Yora
2016-11-13, 09:41 AM
I am currently in the home stretch of preparing my next campaign, which is a mash of three adventures from early first to late third edition and some videogame levels taking place in the same town at the same time. And before I go to statting the NPCs, building the encounters, and redrawing the dungeons, I want to give the whole setup a nice Sword & Sorcery makeover in the spirit of Robert Howard, Michael Moorcok, Clark Ashton Smith, and Karl Wagner. (And of course some others.)
What do you think of these ideas and do you have more to add?
Races and Classes: I think all the options in 5th edition are fine for PCs and NPCs. Halflings and paladins aren't like anything you'd encounter in most classic Sword & Sorcery tales, but as long ss they are not played as goody two shoes with a stick up their butt or kenders, I think it's fine. Regis in the first Driz'zt books (which were very much Sword & Sorcery) worked fine and in the Witcher game the knight Siegfried was basically a Paladin who fit right in hunting monsters in the sewers or leading assaults against elven guerilla camps.
I would recommend that all PCs are listed as unaligned, so the players just go with the flow and don't feel like they have to stick to specific behaviors, but with the negligible mechanical impact of alignment and no way to identify the alignment of NPCs it shouldn't be any real problem to keep it.
Maximum Level: I think that the higher level spells of D&D don't fit with Sword & Sorcery. There are two options to deal with that. Either cap all PCs and NPCs at 10th level and allow no further progress, or if you want to run a longer campaign with even more powerful PCs remove all the spells from 6th to 9th level from the spell lists. Since many spells can be used to greater effect with higher level slots, spellcasters above 10th level still increase their magic power and of course also the amount of spells per day. (You could also put the cap at 8th/4th level or 12th/6th level if you want the cutoff point higher or lower.)
Resting: I really would stick with the standard rules for resting and not use the variant for slower rests. Sword & Sorcery tends to be on the grittier side of fantasy but in practice the heroes always get only minor scratches and keep going without a care. I think the quick recovery of short and long rests fits that style really well, especially when there is no cleric or druid in the party. I can't really think of any Sword & Sorcery story where the hero has to sneak around in the shadows because he's too weakened by his injuries to fight. Conan gets badly hurt once, but he first kills all the remaining enemies before he has to sit down and by that point the adventure is completed.
Giant Animals: Even though they are not terribly common in most stories, few things scream Sword & Sorcery to me like giant reptiles and giant insects. Probably because they are mostly unheared of in other types of fantasy. Huge bears, tigers, and apes are also great and similarly rare in other fantasy. In addition to giant sized normal animals, 5th edition also has ankhegs, behirs, bullets, carrion crawlers, owlbears, remorhazes, and wyverns which are also all very nice fits.
Monstrous Humanoids: There are good number of really bestial humanoids in the monster manual like ettercaps, ghouls, gnolls, harpies, hags, minotaurs, yuan-ti, and also grimlocks. I would mostly rely on these for humanoid opponents instead of the usual goblins and orcs which are still very humanlike in both appearance and behavior.
Dens of Debauchery: I think for Sword & Sorcery the taverns need to have a strong character and be given a good amount of detail that goes beyond "table, beds, barkeeper". Taverns are were a great amount or even majority of social interactions will take place and are the best location to show off the rowdy life of adventurers and scoundrels. Taverns or the halls of kings and warlords should be presented as loud and crowded and stuff should be happening there. NPCs spying on the party or trying to steal from them or attempt assasinations, and of course the occasional bar fight. Taverns should not feel like the game menu screen.
Weird Dungeon Architecture: Almost all dungeons I've seen in fantasy RPGs feel very much like being either castles, abandoned basements, or military bases with natural cave walls. For Sword & Sorcery this is not enough. Sometimes the adventure does lead the party into a normal castle or a well maintained prison, but most of the time, dungeons in Sword & Sorcery are magical and unnatural places that have only passing resemblance to the normal world outside. Even when they are small they are Mythic Underworlds. In my own campaign, which is a very animistic world with lots of spirits, I actually make the entrances to these dungeons portals into the Spiritworld.
There's probably a huge range of options to do that which someone could write a book about. (Note to self.)
Uncertain Outer Planes: Even though Planescape is great and could be seen as Sword & Sorcery in its own quirky way, I think the standard outer planes of D&D don't really work with a more mainstream kind of Sword & Sorcery, particularly the good planes. Everything from Pandemonium to Gehenna could work really well, but being able to open a gate and walk among the gods and angels in Elysium and Celestia just doesn't fit a Sword & Sorcery game.
One approach that I could see working quite well would be to have Heaven and the Hells to be very different in nature and not be analogous and matching opposites of each other. Heaven can be an unknown place unreachable by mortal magic while the hells are open to visitors and demons very willing to answer mortals and listen to their offers of bargains. Or if you want to go down that route, there could be no Heaven, only numerous Hells.
In my campaign the only two other planes are the Spiritworld (Feywild) and the Void (Astral), which can not be visited but is the home of demons.
