I have the glimmer of the thought of an idea here. Historical setting (raid the coast of Britain, sail up the Elbe, follow Leif's trail and destroy the "New World"!) Martial characters only (zero magic world) Utilize FantasyGrounds II (virtual tabletop) Utilize the Rolemaster ruleset or similar system where critical hits break bones, smash internal organs, and have the potential for instant kills Guided character development I make your characters, with your input You'll NEVER know exactly what your stats are You get to roll dice, but won't know what the exact numbers are going on in the background, you'll get a description of the outcome Promotes more role-play and more fear when you don't know how close to death you are My thought is to have a small viking crew of laymen, fighters, thieves and rogues who sail around and cause all sorts of havoc. I have no idea how often this would run, but I figure a session every other week or every month that lasts a few hours. Honestly, I don't know if I'd even have TIME for this, but the idea was bouncing around in my head so I thought I'd share and get some feedback.
I like your idea behind this. Real settings, no magic, DM-generated characters with an unknown factor as to how they stack. Would provide some interesting situations and people having to guess how good/bad that they are when attempting actions.
Since its zero magic i guess i wont be able to use necropants and other delicious staves. Aside from that sounds awesome, but there is still a question of whom would be a fearless leader of our escapades.
That would be half the fun. You'll all be making your characters in a vacuum, with only me aware of what is going on. Based on how you make your characters and what background options you choose, I'll let you know what your lot in life is, and your fearless leader would be chosen by me, not based on any skills or abilities of that person but based on the random chance of life. You'd potentially run in to the case where your leader is the Jarl's son who was handed the job without the qualifications, and then you'd have to manage that RP. Do you overthrow the rightful "leader" and reap the whirlwind back at home when you return? Or do you try to keep yourselves alive? I'm drawing inspiration from that old system found in Daggerfall, which seems to be well supported by the Rolemaster system, where you step through the different stages of your life and I'd fill in the details for ya. Edit: I would also highly encourage everyone to try necropants, at least once in their life.
I'll try to start sketching some shit out on the plane and in the hotel next week, see where that gets me.
Virtual table top I'm assuming? Can't look at it at work, but that's what FantasyGrounds is and since that's what I have licenses for (and there's a Rolemaster ruleset for), that's what we'd use.
Ok cool, I wasn't sure if you were looking at buying it or already had it. The tabletop forge is a free thing I think so I figured if you had not bought anything it might be an option. I found that after looking at FantasyGrounds. FantasyGrounds looks kind of like the super deluxe of virtual tabletops out there, it does a ton of stuff. I have been trying to get back into TT gaming for a while, but no one plays around here so the virtual tabletop thing looks really cool.
