Canonfire!

Wed Jul 04, 2012 6:43 pm A touch of fantasy

So I'm brainstorming on how to really immerse my players in the fantasy of the world. I have two ideas so far that I like:
1. Non-combat encounters. Rather than constantly bombarding them with random monster encounters I'm going to try and throw a healthy mix of fantastic world encounters such as
a. A castle floats overhead on a cloud
b. A dragon flies overhead - either evil or good, but far out of reach of the players.
c. A ghostly carriage rumbles by, but neither attacks or is able to be attacked.
d. A neutral lich is seen gathering spell components - it completely avoids combat unless pressed

2. Superstitions hold weight. I've always liked the idea of a world where our superstitions are real. For instance
a. Breaking a mirror causes a -1 to all rolls for 7 years
b. Finding and picking up a copper on the ground will give you +1 to all rolls for the day.
c. Making a wish on a wishbone has a 1 in 1000 (000 on 3d10) chance of coming true.

What suggestions would you have to expand the sense of "everyday" fantasy in game - specifically non-combat or environmental examples? I'd love to hear expansions of the ideas I've already suggested as well as entirely new ideas. Thanks!
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No place is safe, only safer.

Wed Jul 04, 2012 8:44 pm

I've used ghosts in non-combat situations to effect pretty well a couple of times. See my Rat Tower article for an example. Something like that really sets the mood. I use a lot of vivid descriptions, including the feelings of fear and loathing that players feel when they fight some really horrific otherworldly monster. Sights, smells, sounds. Even if you can't do accents you can describe npc's as speaking with a southern Keoish accent. Remind them of the strangeness of things they encounter to make them feel like the world is a big, wide place.

My players are heading down to southern Keoland from Sterich so I'm already working on how to describe how different a place it is - everybody talks funny, the weather is too hot, the clothes are strange, the food is too spicy, they have to learn how to sleep on this strange contraption called a hammock while on the ship that's taking them down the Javan. While passing through the Hool Marsh clouds of mosquitoes swarm about them. I could go on forever, but you get the idea. Not every players grooves on it, but I know it does help some of them get more into the game experience.

I really like you ideas about superstitions.

Thu Jul 05, 2012 11:01 am

One thing I like to use comes from something I located online years back. Two fans did up a calendar of holidays and added possible magical effects for certain days of the year. The moon phases were accounted for too and interesting things have been known (very occasionally) to happen at the dark, waxing, waning and full of Luna and Celene. Aside from the possibly fantastic things that could happen, keeping accurate track of Oerth's year plus its moon phases definitely keeps everybody centered in the world.

I'm a bit of a ham, so another of things I use when DM-ing is a bit of good ol' play acting. I'll never be an actor, but I can do different voices pretty well. As a result, my players remember certain people from places they've visited vividly and that helps immerse them in the place. So, old folk's voices quaver a bit. Baddy's range from intense to soft-spoken and deadly to downright silly and hard to take seriously (until their master stroke is revealed, of course). Regular NPC's get voices too. Gnomes have one accent and voice pitch, dwarves another, halflings yet another and so on. (Can't count the number of times I been hoarse from doing gravelly dwarf voices at the end of a game session. Get three or more together and I'm really done in.)

My crew is pretty visual and I like getting them involved in tangible ways. One campaign we did up a set of heraldry, an in-game constitution and a codex of laws for a town the party founded. (This was at higher levels, of course, when everyone was looking to create strongholds - they pooled them together to form the town of Greyy in a section of the southwestern Pomarj near Ulek they had laboriously cleared and were regularly maintaining.) One fellow started a small merchant shipping company and he spent lots of time creating deck plans and crew descriptions for the 3 caravels that eventually came to populate the small fleet. Another with a love for architecture did up floor plans for the houses the party lived in. Heck, one guy running a ranger who set up a farm-type stronghold and kept track of his chickens, goats and pigs. We've actually had the party go out into the wilds to bring back mountain goats and wild sheep for him to herd as a mid-level side trek. Silly, but fun - and it sure added to his mental and suspended-disbelief investments in the game.
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<div>Braggi, Swain and Varlet at Large<br /></div>

