ACT I of a Campaign, Alternative Character Creation
One of the things I have always wanted to try was running a campaign where the first act is run sort of like the start to the first fable game. The basic idea is that the campaign world has societies that are sort of like the Pathfinder Society or "adventurers guilds" though I think that is probably a poor name for them. In essence different nations and organizations have institutions where they raise and train adventurers, agents, mercenaries, and general elites that are they recruited into other organizations or simply allowed to go out on their own as long as they retain some sort of relationship to the society. I guess a good example would be the Ninja Villages in Naruto.
The purpose of trying this type of start is to see if its a good environment for extremely strong character generation where the players can form firm roots for their characters relationships to each-other and have their characters abilities and specialization grow in a more natural way.
I generally like to just go to town with homebrewing parts of the campaign to suit exactly what I want the "feel" of the campaign to be. Generally this doesn't affect core rules as far as "I want to homebrew X to do whatever because I think its slightly over or underpowered" instead here are some examples of what I was thinking for this homebrew character creation.
So here's some things that I want to ask.
Anyways just an idea I had for at least the first part of a campaign. I'd like to have awesome overarching plot stuff be clear by the time they get out of the academy.
This type of format also gives me a very good insight into what type of campaign they want to run. They can even officially decide that when they leave the academy. "We are the party that hunts vampires and we work for ourselves!" or "Our party is a section of this mercenary group and we operate as a sledgehammer on the battlefield!"
The purpose of trying this type of start is to see if its a good environment for extremely strong character generation where the players can form firm roots for their characters relationships to each-other and have their characters abilities and specialization grow in a more natural way.
I generally like to just go to town with homebrewing parts of the campaign to suit exactly what I want the "feel" of the campaign to be. Generally this doesn't affect core rules as far as "I want to homebrew X to do whatever because I think its slightly over or underpowered" instead here are some examples of what I was thinking for this homebrew character creation.
- Everyone starts out without a class.
- Everyone starts at a young age (I'll probably homebrew the races to not have vastly different maturity ages)
- Everyone starts with 3d6 attribute rolls, rolled straight down the line
- Discuss with each player "If they could have one talent/ability for their character what would it be?"
- A general understanding that regardless of what your characters backstory is he/she has to want to graduate from the academy
- After the core attributes are rolled, write a backstory that includes, who your characters family is, how your character survived before arriving at the academy, who you met when you entered the academy/how you joined, as well as the general personality you have developed so far (there will be plenty of room for your character to change personalities while growing up at the academy)
- I'd like to run the first act like how time passes during a harry potter novel, but have there be clear systems in place where the players can allocate time towards improving their attributes and learning skills. My goal is for it to be entirely possible to start out with poor stats for a class and still have the player be able to function well as that class in a unique way by the end of the academy.
- The characters will discover talents that their character can harbor that will function like advantages in GURPS. These will significantly affect how their characters interact with some classes but should be very fun.
- Towards the end of the act the players will leave the academy to mentor with specific NPCs where they will learn their class. (I don't plan on this taking very long in real world time because I'd rather keep the party together and the game moving forward but it will probably be pretty fun so maybe the players will want to use this time as an option to develop their characters in a unique way privately from the other players)
- The characters will then meet up and go on thier first adventure together. (This is the part where the guild watches them and assesses them as a party.)
- The climax of the first act is the world graduation tournament where the different schools send their graduates to compete against the other schools. This is to stir friendly competition, to show of the schools "crop", and to give a chance for the individual parties to make a name for themselves.
So here's some things that I want to ask.
- Do you think I'm wasting my time thinking about this, am I the only one that will find this fun?
- I want to have in academy adventures along side the "training/class" segments. Think Harry Potter shinanigans on campus, ideally I want the group to act out and make their own shinanigans as long as their first reaction isn't "We need to get out of the school as fast as possible" which I'm pretty worried about.
- For the class training part, if you were a player, would you rather have a 1 on 1 mentor type thing where you study your class (think Legend of Zoro)? Or would you rather be sent to like, the cleric branch where you learn how to be a cleric with other cleric students (think the part of KOTOR where you join the Koriban Sith Academy).
- Has anyone tired this type of start before? How did it work out?
Anyways just an idea I had for at least the first part of a campaign. I'd like to have awesome overarching plot stuff be clear by the time they get out of the academy.
This type of format also gives me a very good insight into what type of campaign they want to run. They can even officially decide that when they leave the academy. "We are the party that hunts vampires and we work for ourselves!" or "Our party is a section of this mercenary group and we operate as a sledgehammer on the battlefield!"