With the release of Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition I’ve decided to run a fantasy campaign again. One of the things that’s bothered me about D&D and its emulators over the last decade or so is that they don’t “feel” medieval. When every village has clerics with magical healing powers and every city has magic item shops, one wonders why the setting remains medieval/renaissance?
I do realize that I’m overgeneralizing and that its been possible to run medieval settings; it just hasn’t been intuitive for me when running D&D-style games. My current problem is that I came up with a fun new campaign arc and it really depends on a medieval setting – primarily human, with only hints of magic and monsters in the corners. The local priests don’t have access to spells, nor is there a wizard in every village. The mere sight of an elf traveling down a country road would cause farmers to stop and gawk, that sort of thing.
But what of the players? While I may be salivating over my dark ages setting, they’re poring over the new Player’s Handbook and loving the options. The last thing I want to do is dissuade them from playing anything they want, but how do I balance that with my vision for the setting?
The answer, as it turned out, was simple: treat the PCs as superheroes.
I’m not talking about putting them in spandex and giving them secret identities, but rather treating them as if they were aberrations in the world, much like a four-color superhero universe seems to follow the normal course of history in spite of super-scientists, gadgeteers, aliens, super-beings, and even magicians occasionally protecting the city streets from equally colorful villains.
With this model, the fact that the PCs have abilities above and beyond the average tenant farmer, man-at-arms, and priest would be something special. Should they be discovered, the PCs would be treated with fear and awe. A third level fighter becomes akin to a masked mystery man with awesome fighting abilities, while a cleric with a daily cure spell would be treated as one of the blessed by the local, non-spellcasting acolytes. And, when a strange monster rears its head or someone gets lost in a ruin, it’s these “superheroes” that the villagers turn to.
This is not to say that “supervillains” and “secret societies” wouldn’t exist. Yes, there’s a Wizard’s Guild, but it’s in a faraway city or in a remote spot somewhere – traveling wizards are few and far between. The vast mountain kingdom of the Dwarves exists on the edge of human civilization and it’s largely responsible for the occasional forged magic item. The Elves, too, live in an isolated forest somewhere, content to live apart from humanity save for the few carefree members (superheroes and supervillains) that have decided to travel the world.
This does mean that the world is mostly populated with 0-level characters but, in a superhero genre, that’s largely as it should be. The cultists and henchmen of a particular “super-villain” are another matter, as they’ve been given power for their allegiance (this also provides a rationale for followers of evil deities – they offer spells and abilities more freely than the more discerning good deities).
I’m taking this tact with my current group; I hope it works! How about you? Have you ever successfully run a “medieval fantasy” while still allowing the PCs a full range of character options? Did it work well? What didn’t work? Did you find yourself instead “upgrading” the rest of the world as the characters advanced?
I’ve actually been advocating exactly this mode of play for some time. In fact, I have a campaign setting designed to not just enable the concept as you outlined it, but to go full-on four-color superhero. Thumbnail sketch: Vecna has conquered the known world. An ancient protective magic is enabling heroes to rebel. But if the agents of Vecna discover that you are a rebel, you and your family will be tortured and killed. Thus, masks and codenames are necessary to protect everyone.
It’s a bit more Zorro/Scarlet Pimpernel than Captain America/Batman. Or, maybe it’s more League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but with less drugs and snark.
I’ve done this using E6 style gameplay. Most characters in the world were 1st level (for adults) with more talented or successful people being 2nd level. The Duke, who is an old campaigner, may still only be 3rd level.
I also frequently cut down on the amount of magic items in worlds. A magic sword is magical. But in typical D&D games (3rd and 4th eras) the characters are basically glowing with all the magic gear they’re lugging around.
In the fantasy games I like to run a 4th level character is a serious badass. 5th level is the best in the world at what they do: Einstein, Steven Hawking, Michael Jordan, Bruce Lee, etc. While a 6th level character is the stuff of legend. David, Miyamoto Musashi, Gilgamesh, Arthur, Lu Bu, Merlin.
At least that is how I like to run my games. I’ve also done a game with gods walking the earth (20th level characters) and the world was capped at 10th level. Giants were a real threat here because they could band together and slay a god.
The thing to watch for, in my experience, is what we’ll call the “Justice League satellite” effect — the more the characters level up and associate only with people on the same power level as them, the less they relate to the setting and its concerns. In my experience of reading comics, the more the Justice League heroes spend time confabbing in the JLA satellite, the less their adventures have to do with anything back on earth. And when storylines go that route, my interest wanes.
I see your point, but I think not having a far away base to return after adventures helps out. If the PCs had a “base” in a ship off shore, this I could imagine happening a lot more. But having the PCs involved more in the world can help manage the satellite effect.
Does this make sense, Troy?
It does. But I think it’s less an issue of geography than power level. And it’s less something to be critical of, but rather, simply come to accept with level-based rpgs.
One of the things that gets discussed on GS a lot — and with good reason — is that responsible GMs tailor their adventures to PC backgrounds and interests. As the PCs get more removed from the power level of the people they protect, that background material becomes less relevant — in my experience, simply because that source material rarely corresponds to PC power level.
It doesn’t necessarily have to. But GMs who want to keep their PCs tied to the setting are going to have to make a conscious effort to do so. I think it’s a real challenge.
Or go all out and DON THE MASK!!!
I’d love to run Batman as a Monk, Superman as a Paladin, the Thing as an earth elemental…..
But that may not be to your liking. Or try a one-shot. Your players have to wear a mask and keep their identities secret just for one mission.
In a one shot I ran a few years back, one of the characters who was running a monk — and mowing down goblins with a series of kicks — declared in the middle of the fight, “I’m Batman!” And in that moment, he certainly was.
This is pretty much the approach I have been using for the last few years, although I didn’t view it as a “superhero” thing. What I did visualise is that the PCs are pretty much unique. The full set of Class features apply only to them. Sure there are a small number of other wizards and druids, but none of those wizards and druids are the same as a PC wizard or druid.
I give NPCs one or two class features if they are similar to a class and it makes sense. They might even have features the PC classes don’t. The new 5E PHB seems to follow a similar philosophy – it mentions under each class how not all soldiers are fighters etc, underlining that the class rules are for making a hero, not just anyone who fits the job description of being a priest or a monk or a barbarian and so on.
Interestingly, the original Greek origin of the word “Hero” was applied to outstanding individuals like you describe, those touched by the gods and more often than not they were demigods and so above other mortals. I think D&d and similar games owed a lot to Greek Mythology, more than just the existence of mudusas and minotaurs. My home campaign aims for a more classical civilisation setting which I think works really well.
Thank you Walt for gelling an idea I had washing around in what I laughing call my brain for a while now. I shall stealz this idea wholesale for my next fantasy campaign.
Interestingly (and slightly off topic) I got into a stupid pushing match in the comments for DM of the Rings a few years ago caused by someone taking great issue with my floating an idea to lower the “we’ll just eat the cleric’s magic food” syndrome that infected a D&D group I was gaming with. My innocently wondered aloud idea sent one young gamer into incandescent apoplexy.
I just started playing in my first Pathfinder game (always on the bleeding edge, me) and was asked to drop my fighter and become a cleric due to a shift in adventure emphasis – which I was happy to do for the good of all – and noted that my idea was replicated almost word for word in the Pathfinder description of the clerical Create Food and Water spell.
I wonder how that went down with the “You can do what you want but you *can’t* call it D&D” guy I was trying to soothe all those years ago. Of course, they *don’t* call it D&D.