Scalenex
2022-10-04, 04:29 PM
I got an exciting adventure planned with some human adventurers visiting dwarf lands.
I'm reasonably satisfied with the action encounters I have planned. The short version is the adventurers are going to track down and rescue a proverbial dwarf prince or princess through monster infested tunnels before cannibal cultists ritually eat said hostage at a ritual time. Long story is below, but I don't really need advice on the action, I need advice on the non-action scenes.
I'm betting there is probably an existing thread somewhere on this forum full of tips for roleplaying dwarves.
I've been running a solo campaign for my friend for a long time, I guess Baldur's Gate style. His character, Kormatin, is the star but he's got three NPC sidekicks that he controls during combat. I control his sidekicks in non-combat situations.
Anyway we recently completed a very long running story arc, so me and buddy were pondering "What do we do next?"
For a while we've been running non-canon random combat scenarios to playtest new rules and monsters (and since it's non-canon we can reverse character death). We were about to do some non-canon fights with rescuing a hostage from Morlocks while fending off random various subterranean monsters and we thought "Why don't we do this for real?"
The basic adventure is that the heroes need to rescue a dwarf prince or princess before cannibals ritualistically eat said prince or princess at a specific ritual date to provide a ticking clock. To track down the cannibals, the heroes have to rely on a captive Gollum-esque villain as a guide and said guide is looking to betray them at every turn.
In my world, I got something called "Cannibal Sickness" (https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/cannibal-sickness-condition). People who regularly engage in cannibalism grow stronger and uglier but they also get corrupted by an addiction to mortal flesh. Human cannibals become ogres. Dwarf cannibals become morlocks. Orc cannibals become wendigo. Goblin cannibals become Bugbears. Gnome cannibals become ollums. A homebrew creature based heavily on Gollum from LOTR but since they are gnomes, the "g" is silent.
Cannibals who are also arcane spell casters are called skin changer witches (https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/skin-changer-witches-condition), based loosely on real world Cherokee folklore. They use ritual cannibalism to gain in mystical power. Once in a while, skin changer witches get a vision I need to eat someone who has ______ traits in order to reach my next level of power. "I need to someone with royal blood" "I need to eat a seventh son of a seventh son" "I need to eat a wise sage." You get the idea.
Between the heroes and the cannibals are a bunch of unaligned random subterranean monsters.
So we worked backwards. "Why would the dwarves send three humans and a gnome to save their prince rather than a party of dwarves?"
We came up with two good reasons. Kormatin is a holy warrior in a religious order that the dwarves respect. Second Kormatin is actually specifically trained to track and kill evil wizards, and recently killed a very powerful ogre skin changer witch. That would make him a good candidate to hunt down and kill a morlock skin changer witch. Perhaps with a dwarf ranger to act as a guide, since Kormatin and his party are lacking in wilderness skills, especially in foreign environments.
But continuing to work backwards we need to get Kormatin and his allies into dwarf lands. It's a little heavy handed but Kormatin saved an oracle's life in the last story arc, so I'm going to have the oracle make a vague prophecy he spends the winter with his dwarf friends. Because oracles making vague prophecies that essentially "go this place and you find find clues leading to a grand adventure" is a thing I do.
I like to separate my action scenes with roleplaying political scenes and we just had a lot of intense action scenes so it's time to calm things down with some peaceful Roleplay intensive sessions before we drop another action bomb.
Before Kormatin and Company go off to rescue a dwarf prince/princess from evil wizards and monsters, I want to have Kormatin hang out with the dwarves and hopefully grow to care about them before having to rescue a few of them.
he PC leader Kormatin is also trying to recruit political allies. His homeland of Fumaya is staring down the imminent invasion of a stronger unprovoked enemy nation to the south.
To the west, is the dwarf nation. The dwarfs are sympathetic to Fumaya but they aren't eager to contribute soldiers. At this point they are selling Fumaya weapons and armor at a discount. At this point Kormatin is trying to convince them to do more.
So far, I have been gently criticized that while my roleplaying the NPC cast has been generally good and that my human NPCs from different nations and social classes feel distinct and memorable
Via constructive criticism, I was told that my dwarf NPCs have not acted much different from my human NPCs. So far, the PCs have only interacted with dwarves who have been living in human lands for a long period of time, but now they are going to meet a bunch of dwarves in dwarf lands, so I they should be dwarfier.
How do I make interactions with dwarves feel dwarfy (without giving them cartoony Scottish accents). How does the dwarf Charisma penalty manifest in dice-less roleplaying? How do I combine the broad concepts that A) these dwarves are a little xenophobic by nature but also B) they are not hermits and they actual have reason to be fond of and polite to Kormatin and his allies due to their shared religious ties and Kormatin's past actions that indirectly aided them.
A while back, I created this system of charts to create distinctive dwarf clans (https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/dwarf-clan-generator-article).
