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Post by dmsam on Jan 11, 2017 3:53:05 GMT
Here's an idea - The PCs all play as non-human or even monster races on a New World continent, preferably the low-tech, low magic races such as tabaxi, lizardmen, orcs, minotaurs, etc. Humans are the main antagonistic force in the campaign, and they are invading your home and disrupting your way of life in both passive and violent ways. Do you have what it takes to stop the human invaders? Or would your race fall like once majestic elves, mighty dwarves and the ingenous gnomes in the face of this prolific, cruel and intelligent foe?
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DM Diggy
Commoner
Posts: 13
Favorite D&D Class: Cleric
Favorite D&D Race: Halflings
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Post by DM Diggy on Jan 11, 2017 21:15:44 GMT
Not to poo-poo your idea Sam, but this sounds too reminiscent of the Colonial powers versus the Native peoples of the Americas. Not that we shouldn't acknowledge the atrocities that occurred during that time period. Essentially, you are just taking racism and swapping it with xenophobia. Don't get me wrong, xenophobia has its place in games, and if it's the story you and your group want to run go ahead. Just be careful how you portray certain things, because it could rub some people the wrong way.
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Post by lasersniper on Jan 11, 2017 23:54:33 GMT
Not to poo-poo your idea Sam, but this sounds too reminiscent of the Colonial powers versus the Native peoples of the Americas. Not that we shouldn't acknowledge the atrocities that occurred during that time period. Essentially, you are just taking racism and swapping it with xenophobia. Don't get me wrong, xenophobia has its place in games, and if it's the story you and your group want to run go ahead. Just be careful how you portray certain things, because it could rub some people the wrong way. Funny, that is exactly why I find it interesting. I mean, in most forms of fantasy gaming, those downtrodden and "evil" races that are goblins and kobalds usually have some pretty strong parallels to the issue already. Of course not all settings are like this. But many do feel very classic cowboy vs Indians in that respect. I feel like flipping it around could be fun since we don't do it nearly as often. I mean, we play AS evil Nazi-esque characters then we do as a Indian parallels.
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Post by dmsam on Jan 12, 2017 3:27:06 GMT
Heck, why do we watch movies like the Avatar (the one with Na'vi) then?
There are several reasons why I wanted to explore this idea. One, players often dismiss their actions towards any "evil" race as intrinsically heroic. A bunch of goblins who steal the farmer's chickens would be met with the sword, while a human thief would not. Kobolds, downtrodden under the heavy yoke of their draconic overlords, must do what they must to survive, yet they die by droves while trying to protect their own homes from human killsquads. Should they forever stay their retribution?
Second, how often do players get to play as the "underdog" races and ACTUALLY face challenges because of it? Personally, I find that most DMs either hand-wave the social inequalities in their setting, or downright alter racial bonuses to reflect these changes (not a single drow PC I know have actual sunlight sensitivity). How often do players see the actual impact of race and culture within a fantasy setting? How often are your PCs hungry and impoverished enough that they must steal food just to survive? How often are your PCs' freedoms restricted because of their race or class? In this sort of scenario, not only will it be commonplace, but they will experience it as a group, as a part of a society.
Third, a reflection of self. What does a hero feel when they have righted a wrong? Can the monstrous creatures feel the same way? Does a goblin, kobold or lizardman hero morn the loss of his family? Does he swear vengeance on humans that committed such atrocities? When an orcish paladin of vengeance stand above a helpless human child with a great-axe raised, does he see the face of his own son, whose death set him on this path?
When do we get to tell these stories?
