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Post by dicewrangler on Dec 26, 2016 12:15:31 GMT -7
I feel that using the D&D 5e rules has negatively affected the "feel" of my Primeval Thule campaign with common, reliable and safe magic, healing and curing/restoring. I have attempted to make some significant house rules (mainly race/class limitations and slow healing) to compensate but, considering we still use D&D 5e, the player's expectations and desires slowly creep back in. What I need is a completely different rules system so I can reset their expectations, make magic uncommon, unreliable and dangerous again and discourage hoarding wealth and hunting for magic items in favor of the never-ending search for fortune and glory. I believe that I have found that system and will be migrating my campaign to it. . .in a sense.
The system I will be using is Modiphius' "Conan: Adventurers in an Age Undreamed Of" Here is a link to their Kickstarter campaign: /description
The world geography between Primeval Thule and Conan are natural fits: Thule is Greenland and Hyboria is Europe, Asia and Africa. The issue is time. In Thule, Atlantis was destroyed about 300 years ago. In Hyboria, Atlantis was destroyed about 6000 years ago. This suggests that no characters will be able to converted unless powerful magic beyond mortal capabilities, time travel or cryogenic suspension is involved so I did the next best thing. . .
In my Primeval Thule campaign, I asked the players how they imagined their characters in the future, specifically years later when they had reached the pinnacle of their adventuring "careers." I then took their forestories (is that a word?) and distorted them through the lens of time. In my Hyboria game, their former Primeval Thule characters lived on through story and song.
One character, for example, was a sea raider who had dreams of leading his own fleet of pirate ships with him at the helm of an awesome flagship. Merchant ships, lightly-defended ports and even small armadas of military vessels would cower in fear when they saw his flagship and the black sails emblazoned with a grinning skull. In Hyboria, legends of the dreaded sword-wielding specter, Captain Larvis, aboard his flying(!) ghost ship, the "Black Wind", crewed with skeletons that launch their own screaming skulls from its catapults still haunt the icy northern waters on dark, moonless nights. Sea captains navigating those treacherous waters carry hand mirrors with them at all times in case they encounter Captain Larvis with the hopes that they can convince him that he is dead, has nothing to gain by raiding and can now rest peacefully beneath the waves.
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Post by HydraSX on Dec 27, 2016 8:15:14 GMT -7
I backed the Modiphius Conan kickstarter myself, and I agree with you. The Conan rule system is much better suited to the sword & sorcery (S&S) genre in general, and certainly any Thule campaign more grounded in the conventions of the genre (human protagonists only, non-humans and magic users as antagonists, etc.). I would argue though that it is far easier to houserule and tweak 5e to better suit S&S than it would be to try and alter Pathfinder, for instance. It's possible to run a 5e Thule campaign with no magic-using PCs and limited magic item acquisition without combat becoming too hard for players to handle - especially at lower levels. I feel that Pathfinder would be a different story.
However, I think part of the blame rests on the design of the Primeval Thule setting itself. A good portion of the published Primeval Thule adventures, in particular the three included in the Primeval Thule Campaign Setting, are not shy about handing out magic items at all. For example, in The Tower of Dark Flame - an adventure labelled as suitable for characters of 1st to 2nd level - the party acquires a spell scroll, a couple of healing potions, and two wondrous items (beads of force and a brooch of shielding) all in the same adventure. For what is essentially a 1st-level adventure, that's already a lot of magic items even by baseline 5e standards. Now obviously, this can be remedied by tweaking the adventures appropriately - which is what I do whenever I run one of them. To me though, the larger issue is the fact that the Thule setting itself is very inconsistent in representing itself as a "low-magic," "gritty sword & sorcery" setting. This is a point that has been discussed on these boards before. One instance of this that I can remember off the top of my head is how the book says that monks are not an appropriate class for the setting, but then later on there is specific mention of a monastery somewhere on Thule that has martial arts-style monks. The same goes for paladins; the main setting book says there are no paladins in Thule, but then the Player's Companion goes ahead and presents a paladin option.
I love the Primeval Thule setting, but it seems to me the designers chickened out of presenting a true-to-the-genre S&S setting. Without houseruling and tweaking on the part of the DM, 5e Primeval Thule reads (and plays) very much like something that was derived more from traditional D&D fare (the inclusion of conventional high fantasy PC races like elves and dwarves springs to mind here) than from the works of Robert E. Howard/Edgar Rice Burroughs/H.P. Lovecraft that it claims to be inspired by. As a huge fan of S&S, and in particular of Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs (although he isn't typically identified as a S&S writer), I find that Primeval Thule doesn't quite live up to my S&S expectations "right out of the box."
But with that said, Primeval Thule is my favourite published D&D campaign setting to date. I'm having a blast running my Thule campaign, and I'm looking forward to Seraglio of the Mind - whenever it ends up getting released!
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Post by Athkethin on Dec 30, 2016 19:35:40 GMT -7
I am also a Conan backer, and I regret it somewhat; it wasn't enough money that it put me in the poor house or anything, but I think it was a waste. I'm never going to use the material.
For my Thule campaign, I just restricted PCs to humans, and the only spellcasting class (or subclass) I allow is the warlock. I've subbed out almost all magic from the published adventures; magic treasure I just removed or replaced with items off the Trinkets table, and spellcasting foes I just replaced with non-casters.
