Re: The problem here [was: Epic NPCs and their stats]

From: Dan Guillou <dguillou_at_EDtXNc5OH9VQVHth7uUfrFEQ69PTp-F2el7FagGMdnRH4jfWszGRD0eysJLwWpKp4jm>
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2007 12:07:47 +0200


I realize that we aren't going to change each others opinions here. More like we are expressing our own tastes and temperaments, as translated through gamemastering habits. Having said that, aware that this is my contribution to the ongoing poll of viewpoints or whatever, I want to say that, in my own GMing I have always found it easier to ignore and modify, than to create from scratch.
In fact, the two campaigns that I think back to with most pride and satisfaction, were based on background material that I think was partly very good, and partly rubbish. I'll describe one.

The Marshland campaign was set in a vast river delta. Main objective was to find a McGuffin of vast Goodness for the fight against Evil. The end was a big dungeon, and on the way there lay various encounters, with and without clues for the whereabouts of said dungeon. First thing I did was move the thing halfways across the world, from temperate to tropical. I have childhood recollections of the papyrus swamps/river delta in southern Iraq, and together with my parents pictures and my own biology (and lots and lots of neat bugs) the setting became much more to my taste. (Did you know papyrus grows over three yards high, so a lot of canals are like mazes; it's quite unlike canoeing in swedish marshlands where you almost always see the horizon. And did I say neat bugs?)
Second, I rewrote the whole Good-vs-Evil thing. It was still true that the cult which originally had the McGuffin were into light and healing
(kinda like Erissa) but in my version they were also fascists, elitist
reclusives whos' holy mantra was "I'm so pure". And the employers to whom the players eventually turned over the McGuffin weren't so nice either (which lead into a follow-up campaign with the old "Redress-your-Wrongs" and save a bunch of relatively innocent necromancers from bloody purging).
Thirdly, the reptile-men aborigines expanded from "rare mobs you can fight with" into one of the regions main sources of revenue: slavery.
(Originally, there were nice human abos, and nasty cannibal reptile-man
abos. In my versions all abos were nasty, because they were beeing hunted, the human abos were really rare, and all abos were some kind of cannibals, although not all tribes would eat their enemies.) I had just read about how africans were viewed by people in the slave trade, so I gave my players expert opionons from the local NPCs along the lines of "Well they just don't feel pain like we do. Look at their inanimate faces... If you're not really really harsh with them, they'll feel nothing but contempt for you. Yes, of course you have to use the serrated crocodile skin whips, otherwise you won't penetrate their natural armor. They. Are. Not. Like us." And so on. Loads of fun. Fourth. I threw away the underground dungeon (miraculously dry, below the water, in a swamp). Replaced it with mud-filled tumulus, and a fight with competing tombraiders.
I did keep the maps, most of the NPCs, most of the encounters. Although, of course the changes I had already made, changed the nature and tone of many of them.

The thing is... What I'm trying to illustrate here, is that I could never have built this campaign from scratch. Others might work differently, but I need to buy products with lot of the drudge-work already done. Stats for three hunting swamp-tigers. Map of minor temple ruin. Trading post with eight supporting cast NPCs... Adding or subtracting a mastery if I need to adjust the difficulty, is a moments work, writing a minor NPC or mob from scratch takes fifteen minutes. Changing the bits around in a silly map (where you have to go through the Abbots bedroom to get to the main kitchen, for an example) takes fifteen minutes, making a fresh new monastery takes hours. (Well, that would be a hasty, shoddy, wrong, monastary, but still.) Finally, I find that my creativity works best within (or perhaps against, or growing out of) a framework. If I have a limited set of alternatives, I choose one. When I see what's there (it doesn't have to be perfect or very original, as long as it is there) I find it easier to add what I think is missing. When I don't agree with something, I come up with alternatives. When I'm annoyed, I actually find it difficult not to start working on how it should have been. And with total freedom, naturally, I end up sitting staring at a blank paper.

Cheers,
Dan Guillou

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