DnD prohibition

[pybro]

I was thinking about it a good chunk of the day about a prohibition scenario. I have an idea why their is a ban on alcohol. The reason is that a new religion and god rose to power. Then they told everyone the same things that the drys (the people pro prohibition) told everyone in America. If you have a better idea please tell me. I was thinking that the players could be part of the mafia or the cops. Still trying to think to make my own armor or just use the armors in the Players Handbook? For firearms I'm going to use the stats in Dungeon Master's guide under modern fire arms. I was thinking to have the party be proficient in driving cars, because if your a cop you need to drive around to stop crooks and if you are a mafia you need to drive your alcohol around.

Please tell me of my errors in spelling please and what do you think?

[ZealousObject]

I would say just use a different system other than D&D for this campaign, imo best to stay in line with the creators idea of the world you are going to be playing in.... but I don't know many TTRPG systems to give you many suggestions besides like World of Darkness or Shadowrun. In regards to D&D I would suggest looking at the UA Modern Magic to give you ideas regarding how the classes interact in a more modern setting and scaling back from there. In other words I wish you the best of luck and happy gaming.

[Zale]

I think it's a concept with promise. Just make sure to tell your players to design their characters with the mob/cop aesthetic in mind.

If you want to give things a D&D style twist, you could substitute alcohol for some sort of magical substance. Potions of some kind, or some mystic drug that's recently come under fire.

Otherwise I really like this idea, though I have a weakness for period peaces.

As an aside, d20 Modern is a thing if you're dedicated to keeping the D&D system, but you could also look abroad.

[Mechalich]

This concept works extremely well as a historically-based Mage: The Ascension campaign - you just make the actual US Temperance Movement a faction of the Celestial Chorus (with a bunch of nephandic corruption) and you're done. The players are either rival traditionalists (Cultists of Ecstasy, Dreamspeakers, and Verbena probably work best) if you're going the mafia route, or Technocrats if you're going the cops route.

[ElChad]

Sounds a bit ridiculous, but here's an alternate idea which may make things interesting. What if the drys are trying to enforce prohibition due to demonic corruption? Say there's an alcohol on the market mixed with demon blood that causes a euphoric sensation but has a 1% chance of the drinker being possessed by a demon and raging out. It may add another layer to the story rather than a simple cops and robbers style of story.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Seems like a good premise, but maybe not for D&D? I'd look at either transplanting the themes of the Prohibition era you find interesting into a more D&D-friendly standard fantasy setting (maybe Eberron? Eberron is already mildly noir), or transplanting the game into a system that's more aimed at modern times-- d20 Modern, Savage Worlds, something like that.

[Nifft]

I'm sure you could bend D&D to work for this scenario, but maybe you could get a better result with less work by starting with a game that's closer in era and technology to where you want to play.

World of Darkness could surely do this, for example.

[Bohandas]

Sounds a bit ridiculous, but here's an alternate idea which may make things interesting. What if the drys are trying to enforce prohibition due to demonic corruption? Say there's an alcohol on the market mixed with demon blood that causes a euphoric sensation but has a 1% chance of the drinker being possessed by a demon and raging out. It may add another layer to the story rather than a simple cops and robbers style of story.

For an additional layer above that the drys, in turn, were sent by the baatezu

[Lord Torath]

What technology level are you thinking of? A mafia set in standard D&D could work, with crossbows replacing rifles and hand-crossbows replacing pistols. Robert Asperin's Myth Adventures feature the Mob, complete with Racketeering, Sports Gambling, Fairy Godfathers, and Molls. Book 4 covers this the most, though Book 6 also deals with the Mob.

[Potato_Priest]

I've thought about doing a western gunslinger campaign in 5th edition D&D before, and the conclusion that I reached was that it was best to give everyone AC equal to 10+con mod+dex mod just to keep ACs in the right zone, and make armor and shields unavailable. Might work well for you as well.

[pybro]

What technology level are you thinking of? A mafia set in standard D&D could work, with crossbows replacing rifles and hand-crossbows replacing pistols. Robert Asperin's Myth Adventures feature the Mob, complete with Racketeering, Sports Gambling, Fairy Godfathers, and Molls. Book 4 covers this the most, though Book 6 also deals with the Mob.

I was thinking of 1920's and 1930's era technology

[Knaight]

I was thinking of 1920's and 1930's era technology

That's one of two fairly big reasons to use something other than D&D, with the other being that D&D is an economic mess in general and this game is pretty intrinsically one tied to economics - which means the system can either help or get out of the way, but really shouldn't be highly present while also being largely useless. I'd also note that during the prohibition there were a lot of independent bootleggers, there was organized crime on a much smaller scale than large crime families, and that there's generally more to it than just mafias vs. police. A lot of that would really add to the game.