D&D does sword & sorcery fine, you just have to be willing to say "no" to players, or at least be willing to lay out firm guidelines on what is allowed. For what it's worth, all three of my players repeatedly tell me that our Thule game is their favorite campaign they've ever played in.
I don't leave magic out entirely, but I do make it different from what's in the book. For example, the party found a mahogany and obsidian wand in a wooden case; one of them was foolish enough to touch it. Unbeknownst to the player, the wand summoned a quasit (it remains invisible or in its frog/bat forms all of the time). When he touched the wand I had him roll a Charisma saving throw; if he had succeeded on the roll, the quasit would have been his servant. Since he failed (he never knew whether he succeeded or failed, and I think he's forgotten about it altogether now), the quasit is doing its best to corrupt him (the player hears a voice occasionally suggesting that he do foolish to terrible things, and doesn't know where it is coming from. He's starting to think it's all in his head, since it only speaks to him when others aren't around).
On the rare occasions I have enemies be spellcasters, they always summon demons to fight for them, and I use the term "demon" in the way Howard did in the Conan stories; they're just strong, occasionally horrific monsters. So a summoned "demon" will be a bugbear or maybe even an ogre by classic D&D terms, but it's a nightmare to the party. I also liberally reskin monsters to work in context; kobolds make wonderful savage pygmies, for example.
I would have preferred a Thule setting book that was a little more Sword & Sorcery out of the box, but I can understand why they didn't write it that way, and I think it's easy enough to make it work.
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Post by iHateLucho on Dec 31, 2016 10:40:11 GMT -7
I am also a Conan backer, and I regret it somewhat; it wasn't enough money that it put me in the poor house or anything, but I think it was a waste. I'm never going to use the material. For my Thule campaign, I just restricted PCs to humans, and the only spellcasting class (or subclass) I allow is the warlock. I've subbed out almost all magic from the published adventures; magic treasure I just removed or replaced with items off the Trinkets table, and spellcasting foes I just replaced with non-casters. D&D does sword & sorcery fine, you just have to be willing to say "no" to players, or at least be willing to lay out firm guidelines on what is allowed. For what it's worth, all three of my players repeatedly tell me that our Thule game is their favorite campaign they've ever played in. I don't leave magic out entirely, but I do make it different from what's in the book. For example, the party found a mahogany and obsidian wand in a wooden case; one of them was foolish enough to touch it. Unbeknownst to the player, the wand summoned a quasit (it remains invisible or in its frog/bat forms all of the time). When he touched the wand I had him roll a Charisma saving throw; if he had succeeded on the roll, the quasit would have been his servant. Since he failed (he never knew whether he succeeded or failed, and I think he's forgotten about it altogether now), the quasit is doing its best to corrupt him (the player hears a voice occasionally suggesting that he do foolish to terrible things, and doesn't know where it is coming from. He's starting to think it's all in his head, since it only speaks to him when others aren't around). On the rare occasions I have enemies be spellcasters, they always summon demons to fight for them, and I use the term "demon" in the way Howard did in the Conan stories; they're just strong, occasionally horrific monsters. So a summoned "demon" will be a bugbear or maybe even an ogre by classic D&D terms, but it's a nightmare to the party. I also liberally reskin monsters to work in context; kobolds make wonderful savage pygmies, for example. I would have preferred a Thule setting book that was a little more Sword & Sorcery out of the box, but I can understand why they didn't write it that way, and I think it's easy enough to make it work. Hi Athkethin, I will be running a 5th Edition PT campaign early next year and was thinking a little like your rules: all PCs are human (human variant and Atlantean included), restricting spellcasting classes (or making them roll madness saving throws when they use dangerous magic, haven't decided yet), etc. I want a real Sword & Sorcery feel, so I want to deal with magic as it is a huge part of the D&D rules and make it more S&S-friendly and I find your magic-handling examples very interesting. I'd been itching to share my house rules here, but it will take me a long time to translate them from spanish (I'm from Ecuador), I'd like feedback and suggestions for them, so I will still share them sometime before I start my campaign. Anyhow, I wanted to ask you, how do your players manage to heal themselves without healing magic? Only natural healing? |
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Post by Athkethin on Dec 31, 2016 13:12:31 GMT -7
To answer your question simply: I buckled.
It became evident very quickly that either the campaign wasn't going to be any fun or everybody was going to die (which would not be very fun). So I introduced Nergal's Blessing, a reskinning of Keoghtom's Ointment from the DMG. Different cultures call it different things (another group they met called it Light of Tarhun), but it's the same stuff. I also provided them a recipe for it in the alchemists's lab of the Tower of the Black Flame (which they commandeered after the first adventure).
I only have three players/PCs, so they all gain max hit points every level and the ointment heals its maximum every time. They still treat it as a precious resource (it's pretty hard to make), and the fights are brutal - we have a running joke about how it isn't our campaign unless the warlock is making death saves. But the tension is great and they all love it.
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Post by iHateLucho on Dec 31, 2016 15:59:05 GMT -7
Great idea! I was thinking maybe reskinning the potions of healing from lesser to stronger into "herb mixes", "powder", "poultices" and "ointments", but the Keoghtom's Ointment sounds great as a valuable asset characters find from time to time.
The max HP/level also sounds good for a hardy Thulean party with low or no healing magic available.
Thanks a lot and have a happy new year!
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