This is not your usual Standard Fantasy Setting

[Yora]

Okay, this is a bit of a strange question. There are many interesting campaign settings that don't do a pseudo-medieval European environment or something other easily recognizable like Ancient Greeks or Samurai. Worlds that are meant to be very different from what the players already know.

But when it comes to running the campaign, how do you effectively communicate the tone and style od the setting to the players. People who have not read through dozens or hundreds of pages that go side by side with the illustrations of the book.
My games have always been pretty straightforward affairs that could have taken place in basically any generic world and I don't think anything that I had envisioned for the setting got actually through to the players. Not because they ignored it, but because I didn't know how to show it.

What can you do as a GM to run adventures in a way that they showcase the setting and feel like things that are specific to it and not generic?

[Knaight]

Description of the physical realities of the area (natural terrain and material culture, plus how people are distributed and such) is a big part, with NPC behavior being another major part. Then there's the matter of proper nouns, titles used, etc.

[Yora]

I think titles probably work best when you are emulating a style whose vocabulary is already known. If you got a vizir or raja, most players would be able to get the image.
On the other hand, it might indeed be a good idea to avoid terms that are usually associated with standard fantasy elements. Knights and noblemen in a castle evokes a certain image. The lord's companions and highborns in a fortress should lead to the players being less likely to paint a mental picture without listening to all the other details first.

I was always bad with visual description.It's something I always forgot to think about in advance and then skimmed over when it came up. While there's such a thing as bad and way too long box text, I think it might be worth it to write down "establishing shots" for major locations or landscape transitions (which you usually know about well in advance). I was recently watching the old Star Wars movie and realized that this is one of the major things missing from the new one. Showing off a new location in ways that makes them look really impressive helps a lot with with getting into the right mind for the scenes that will take inside when you'll be mostly dealing with characters in small indescriptive rooms.

Another thing I've been thinking of is to use any nonhumans the setting has. When you have qunari, furbolgs, and githyanki, don't have the adventures take place in human villages and make 95% of the enemies humans and orcs. If a world is meant to be different, put the unique elements center stage, not left silently at the sidelines.

[Thinker]

Create things for the players to interact with in the setting that convey its tone. If there's an emphasis on exploration, create an explorer's guild that hires adventurers looking to chart the unknown. If you are worried about setting the time period back before a typical medieval fantasy game, change the gear that players have access to. That steel plate might become bronze. If you want the struggle to be between law and chaos, give players a tool to smite chaos (or law). Players only care about what they can interact with so that's your opportunity to invoke feelings about the setting.

[VoxRationis]

Unfortunately, "knight" and "castle" both apply to cross-cultural analogues beyond their usual connotations in the Western mindset.

I'd myself draw sketches of art, architecture, dress, that sort of thing, to show my players. I'd also highlight cultural and societal differences from Western Europe in my descriptions of daily life. For example, if in your setting, people ride something other than horses (say, dragons, or terror birds), mention the stables as your players walk by them, and point out the differences in the stables. Matter-of-factly mention that the stablehands are throwing chunks of meat, not putting out bags of oats.

[Knaight]

I think titles probably work best when you are emulating a style whose vocabulary is already known. If you got a vizir or raja, most players would be able to get the image.
On the other hand, it might indeed be a good idea to avoid terms that are usually associated with standard fantasy elements. Knights and noblemen in a castle evokes a certain image. The lord's companions and highborns in a fortress should lead to the players being less likely to paint a mental picture without listening to all the other details first.
It is easier if you still have some analog, but even without one you can get a sense of something being odd. Take "Autarch". It's a real title, but it's kind of bizarre and expresses that the setting is a bit odd. The names are often better than the titles though. As just one example, I recently ran a game inspired mostly by pre-reconquista Spain, particularly the Taifa emirates. There were a lot of characters with names that were combinations of Spanish and Arabic sounds, and the presence of characters with names like Ibrahim Iglesias or Marcia bint Muhammed conveys that the two cultures are there, that the two cultures are merging, and that we are definitely away from the typical England/France medieval fantasy.