Few Magic Items: Sword & Sorcery heroes rarely carry more than one or two magical items with them and often don't have any enchanted weapons or armor at all. If they have something it's usually protective items that directly counter specific abilities of magical creatures. And alchemy. Lots of alchemy. If you want to give players a good amount of magical help in a Sword & Sorcery campaign, go nuts with potions.
What do you think of these ideas and do you have more to add?
Races and Classes: I think all the options in 5th edition are fine for PCs and NPCs. Halflings and paladins aren't like anything you'd encounter in most classic Sword & Sorcery tales, but as long ss they are not played as goody two shoes with a stick up their butt or kenders, I think it's fine. Regis in the first Driz'zt books (which were very much Sword & Sorcery) worked fine and in the Witcher game the knight Siegfried was basically a Paladin who fit right in hunting monsters in the sewers or leading assaults against elven guerilla camps.
I would recommend that all PCs are listed as unaligned, so the players just go with the flow and don't feel like they have to stick to specific behaviors, but with the negligible mechanical impact of alignment and no way to identify the alignment of NPCs it shouldn't be any real problem to keep it.
Maximum Level: I think that the higher level spells of D&D don't fit with Sword & Sorcery. There are two options to deal with that. Either cap all PCs and NPCs at 10th level and allow no further progress, or if you want to run a longer campaign with even more powerful PCs remove all the spells from 6th to 9th level from the spell lists. Since many spells can be used to greater effect with higher level slots, spellcasters above 10th level still increase their magic power and of course also the amount of spells per day. (You could also put the cap at 8th/4th level or 12th/6th level if you want the cutoff point higher or lower.)
Resting: I really would stick with the standard rules for resting and not use the variant for slower rests. Sword & Sorcery tends to be on the grittier side of fantasy but in practice the heroes always get only minor scratches and keep going without a care. I think the quick recovery of short and long rests fits that style really well, especially when there is no cleric or druid in the party. I can't really think of any Sword & Sorcery story where the hero has to sneak around in the shadows because he's too weakened by his injuries to fight. Conan gets badly hurt once, but he first kills all the remaining enemies before he has to sit down and by that point the adventure is completed.
Giant Animals: Even though they are not terribly common in most stories, few things scream Sword & Sorcery to me like giant reptiles and giant insects. Probably because they are mostly unheared of in other types of fantasy. Huge bears, tigers, and apes are also great and similarly rare in other fantasy. In addition to giant sized normal animals, 5th edition also has ankhegs, behirs, bullets, carrion crawlers, owlbears, remorhazes, and wyverns which are also all very nice fits.
Monstrous Humanoids: There are good number of really bestial humanoids in the monster manual like ettercaps, ghouls, gnolls, harpies, hags, minotaurs, yuan-ti, and also grimlocks. I would mostly rely on these for humanoid opponents instead of the usual goblins and orcs which are still very humanlike in both appearance and behavior.
Dens of Debauchery: I think for Sword & Sorcery the taverns need to have a strong character and be given a good amount of detail that goes beyond "table, beds, barkeeper". Taverns are were a great amount or even majority of social interactions will take place and are the best location to show off the rowdy life of adventurers and scoundrels. Taverns or the halls of kings and warlords should be presented as loud and crowded and stuff should be happening there. NPCs spying on the party or trying to steal from them or attempt assasinations, and of course the occasional bar fight. Taverns should not feel like the game menu screen.
Weird Dungeon Architecture: Almost all dungeons I've seen in fantasy RPGs feel very much like being either castles, abandoned basements, or military bases with natural cave walls. For Sword & Sorcery this is not enough. Sometimes the adventure does lead the party into a normal castle or a well maintained prison, but most of the time, dungeons in Sword & Sorcery are magical and unnatural places that have only passing resemblance to the normal world outside. Even when they are small they are Mythic Underworlds. In my own campaign, which is a very animistic world with lots of spirits, I actually make the entrances to these dungeons portals into the Spiritworld.
There's probably a huge range of options to do that which someone could write a book about. (Note to self.)
Uncertain Outer Planes: Even though Planescape is great and could be seen as Sword & Sorcery in its own quirky way, I think the standard outer planes of D&D don't really work with a more mainstream kind of Sword & Sorcery, particularly the good planes. Everything from Pandemonium to Gehenna could work really well, but being able to open a gate and walk among the gods and angels in Elysium and Celestia just doesn't fit a Sword & Sorcery game.
One approach that I could see working quite well would be to have Heaven and the Hells to be very different in nature and not be analogous and matching opposites of each other. Heaven can be an unknown place unreachable by mortal magic while the hells are open to visitors and demons very willing to answer mortals and listen to their offers of bargains. Or if you want to go down that route, there could be no Heaven, only numerous Hells.
In my campaign the only two other planes are the Spiritworld (Feywild) and the Void (Astral), which can not be visited but is the home of demons.
Few Magic Items: Sword & Sorcery heroes rarely carry more than one or two magical items with them and often don't have any enchanted weapons or armor at all. If they have something it's usually protective items that directly counter specific abilities of magical creatures. And alchemy. Lots of alchemy. If you want to give players a good amount of magical help in a Sword & Sorcery campaign, go nuts with potions.