Whoops. MORE themed campaigns.
When we decided on creating the drow campaign, we actaully didn't quite get there until we had almost reached Ohio (from Indiana). So we came up with a lot of ideas we never used:
Here's the short list: Feel free to add to it!
An all-vampires group. A Vampire clan. The benefits of this is that you can be any race/any class.. but the downside is .. you have to sink your first level feat into Vampiric Bloodline. Still, not bad. Set it anywhere. I would kinda set it in the heart of largest urban aera I could- Suzail, Marsember.. Baldurs Gate.
Riverboat Clan "The Delimbyr Princess" -(or somesuch..I never went too far with it) a riverboat on the Delimbyr crewed by adventurers who ply the waterways around Silverymoon and get into madcap misadventures. This would be restricted to humans, elves, eladrin, and (especially!) halflings. And maybe the occasional cranky dwarf cannoneer or gnome steam-artificer. I dunno. This was my second choice and I am kinda keeping it in reserve.
Pirates. (too many possibilities, almost..)
A mercenary company (perhaps formerly associated with the Zhents, or even start them stranded on one of the less-friendly islands of the Moonshaes or Chult). So the beginning arc of the campaign is "we're a band of brothers stuck in a hostile foreign land.. and we only have each other.." I actually came up with the basic for this one (Champions of Honor style!) when my half orc warlord was pressed for details about where he was from. The name I invented was "The Crawling Chaos" and our symbol was an ant. (Idea from the Invaders Must Die (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTw2YvutJRA) video).
A thieves guild. (same.. although you could go really far with this..) It would take on a different flavor depending on where you put it. A Calimshan thieves guild would be really cool!
A Noble house of Cormyr. (a bit humanocentric, but you could have "honored guests from the elven court" etc..)
A gnoll pack. or maybe a combined group of monster-types (half orcs, orcs, humans, etc) from Muranndin ("the Monster Kingdom" south of Amn) loosely assembled under the banner of a charismatic bandit lord.
Some friends of mine have an (almost) all kenku group, or they had plans for it. The "Baltimore Ravens" is a bit of an OOC name, though.
I know mine are all Faerun-centric, but feel free to add your own ideas!
A gang of prostitutes (using the mandatory DMG First Ed table for character generation, of course) - what? WHORE game themes, you typed, right? :D
Angels/celestial beings are sent to one layer of the Abyss to create a Bastion of Good on that plane. They have to establish a stronghold there, explore the layer, fight off the assaults of the minions of evil... and fundamentally transform the nature of the layer in the long run.
Reverse idea, with Demons or Devils invading a plane of Good.
A Colonial expedition in lands unknown. Similar to the two previous ideas there, but it's more about the shock of cultures than the epic battles of constrasting Ultimate Good vs. Evil. Think of Columbus as he arrives in the Carribean, or a proto-Maztica of sorts.
"What's the human word for credit?" A gang of entrepreneurial demihumans (dwarves, elves, halflings) strike out to make it big in the scary human-dominated world. You never know when leaf-bikinis will become the next big thing.
I like the mercenary company stuck in Chult. Maybe you could do a Deliverance type scenario where instead of inbreds, the PCs are assaulted by cannibal halflings. "Duelling Banjos" could be interesting.
A pilgrimage is another possibility. There are enough Divine classes to allow differences and if it's an organised affair, no reason why non-Divine classes can't tag along in an advisory or bodyguard capacity.
A lot of good ideas but I will point out that they are nearly all devoid of any involving a culture. Rather substitute race as culture which is an approach I always found lame.
I know I sound like a grumpy grognard. But think about it what sets Comyr from Sembia from the Dale from Silverymoon and so on. And cultures are not just one thing either they are multfaceted poor Cormyr is different than rich Cormyr which is different than forest Cormyr than coastal Cormyr.
Also avoid situations focus on people stuff like culture, religion, and organization. Situations tend to have problem of being resolved while people stuff just keeps generating new problems and more importantly adventures.
For example your riverboat clan idea should focus more on the river culture than the boat itself (although it will be an important element). That way if the campaign shifts away from the actual riverboat is still very much about the original theme.
My group has done several themed games:
-- One is our Shorties campaign where all the character have to be of one of the short races (in which we include dwarves).
-- Our Sumai Syndicate game where all the characters are members of a criminal organization dealing with three other organized criminal organizations in the trade city of Sumai.
-- We had a Hybrid themed group where the majority of the characters were hybrids of some sort.