I was always bad with visual description.It's something I always forgot to think about in advance and then skimmed over when it came up. While there's such a thing as bad and way too long box text, I think it might be worth it to write down "establishing shots" for major locations or landscape transitions (which you usually know about well in advance). I was recently watching the old Star Wars movie and realized that this is one of the major things missing from the new one. Showing off a new location in ways that makes them look really impressive helps a lot with with getting into the right mind for the scenes that will take inside when you'll be mostly dealing with characters in small indescriptive rooms.
Do you use a GM screen? If you do, having some lists of pertinent visual elements, adjectives, etc. for different areas can be really helpful. You don't need everything, but just predominant visual elements, predominant sounds, notable smells, etc. can convey a lot. You don't want to go overboard into purple prose, but having a little bit helps.

[BRC]

Names can become very evocative. Standard Fantasy Settings tend to evoke an England that Never Was, and players will tend to revert to that if not frequently reminded.


If your campaign is based on the Italian Renaissance, names like "Monte Ferro", or referring to Mercenaries as Condottieri can remind the PCs which world they're inhabiting. Otherwise, don't be afraid to make explicit reference to visuals the Players are familiar with, you can say describe the city as "Dominated by a towering Aztec-style step pyramid" without Aztecs existing in your world.

Similarly, refer to extraordinary things as commonplace in your "Establishing Spots". To use an example from a sci-fi setting of mine

"As you step onto the acid-scarred streets of Lower-Chemsburg. You can smell the toxic odor wafting off the Chromatic Sea to the east. The streets are full of sullen-faced workers rushing from the titanic factories to the tenement houses and cramped slums. The smog burns your lungs and stings in your eyes. Storm sirens cut above the cries of street vendors selling acid-proofed ponchos and comfortable shelters to those who don't feel they can get home in time. The western horizon is completely covered by a bank of dark-green clouds and the occasional flash of lightning heralding. The southern skyline is dominated by a grim environment dome, while a space elevator rises out of it's pyramidal base to the north, vanishing into the smog and clouds."

To provide further context, Chemsburg is on a planet called Drakenworld, which is a pollution-blighted hellscape after a few centuries of Dragons trying to make money off of it. The planet regularly experiences strong acid rain and powerful megastorms, the mentions of Ponchos and vendors selling shelter is supposed to drive home the idea that these storms are a regular part of life here.

[Thrudd]

Write a brief introduction to the setting. Words are really your only tool in an RPG, so you just need to find the right ones. You could find some images that impart some of the feel you want to supplement, but really you just need to do your best to be as descriptive as you can.
Having the game take place in an equivalent of the Mos Eisely cantina isn't necessary to make the world feel different (unless that's the feel you want). You just need to make reference to those different elements at the right time. Even if the campaign starts out sort of "normal", in a human village with ancient-ish culture, the first adventure should begin to introduce them to the setting's unique features and character.

[LibraryOgre]

Words and names are important. Even if your players insist on "Bob" or "Leondegrance", pick names that fit your local milleu. Occasionally, smack them across the face with your differences... slavery, weird elves, anything that stands out.

[BayardSPSR]

Okay, this is a bit of a strange question. There are many interesting campaign settings that don't do a pseudo-medieval European environment or something other easily recognizable like Ancient Greeks or Samurai. Worlds that are meant to be very different from what the players already know.

But when it comes to running the campaign, how do you effectively communicate the tone and style od the setting to the players. People who have not read through dozens or hundreds of pages that go side by side with the illustrations of the book.
My games have always been pretty straightforward affairs that could have taken place in basically any generic world and I don't think anything that I had envisioned for the setting got actually through to the players. Not because they ignored it, but because I didn't know how to show it.

What can you do as a GM to run adventures in a way that they showcase the setting and feel like things that are specific to it and not generic?

I disagree with much of what's been said in this thread: choosing different words for the same things won't necessarily make them feel different; once players have figured out that "autarch = king," they may even end up referring to that character as "the king." Using familiar terms communicates more effectively.

It's not the words, so much as what you do with them. Theme the plot - the actual things that happen - based on the world they're in. Minor nobles respond to the will of a Japanese emperor in very different ways than they would to a European king, for instance; emphasize that. If all that's changed is the wallpaper, the room's going to feel the same.

Of course, this doesn't actually mesh well with games that have built-in assumptions about social and economic structure, the relationships between different kinds of people, and so on. If you're running a system inspired by a certain understanding of medieval Europe, and you want it to feel like bronze-age Egypt, you're going to have to change a great deal of it - maybe down to the foundations of character creation. You need a system that emphasizes what matters in that culture.