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justdave
Squire
Yes
Posts: 27
Favorite D&D Class: Paladin // Barbarian
Favorite D&D Race: Human
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Post by justdave on Jan 12, 2017 8:57:36 GMT
I don't see how the parallels to the colonial times is a reason not to play this kind of campaign. Roleplaying is here to explore different worlds, places and positions. If the GM is aware of what he's doing (which he definitely seems to be), this kind of campaign can give people a secure platform to expand their horizons regarding those issues. The idea of humans as parasites expanding and "civilizing" everything in sight is a theme that's explored plenty in Sci-Fi (I mean look at WH40k). Using this template on a DnD-Setting only seems logical and has the potential for not only some meaningful discussion, but also tons of fun and worldbuilding. What does a culture of Ghouls look like? How would a band of Goblins attempt to start a settelment? I really like this, and I think the real life connections only make this more worthy to pursue
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Post by friartook on Jan 12, 2017 19:33:53 GMT
I think this is an amazing concept. I've always been uncomfortable with the "Orcs are evil so its ok to slaughter their children" mentality that traditional D&D games and settings seem to encourage. In almost all of my settings "monsters" have distinct cultures and goals of their own. Even if their alignment says "evil", I consider that more of a guideline for social mores than a judgement. That being said, I think DM Diggy has a valid point. Not that such a campaign shouldn't be run, but that care and empathy must be exercised when addressing issues such as colonialism. There's a heck of a lot of real world baggage there. My most recent setting explored race and slavery in its undertones, and there were times when I had to stop myself in the worldbuilding process, back up, and check my assumptions. There's a fine line between representation and cultural appropriation.
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Post by dmsam on Jan 12, 2017 22:06:11 GMT
To create a degree of separation between colonialism, a DM can always make the campaign continental rather than intercontinental, with the humans as an up and rising species/kingdom. All it takes is a driven population standing behind a charismatic conqueror and a well functioning government. If colonial powers vs natives strikes too close to home, then look to the expansion of the Roman Empire, or the conquest of Ghenhis Khan or Alexander the Great may be a more palatable source of inspiration.
Many of the greatest stories are told from the perspective of the conquered. What better way to do this then as a party of lizardmen, orcs, minotaurs, kobolds, goblins and other "monsterous" races?
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grinningdwarf
Commoner
Posts: 20
Favorite D&D Class: Fighter
Favorite D&D Race: Dwarf
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Post by grinningdwarf on Jan 16, 2017 15:18:27 GMT
I'd love to play in this campaign. It would be interesting.
And I love the spin that's put on the monsters. That's why The Hunter's Blade Trilogy might be my favorite Forgotten Realms series. Who would have thought that dwarves could ever come to terms and sign a peace treaty with orcs? Great stuff that rises above the level of typical swords and sorcery fare.
Keep us informed on your campaign!
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Post by randosaurus on Feb 4, 2017 8:24:41 GMT
Have to advise caution in any instance where a fantasy culture has a real life analog. It's a common pitfall in fantasy settings where a real world culture is distilled to simple flavor elements. Consider a halfling "Romany" caravan, the entire Druid class, nearly every single instance of anything remotely east Asian*... In this situation you've cast the Pre-Columbian cultures as low-tech, low magic. Which is... fine. But everything I've read about treading this line is do it purposefully and for a reason. Part of the peril is unavoidable. D&D and fantasy generally draw on folkloric traditions from the world over-- partly because it's easy to sample from true life, partly because the world is so diverse and has generated so much content (history), partly because folkloric tradition is in the (free to use) public domain. It oversimplifies the real cultures it uses much like it simplifies the fantasy creatures into monoliths so uniform all lizardmen/orcs/centaurs share the common alignment. It's simplest. But it can go really very wrong when published. It might be worth noting that this campaign exists. It's from 2e, Forgotten Realms. It was... ...Problematic. Maztica was a fan-fic trilogy of colonial era central America. More recently, they literally wrote it out of existence. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abeir-Toril#MazticaI have to ask if the tabaxi, lizardmen, orcs, minotaurs, are going to be their respective cat-like, territorial, often CE, usually CE archetypes? I think one interesting way to approach this campaign, using what already exists in D&D-- I imagine the intelligent races battled to a sort of equilibrium state. Something would be needed to establish the wider world and then the characters within the monstrous society. We don't have many good references for how evil races interact in the wild, but there is ample precedent that they can coexist when kept separate, even ally to form monstrous militia movements under a banner (or antagonist). One reason I always imagined for monstrous races to advance levels in character classes was for 'the game'. To maintain equilibrium the races couldn't go to regular all out war-- weaker numbers would weaken both, it's mutually un-beneficial to war. So each race would train up elite squads to contest claims, disputes, disagreements in direct small-squad opposition or