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View Full Version : Adapting a Main Character-Driven Video Game to a DnD Campaign Part 2: Getting There



aadder
2021-03-23, 08:09 AM
Hello everyone,

So after working out several things regarding characters in my previous thread, i'd like to ask a question about settings. Specifically, how do you get characters to a setting that doesn't canonically exist in connection to established DnD materials?

In the campaign i'm writing, i'm setting it in an adapted world that obviously is non-canon with Forgotten Realms and other related media, so i'm trying to figure out how to get the player characters there. I'm okay with having one or two of them be of the universe's setting, but any more than that and we have a problem because then i have to invent more places for them to have been from, more things for them to have been doing, and give them plot for later, because i intend to have them travel kind of all over the world.

I would ordinarily have some kind of "a wizard did it" explanation, like a portal or teleportation or something, but that runs into problems because magic doesnt' work like that in my setting. It would create the two-fold problem of my PC's having to know how they got there in intimate detail, but then also have to run that through the NPCs who might interact with them. After all, who wouldn't want to know about portals and teleportation magic? So i'm trying to avoid that if i can. I feel like i've kind of written myself into a bad position.

How do you generally get people places when the mechanics of the world don't work? I get the feeling i might have to just make them all from this world, but that seems like a lot of work as well.

Civis Mundi
2021-03-23, 10:25 AM
It's pretty rare around my table to use an established setting, and I know that's not an uncommon practice. I'd just make them all from the world, though I'd be an active participant in their character creation process to make sure they don't get lost. As they get excited about their concept, you can offer options of where they might be from, and so tie them into the setting. Having people from around the world also gives you reason to go to their places of origin. You might also drop other little bits of world information that are pertinent to their character, like the source of magic and any homebrew stipulations on it.

If the world requires explanation, I'd try to make sure you can summarize everything the players need to know about the world in one page. If you can't make it fit, condense more by asking what really needs to be known now, and what can be discovered later. Over time, the players will learn about the world by osmosis, and by asking questions. There's not an inherent expectation for players to understand the setting in depth anyway, even if it's the Forgotten Realms -- History/Arcana/Nature/Religion rolls will also help reveal the world over time.

False God
2021-03-23, 08:55 PM
If a wizard ain't good enough to do it, a god did it.

Alternately the whole of reality is collapsing and random bits of random realities are randomly overlapping at random times randomly depositing people from World A into World B.

Perhaps World B can be teleported to but because magic works funky on World B it is notoriously hard to get there (often by accident and more often you arrive as swiss-cheese), and the standard methods of magic won't help you get back in the slightest. So the locals don't care that you know how teleportation works because your form of teleportation doesn't work there.

If you intend to have them travel all over the world then it sounds like you need to invent the whole world anyway. Allowing players to "add" elements (within reason) about their homelands can be a great way to speed along your development of the world. Suddenly you're not responsible for the whole thing, now you're crowd-sourcing it and you may be given interesting bits that you'd never have thought of.

Of course you could just tell them NO and make them all be from the same town. Like, I just started a WoD game that is set in WoD-IRL, and we're all required to play characters who come from the town we live in (we're all in the same town).

Anonymouswizard
2021-03-24, 06:53 AM
There's more to the world then the game shows, let the players fill it in.

Sometimes that won't work, if I'm running a game based off of Shin Megami Tensei IV then the only places characters can come from are Tokyo and Mikado, and for the first part of the game one or the other might be off limits for PCs. But I could work with players to develop a district left out of the game's version of Tokyo or a new region of Mikado (this is pretty easy, most of Mikado is undefined and so we mostly need a name and what the town/village does).

Take an idea from Fate, when creating characters players can just say where they're from or what organisation they belong to and that's true even if it didn't exist before. The characters all come from a landlocked country but Clare wants to play a sailor? As long as the game hasn't started the map changes to include a coastline!

Here I presume that you want them all to come from different locations and the game doesn't have enough locales to do that? Then let them make some up! Ask them where they come from, what the name of their village is (revision naming conventions if it won't give the game away), and what that village farms and/or produces.

And if you're worried about redundant villages, eh, either ask for characters to come from places that are renowned for more specific things (say a town famous for chairs), accept that real life is messy enough to make it realistic, or realise that it's only a game and as such these things don't matter. Who cares if a nation consisting of two cities and a coal mine has sixteen different marital arts colleges dedicated to the bill?

Alternatively if it's about not being certain of they'll read the campaign brief, keep it short, start with the information they need to create their characters and use leftover space for information their characters will know, and let players know that more information is available.


I mean sure, you could throw in characters from another setting via a wizard/god/angel/devil/astral squid did it. But there's no reason to not just let every character to be from the setting and expand to fit.

Quertus
2021-03-24, 08:19 AM
The easiest answer is that they're all from the world. Or so you'd think, given how much pushback I get from my general concept of "not from around here".

The question is, why? What is the *purpose* of their point of origin?

From the world, they should understand the world, and have connections to it. Not from the world, they should get to Explore the world, and form connections.

What work do you want to do? Do you want to put forth the effort to explain everything to the players up front, and catch their errors when they do something that no reasonable person from that world would do "are you sure you want to touch the stove - you know stoves are hot - and pants aren't normally worn on your head", or do you want to do the work of explaining the world in game in an enjoyable way ("the strange metal box has 4 spirals on top, like coiled snakes. 3 are dark against its surface, but the fourth is a glowing red. There is raised surface on the back of the box, with 6 knobs, and a handle on the front of the box.")?

Do you want to do the work ahead of time of creating all their childhood friends, relatives, and other connections to the world, or the work of creating NPCs for them to form connections to?

What do you want to do? Where do you want their focus to be?

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To answer the question in the way you likely intended… iirc, Toril has had whole continents come and go; a (12th level?) World Walker complained about Krynn because it was *harder* to leave than most other official settings. Spelljamming ships can take even low-level characters most anywhere. Magical places of power, freak accidents, or "a Wizard did it" also trivially answer this question.