Spears of the Dawn is a good example of a game just doing "West African-themed D&D" without feeling dramatically different from "anything else-themed D&D." It's hit and miss.

[Vitruviansquid]

Set the scene for your players at the beginning of the campaign or even at the beginning of each session. Think about how storytellers transport an audience to a different time and place at the beginning of a atory.

During play, gently insist that your players use the correct terminology and correct any misconceptions that come up. If the players ask to meet the king in a setting where the king is ceremonial and all real decisions are handled by a council of wise men, suggest that they are actually looking to speak to the council.

[TheYell]

Have them come to a major population center during a festival. That will give you a chance to show off the cuisine, the costume, the religion, the government, the population diversity, the economy, or anything else you want to show off in one fell swoop as it marches past them or as they elbow their way through it. Folklore dances with religious purpose. Civic parades to show obeisance to the authority figure. "Fair food" sold at stalls for odd currencies.

[Honest Tiefling]

Have them come to a major population center during a festival. That will give you a chance to show off the cuisine, the costume, the religion, the government, the population diversity, the economy, or anything else you want to show off in one fell swoop as it marches past them or as they elbow their way through it. Folklore dances with religious purpose. Civic parades to show obeisance to the authority figure. "Fair food" sold at stalls for odd currencies.

You can also sneak in some legends in there, such as the purpose of festivals or references to them in drinking songs. The actual legend itself shouldn't matter (legends popping their head up only to become the problem of the day about an hour later is a bit cliche in my book), but the content. Who are the heroes, how do heroes act, and what do heroes do?

[Knaight]

I disagree with much of what's been said in this thread: choosing different words for the same things won't necessarily make them feel different; once players have figured out that "autarch = king," they may even end up referring to that character as "the king." Using familiar terms communicates more effectively.

Nobody is saying to just alter the words, just that it's among the things you should do. If you use the term "knight" it calls up images of heavily armored mounted warriors that fight predominantly with lances and swords. If you have a distinct concept and use the term "knight" it causes it to feel more familiar than it should.

[Milo v3]

Make sure to work closely with your players during character creation, especially in the "Concept Brainstorming" and "Backstory" stages. That generally can help you highlight what things will be different for that player specifically in how they interact with the setting and can help you figure out what expectations your players might have that you will have to explain have changed that they might not have discerned from however you pitched the setting.

[Yora]

Have them come to a major population center during a festival. That will give you a chance to show off the cuisine, the costume, the religion, the government, the population diversity, the economy, or anything else you want to show off in one fell swoop as it marches past them or as they elbow their way through it. Folklore dances with religious purpose. Civic parades to show obeisance to the authority figure. "Fair food" sold at stalls for odd currencies.

Festivals have always been the greatest mystery for me in RPGs. How are they supposed to work? What is there for the players to do and to interact with? These always seem to me like droning walls of text with often some irrelevant minigames thrown in. That just doesn't seem appealing to me at all.

[Gnoman]

While I rarely have that problem (my players whine about not getting enough walls of text), a major gameplay function of a festival would be to allow the party to interact with NPCs that they normally wouldn't be able to, or to accomplish tasks that would normally draw attention because the crowds mask normally suspicious behavior.

[Darth Ultron]

What can you do as a GM to run adventures in a way that they showcase the setting and feel like things that are specific to it and not generic?

This really is so hard....and the only thing you can really do in just dump the players in the middle of it and let them sink or swim.

You can take hours, days, weeks or years to explain things all you want to the players...but for most it will go in one ear and out the other.

It works best if you avoid the classic stuff, for example don't let the characters meet in a tavern and ''pretend'' to get drunk.


Festivals have always been the greatest mystery for me in RPGs. How are they supposed to work? What is there for the players to do and to interact with? These always seem to me like droning walls of text with often some irrelevant minigames thrown in. That just doesn't seem appealing to me at all.

You just need to think of the festival as an adventure.

Simple games, like target throws are fun...you just need simple homebrew rules like ''highest number hits the bullseye'' and wins a prize. And you can have at least one ''type'' of game for each PC.

Wrestling aka grappling works just fine in the rules as do skill checks to do things.

And to up the fantasy, you can even do things like....ahem....''10000 gold pieces to the one who will spend five rounds in the pit with a summoned demon''.