Thu Jul 05, 2012 11:19 am

Thu Jul 05, 2012 1:40 pm

I have my own sense of fantastic reality that I try to infuse into my games. I am naturally biased because my educational background is in the biological sciences with a zoological emphasis. Thusly, I am always trying to create a believable, but mythical/fantastic, ecological realm. It doesn't always work seemlessly, yet in the wilderness setting, I attempt to weave a type of ecological world where normal creatures and the fantastic interact. I have always been a fan of the Dragon Magazine articles entitled "The Ecology of-" series. Whoever started that trend was, to a science-minded person like myself, a genius. To others, it doesn't work, but for me, a "chimera" (this is both a science and fantasy term, so pardon the intended pun) of both science + fantasy, it's great.

I've also had some encounters where characters come upon some type of spoor, track, leftover kill, and the like, of a creature without actually meeting the beast. If the characters, for whatever reason, wanted to actually find, it, so be it (might be a bad idea, though).

Finally, when describing demi-humans or humanoids, I try to add a sense of cultural identity for each. Give them 'personality' rather than a flat description. True, orcs are warlike and savage, but they have a tradition and customs unique to that group. I try to play them more than merely rapacious, single-minded, blood-thirsty subhuman savages. They ARE this, but much more. Create a sense of culture for each, especially if the situation warrants it (such as the party spies upon an orcish settlement from afar).

-Lanthorn, Fantasy Ecologist

Thu Jul 05, 2012 3:33 pm

- Strange roadside statues of a long forgotten god
- Weird colorful plants or fungi where the players would not expect such things
- Gloomy weather when the players are heading to ToE, just to set the mood
- Love using Brownie's as wilderness guides
- The party comes across another adventure group in need of much needed healing
- A band of rum merchants setting up camp for the night, let the party start!
- Strange lights in the night sky
- A cold fog in the morning hours
Just afew things, hope they help Smile

Sat Jul 07, 2012 11:13 am

Sat Jul 07, 2012 5:25 pm

Jamesdglick, thanks for the trivia answer! As a sidenote, Kim Mohan was the mastermind behind one of my favorite books, The Wilderness Survival Guide.

-Lanthorn

Tue Jul 10, 2012 10:24 pm

These are all fantastic ideas for really immersing the players within the world setting. One of my own interests is trying to see how the world as a whole functions, and not simply how adventurers fit into it.

Here are some of my suggestions:

-Try and find a way to give your players information on the various "goings-on" in other parts of the world. If they're guarding a caravan, for instance, their employer might happen to mention all the political unrest in Onnwal and its relation to that country's growing dispute with Idee.

Or, if your player stop at an inn for the night, have a bard come up to perform the evening's entertainment. In between songs, the bard could talk about the rumors he's heard of a holy crusade that the Knights of the Watch are preparing around the Valley of the Mage, the brewing war between Geoff and Gran March or the fire giant who's proclaimed himself the son of King Snurre Iron Belly and is attempting to rally many of the giants of the Hellfurnaces under his leadership.

-Have some encounters be completely incidental, and never really referred to again. For instance, your players might meet a group of farmers on their way to town to sell their produce at the market. Since they're going the same way, the farmers could travel with your players, and casually chat with them on the extortionate road tolls they have to pay, or the fact that the harvest isn't nearly good as it was over the last couple of years, or the impending marriage of the duke's son.

Your players might never run into these farmers again, but it could be an interesting and memorable role-playing encounter, even if it doesn't actually advance the plot at all.

-Get your players to detail as much as they're willing to about their characters' families-their cousins, aunts and uncles, and so forth. These NPCs might interact with your characters in any number of ways-they could provide temporary lodging for the players, introduce them to prominent local contacts, give them advice on which merchants or craftsmen provide the best deals, and so forth. Interacting with these characters, created by your players, also gives them a chance to participate more directly in actually creating the campaign world and the people who dwell in it. They might also make for a more interesting role-playing encounter than yet another nameless innkeeper who the players will visit for one night and then never see again.

And again, these characters might generate aqdventures themselves. After all, the party wizard might have a cousin whose children have just been kidnapped by Orcus-worshipping cultists, and who's about to have a nervous breakdown from the stress. Guess who just happens to stop by to visit the cousin right after the abduction happens?