[Haldir]

Nothing wrong with using D&D for this concept. Please ignore the hipster-system fetishists unless you want your combat to be "jonesy took a stray bullet and died instantly"

[Mr Beer]

Nothing wrong with using D&D for this concept. Please ignore the hipster-system fetishists unless you want your combat to be "jonesy took a stray bullet and died instantly"

D&D can be used for a lot of different settings, but pointing out that it's not the optimal choice for a modern prohibition campaign and making alternative suggestions doesn't make that person some kind of insufferable poseur.

[TheYell]

Nothing wrong with using D&D for this concept. Please ignore the hipster-system fetishists unless you want your combat to be "jonesy took a stray bullet and died instantly"

Make it Call of Cthulhu and you'll be begging for a stray bullet.

[Haldir]

D&D can be used for a lot of different settings, but pointing out that it's not the optimal choice for a modern prohibition campaign and making alternative suggestions doesn't make that person some kind of insufferable poseur.

It does not imply that at all, but let me ask, which is more optimal- spending time teaching four or more people a brand new system and bogging down play while they struggle to learn it, or using a system that is well known, comfortable, and will do the job just fine?

[Knaight]

It does not imply that at all, but let me ask, which is more optimal- spending time teaching four or more people a brand new system and bogging down play while they struggle to learn it, or using a system that is well known, comfortable, and will do the job just fine?

There are plenty of systems that can be learned quickly, and even the crunchiest systems are quick to learn compared to an extended campaign. So the options here are either to spend a little time adapting to a new system that actually works, or deal with a clunky system that is very highly specialized towards something else entirely for the entire campaign.

[Mechalich]

It does not imply that at all, but let me ask, which is more optimal- spending time teaching four or more people a brand new system and bogging down play while they struggle to learn it, or using a system that is well known, comfortable, and will do the job just fine?

Most systems require relatively little effort to learn and, unlike D&D, do not especially reward system mastery making them easy for new players to utilize effectively with no more than a fairly brief introduction. By contrast, attempting to use D&D for this idea will require immense modifications to the system and generate all sorts of weird interactions that the GM will be forced to adjudicate on the fly. Ultimately, the very fact that d20 Modern exists is strongly demonstrative of how unsuited D&D is to modern settings and modern concepts.

It is possible to tell a story about Prohibition using D&D - in fact a blanket religious ban on alcohol consumption via a new god has strong historical precedent - it's the sort of thing that happened to people who got conquered by Islamic Empires for the better part of a thousand years - but that's very different from a modern setting focused around prohibition and its relationship with organized crime.

[Mr Beer]

It does not imply that at all, but let me ask, which is more optimal- spending time teaching four or more people a brand new system and bogging down play while they struggle to learn it, or using a system that is well known, comfortable, and will do the job just fine?

I'm not going to make a bunch of assumptions on behalf of OP in order to determine the best course of action.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

It is possible to tell a story about Prohibition using D&D - in fact a blanket religious ban on alcohol consumption via a new god has strong historical precedent - it's the sort of thing that happened to people who got conquered by Islamic Empires for the better part of a thousand years - but that's very different from a modern setting focused around prohibition and its relationship with organized crime.

"You all meet outside the still-smouldering remains of a tavern..." Bonus points for finding the barbarian curled up in a ball, hugging the remains of a beer cask and sobbing.

One thing to bear in mind is that historically, monasteries were one of the main producers of alcohol (Dom Perignon was a monk, beer counted as "runny bread" and so on) - so, rather than a religious ban, it might be a royal proclamation (say the king's a little reactionary, and at the last ball he held, someone over indulged and vomited in his presence), and the churches are linking up with the criminal underworld to maintain supplies.

[BWR]

The question is really whether you want to run an actual American Prohibition game or just use the same basic concept.

It can easily and canonically be done in D&D. The Land of Ylarum (not-Arabia, complete with not.Muhammed and not-Islam) in Mystara is dry in both the literal and euphemistic sense. Their religion is fairly new, and you could easily introduce firearms (flintlocks) from the Savage Coast, a little way down the continent. You could even set up a situation like 'The Moral Dimension' episode of "Yes, Minister".

[dps]

I was thinking of 1920's and 1930's era technology

There's an old TSR RPG called Gangbusters that was designed specifically for roleplaying prohibition-era cops and gangsters. Might be hard to track down a copy nowadays; I have a copy packed away somewhere but I'm not willing to part with it (and, in any event, won't have time to dig through multiple boxes of stored books and games to find it anytime soon).

[KorvinStarmast]

There's an old TSR RPG called Gangbusters that was designed specifically for roleplaying prohibition-era cops and gangsters. Might be hard to track down a copy nowadays; I have a copy packed away somewhere but I'm not willing to part with it (and, in any event, won't have time to dig through multiple boxes of stored books and games to find it anytime soon).

This is the right answer, IMO.

Thieves guild versus the tea totallers can work with standard D&D weapons and stuff.
New temple, new clerics and paladins, new rules, and the thieve's guild is the underground.

[Kami2awa]

Make it Call of Cthulhu and you'll be begging for a stray bullet.