I figured there are about 80 to 100 clans. I made profiles for the five richest/most prestigious clan and one minor clan that I pull a lot of important NPCs from. If I need to fill in the blanks on one of the other clans in a hurry, I can use the chart.
I got a few friendly dwarf factions for Kormatin and company to meet with. I can add more. I can maybe figure out a means to introduce a less-than-friendly dwarf faction just for variety too.
Anyway, a while back Kormatin found a lost heirloom to the Red Shaft Clan (http://https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/red-shaft-clan-organization?preview=true) in the treasure hoard of a vampire he killed. Kormatin gave the heirloom to his king who gave the heirloom back to the Red Shaft Clan. In return, the Red Shaft sent a bunch of weapon smiths to boost the king's armory. Kormatin made sure his king got the lion's share of the credit, but they will at least want to give Kormatin and his party a nice dinner and free drinks. And they will want to hear all about his vampire slaying.
Kormatin and his allies have had business dealings with members of the Dragonbane clan (https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/dragonbane-dwarf-clan-organization), who happen to have a lot dwarves living temporarily in Fumaya. Kormatin and his allies are actually going to caravan with a small party of Dragonbane dwarves to get to the dwarven lands. And I'm planning to have the caravan attacked by a monster and/or brigands to let Kormatin have a nice adventurer moment. So again, the Dragonbane clan will likely want to host Kormatin a while.
Kormatin is a holy warrior for the Sun goddess Khemra. THe dwarves have a small priesthood of Khemra worshipers (https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/the-soleio2C-aka-dwarf-keepers-organization) that will probably want to visit with him.
One of Kormatin's sidekicks/party members is of the smith god Hallisan, naturally Hallisan is a very beloved god to dwarves, so they could get a warm reception there too.
Kormatin and his party made some friends of the Bristlebranch dwarf clan (https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/bristlebranch-clan-organization). They are a poor but proud clan, a bit more on the outdoorsy side compared to mainstream dwarves. So I could have the heroes visit a Bristlebranch holding too.
Kormatin is part of a small semi-secret order (https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/order-of-the-lantern-organization) that quietly hunts down evil mages that have machinations that potentially threaten the world. I might give his order a branch office in dwarven lands, since protecting the world from evil mages is something dwarves could get behind.
Eventually the proverbial prince or princess to be rescued is probably going to be a child marked with Khemra's divine blessing, a favored soul. I could throw in that child's as of yet undetermined clan as another faction to meet.
I could also throw in dwarves that just pop up to meet a famous adventurer or any other third party dwarves that would be interested in rare VIP human visitors or any other third party dwarf characters that the story needs.
I'm reasonably satisfied with the action encounters I have planned. The short version is the adventurers are going to track down and rescue a proverbial dwarf prince or princess through monster infested tunnels before cannibal cultists ritually eat said hostage at a ritual time. Long story is below, but I don't really need advice on the action, I need advice on the non-action scenes.
I'm betting there is probably an existing thread somewhere on this forum full of tips for roleplaying dwarves.
I've been running a solo campaign for my friend for a long time, I guess Baldur's Gate style. His character, Kormatin, is the star but he's got three NPC sidekicks that he controls during combat. I control his sidekicks in non-combat situations.
Anyway we recently completed a very long running story arc, so me and buddy were pondering "What do we do next?"
For a while we've been running non-canon random combat scenarios to playtest new rules and monsters (and since it's non-canon we can reverse character death). We were about to do some non-canon fights with rescuing a hostage from Morlocks while fending off random various subterranean monsters and we thought "Why don't we do this for real?"
The basic adventure is that the heroes need to rescue a dwarf prince or princess before cannibals ritualistically eat said prince or princess at a specific ritual date to provide a ticking clock. To track down the cannibals, the heroes have to rely on a captive Gollum-esque villain as a guide and said guide is looking to betray them at every turn.
In my world, I got something called "Cannibal Sickness" (https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/cannibal-sickness-condition). People who regularly engage in cannibalism grow stronger and uglier but they also get corrupted by an addiction to mortal flesh. Human cannibals become ogres. Dwarf cannibals become morlocks. Orc cannibals become wendigo. Goblin cannibals become Bugbears. Gnome cannibals become ollums. A homebrew creature based heavily on Gollum from LOTR but since they are gnomes, the "g" is silent.
Cannibals who are also arcane spell casters are called skin changer witches (https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/skin-changer-witches-condition), based loosely on real world Cherokee folklore. They use ritual cannibalism to gain in mystical power. Once in a while, skin changer witches get a vision I need to eat someone who has ______ traits in order to reach my next level of power. "I need to someone with royal blood" "I need to eat a seventh son of a seventh son" "I need to eat a wise sage." You get the idea.
Between the heroes and the cannibals are a bunch of unaligned random subterranean monsters.
So we worked backwards. "Why would the dwarves send three humans and a gnome to save their prince rather than a party of dwarves?"