And you can really, really, go off the walls with things like ''for the next contest you will be polymoprhed into a dog and must hunt down and bring back a sparkled tailed song bird''

And you can add lots of drama....cheating npcs, annoying npc, riged games and so forth.

It can, in all, be a very light hearted...but still fun and deadly game.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

I use musical cues to highlight cultural differences, plus picture references and titles.

For example, I ran a game where the party moved from a Renaissance Europe style setting, where I prepared my soundtrack with lots of (admittedly out-of-place) Baroque music and film music inspired by that period, and referred to the rules as Councillors and had lots of Guild-vs-Guild action - to a desert crossing, where I used lots of middle eastern music and film soundtracks like Kingdom of Heaven - to finally a dark colonial India setting (where the colonists are openly and clearly vile and evil: nothing nuanced about it), where I used almost exclusively the OSTs from Battlestar Galactica, used titles from the British Raj and showed pictures of appropriate architecture and costume.

Currently, I'm running a game of settlement and expansion into a wild hinterland by pseudo-roman colonists - and I'm using Greco-Roman names for everything, banned PC demi-humans entirely, and I'm soundtracking the game with John Ford / Bernstein western soundtracks. It's the frontier, see.

[Zombimode]

Festivals have always been the greatest mystery for me in RPGs. How are they supposed to work? What is there for the players to do and to interact with? These always seem to me like droning walls of text with often some irrelevant minigames thrown in. That just doesn't seem appealing to me at all.

A festival is a great place to interact with a great variety of people. Everyone goes to a festival and probably the social barriers are a bit lowered to. It is generally a place of relaxed happiness.

The appeal is the change of pace from the usual brutal nature of the adventuring life. The appeal is to have your character to experience something "normal" and entertaining for a change. The appeal is to have rich opportunities to interact with lots of people.
Interestingly the reasons for the players to enjoy a festival are rather similar to the reasons why the people in the game world would enjoy the festival.


If, on the other hand, your players just blankly stare at you after being thrown at a festival, maybe they are not all that interested in exploring the setting (or in roleplaying in general) in the first place.

[Yora]

Well, I'm not myself really interested in either doing festivals in my games, nor having them in games that I play. I fail to see the purpose. Just goofing around and killing time? That seems like unnecessary filler to me.

[Zombimode]

I fail to see the purpose. Just goofing around and killing time? That seems like unnecessary filler to me.

Why would you assume that the festival is in no relation the the players goals?
In the end a festival is just a setting. There are numerous reasons why the player characters would go to the festival in the first place other than the entertainment.

But even if the would not be the case, I fail to see how exploring the more "human" side of your character would count as "killing time" and "unnecessary filler".

Compare it the the party scene in Witcher 1. The scene has no bearing on the overarching plot of the game at all. It is nevertheless one of my favorite scenes in the game (or any CRPG).
Or all those OotS strips that have nothing to do with the McGuffin hunt.

[nrg89]

Festivals have always been the greatest mystery for me in RPGs. How are they supposed to work?

Do like action movies do; make an action scene within the social gathering. The scene in The Godfather part II where Vito Corleone assassinates don Fanucci in Little Italy (using the fireworks to drown out a gunshot) gives us a glimpse of Italian American culture. The scene in Spectre where James Bond is having a very big action scene in the middle of a Día de Muertos celebration in Mexico City shows us a nugget of Mexican culture. The scene in The Fugitive where dr. Kimble is blending in to a St. Patrick's Day parade shows us a glimpse of Irish American culture (complete with shots of a green Chicago River). Or the Clock Festival in Back to the Future part III where Marty is on the look out for Mad Dog Tannen who sneaks up on a dancing Doc Brown.

And, as others have said, you can also use it as a backdrop for NPC interaction. Think of when Vito Corleone is meeting constituents during his daughter's wedding in The Godfather part I, the sound of laughter and live band music contrasts with the tension at Vito's desk.

I can't for the love of me find the source but there's a trick movies like to use when they want the audience to be tense but still listen to boring exposition and it's called "bear at the beach". It gets it's name from a film maker who wanted a couple making out and talking at a beach, which is boring, and follow it up with an action scene of a bear fight, which is exciting. His solution was to cut between the couple making out and the bear slowly approaching the beach and now it's a Hollywood staple. Festivals are perfect for "bear at the beach" moments because the background are all chilling and having a great time while the PCs are on the edge, expecting some action soon.

