Slow and RP focused game ideas

[frost890]

I am going to start a campaign for some players that want to focus more on the RP/fluff aspects of the game. So I am looking for advice of running a more fluff adventure. I seem to be drawing a blank on what kinds of "challenges" to throw there way. I want it to be more sandbox then simply hack-n-slash. Once things are started I can usually work things out but it is the beginning that always gets me.

[Hellpyre]

Just a few ideas in no particular order:

Convince the new settlers to move off of the place they are building a house - it has some significance beyond their ken.

*Discover why the paladin of Pelor has been killing beggars, and why he hasn't fallen from grace because of it.

*The church of Olidammara wants your party to try and test the defenses of their new vault; break in without being caught and you'll be well rewarded.

*The vizier and the king disagree on how to deal with mounting border tension. Try to work out the best solution and bring them around.

*A rite of ascension for godhood is being attempted. Try to track down the details so you can stop it before the celestial balance shifts.

*End farmer MacGregor and butcher Smith's longstanding fued.

[Lapak]

Take this advice and respin the plots of standard D&D adventures by making (most of) the villains reformable if the PCs are willing to explore their motivations and try. The first half of the post explains why he constructed his own setting the way he did, and the back half is a minor reworking is Keep on the Borderlands that turns it into a ‘talk-em-up’ rather than a kick-down-the-doors-and-kill-the-monsters.

http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2016/06/romantic-fantasy-revisited-4-so-what.html?m=1

[Florian]

I am going to start a campaign for some players that want to focus more on the RP/fluff aspects of the game. So I am looking for advice of running a more fluff adventure. I seem to be drawing a blank on what kinds of "challenges" to throw there way. I want it to be more sandbox then simply hack-n-slash. Once things are started I can usually work things out but it is the beginning that always gets me.

Have you thought about using the subsystems introduced in Ultimate Intrigue and Ultimate Wilderness? Maybe use the modified downtime rules?

A minor problem when trying for more "fluff/rp" with Pathfinder is that, unlike combat, there're fewer mechanics to fall back onto and in pure "ok, just role-play it, folks!"-situations, some players will always have trouble finding out what to do or be overshadowed by other players. Using a bit more mechanical framework can actually help both sides.

Pick a city in a region that still has a bit of "frontier"-feeling, different cultures and an uneasy truth the the monsters out there. Varisia and Ustalav are good places to start looking, with the varisians, sczarni, taldan culture, while at the same time having the old runelords or whispering tyrant out there.
(I´m skipping the advanced methods for sandbox building, like r-maps)

Talk with your players to make characters that fit in with the chosen location. For ex., Ustalav has the sleepless detectives, archetypes and class features tied to the lepidstadt academy.

- Find out why a family line is cursed.
- A changeling Paladin fears she begins to hear the "Call" and is starting to lose her faith.
- A tribe of werewolves acts unusually docile. Why is that?

[Crake]

Instead of having "a plot", make the game entirely sandbox, and let the players drive the game forward. This ensures that the players need to talk to people to further their agendas, to gain information to keep them informed, to seek out adventure through roleplay. It also ensures that the players do exactly as much roleplay vs adventuring as they want, just make sure to give out xp for roleplay rewards so the players don't feel like killing monsters is the most efficient way to level.

[frost890]

Thanks and sorry for the delay in responding. Life gets hectic at times.

[Oracle71]

I would suggest taking a look at the Birthright(TM) campaign setting (the original 2E version for ideas, and the 3E conversion for mechanics). The whole point of the setting is to add empire building and political intrigue into the D&D system, and it is far more reliant on RPing and skills than most other campaign worlds.

[NomGarret]

This is the kind of game where it’s even more important to have characters invested in the setting. Encourage your players to make characters with long-running personal objectives, and they’ll hopefully make a set of plots themselves. Your job is putting together obstacles to that end.

[Yahzi]

I want it to be more sandbox then simply hack-n-slash. If you want sandbox, you could download this app (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/217951/Sandbox-World-Generator), generate an entire continent complete with kingdoms, rulers, and armies, and then lay politics on top of that. Here (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/224658/Scorpus--The-Stinging-Sea)is an example of its output, after some creative editing.

If it's politics you're after, but without adding new mechanics, you might be interested in Lords of Prime (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/217953/Lords-of-Prime).