it.

I'm curious to see as to what you do with the runes. I mean, that's like the main part of the story, runes and armies. If you start low level and build your way up I think it'd be fine to give each player a true rune. Especially if you follow game mechanics and have them upgrade as the plot goes on/players level up. I'd stay away from the really op runes, but the elemental runes and Soul Eater and... well, actually, it seems most of them would be okay.

[Zerter]

I would use Suikoden as a setting (it's the best), but not sweat the small stuff. If you feel you need to have everything worked out, just import dungeons from other premade adventures. Just use Suikoden as an inspiration to describe the enviroment, like there being paintings of historical scenes and the like.

I would however definitely not give every member a true rune, rather would treat the things along the line of major artifacts and have just one for the entire party. It really cheapens them if everyone has one from the get go. If you're worried about everyone being equal, give everyone a different boon: one is the son of the legendary general, the other trained under the tactical genius, the other is a dueling prodigy and one of them seems innocent, except he carries some kind of black rune with him.

[JeenLeen]

For dungeon-making, I think the advice mentioned above sounds good. Instead of traditional dungeon-crawls, except where needed, have them just be plot-based missions. I'll add to replace random battles through a large dungeon with 1-3 battles leading up to the boss fight. If the players take a wrong turn, maybe that leads to treasure or gives the boss some more time to plan his response?

The biggest problem I see is the Stars of Destiny. Is it 108? (Been a while since I played the game.) While your players may enjoy having a base/city form around their operations, if active recruitment of important people is as big a part of the campaign as it is in Suikoden, I can see players getting bored, especially if it's stuff like bathhouse runner and such. Although if, knowing your group, you think they would enjoy it, sounds great.

I don't see a problem with each character getting a True Rune, but try to set up something how the players don't feel like one gets an edge. Maybe some quest that somehow reveals the nature of the Runes and lets them pick one, or just discuss it OOC at a proper time that won't ruin the story?
I don't think it messes with the plot to have multiple True Runes. A fair number showed up in each game I played (Suikoden 1 through 3), even if a fair number were held by NPCs or non-combative Stars of Destiny (like Joshua's True Dragon Rune.)

[DarkEternal]

I stole borrowed the "rune" system from a person on another board who worked into making runes into a tabletop system. I'm still working the ends on how they will be used(though it would certainly follow the levelling mechanic, meaning that the number of times used and the level of spells uses from a rune would depend on the character level and his governing stat).

Here is the example, I'll use the Soul Eater rune, copy pasted from said persons blog:

Basic Ability: Bleed (ESL 0)
Range: Touch
Duration: Instantaneous
Target: one living creature
Saving Throw: Will negates; Spell Resistance: yes
You cause a living creature that is below 0 hit points but stabilized to resume dying. Upon casting this spell, you target a living creature that has –1 or fewer hit points. That creature begins dying, taking 1 point of damage per round. The creature can be stabilized later normally. This spell causes a creature that is dying to take 1 point of damage.

Basic Ability: Touch of Fatigue (ESL 0)
Range: touch
Target: creature touched
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates; Spell Resistance: yes
You channel negative energy through your touch, fatiguing the target. You must succeed on a touch attack to strike a target. The subject is immediately fatigued for the spell's duration.
This spell has no effect on a creature that is already fatigued. Unlike with normal fatigue, the effect ends as soon as the spell's duration expires.

Basic Ability: Touch of Fatigue (ESL 0)
Range: touch
Target: creature touched
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates; Spell Resistance: yes
You channel negative energy through your touch, fatiguing the target. You must succeed on a touch attack to strike a target. The subject is immediately fatigued for the spell's duration.
This spell has no effect on a creature that is already fatigued. Unlike with normal fatigue, the effect ends as soon as the spell's duration expires.

Basic Ability: Deathwatch (ESL 1)
Range: 30 ft.
Duration: 1 min./level
Area: cone-shaped emanation
Saving Throw: none; Spell Resistance: no
You can determine the condition of creatures near death within the spell's range. You instantly know whether each creature within the area is dead, fragile (alive and wounded, with 3 or fewer hit points left), fighting off death (alive with 4 or more hit points), healthy, undead, or neither alive nor dead (such as a construct). Deathwatch sees through any spell or ability that allows creatures to feign death.

2. Finger of Death (ESL 5) [Death]
Range: touch
Target: living creature touched
Duration: instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude partial; Spell Resistance: yes
You can attempt to slay any one living creature. When you cast this spell, your hand seethes with eerie dark fire. You must succeed on a melee touch attack to touch the target. The target takes 12d6 points of damage + 1 point per caster level. If the target's Fortitude saving throw succeeds, it instead takes 3d6 points of damage + 1 point per caster level. The subject might die from damage even if it succeeds on its saving throw

3. Black Shadow (ESL 7)
Range close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target one creature/level, no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw Will half; Spell Resistance yes
Negative energy spreads out in all directions from the point of origin, 3d8 points of damage + 1 point per caster level (maximum +35) to nearby living enemies. It does not heal undead, but does not hurt them either. (Variant on mass inflict serious wounds, which is right spell level, but almost feels too weak.)

And so on...There's two more. Like I said, this would be more of an "addition" to the plot and not really the driving force behind it. Bear in mind that these people don't know even what Suikoden is, so purism is hardly the problem. I wanted to play out the story, the people they would meet, the island fortress they would get and the coups they would stage or try to do it at the very least. Seems like it could be a lot of fun. If I ever get over that block with actually building stuff like dungeons for them to pass. Nicking them from other adventures could work, though.