Or, they could just go down there to kill time and play some minigames. Look at how your players respond to it because I know, as a DM it's very boring to watch the PCs interact with stuff you have put no weight in, but if your players think it's time to take a break from the serious stuff and just goof off it's a good thing to include in your game. Your players might think that there's more to their characters than fighting, stealing or punching and in the end your game is just a backdrop for the players. DMs jobs are to make sure their players have fun.

[Yora]

Okay, that makes a lot more sense. I've always only seen festivals in boring adventures that were basically "the PCs go to a festival and have fun looking at the stalls until eventually plot happens again".
Having adventure progress happening at a festival seems much more interesting than making visiting a festival a break in the current activities of the party.

Doesn't James Bond do that all the time? I think about every single movie has some chase scene or assassination in a crowd and it's always some kind of loud colorful event that has nothing to do with the plot. It just looks more interesting on screen than people shopping.

[DigoDragon]

I'd myself draw sketches of art, architecture, dress, that sort of thing, to show my players. I'd also highlight cultural and societal differences from Western Europe in my descriptions of daily life. For example, if in your setting, people ride something other than horses (say, dragons, or terror birds), mention the stables as your players walk by them, and point out the differences in the stables. Matter-of-factly mention that the stablehands are throwing chunks of meat, not putting out bags of oats.

That's a good way of doing things. I built a fantasy setting that took place on the ashes of a destroyed Earth. I was showing my players relevant clips of Thundarr the Barbarian to convey the kind of environment the world was in. Imagery and rich descriptions can be a big deal to get the point across. :D

[Joe the Rat]

Okay, that makes a lot more sense. I've always only seen festivals in boring adventures that were basically "the PCs go to a festival and have fun looking at the stalls until eventually plot happens again".
Having adventure progress happening at a festival seems much more interesting than making visiting a festival a break in the current activities of the party.

Doesn't James Bond do that all the time? I think about every single movie has some chase scene or assassination in a crowd and it's always some kind of loud colorful event that has nothing to do with the plot. It just looks more interesting on screen than people shopping.

You sort of have two directions here, but the core of it is festivals show culture (and local produce, and homecrafts, and technology, and their attitudes towards Foolery...). Wall-o-texting, or dropping cues as they go about "business" ("Oh, the silversmith? He's got a booth over by the snake-eating contest")) is a simple way to snapshot in some culture or culture quirks. nrg89's examples are adventures intersecting with festivals - the party is already doing something - pursuing, hiding, gathering components - and have their path lead them through a large, loud, and colorful (and tasty smelling) obstacle. Maybe you need to navigate through it, maybe you need to navigate it - briefly take part in the quadrille to speak with your contact, get the right costume to blend in, figure out which one is the assassin gunning for the shogun, that sort of thing.

Festivals can take on many of the functions of an inn or tavern. Food, intoxicants, relaxing, opportunities for violence, strangers hiring and weird cue and clues to story threads, uncouth propositions, the whole works. "You all meet at the Blood Festival" would make for a different lead in. (Oh, that's a late fall festival where the locals celebrate a large-scale hunt to provide sufficient meat for the winter. The village roasts an entire Calydon Boar for the big night. You're supposed to dab blood on your face - but avoid 4 markings, that's unlucky.)

Actually, your tavern scene is probably a good place to show off the local flavor without the protracted minigames and shopping trips. What foods and drinks are served (vegetarian vs. mix, what's the grain product and how is it prepared, what do they ferment - or do they have alcohol?). What types of entertainment? Performers (and how they dress), style of music and instruments, tavern games (dwarves don't use throwing axes - the axe is a sacred weapon, not to be thrown for idle sport). How do people dress? What's the material and style of dress for "worker," "businessman," "military/guard," "slumming noble," and "(in)appropriate server attire". What is the architecture - is the building round vs square, is this a permanent structure or looks like it could be packed up, reflecting a nomadic cultural history. Wood or stone or strange processed material? How ornate is the decor - your dive bar can be rough, or it could look like a caravan of Vardos exploded in there. Private tables or communal benches? Individual orders, or pay at the door and partake of the platters. Or do you pay for food? When is the big meal? Are there quest-givers here, or is business verboten at meal time? How do sleeping arrangements work?