Well the Call of Cthulhu rules system was pretty much made for the Prohibition era. Plus, all the non-setting specific bits (the BRP system) are freely available here:

https://www.chaosium.com/content/Fre...uick-Start.pdf

[Anymage]

The biggest reason I'd want to stay away from using the D&D system to try a realistic historical setting is because you'd inevitably wind up with cops and robbers and magic. D&D with all the supernatural stuff cut out is a much slimmer ruleset. And that's before noting how things like the leveling system and the flatness of only rolling a single dice for action resolution give a more heroic feel than a gritty one.

Magitech prohibition is possible. Arcane magic being the equivalent for alcohol could be one way to go about it. (One mad mage can do a lot to convince people that arcane magic is too dangerous for public access.) Planescape, while you're unlikely to wind up with one specific alcohol analogue banned, could have plenty of contraband that people wanted smuggled. But making tommy guns and car chases work in a system designed for high fantasy will require a lot of tinkering with both ideas if you want something workable.

[pybro]

The biggest reason I'd want to stay away from using the D&D system to try a realistic historical setting is because you'd inevitably wind up with cops and robbers and magic. D&D with all the supernatural stuff cut out is a much slimmer ruleset. And that's before noting how things like the leveling system and the flatness of only rolling a single dice for action resolution give a more heroic feel than a gritty one.

Magitech prohibition is possible. Arcane magic being the equivalent for alcohol could be one way to go about it. (One mad mage can do a lot to convince people that arcane magic is too dangerous for public access.) Planescape, while you're unlikely to wind up with one specific alcohol analogue banned, could have plenty of contraband that people wanted smuggled. But making tommy guns and car chases work in a system designed for high fantasy will require a lot of tinkering with both ideas if you want something workable.

What if I get rid of cars and keep all other technology during that time? Would that work? Also if replace the ranged weapons in the base game with guns will that work?

[Haldir]

What if I get rid of cars and keep all other technology during that time? Would that work? Also if replace the ranged weapons in the base game with guns will that work?

Yes, it will all work fine. Even the cars. Just remember that it's important NOT to get bogged down in rules. If something seems a little funny, just make a quick ruling that makes sense and is fair and keep the game moving.

I've been around these parts since damn-near the beginning, and as far back as I can remember we've had these conversations. It's natural, because we're all separate from one another and a ruleset is the unifying reason for our community. I cannot count how many hours have been wasted by some Pixie with a Cool Idea having to rewrite his or her entire campaign because of the avalanche of suggestions for obscure and weird systems that might do one or two things better. Just gather your crew and play the system you know. Playing is better than standing around deciding rules stuff.

Ye be warned, don't fall into their trap.

[dps]

Yes, it will all work fine. Even the cars. Just remember that it's important NOT to get bogged down in rules. If something seems a little funny, just make a quick ruling that makes sense and is fair and keep the game moving.

I've been around these parts since damn-near the beginning, and as far back as I can remember we've had these conversations. It's natural, because we're all separate from one another and a ruleset is the unifying reason for our community. I cannot count how many hours have been wasted by some Pixie with a Cool Idea having to rewrite his or her entire campaign because of the avalanche of suggestions for obscure and weird systems that might do one or two things better. Just gather your crew and play the system you know. Playing is better than standing around deciding rules stuff.

Ye be warned, don't fall into their trap.

BS. If he has to write a bunch of house rules to get DnD to work in his setting, it's probably going to take as much effort to teach his players his house rules as it would to teach them a new ruleset (unless said ruleset is extremely mechanics-heavy). Plus, your posts seem to imply that everybody is already playing DnD as opposed to some other system, which even if true would still beg the question of which DnD version people are using.

[Haldir]

BS. If he has to write a bunch of house rules to get DnD to work in his setting, it's probably going to take as much effort to teach his players his house rules as it would to teach them a new ruleset (unless said ruleset is extremely mechanics-heavy). Plus, your posts seem to imply that everybody is already playing DnD as opposed to some other system, which even if true would still beg the question of which DnD version people are using.

Since the OP specifically said he was interested in using D&D as the system and wondered if it could work, I answered him honestly. I also gave him an honest warning not to become a rules-grognard and be burdened by worry if a system doens't have precise rules for driving cars, but instead to roleplay and have fun and let the system serve the game as a means for resolving conflicts. Given the context of his questions this is completely appropriate.

[Knaight]

I've been around these parts since damn-near the beginning, and as far back as I can remember we've had these conversations. It's natural, because we're all separate from one another and a ruleset is the unifying reason for our community. I cannot count how many hours have been wasted by some Pixie with a Cool Idea having to rewrite his or her entire campaign because of the avalanche of suggestions for obscure and weird systems that might do one or two things better. Just gather your crew and play the system you know. Playing is better than standing around deciding rules stuff.

I can't count how many hours have been wasted playing a game I fundamentally dislike (D&D in general, but especially D&D for things where it's a poor fit) before switching to a different system, and switching between systems every so often - and I don't like seeing other people falling into that same trap.