Did that last night lol. I have periods where I want to watch something, but it's too late to invest in anything, so I save movies that interest me then watch Teen Titans Go instead
Hey, folks, Guam's got a storm incoming in the next couple days, and it might be bigger than most of our recent ones. We should be fine, if Troggy or I mysteriously disappear it's just because the power's out. And don't listen to the news if they say Guam's been wiped off the map, they like being dramatic.
I've been struggling with this but figured it out, I think. The thing that's hard to get from a lot of D&D player/DMs' perspective is that there simply is no level => challenge correlation directly. Challenge is almost entirely derived from:
Hit points
Damage per round (from your most damaging ...
I want to write a campaign where magic is totally absent using an existing setting—like an existing area where magic is strictly forbidden by authorities or an existing dead magic zone.
For the purposes of this campaign I don't want to create my own world or my own setting in an existing world.
...
I'd like to drop a frame challenge there that I'd recommend not using DnD 5e for this. Too bad the only system that springs to mind is SW, which I kinda also dislike :P
It's a setting-agnostic tabletop RPG system that might fit realistic medieval gameplay a bit better than DnD 5e
Even if you remove magic from 5e, the fantasy sorta remains. Hit points get recovered overnight, wounds don't get infected, injured people perform as well as unharmed ones and such. Savage Worlds makes for a lot grittier experience, should you want it, with its wound and injury systems.
(It's not a game I personally like, but might be a better fit for your purpose)
Basically, my idea is. I have a homebrew system and I organised a great medieval realistic campaign set to happen in 1331 in the Kingdom of France. Players loved it. And I thought, best way to spread it was to adapt it to a well known system.
And it's not a bad thing, generally. But it might make sensible adaptations of your content tricky, unless you're willing to make major changes to core mechanics
What's most important really is the story and the historical details (like what food peasants eat, how trade routes are organised etc....) that took quite a bit of research
You can't play call of cuthulu with level 20 DnD characters ^^
the heroes are just too powerful to fear anything but gods...
I didn't play miuch dnd5 yet. But it appeared there was less magic
like. magical items are basically out of reach, which is a good start
and lots of classes have spell like abilities, like Second Wind. So it's not necessary to have healers and such in the group. That's not too bad either
@kviiri I was likewise tempted, but there is enough traffic already on that q that I am going to let this one slip by. @Taiko I have a few recommendations, but quite frankly do not think that they fit as an answer given the way your question has been asked.
I did look through Apocalypse World: Dark Ages playtest once. Wasn't exactly thrilled, but it puts a lot of work presenting the grittiness of the medieval world to the player.
@Taiko The only classes you can run will be Fighter Champion, BattleMaster; Rogue (Assassin, Thief); Barbarian; Monk (maybe) ... depending on how "zero" your zero magic setting is. (There is a spell-less Ranger at the WoTC home page that you can probably run).
Every other class has magic, and is built around using that magic. Bard, sorcerer, cleric, druid, wizard, warlock, ranger, paladin.
@Taiko You then need to look at all of the monsters and get rid of the ones that need to be hit by magical weapons, or by magic. Or, you need to find ways on your own of the characters being able to deal with them. (Run away is an option, I suppose)
Those who are suggesting a different system (like Pendragon) are perhaps pointing you in the right direction. Or Song if ICe and Fire RPG ... perhaps.
@Taiko Some links to a few old game rec questions are here1 and here2
What exactly do you want your campaign to be about? Whom will players play?
Montsegur 1244 is earlier, it focuses on the Cathar heretics in that castle. It is very much medieval realism.
“The New Middle Ages, or Ten Ways to Dream about the Middle Ages” by Anders Nygard focusses on students in 1229 paris, so is even earlier. Also, it's part of the Nørwegian Style anthology, and all those games are strange and experimental; in this case, every player has special powers based on modern reasons to relate to the middle ages inspired by essays from Umberto Eco.
“Ars Magica” is also set in the 13th, not 14th, century. It is a well-known system with a lot of historical detail, but goes into the extreme other direction of exploring what if medieval prejudices about magic etc. were true: How would being a group of magicians in what they call ‘Mystical Medieval Europe’ work?
That's early in the Hundred Years' War. Maybe it's related to that? I mostly remember because I was toying around with the idea of humans vs technologically sophisticated aliens set around that year too.
Hm, no wait... the HYW didn't start properly until 1337. But apparently tensions were already high.
“Zweihander” is a recent RPG pulling from the grimdark Warhammer aesthetics. Consequently its setting is more late middle ages/early renaissance than high middle ages, but judging by its awards, sales and flipping through the book, it may be interesting to look at for you, mostly because it does classical adventuring in a quasi-medieval, low-magic world.
An alien empire's science/scout/resource acquisition ship suffers a reactor failure and crash lands on the most habitable planet in their near vicinity: earth. The year is 1453. They decide to abduct some stupid monkey people for their experiments, but these monkeys, "humans" as they call themselves, put up a surprising amount of resistance and manage to seize a largish amount of alien technology, forcing the aliens to set up proper defenses and strategy.
“HârnMaster” is a pseudo-medieval low-magic RPG I played at some point. The system itself may not be extraordinary, but its world description and the tools that it provides for managing medieval-style economy as GM are useful. Also nice: campaign seeds such as The Earl's Progress which give you an idea of how something that is not classical adventuring, but still something that is similar to it, might reflect in a Medieval RPG.
@kviiri “AW:DA” is another one. Same impression as kviiri. (Maybe having a newbe GM for that particular game did not help my case either.)
(“Mouse Guard” is definitely not pre-100YW france, but a cool medievalesque no-magic setting.)
@Taiko That's the systems I can think of off the top of my head. I think it really boils down to what kind of things your players will want to do.
A friend of mine wants to run an X-COM style game set about a hundred years later than that, but with demons, not aliens. The system there will be Zweihander, which is the main reason I'm aware of that system.
In This Question, I was dowvoted a lot. As far as I am aware, I did not do anything wrong. Can someone please explain to me why I was downvoted?
