Buffy the Vampire Slayer

[DetectiveFjord]

I'm an avid Buffy fan and I've been thinking that the formula for the show might work well with an episodic roleplaying campaign. I've been brainstorming ideas of the best way to model it. There are a few key elements to work with:

(1) The episode sequence:

- Begins with an encounter that introduces a new and mysterious challenge, (i.e. a monster, weird happening, murder mystery)

- The characters go through a process of information gathering through research, investigation, or experimentation. They eventually identify the threat and come up with a plan to deal with it.

- The characters execute their plan. The results don't always go as planned and the outcome sometimes segues into a new problem.

- Repeat as necessary until a functional plan is found.

(2) Magic:
- Magic is slow and risky, but powerful. I think this is best modeled (in a d20 system) by incantation-based magic as laid out in Unearthed Arcana. The problem therein is that there is so little in the way of officially (or even unofficially) authored incantations. Using this model requires intensive groundwork if you want to have a wide variety of available incantations.

(3) Low Fantasy/ Underworld:
- B:tVS deals with a world that really is like a beehive in a balloon. There is the mundane surface world, and beneath a really, almost implausibly complex and dangerous underworld of fiends. The heroes repeatedly delve into that world beneath the surface, but always come back. The anchor is High School, or family, or real world responsibilities. The campaign should replicate that anchor in some way.

Because I have more experience with DnD, I'm leaning towards d20 modern, but I wanted to ask around.

Has anyone used d20 modern? What did you think of it?

Has anyone tried a Buffy themed campaign?

I know theres an rpg system for BtVS, I'm not interested in it.

[Turtlefun]

To be honest i have no real advice to offer you but this is an amazing idea and i will wildly throw my money at it

[DMVerdandi]

While many spells are what one would consider long rituals in buffy, there are a plethora of spells that are not considered such. There would be normal casting in buffy, and although willow is seen as the penultimate spellcaster after a while, there are still others in her league. Are they human? Most of the time, no.

Here is the thing, Magic is not unlearnable, and it is not impossible to become even DND wizard level. What is the key is that it is SCARCE. Even learning the basics takes practice and education for humans, and in the modern world, few thought it was real, knew where to get the real juju, and even how to read or decode it.

I would DEFINITELY enforce languages in this game for learning spells.
Also, a foil mechanic for casting spells. If you can't make your concentration check, roll for a random status effect. Minor ones, but it wastes a turn or so. Maybe on a D20 with 1-4,5-8,9-12 ,13-16, 17-19 each having one status per group. 20 would cause magical addiction.


As far as combat, use guns from the DMG, Gun feats from D20 MODERN, and maybe the credit system.

As for classes?
Maybe... TOB fighter (Take fighter, give access to all schools, warblade progression)

Occultist (Take Spell to power erudite, give access to ALL schools of magic.)

Factotum

and NPC classes.
And those are most of the modern human classes. Use DND ones for people who are into archaic forms of training.


Maybe keep them for classes for the monsters.

[DetectiveFjord]

Occultist sounds like a good fit, what book is that from?

[inuyasha]

BtW, B:tVS in D20 modern is the shadow chasers campaign type, look it up in the main book :)

[Gildedragon]

Yeah. D20 modern limitations might work best. If one wanted a full caster the archivist works best; and dropping the distinction between divine and arcane too.
The dual stat casting is part of why it works nicely. Adding truenaming-type skill checks to casting would be a nice bonus; though it'd need to be less dunderheaded than the current truenaming mechanic.

Then again, in a rare-magic world maybe the truenamer shines through.

[Xervous]

D20 modern level 20 truenamer. Can it gate in Voltron?

[DetectiveFjord]

dropping the distinction between divine and arcane

I like this idea.



Then again, in a rare-magic world maybe the truenamer shines through.

That would be cool. Archivist and Truenamer are good fits, flavor wise.

My initial thought with Magic is to cap out all spell casting at 4th level spells. All higher level magic is available only through Incantations (i.e. expensive, long, and risky rituals) The big stumbling block there is that I personally would have to design and write up the incantations myself.

[Gildedragon]

Yeah; but you can delay designing the incantations until they are needed as per research rewards or plot mcguffins.

[Talya]

There would need to be real risks to magic, and a cost to frequent use of it that can eat away at you like an addictive drug.

If anyone runs a campaign in such a setting, count me in.

[DetectiveFjord]

Magic addiction should definitely be a thing. You could copy the mechanics of drug addiction from BoVD. Alternatively you could modify the mechanics in libris mortis described in the "undead hunger" section.

I might just take the basic 3.5 mechanics and narrowly restrict the class and race choices. I don't want to encourage people to rehash the same character builds that are used in 3.5 games now.

Some ideas are


- Warblade
- Ranger (Urban)
- Factotum
- Archivist (In a setting where arcane and divine aren't distinct, this class should replace wizard and cleric)
- Truenamer
- Vampire Spawn
- Paladin/Blackguard

A major problem here is that the Archivist is far and away a more powerful class than the others.

[DetectiveFjord]

An alternative class list would be this.

Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, Crusader, Bard, Swordsage, Binder, Factotum, Warblade, Rogue, Warlock, Warmage, Urban Ranger, Truenamer, Vampire Spawn, Paladin

Most of these are picked from the tier 3 and 4 lists. Paladin is the odd man out in terms of being underpowered, maybe make it a project to bring it up to speed with the other choices.

Edit: perhaps this fix.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=10409695

And this one for the Truenamer:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90961