“I have a dream” or more accurately described as “My brain goes to strange places when I'm ill”.
Posted by: Jason Silverain / Category: Basic Roleplay, Homebrew, How To Host A Dungeon, Kobold, Review, Setting, Update, Video games
Good evening everyone, for some reason I'm possessed to write this post now at near 00:30am but you can't accuse me of been slack on getting my posts done this month.
Ladies
and Gentlemen I have a dream.
However
this is not a dream of equality and friendship, no this is a dream
brought on by light dozing sleep patterns, ear infection created
nausea, moments of fever, prescribed medication and most likely some
suppressed anxiety.
Ladies
and Gentlemen I have a dream to create a horror based fantasy
campaign in Basic Roleplaying (BRP).
Now
this has hit some snags from the start, first of all I've never Dmed
Basic Roleplaying and most of my group have never played it either
but my choice to run the game in this system is due to the following
three factors:
- Other roleplaying systems such as Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder traditionally tend to empower the hero's so even monsters that in lore and roleplay terms a character should be scared of soon become hardly challenging to the typical adventurer. I want to shake up the party a little a draw us back from this, I want pull us away from been well oiled murder machines or the perfect diplomat (other known as diplomancers in my group ) and get a little more human and vulnerable.
- Basic Roleplaying has an inbuilt sanity system which is relatively simple and saves me from having to create an experimental system or using the Tome of Horror Corruption/Taint Systems. It also has the additional effect of having a reputation for destroying characters thanks to Call Of Cthulhu and this will give me additional groundwork for setting the campaign mood.
- We've had access to the Basic Roleplaying Book and Fantasy 1 for a few years now and not yet used it and I want to make my friend feel that it was not a wasted purchase, in addition the system is rather more flexible for ad-libbing character stats than most of the D20 systems I traditionally play.
The
other issues I'm facing include the fact that the Basic Roleplaying
book is a huge unwieldy beast which is a pain to flick through and
that its supplement isn't much better and is missing a context page
and appendix, I have taken measures and downloaded the quick start
guide but I suspect a lot of photocopying is still in order.
Whilst
looking for online support for BRP I have notice it it seems to lack
any central wiki and that it only has a minor presence online other
than BRP
Central
and I'm not particularly willing to sign up to the forum as I'm in
the middle of reducing my existing accounts online as it is after 15
years on not doing so.
I've
managed to avoid getting side tracked in map design thanks to
Adroit-Tellurian's
post on the map making SubReddit
as the city of Bromwich is ideal for my needs so now I can focus on
the encounters for the game.
While
this will be horror themed and will lend heavily from inspirations
such as Darkest Dungeon I am planning on making it rather a
traditional dungeon crawl style adventure (though initially the party
will have to make their way through a contested haunted city) and
I've plans for various sub objectives so the party has a little free
roaming if they so wish.
So
why am I posting this? Well the two people in my group I would
traditionally brain storm with are quite likely to be players so I
don't want to spoil the surprise so I'm turning to the online
community of my fellow roleplayers for suggestions or heck if you
feel like you've got a few NPCs you don't mind going crazy or
encounters you think would be appropriate I would be very grateful to
see them.
Finally this months post should be the last of the How To Host A Dungeon Series for now though I would like to return to it and craft a few more alternative rules beyond civilisations in the future.
So next month I've got a number of possible topics to turn to, ranging from Green Text Stories of my groups current online game and its hijinks, a overview on how to run a monstrous/evil campaign since that was popular in the FAQ and I've also been delving into the more casual side of gaming so a series of short reviews is in the works.
By the way if you've not seen the FAQ page yet please feel free to check it out and post more questions in the comments.