Topic: Would I Be A Bad Person...Err...GM If...

[David Johansen]

(Cross posted from rpgnet)

My new Rolemaster campaign is set in the northern most port town of an expanding people who aren't quite comfortable with calling themselves an empire yet. They've conquered the large island they originated on and are spreading onto the continent, particularly in less settled areas from which they then expand.

They're a slave owning society, though they would be ashamed to treat a slave as badly as a feudal serf's lot in life. Men and women are judged by the condition of their slaves as much as their horses. The society isn't a matriarchy but there are very powerful women and very little gender role distinction. The magistrate of the bustling northern town, for instance, is a woman.

There are hill dwelling barbarians to the north and west of the town and a european feudal type society to the south and west, which was once a mighty empire but has since fallen into disarray. The last king having abdicated to become a cobbler a few hundred years ago, commenting that he'd reached the point where he wanted a little real political power.

My adventure outline was that a ship's captain had made an illegal slave raid on the southerners and taken a few prisoners of noble birth. A group of young noblemen had infiltrated the town and seized the gates of the town and the citadel, allowing a sizable force of horsemen to charge through the streets and seize the magistrate as a hostage. My intention was to have the PCs fight to regain one of the two sets of gates and get mixed up in negociations.

Except, being a first session, the PCs decided to play, a southern ranger, an islander rogue, a half elf assassin, a woodman assassin (I don't even know where I'm putting the woodmen yet!), and an islander sorcerer.

So instead of fighting, they tried to get out of town on the slave ship that was just leaving. It all came out okay in the end but I didn't bring my miniature ship, towers buildings, a bloody forest, but the ship's mast makes it hard to pack so I didn't bring it...

Oh well, that's one way you can pretty much predict where your PCs will go right? If you weren't ready for it, that's where they're headed.

But back to my original question, given the roguish nature of our band of wouldn't be heroes, would I be a bad person if I attatched a group of young kids along the lines of say The Mad Scientist's Club or The Little Rascals to them?

[David Johansen]

On a side note, my last campaign setting grew somewhat organically to fit the needs of the adventures I wanted to run.  This time I'm working on a world from the top down, starting with creation myths and the nature of divinity and reality.

One thing I'm a bit stuck on right now is naming conventions.  I started creating some "languages" for the sake of producing consistant place names, but the results were somewhat uninspiring, especially when trying to avoid repetition of names from other fantasy sources and re-using connotations of sylabels from english.

Right now, I'm working more on the notion of common as english with very simple descriptive names, but again the results aren't inspiring me much.  Even olde english puts me in the position of drawing associations with earth cultures that I'm trying to avoid.

I've been told that just translating all the place names into Swedish is right out.  Aparently the Mutant Chronicles approach wasn't much appreciated over there.  Even if they ran it in reverse on that side of the pond.

[Erik Sharma]

I feel for you. Have the same problem working on a new campaign world starting with a large island/continent (about the size of australia). Coming up with fresh names is not an easy task, for that I have searched the web for all those name generators to help me out. And that is where I currently are on my world, still working on the postersize map.

 So thats the only advice go out there and search for name generators, some of em are customizable so you can adapt them for different sounding names and such.

http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/ Is a good one that you can customize but requires some learning. But it also have some nice ready scripts you can use for different sounding names.

[yammahoper]

I assume the young group of kids is a GM control tool to keep the party where you need them and place a few travel restrictions on them?

If that is the case, and it fits well in the story, do it.  However, there are many other hooks to keep them local or steer them that I see just from their character descriptions.  Who are the assassins masters?  Where did the Sorcerer study?  Are there any objects, items or places of mystery and legend left from the days of the now decayed southern empire?  Is one of the PC's a blood relative/cousin of a noble?

I once had a large part of a campaign run around a PC owned orphanage.  Basically after a villages adults were wiped out, the party saw to the needs of the kids, from the very young to the teens, their housing, clothing, feeding, education and even training/marriage and dowerys.  That game stayed in southern Mirkwood for 7-8 game years, until all the kids were grown (and one new PC came from the kids after a PC death).  So yes, it can work.

Will the players like it?  Well, the answer to that question answers your own.

lynn

[Raf Blutaxt]

I usually find taking descriptions of places and translating them into a language none of my players knows works fine.

The tricky part is to find a language that sounds like you want the local language to sound. Sometimes it also helps to change one or two syllables to make it sound familiar but hard to  recognize.

[David Johansen]

Whether the players like something generally depends entirely on the execution.  Though I'm told one of the new players (who was extremely ambevilant about chart master) bought sixty dollars of .pdfs Saturday

But the discussion in which I learned this was more about books, and the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, and Mad Scientist's club came up...And then I thought "What's the worst thing I could possibly do to a group of black hats?"

On the naming, I really want to create languages for the areas and draw the names from them.  I just need to go back and make smaller prefixes and suffixes.  Generally speaking the words for common / basic things need to be one sylable not six.  It's just a place where I'm lagging behind.

I've got the physical maps done but I want to make copies before I add cities and towns so I can do maps for times past and maps of cultural migrations easily.  Then I'll paint them.

I haven't even started to think about cultural dress or anything like that.

[Balhirath]

...And then I thought "What's the worst thing I could possibly do to a group of black hats?"

Make them ... (Drum roll) HERO's!
Seriously, about the worst thing that can happen to chars that like to stay in the shadow is to become a known Hero. Imagine a Bard watching the group. He or she does not know the reasons for the groups actions, so if they capture (or just hire) a slaveship to get themselves and the group of youngsters out of the town, that could be quite story: The Heroic group of mysterious strangers that fight a running battle to save a group of kids from the Evil Attackers. When they see that the way out of the city is blocked, they fight their way to the harbour, capture a ship in league with the Evil Attackers, get the kids on board and sail out to safety. (For the kids sake ofcause. Otherwise they would have stayed in the city and kicked ass!)

People will start to notice them and they are popular, getting free beer ect.
Do that a few times (Not every time, just when they do something good) and sooner or later they will start acting like Hero's or skip the area, cause they cant stand that everybody expect them to be hero's.

[mocking bird]

As a player I usually hate having NPC's running around with the party.  Does the GM want them to live, will they get in the way, are they treacherous?

However, how do you know the party won't be heroes?  Do they want to be?  Having two assassins in the group could be interesting and possibly heroic.  I am surprised they didn't hang around in the city as it seemed a prime assassination situation.