-- In our latest themed game, each player chose the race/class combination for another player in the group.
Now that you can play an Undead characters, I think a cool themed group would be a party of Revenants.
Quote from: estar;368048A lot of good ideas but I will point out that they are nearly all devoid of any involving a culture. Rather substitute race as culture which is an approach I always found lame.
I know I sound like a grumpy grognard. But think about it what sets Comyr from Sembia from the Dale from Silverymoon and so on. And cultures are not just one thing either they are multfaceted poor Cormyr is different than rich Cormyr which is different than forest Cormyr than coastal Cormyr.
Well- I guess the "culture" part of that isn't as important to me as the cohesive quality of the cast of characters- the Cormyr idea I had ("A noble house in Cormyr") would probably work like this: we'd have an NPC as the actual noble- say a duke or a baroness or something. And an NPC "retired war wizard", and then mapped out holdings, a nearby village.. and a few servants (more NPCs), and then the PCs would be either relatives or guests of the Duke's family- you could kind of have apprentice wizards and village warlocks.
The theme of this kind of campaign would be a lot less obvious (I'm not even sure it would have one until we started).. But without locking yourself into any one abstract thing, you still have plenty you could do with that kind of cast of characters.
At this point I'm thinking about it almost as if I were casting a TV show. Starring (of course) the PCs.
Quote from: Abyssal Maw;368056Well- I guess the "culture" part of that isn't as important to me as the cohesive quality of the cast of characters-
......
At this point I'm thinking about it almost as if I were casting a TV show. Starring (of course) the PCs.
The problem I found with just focusing on the character is that the approach is too shallow. Throwing culture an important part of the mix give the character the context in which they define themselves.
The same group of personalities would very different if placed in a tyranny run by Zhentil Keep vs the benign feudalism of Cormyr vs the individualism of the Dalelands.
And culture is always present in a campaign even the referee doesn't say or write anything about it. The culture in these cases is largely assumed. I prefer to make it overt, manipulate it to use it as fuel for more adventures.
And you don't have to write an essay either. Often a half page to a page worth is enough to make it work.
cROSSPOSTED FROM AN OLD POST...
Understanding ethocentric settings and how they contrast with Divset or Conset.
"2) Divset vs Conset
It is vital, in any Sandbox world, to have some overarching plotlines and themes zooming overhead. It has been said before, but it is worth repeating. This helps that feeling of the world not being in place for the players to romp in, that it would be there with or without the players.
However, Conset worlds make poorer Sandboxes. A game with a single overarching plot/reason for existence (such as LotR) is less of a sandbox, as unless the players latch onto plots that affect the 'big overarching', their actions will have less meaning (see motivation in point #1).
A divset world, with many major plotlines and themes, by contrast, allows the players that important luxury of choice that makes a Sandbox game what it is.
It is not direct, pure railroading to have a pretty normal world with (To use Patrick's example) "the Dark Overlord's army is taking over the continent", but if that is the only overarching, big-picture plotline, then the Sandbox game is less of a Sandbox and has a lower chance of success becasue you have still set up a situation where the players still have to respond to that one plotline or be somewhat inconsequential.
I see this mistake a lot (and see it mentioned in many responses here), and while it is fine and maybe even preferred in most types of games, it is a mistake in a long-term sandbox."
Useful link...Theme_Wars (http://www.thecbg.org/wiki/index.php?title=Theme_Wars)
I was in a game once where our starting PCs were the three young sons of a single nobleman (the Dessinger game, for those of you who've read about it here before). It actually worked really well, and there was a ton of great roleplaying and interaction between the characters because of it.
Quote from: estar;368048A lot of good ideas but I will point out that they are nearly all devoid of any involving a culture. Rather substitute race as culture which is an approach I always found lame.
I know I sound like a grumpy grognard. But think about it what sets Comyr from Sembia from the Dale from Silverymoon and so on. And cultures are not just one thing either they are multfaceted poor Cormyr is different than rich Cormyr which is different than forest Cormyr than coastal Cormyr.
Also avoid situations focus on people stuff like culture, religion, and organization. Situations tend to have problem of being resolved while people stuff just keeps generating new problems and more importantly adventures.
For example your riverboat clan idea should focus more on the river culture than the boat itself (although it will be an important element). That way if the campaign shifts away from the actual riverboat is still very much about the original theme.
You and I seem to think very similarly about these sorts of things.
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