Start painting that picture at the first session - wherever the game starts, it starts in a culturally notable time or location.

[LibraryOgre]

You can also have other plot happen during the festival.

Need to meet with a contact? He's at the festival, so you find a time when he's taking a break.

Get your pocket picked? Chase them through the festival crowd.

Have an on-going feud with a member of the guard? You MIGHT duel him, but you could instead challenge him to a game of "Dunk the Chump", where you both strip down and wrestle in a pond, and whoever holds their opponent under for a 10-count wins.

[Darth Ultron]

Well, I'm not myself really interested in either doing festivals in my games, nor having them in games that I play. I fail to see the purpose. Just goofing around and killing time? That seems like unnecessary filler to me.

Yes? A ''Festival Adventure'' is meant to be light and fluffly and fun. They are a good break if you run very serous, mature and intense games...or really just a normal game.


Okay, that makes a lot more sense. I've always only seen festivals in boring adventures that were basically "the PCs go to a festival and have fun looking at the stalls until eventually plot happens again".
Having adventure progress happening at a festival seems much more interesting than making visiting a festival a break in the current activities of the party.

.

Well, you can make the festival the adventure too. Like where the king has a ring of wishes that he gives out as the grand prize. And just having the Pc's compete is adventure enough...but throw in the Really Rottens and you have a classic adventure.

My last festival game had the Pc's get shrunk down to six inches tall and fight a charmed chicken ''for fun''. And the evil baron picked that moment to attack and cause trouble. and the tiny Pc's had to save the day. It was loads of fun for everyone...as it was made to be.

[Jay R]

Write an introduction to the campaign, emphasizing what will be different from other games.

I also recommend making explicit what things the PCs do not know, if the players already have assumptions about them. The introduction to my most recent campaign included the following:

Note: I have a basic idea for PCs, but I urge people to ask for exceptions. Some exceptions I won’t grant because they don’t fit the world, others because they would make a character too powerful. But I am quite comfortable with the idea that every character is an exception to the basic idea.

You will begin as first level characters with very little knowledge of the outside world. Your character is just barely adult – 14 years old. You all know each other well, having grown up in the same tiny village. Everyone in this village grows their own food, and it’s rare to see anybody from outside the village, or anything not made in the village. There is a smith, a village priest, but very few other specialists.

You are friends, even if you choose to have very different outlooks, because almost everybody else in the village, and absolutely everyone else anywhere near your age, are dull villagers, with little imagination.

By contrast, you and your friends sometimes stare down the road, or into the forest, wondering what the world is like.

The world is basically early medieval. You all speak a single language for which you (reasonably) have no name. If you learn another language, you’ll know more about what that means.

It’s a really small village. There are fewer than 100 people living there, which is smaller than it used to be. There are chickens, goats, sheep, a couple of oxen, but no horses or cows.

The village has a single road going out of town to the north and south, and you’ve never been on it. The only travel on it occurs when a few wagons go off to take food to market – and even that hasn’t happened in the last few seasons. Very rarely, a traveler may come through, and spend the night with the priest. You have all greedily listened to any stories these travelers tell. Your parents say this isn’t good for you – what’s here in the village is good enough for you, and all travelers are always liars, anyway.

A stream runs through the village. (This is primarily so you can learn fishing if you desire.) There are also a few wells.

The village is surrounded by a haunted forest nearby. You have occasionally gone a few hundred feet into it on a dare, but no further, and never at night. I will modify this (slightly) for any character who wishes to start as a Druid or Ranger. Nobody gets to know the modification unless they choose one of those classes.

Three times in your lifetime the village has been raided at night from the forest. You were children, and were kept safe in a cellar. Some villagers have died, but by the time you were let out, whatever the attackers were had fled or been buried.

There is very little overlap between the D&D adventurer class “Cleric” and the average priest. Most priests will have about as much magical ability as seen in medieval stories, i.e. no more than anyone else. (If you want to play a cleric, let me know. There’s a way we will handle it, but no player except one with a cleric PC will know about it.)

Similarly, not all thieves are in the Thief class, not all bards are in the Bard class, etc. Most fighters are “0th level”. There might be a fair number of 1st level Fighters; anybody else with levels will be uncommon. If you meet a bard on your travels, he will probably be a singer/harpist with no adventurer skills or class.