We came up with two good reasons. Kormatin is a holy warrior in a religious order that the dwarves respect. Second Kormatin is actually specifically trained to track and kill evil wizards, and recently killed a very powerful ogre skin changer witch. That would make him a good candidate to hunt down and kill a morlock skin changer witch. Perhaps with a dwarf ranger to act as a guide, since Kormatin and his party are lacking in wilderness skills, especially in foreign environments.
But continuing to work backwards we need to get Kormatin and his allies into dwarf lands. It's a little heavy handed but Kormatin saved an oracle's life in the last story arc, so I'm going to have the oracle make a vague prophecy he spends the winter with his dwarf friends. Because oracles making vague prophecies that essentially "go this place and you find find clues leading to a grand adventure" is a thing I do.
I like to separate my action scenes with roleplaying political scenes and we just had a lot of intense action scenes so it's time to calm things down with some peaceful Roleplay intensive sessions before we drop another action bomb.
Before Kormatin and Company go off to rescue a dwarf prince/princess from evil wizards and monsters, I want to have Kormatin hang out with the dwarves and hopefully grow to care about them before having to rescue a few of them.
he PC leader Kormatin is also trying to recruit political allies. His homeland of Fumaya is staring down the imminent invasion of a stronger unprovoked enemy nation to the south.
To the west, is the dwarf nation. The dwarfs are sympathetic to Fumaya but they aren't eager to contribute soldiers. At this point they are selling Fumaya weapons and armor at a discount. At this point Kormatin is trying to convince them to do more.
So far, I have been gently criticized that while my roleplaying the NPC cast has been generally good and that my human NPCs from different nations and social classes feel distinct and memorable
Via constructive criticism, I was told that my dwarf NPCs have not acted much different from my human NPCs. So far, the PCs have only interacted with dwarves who have been living in human lands for a long period of time, but now they are going to meet a bunch of dwarves in dwarf lands, so I they should be dwarfier.
How do I make interactions with dwarves feel dwarfy (without giving them cartoony Scottish accents). How does the dwarf Charisma penalty manifest in dice-less roleplaying? How do I combine the broad concepts that A) these dwarves are a little xenophobic by nature but also B) they are not hermits and they actual have reason to be fond of and polite to Kormatin and his allies due to their shared religious ties and Kormatin's past actions that indirectly aided them.
A while back, I created this system of charts to create distinctive dwarf clans (https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/dwarf-clan-generator-article).
I figured there are about 80 to 100 clans. I made profiles for the five richest/most prestigious clan and one minor clan that I pull a lot of important NPCs from. If I need to fill in the blanks on one of the other clans in a hurry, I can use the chart.
I got a few friendly dwarf factions for Kormatin and company to meet with. I can add more. I can maybe figure out a means to introduce a less-than-friendly dwarf faction just for variety too.
Anyway, a while back Kormatin found a lost heirloom to the Red Shaft Clan (http://https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/red-shaft-clan-organization?preview=true) in the treasure hoard of a vampire he killed. Kormatin gave the heirloom to his king who gave the heirloom back to the Red Shaft Clan. In return, the Red Shaft sent a bunch of weapon smiths to boost the king's armory. Kormatin made sure his king got the lion's share of the credit, but they will at least want to give Kormatin and his party a nice dinner and free drinks. And they will want to hear all about his vampire slaying.
Kormatin and his allies have had business dealings with members of the Dragonbane clan (https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/dragonbane-dwarf-clan-organization), who happen to have a lot dwarves living temporarily in Fumaya. Kormatin and his allies are actually going to caravan with a small party of Dragonbane dwarves to get to the dwarven lands. And I'm planning to have the caravan attacked by a monster and/or brigands to let Kormatin have a nice adventurer moment. So again, the Dragonbane clan will likely want to host Kormatin a while.
Kormatin is a holy warrior for the Sun goddess Khemra. THe dwarves have a small priesthood of Khemra worshipers (https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/the-soleio2C-aka-dwarf-keepers-organization) that will probably want to visit with him.
One of Kormatin's sidekicks/party members is of the smith god Hallisan, naturally Hallisan is a very beloved god to dwarves, so they could get a warm reception there too.
Kormatin and his party made some friends of the Bristlebranch dwarf clan (https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/bristlebranch-clan-organization). They are a poor but proud clan, a bit more on the outdoorsy side compared to mainstream dwarves. So I could have the heroes visit a Bristlebranch holding too.
Kormatin is part of a small semi-secret order (https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scarterra-scalenex/a/order-of-the-lantern-organization) that quietly hunts down evil mages that have machinations that potentially threaten the world. I might give his order a branch office in dwarven lands, since protecting the world from evil mages is something dwarves could get behind.
Eventually the proverbial prince or princess to be rescued is probably going to be a child marked with Khemra's divine blessing, a favored soul. I could throw in that child's as of yet undetermined clan as another faction to meet.
I could also throw in dwarves that just pop up to meet a famous adventurer or any other third party dwarves that would be interested in rare VIP human visitors or any other third party dwarf characters that the story needs.