AdversusVeritas
2007-07-30, 02:48 PM
I’ve been reading Harry Potter and playing Psychonauts and Fable on Xbox , which has me thinking of a new game I want to run. The PCs will be young, probably only 15 or so, and they will be starting off as apprentice level (from the DMG 3.0) while attending a sort of adventurer’s school. The students are going to get assigned to adventuring parties and have to complete so many hours of adventuring before advancing to the next grade.
The only thing I'm borrowing from Harry Potter is the idea of houses. Each house will be devoted to a different philosophy of adventuring: one teaches that the purpose of adventuring is self-perfection (basically min/maxers), another that the purpose is to serve your alignment, another that the purpose is to inspire others to greatness, another that the purpose is exploration and discovery, and another teaches that only adventurers have proven themselves worthy to be leaders in society.
Now, the really fun thing is that none of the players so far have chosen to play an arcane caster. Even better, OOC they really don’t know much about arcane spells at all. I’m not planning on using this to screw them over, but I think it would be fun to give them a few surprises. For example, during the first adventure I think they are going to try to sneak our of their rooms after hours, and the schoolmaster’s prying eyes (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/pryingEyes.htm) roaming the hallways will give them in a panic both IC and OOC (I’ll probably fudge their hide roll and the PCs’ spot checks so that they can catch sight of them). They will probably assume that they are some sort of monster.
Does anyone have more suggestions for the game in general, or for fun arcane spells to mess with their heads? Should I do anything to update the apprentice-level rules for 3.5?
The only thing I'm borrowing from Harry Potter is the idea of houses. Each house will be devoted to a different philosophy of adventuring: one teaches that the purpose of adventuring is self-perfection (basically min/maxers), another that the purpose is to serve your alignment, another that the purpose is to inspire others to greatness, another that the purpose is exploration and discovery, and another teaches that only adventurers have proven themselves worthy to be leaders in society.
Now, the really fun thing is that none of the players so far have chosen to play an arcane caster. Even better, OOC they really don’t know much about arcane spells at all. I’m not planning on using this to screw them over, but I think it would be fun to give them a few surprises. For example, during the first adventure I think they are going to try to sneak our of their rooms after hours, and the schoolmaster’s prying eyes (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/pryingEyes.htm) roaming the hallways will give them in a panic both IC and OOC (I’ll probably fudge their hide roll and the PCs’ spot checks so that they can catch sight of them). They will probably assume that they are some sort of monster.
Does anyone have more suggestions for the game in general, or for fun arcane spells to mess with their heads? Should I do anything to update the apprentice-level rules for 3.5?