There is an old witch at the edge of the village. Your parents disapprove of her, call her a fraud, and are afraid of her. Everybody knows that the crop blight three years ago was because she was mad at the village.

The old folks in the village sometimes talk about how much better it was long ago. There was real travel, and real trade. Nobody knows what happened since.

You have heard many mutually conflicting tales of all kinds of marvelous heroes. You may assume that you have heard of any story of any hero you like – Gilgamesh, Oddysseus, Sigurd, Taliesin, Charlemagne, Lancelot, Robin Hood, Aragorn, Prester John, Baba Yaga, Prince Ōkuninushi, Br’er Rabbit, anyone. The old stories seem to imply that occasionally there have been several Ages of Heroes. Your parents don’t think these tales are good for you. Takes your mind off farming.

DO NOT assume that you know anything about any fantasy creatures. I will re-write many monsters and races, introduce some not in D&D, and eliminate some. The purpose is to make the world strange and mysterious. It will allow (require) PCs to learn, by trial and error, what works. Most of these changes I will not tell you in advance. Here are a couple, just to give you some idea what I mean.

Dragons are not color-coded for the benefits of the PCs.
Of elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, kobolds, goblins, and orcs, at least one does not exist, at least one is slightly different from the books, and at least one is wildly different.
Several monsters have different alignments from the books.
The name of an Undead will not tell you what will or won’t hurt it.
The first time you see a member of a humanoid race, I will describe it as a “vaguely man-shaped creature.” This could be a kobold, an elf, or an Umber Hulk until you learn what they are.



I will answer any reasonable questions about the village and its denizens. You do not know anything that cannot be learned in a backward, isolated village. (And yes, that’s why you’ve grown up semi-isolated.)

You will create your characters by allocating 80 points, with the following conditions.
1. Each stat must be between 3 and 18.
2. Any points over 16 will cost double. (So a 17 costs 18 points, and an 18 costs 20 points.)
3. You may only have one 18, and only two 17+.
4. I strongly urge you not to have a “dump stat”. An extremely low stat will affect what you can do.

Your character is way behind the average starting D&D character in knowledge of the world. I am making up for that by giving each PC one 3E Feat (see below), and one unusual starting item you would normally not have at the start of a game. This item must be justified by the character, and must be acceptable to me. For instance, a Wizard could start the game with a familiar. A Bard could have a well-made harp. Somebody with Animal Training could have a trained dog already (but not a horse or bird of prey.) A fighter might have a boomerang as one weapon. Come up with something fun, useful, and unusual, but not outrageous. It won’t be a magic item, but it could be something rare. [It is not armor. Your village can produce leather, studded leather, brigandine, or scale armor, but not chain or plate.]

Specific rules. Reasonable exceptions to these rules are allowed, within certain bounds. I won’t necessarily explain the bounds to you. (If I plan to have you carried off by Vikings, I won’t tell you why your character can’t speak Old Norse, for instance.) Ask for exceptions. Your character should be an exception to the general rules in some way, and I’m prepared to modify PC rules to let you play something unique. I want you to have a character you will enjoy, but who won’t mess up my plans or overshadow the other characters.

1. All characters are human. If you want an exception, talk to me. We have to find a way for the non-human to fit into my plans for the start of the campaign, which I will not tell you. (For instance, you don’t know what races exist.) To reduce the negative impact of this rule, if your real goal is to multi-class, your human character may do so.

2. It will be possible for your character to get started within the village, so if you wish to be, for instance, a druid, there will be an older druid of some sort nearby. Tell me your plans, and I will arrange any necessary mentor or other resource.

3. You may choose any 2E class. If you want a class from another version, let me know, and we’ll try to work it out. (You can’t be a barbarian, because you grew up in a village. But if you wish to be a sorcerer, I will create a 2E-compliant sorcerer class.) If you want something that’s consistent with medieval fantasy but isn’t a standard D&D class, let’s talk. I want you to play the unusual (human) character that you’ve never been able to play before.

4. Whatever the character class you choose, your teachers or mentors weren’t high level, and can only get you started.

5. Spellcasters will start with only four spells, of which you will choose two and I will choose two. The two I choose for wizards will be Read Magic and Detect Magic. The two for Clerics will be Cure Light Wounds and Detect Evil. Initial spells must come from the Players Handbook. Unusual spells from other sources may be available later, but you didn’t learn them in your village. Necromantic spells are also not allowed at the start of the game.