trials. That would give plenty of opportunities for adventures as the PCs train up and establish the world, and explore the power dynamics on the continent before the humans arrive. The arrivals wouldn't really present a challenge noticeable until they settled, gained a generation, and expanded outward. It would have to take longer, if the human settlers had to expand farmland into grazing territory of a 6HD minotaur culture, for example. The bleeding edge of that expansion would be the adventuring humans. From the monstrous PC perspective, the humans with character levels got there mostly by battling the PCs own people or their neighbors. The PCs would end up at the vanguard of efforts to stop the Human incursions, so by that point of the campaign the PCs would be at the center of action for the whole New World. I think ultimately it makes an interesting prequel campaign for later stories in the more developed world. It would be easy to have call backs to the earlier campaign in those later adventures and build a persistent world. By that later point, the monstrous races would be pushed back to remote pockets or disappeared completely. Only certain secret locations or ruins would still be undiscovered so you could re-use any of the settings or scenes you used; I'm always a fan of narrative ways to re-use the same terrain over a number of encounters. Perhaps the monstrous races are now plotting their return. Plenty to work with. Maybe that only happens if the PCs fail. Ultimately I think you should tell the story you want. There's nothing wrong with using the prism of the story to examine real world concepts, philosophy. As was said above, you just need to know who is sitting at your table. There's already space for examining the truly monstrous in a world with torture demons, brain-eating tentacle aliens and monsters that can drain away souls. I don't think anyone will show up and smack the dice out of your hand** if you took a look at history through the fantastic. * Seriously, this is a thing. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Adventures** Do you get to keep the outcome of the roll if they do?
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Post by dmgenisisect on Feb 4, 2017 10:37:44 GMT
First of all I'm all for an everyone is a monsterous race game, particularly as it gives you a chance to flesh out their society and motives. Moving away from always chaotic evil is always a good move in my mind, as I'm kind of against the whole have races you can KoS.
Second point, I'm all for using history as an inspiration for your games, after all history has some of our best stories in it, and many of them I think should be told through the lense of TTRPGs.
Third point, I'm all for having diverse feeling cultures in a game, after all there a lots of great cultures out there to draw inspiration from.
But there's something you got to keep in mind and that's it is not good to to take someone's culture and boil it down to simplicity and then miss work it or apply it, particularly if your reinforcing negative stereotypes. For example think about what your reinforcing in your players if your natives are all monsterous humanoids, even if they're playing them. Just make sure they all have properly though societies which focus on how they are humanoids too! Also I wouldn't suggest having the natives low magic and low tech. It might be cool to give the invaders advanced tech compared to what your PCs have (ie they have artificers or basic gunpowder but the PCs only get what's in the PHB), but maybe they don't have magic. Alternatively have them on equal tech footing but give each sides different feeling magic (maybe an arcane divine split, or have one side focus on more wild magic, or give a side prominent psionics). That way your not subconsciously enforcing that the natives are inferior.
That said all of this is irrelevant because what you do at your table is your business.
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Post by dmsam on Feb 7, 2017 0:13:06 GMT
In my vision of this campaign, there is a significant difference in the cultures of the people. In terms of technology and military prowess, the two "sides" would be roughly equal. In order to avoid degrading certain cultures, the language used to describe these different people must be carefully crafted.
Very rarely does a culture of an entire race portray itself in a negative light, since many of them are ethnocentric. This holds especially true in times of conflict. The "monstrous" races will only be monstrous to humans, but certainly not to themselves. In fact, they would likely hold each other to high esteem.
It may be tricky for a DM to describe other cultures appropriately. However, by using neutral language or even a positive conversational tone, you can drive your players to accept many things as "normal", no matter how alien something is.
For example, if you are trying to portray lizardfolk's cannibalism in a different light, try having the PC's grandmother cordially invite them over for delicious medium-rare steak. That is going to sound a lot nicer than a horrific scene of butchery of some poor sod in the battlefield.
Likewise, don't describe the orc's tent as bare and shambling. Call it practical and rugged, capable to be dismantled at a moments notice should the chief order a migration. To orcs, human or elven structures must seem unbearably gaudy and unnecessarily permanent.
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Post by randosaurus on Feb 7, 2017 7:42:39 GMT
I definitely think immersion is the best approach to bring the PCs into the campaign culture for their particular monstrous race, and the most fun to imagine and build out as a DM. My own problem is having to resist pointing out the subtleties while they're happening. The PCs shouldn't realize something was amiss with that steak until 3-4 sessions later. Or perhaps the 3 non-lizardfolk PC would be aware-- it could be odd to them.
