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View Full Version : Need some World-Tweaking advice. (Casa Thorn players please stay out)



Warchon
2019-10-26, 02:06 AM
Preface: Anyone at my upcoming table, Casa Thorn, if you stumble into this thread please exit now as this contains spoilers. Hestus, Ozzy and Kaylee I'm looking at you.





Okay, now that I've cleared out my players.

I'm a newbie DM who has offered to run a one-shot or brief campaign while our usual DM is adjusting to some life changes. I'm going to be running a game in the Wendy's TTRPG setting, chosen for simplicity and novelty. I've managed to walk my players through character generation without tipping them off to what we're actually playing, as I want it to be a surprise.
The ruleset is essentially a pared down 5e, like D&D with training wheels. My difficulty comes from some players who have chosen dark and gritty background stories. I'm happy to customize the setting to fit, but I'm at a loss at how to deal with my healer and could use advice.

The player nicknamed his character "Redsleeves," and envisions her often elbow deep in gore in plying her trade. The dissonance comes from the way healing and hp work in this world.
HP stands for Hunger Points, and downed characters are "incapacitated with hunger." Healing is literally handled with on the fly snacking. This is hard to defend, since monsters still use the standard claw and bite attacks, or wield giant cutlery to bash you with, but that's how it's written.
The player already knows that he's getting an alerted version of his requested Goddess Mishakal (Feed the Hungry, as opposed to Heal the Injured) but doesn't know the details. I could similarly reorient his justification for his nickname in the same manner--a zealous food-mage, her sleeves are often drenched in ketchup and other sauces--but while the Goddess change is a lateral step, this feels more like entirely hijacking the intent of the character.
Gently reminding him that he's already been informed his healing is (essentially) magical, not surgical, is on the table, but I'd prefer to accommodate him if I can, as I have encouraged chat-based interplayer roleplay in the process of prep, and as a result he like several others is quite invested in his character, and I want to reward his interesting character concept.

So far I haven't come up with a compromise that doesn't feel like a stretch even for the intentionally ridiculous premise of the gameworld, so I am seeking thoughts from the community. The priorities I'd like to emphasize are:

Letting the player hold onto his core character concept.
Maintaining the general narrative that HP damage is simply a measure of how hungry you are.


On a side note, I expect that this thread will tempt folks to weigh in with endorsements or criticism of either the game or the restaurant, but I ask that those comments be held for use elsewhere, as other threads already exist for that discussion.


Edit: I've offered to let the player simply have the fluff that his character is known as a field medic, but let him know that it won't influence anything in combat. I'll see how that goes over.
I'll most likely add or change an encounter at some point to let him resolve a situation using these skills so he can feel like it mattered.
I've already done something similar with a player who wanted to be a wealthy Lord, just by letting him know his riches would not trickle into the gameplay, so it seems fair.

foobar1969
2019-11-22, 10:37 PM
You posted 4 weeks ago, so I'm guessing you already played. How did it go?

I always recommend using some version of the RPG Same Page Tool (https://www.google.com/search?q=RPG+Same+Page+Tool) before starting a new game world.