6. Wizards will learn three new spells at each level, and will have other ways to develop them. Clerics will learn a new spell each adventure, and will have other ways to learn them. (Yes, they come from your god. But you have to know what to ask for, and how to use it. It’s a much easier process than for wizards, who must learn them from scratch.)

7. A cleric must choose a deity. This will be the deity who grants you spells. It will have a minor effect on the spells you get, but not much. The deity can be chosen from any pantheon. (Except Lovecraft!) Any other player may opt to choose a deity as well. A druid must choose a nature god. I’ll be loose in the definition of a nature god.

8. A Priest or Druid can choose to be a standard Priest or Druid, or you can ask for specific differences based on your god. I will be quite lenient here, as long as it makes sense. If you do this, however, I reserve the right to make some other specific strictures which you might or might not know about at the start.

9. None of you know anything about what happens to high-level characters. For instance, Druids may ignore everything in the PHB about the Druid Organization. There just aren’t that many high-level people in the world. We will use most of what the rulebooks say about followers and strongholds, but some of it will be modified. For one thing, not all creatures on the Ranger follower chart even exist. The thief follower table is also inconsistent with the world. Player desires will be encouraged. When we get to that point, be prepared to negotiate for something you would prefer.

10. All starting equipment will be things that can be produced in a small isolated village. You may have a spear, axe, sword or bow, but not an atl-atl, fancy crossbow, etc., unless it’s your unusual item. There may be exceptions. Ask for something you want.

11. Your character has (at least) one specific food-producing Non-Weapon Proficiency – farmer, swineherd, shepherd, etc.

12. Men and women are different in this period. All women will have at least one Non-Weapon Proficiency of sewing, cooking or embroidery, or some such, and all men will have leatherwork, woodwork, smith, or some equivalent. You don’t have to care about it, but that’s life in a small village. I urge the party as a whole to have sewing, leatherwork, and blacksmithing, just to repair clothes and armor. Otherwise, I’ll have to track any damage done. Similarly, if you don’t have a fletcher, I will count arrows.

13. All non-weapon proficiencies must be learnable in an isolated village, or from travelers’ tales. If you want an exception, come up with a justification. I respect good rationalizations. (Obvious examples include learning Latin from the village priest, astrology from a traveler, or herbalism from the witch.)

14. If you want a non-weapon proficiency that cannot be learned in the village, you may allocate the slot for it, and you will have a very rudimentary version of it, that will grow to the standard level with experience. That slot indicates that it’s a skill your character cares about, and pursues whenever possible. For instance, if you take Etiquette, then you will know how to behave in a village. If you get to an army garrison, you will quickly observe and learn military etiquette. Spend much time in a market, and you will learn how to behave in trade. If a noblewoman goes by, you will learn a little about how she acts, and about how people treat her. Skills for which this would be necessary include Spellcraft, Riding, Survival, Etiquette, etc. Feel free to take the skills you want. I’ll see that you learn them soon. This is to allow your characters to learn and grow quickly, and to have the full range of NWPs available. I urge each player to have one or two of these.

15. You grew up in a small village surrounded by an unexplored forest. There are wild animals and worse in the forest, and you have trained with at least one simple weapon. For this reason, your character can use your choice of a spear, short bow or short sword, regardless of character class. (You must choose one. Your character cannot use more than one of them unless both are allowed to his or her class.)

16. I intend to give each character a single 3E Feat. It will be chosen to be one that will make a first level character more usable and unique. If you aren’t interested in learning the 3E Feats – don’t worry. I’ll assign one that will be useful, and explain how it works. If you are interested in the rules, feel free to make a request. If it’s reasonable and doesn’t interfere with plans that you don’t know about, I’ll allow it. Toughness is not available. The goal of the Feat is not to make your character more generally competent, but to make him or her more competent in one specific area, to improve specific skills, or to have a unique option most people don’t have.

I repeat – ask for exceptions to these rules. I want you to play what you want, and to have an unusual character. For instance, if you have a character idea that can’t work if you grew up in a small village, talk to me, and we’ll try to make it fit in – but it might mean that you miss the first half of the first adventure. If you have some cool idea for something your character wants to start off with, let’s discuss it. I might say no, or have it replace the Feat or the unusual item, or just grant the exception.