Something that appeals to my own world-building style would be in the balancing of the tech/magic between the sides. I usually look at Civilization or other RTS games for inspiration for how combating factions create units or tactics distinct to their culture. Maybe the minotaurans are driven out because humans are used to open field battle, but lizardfolk end up hosting the other monstrous races in their inaccessible swamp realm. How would that constraint on resources inform relationships between the species?
For certain, each species would not seem evil to their own people. I believe that orcs are 'mostly CE' and minotaurs are 'usually CE' due to some aspect of their psychology that doesn't fit will to the human/humanoid Law-Chaos/Good-Evil axes. For Tolkien orcs that were born in a vat, CE makes sense because they were spawned to destroy all nations-- solid CE. Minotaurs could be CE because of their history of oppression; their forebears were trapped in cruel, inescapable mazes. Their oral heritage would be one of liberation, and CE would manifest in their philosophy that would be natural if cattle overthrew the rancher (that actually works really well now that I think about it) and vowed never to return to any pen.
As far as sensitivity to real cultures, I often use them as a starting point. A fantastic setting should engender fantastic peoples, wondrous cultures. One critique I have for any setting other than low-magic is that there should be far far more magic than there is. Magic is an all-purpose solution, why isn't is used for everything? How would magical heritage or ecclesiastical structures guide a monster culture? In my own case, I thought up a halfling wagon culture that was a traveling circus/fortune telling scam. Pretty well-trod territory. What might halfling carnies do with magic? Revise, correct, develop the concept & by the end my halflings were enchantment-specialized hypnotists naturally bonded to a bear companion for life and scourge of the land, enslaving sentient creatures for their horror carnival (or just hunting them for sport). No way to confuse them for real life caravaners (also no longer allowed as a playable race).
The important thing I think is to really make the species, the cultures your own. What makes it to the table should be the tip of the iceberg. It might take a bit of collaboration with the players to really develop cultural heritage & history. This exact area is where I find it tempting to take real world culture, history, folklore and file off the VIN & pass it off as original. Always make changes that are meaningful or fun as they affect the game, and go with it.
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Post by dmsam on Mar 27, 2017 18:33:36 GMT
So I started running this campaign, and had four sessions so far. It is quite fun, but the atrocities of war show through quite a bit. Here are a few things that I am surprised about:
1. Desperate people are willing to do desperate/terrible things. Given the setting, the PCs had no issues committing acts of terrorism, just because a commanding officer told them to. In fact, they didn't even question it when they were told to destroy a lighthouse so that enemy trading and supply vessels would crash into a nearby reef.
2. Following orders is easy. Leading is hard. I gave my players an option to be the captain of a privateer vessel, but none of them wanted to be the leader, and deferred that responsibility to me without a second thought.
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Post by meribson on Mar 27, 2017 21:31:10 GMT
Heck, why do we watch movies like the Avatar (the one with Na'vi) then? Pretty visuals? In all seriousness, I hope your campaign goes well. My two bits on the culture issues is to take inspiration from any real world culture you wish, but alter key aspects and don't just follow a one-real-world-culture for one-fantasy-world-culture basis. For example, the orcs in the Green Coast in my setting have a cultural basis from the nomads of the Mongolian steppes, but it isn't a cut and paste. There's elements taken from other real world cultures in there, such as the Norse and various smaller African tribes. The first that comes to mind is a rite practiced by one of the clans where the new chieftain will commit an act of ritual sacrifice to gain a vision of prospective futures. In most cases this is one of their own eyes, though on one occasion in recent memory the offering was the chieftain's tongue.
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Post by randosaurus on Mar 28, 2017 4:36:06 GMT
So I started running this campaign, and had four sessions so far. It is quite fun, but the atrocities of war show through quite a bit. Here are a few things that I am surprised about: 1. Desperate people are willing to do desperate/terrible things. Given the setting, the PCs had no issues committing acts of terrorism, just because a commanding officer told them to. In fact, they didn't even question it when they were told to destroy a lighthouse so that enemy trading and supply vessels would crash into a nearby reef. 2. Following orders is easy. Leading is hard. I gave my players an option to be the captain of a privateer vessel, but none of them wanted to be the leader, and deferred that responsibility to me without a second thought. You could just steer them towards team Evil... Hope there aren't any paladins in the group committing these acts of violence.
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