The biggest problem I see is the Stars of Destiny. Is it 108? (Been a while since I played the game.) While your players may enjoy having a base/city form around their operations, if active recruitment of important people is as big a part of the campaign as it is in Suikoden, I can see players getting bored, especially if it's stuff like bathhouse runner and such. Although if, knowing your group, you think they would enjoy it, sounds great.

I agree. Some would probably be cut off from the story. It doesn't have to be 108, but yeah, a lot of them would be put in various quests. I was even thinking(since every sane DM bans Leadership) that the party can take one of the stars as a DMPC on adventures with them. This person would fight alongside them, perhaps even serve to give some sort of a boon(depends on the party member. Vicky would be able to teleport them for instance, Crowley would be an uber badarse mage covered with normal runes, Luc would have his true wind rune, and so on.)

[OttoVonBigby]

Suikoden vet here. Consider also (w/r/t the "to true rune or not to true rune" question) that the Stars of Destiny are special because IIRC they all have runes--non-unique runes, non-true runes, just runes. All the random mooks running around cities and attacking you and stuff have no runes at all. So if you scale that up to a setting as vast (population- and geography-wise) as what the D&D rules seem to assume, you end up with runed characters being superlative heroes and true-runed characters being freakin' legends. I see nothing wrong with the PCs being freakin' legends; in a regular D&D campaign the PCs can easily reach Ted-like levels of immortal interplanar weirdness (referring to IV here).

But then, that might entail the campaign evolving beyond the "build an army" model. So I'd agree that trying to use lots of Suikodeny tropes and concepts without actually trying to BE Suikoden would be the safest, most flexible approach.

What I mean is that mapping is a big problem for me in terms of dungeon, especially with the group I lead that really like to have a good feeling of the place where they are in. Where to put what loot, will it be just in some chest as it is in Suikoden, will it only be on enemies, or the like?My method is always to have a reason for the dungeon to exist (as posters above mentioned) but I don't sketch its physical structure meticulously. I instead pre-plan important rooms, or chains of rooms, and encounters, deciding roughly when in the crawl I want them to appear, and then I improvise--making the players keep track of which turn they took at that last intersection, and what the scale of this new (maybe empty) room is, etc. This can be cumbersome but it has the advantage of grabbing the players' attention, getting them invested and interested, and foisting work I don't like onto them (and they sort of DO like it).

As for loot, you sort of have to mix it up between treasure chests all over the place (which is implausible) and carried loot on slain monsters (which not all monsters will have).

To keep the "dungeons" Suikodeny, might I suggest shooting for big scale: looong halls, black pits, etc. Maybe a race of giants built most of the ruins or something.

OH! and another absolutely essential Suikodeny trope: have an important NPC ally (old friend or family member) betray a PC. :smallbiggrin:

[ArcturusV]

Adding to the Dungeoncrafting bit:

Don't just think of why it was made. Also think of what the current occupants require.

So you could have your mountain passage as a series of Lava Tubes. The makers were natural forces, so it should follow natural patterns. But inhabitants would have needs that the natural construction wouldn't account for.

So here's the big list of things I try to think of when I'm making dungeons that make a certain amount of intuitive sense in the game world:

1) Sleeping Quarters. Any place that has been occupied (Even by creatures of animal intelligence) for a long time is going to have sleeping quarters. Comfort and safety are primary concerns here. Even creatures of animal intelligence will build shelters of a sort, dragging in things that are generally more comfortable, warm, protective, etc for their resting place. Or just choose a place that is as close as possible to that right out of the get go.

2) Bathrooms. As you mentioned. One of those things that made, say Breath of Fire for the SNES stand out as a little more fleshed out than the typical RPG video game? Houses had bathrooms in them. It's a simple thing but often something I see people forget until I point them out.

"Oh, this is the ancestral home of the Clan Treleska."
*shows off the map of the place*
"Hmm, and they've been living here for a long time, right?"
"Centuries."
"... then why don't they have bathrooms? There's no outhouses on the outside either. Every toddler knows that everyone poops."

Again, even animals care about this and will at least have a dedicated area for such a thing.

3) Feeding. Again, regardless of occupant intelligence they will want somewhere to eat. Even with animals they separate out Food/Sleep/Poop into different regions. Anything of higher intellect tends to do so as well. So there should be a dedicated mess hall/kitchen/dining room, or at least a cleared out place where an animal would bring carcasses (If it doesn't just eat the carcass at the kill location only).

4) Recreation. It's something that's easy for people to overlook. Everything needs play of a sort. Cats with Fort Cardboard Box, or Dogs with a Ball, or a place where wolf cubs will pounce and bite in play, etc. The more intelligent your occupants are, the more likely they are to have adapted an area for recreation. Even if they are under strict security they likely have a place they zoned out (Or hide in) to do things like Smoke, Drink, Gamble, Get Laid, etc.

5) Meeting places. Another one overlooked. If you're dealing with an organization like Bandits, etc. They're going to want some place to meet and hash things out rather than their bedroom, or the kitchen, or where they are trying to hide in order to get some alone time and fun. Someplace where they can conduct group business.

Other things tend to get mentioned out of hand already. Storage rooms, treasure rooms, etc.

The only other thing I can think of? If it's a man made dungeon, or created by a creature of similar intelligence? Resist the urge to have "Empty Spaces". It's a whole lot easier to build/dig out an adjoining room and put up a simple wall to separate them, then it is to dig out a 150' long tunnel to the next separate chamber. Even if there are security concerns (Which is often how it's explained), people would typically balk at the time and money that might take, or just at the pain in the ass it is to walk 150' every time you want to go make a sandwich while you're working in the Lab.