I’m going to try and take part
in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea is there’s a prompt every
day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are
a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one
every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar
for this year.
Recently
I’ve been developing my own setting for D&D. The idea behind my setting is
the modern world is invaded by orcs and other monsters. This event causes chain
of circumstances to unfold and ends with my players being thrust into a world
where they have to deal with magic, monsters, and a world that isn’t safe anymore
and how they’d deal with that.
Part
of the challenge for this setting is coming up with the altered familiar. This ended
being things in two categories, real world things that have been altered to the
new setting and D&D staples that have been shifted to fit the real world.
This led to me figuring out how to translate D&D into modern society. I’m
translating monsters, spell, and even adventures into our modern world.
Translating
the real world to D&D actually ended up being far easier than the other way
around. Part of the inspiration for the setting is a series of videos by Ginny
Di on D&D aesthetic and how it would look in a modern world. I’ll link to
it here. Part of what made the idea work for me is by limiting the characters
to teenagers as you would in old school traditional D&D. This opened up a
world of ideas.
The first
was treasure. I didn’t want teenagers digging through every monsters pocket for
loose change after a fight. I decided that all adventure and dungeon crawling
functioned on Vimeo. Whenever a monster is killed all of its money is deposited
evenly in the players Vimeo accounts. It was a nice solve.
Second
was language and part of why teenagers work so well. All of the characters get
a couple of bonus languages; text and emoji. For the start of my campaign all
the characters will be human. This will certainly change later but this is how
we’re starting. Since I still wanted them to be able to talk to other races and
characters those two languages are universal. I also created a new item a magic
compact. It’s a small hand held compact similar to you would find in any makeup
store. Except the mirror is magic and linked to a network of other similar
magical items. For some reason, to be revealed later, cellphones connect to
this network. Additionally, all D&D races speak Arkinian, or the language
standard to the Commonwealth. A human centric empire that spans worlds.
Arkinina and English are exceptionally similar. Again for reasons that will be
identified during the campaign.
These
were small bits of the things I translated for my campaign. I have several new
takes on magic items like a motorcycle helmet of comprehend languages that
translates anything heard into subtitles on the inside of the visor. Spells
have gotten a shift over such as Vecna’s Voice Mail which functions similar to
Magic Mouth but records the message on your voice mail.
I’ve
translated characters such as Halaster, the Mad Mage, who instead of building
dungeons to lead adventures into his traps is an app developer who creates deadly
challenge peppered around the world that the app will direct people to. I’m
even playing around with the idea of translating Curse of Strahd to a small New
England town where the players might get invited by a distant relative. Maine
and Barovia are probably sister locals.
I’m
even playing around with the idea of translating non-D&D adventures into my
world. I could easily see a couple of Shadowruns fitting into this setting. Or
possibly one or two Vampire scenarios, since I’m planning on having a little
bit of politics play out in their home town.
Taking
these different ideas and translating them to my campaign has been a lot of
fun. I’m looking forward to seeing it to fruition and learning how it will all
work in the end. Plus I kind of want to see Strahd with a New England accent…crap,
I just realized I’d be the one doing the accent…I wonder if I can get a guest
NPC to come in as Strahd?
Anyway,
I’ll be back tomorrow for Tradition.
Until
then, stay safe and be well.
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