Why Theme Campaigns Rock (and 13th Warriors Suck) - Running RPGs
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- Опубликовано: 13 июл 2024
- A shared Character Theme is a fun way to spice up your RPG campaign, such as all in a Thieves Guild, a travelling band, or a shared character race. Themes allow players to deep-dive into aspects of the game world that most campaigns could never do. But when one player decides not to join the Theme (a.k.a. The 13th Warrior) the campaign can quickly collapse.
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Guest starring Mike, Todd, and Dweebles
00:00 Intro
02:43 What is a Theme Campaign?
03:11 System Themes
03:54 Setting Theme
06:49 Character Theme
12:42 How To Make a Theme Campaign
13:57 Tell Your Players the Theme
14:49 Sell the Theme
16:16 Accidental Themes
18:05 13th Warriors
20:43 Easy to Introduce Hard to Keep
24:39 They Become the Star
26:30 They Destroy the Table's Fun
29:05 Closing Thoughts
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Игры
For more about my Kids Gang theme campaign we did with Cyberpunk, check out my War Story "The Bonsai of Death"
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Cool. Any chance we may get a campaign diary of "CyberGoonies"? Or was it too long ago to do that?
I was in a pirate themed campaign where one of the characters started with a lawful good paladin, totally did not fit with the campaign whatsoever. The player was really pushing how much their character did not fit in, it was honestly kinda annoying and I didn't know why the DM wasn't shutting him down. Then the first fight came along and halfway through his character gets knocked overboard and drowns in his heavy plate armor. We were shocked at how casually the DM killed the character, and then the player burst out laughing before pulling out a second character sheet and taking control of the cook who was his actual character. He and the DM had planned it out ahead of time, and the paladin's death served as the central tension for the campaign as we were now hunted by his order who wanted an artifact he had kept hidden in his luggage.
I love this switcheroo, I would love to do this!
That’s actually pretty funny in hindsight.
@@christianmunso7482 This is very high risk tho and has the potential to actually be/become a railroad or simply look like one, or simply steal the spotlight of a plotline the players might prefer so employ with caution.
@@viniciussardenberg706 Sounds like this was the GM getting a player in on the setup for the original plotline, rather than a player-oriented plotline.
@@AGrumpyPanda I'm glad my group is full, so I don't accidently get one of you. When a DM spends time and energy crafting a fun game, PLAY IT. For all you know that little railroad was the segue into a rad sandbox. Edit: on rereading your comment, I realize you were talking to another person's point which was what I should have replied to. I'll leave this up in case some player like that can read it and maybe not be an obstinate combative drag that insists on subverting the social arrangement of the game.
I really feel like, "The GM will make it work" has become one of the bigger bugbears of TTRPGs, both from the perspective of players and of developers. It's technically true, but people underestimate how quickly this mantra can overwhelm the GM with responsibilities that could have been avoided altogether.
I think it is one of the points where "Session Zero" become important in reaching some consensus on what to play.
This does help at getting people to understand that they too have a part in the responsibility for getting it to work.
Oof, yes. On basically every video talking about problems that can arise in games like D&D, no matter what it is, there's always a bunch of people talking about how the GM should be doing this or that differently to fix things, like it's ONLY the GM who has any responsibility. I mean the GM has a lot, and can do a lot, but there's a point where you're expecting someone to be superhuman.
Gaming is a group effort. I probably say that in every RPG Philosophy and Running RPGs video. Another that I should probably say more is that even the greatest GM in the world is only as good as their players allow. The best games/campaigns I've ever run or played were only possible because of the players I had and how we all worked together.
Placing 100% of the responsibility of a game's success on a GM's shoulders, and 100% of the blame if it fails, is a quick recipe for a failed group.
I also don't think it's even true. If "The GM will make it work" was always true then why do so many campaigns and groups end early or split up? The fact is that a gm can try to accommodate players, but at the end of the day the players themselves need to understand it's a group activity. If a player is so determined to make their character super special that they are willing to put it above the other players interests then they shouldn't be playing.
@@CrushedIdealism - Yup, right on. 5 people trying to be the star of the show isn't going to have anyone leaving happy...especially the GM they believe should "...make it work" for them. It also astounds me how many players never grow out of that "star of the show" mentality :(
I love setting up themes by giving all the players the same leading question to answer during character creation. It started with a campaign where I wanted the PCs to be mid-level but not well-off status-wise, so I told all of the players, "Your backstory will need to answer two questions: 1) How did you reach a level of power normally associated with dragon-slaying and leading armies, and 2) Why, in spite of that, will you start the campaign on a rainy dock in the middle of the night with nothing to your name but the clothes on your back?"
I got a disgraced general from a conquered and forgotten mountain kingdom, a silver-spoon scion of wealth running away from his family obligations under an assumed name, a wild sorcerer whose powers kept flaring up and costing her every chance at a stable life, and another mage who accidentally gained immense arcane power at the cost of sealing her twin sister into a magical relic. That campaign lasted a full year as they stowed away on the first ship bound for the horizon, befriended the captain who was also running from an unpleasant past of his own, and gradually came clean about their histories, and grew to trust each other and themselves again.
That's awesome! I'll have to borrow your two question strategy.
Mind if I borrow that
Pottery.
Me: "hey, does anyone want to play an all-kobold campain?"
Everyone: "oh hell yeah!"
Everyone in the dms not ten minutes later: "I want to play a dragonborn that thinks they're a kobold. A gnome disguised as a kobold. A halfling trader working with the kobold clan. A goblin prisoner in the kobold camp."
Every time. Every. Single. Fucking. Time. Then when you tell them no, that doesn't fit to theme, the game dies.
I feel you on that one. I tend to let my group vote on a selection of themes but I always have that one guy who decides to say screw it I didn't vote for this and does something that just ends the game.
If this discussion happened at the table, I would look the first player straight in the eye and say "I wanna play a kobold that think he's a dragonborn" regardless of my actual concept.
I guess my friends are pretty accepting of when I limit things in a campaign, I've had a long standing "No meme characters" rule in my games and often comes from the fact that they'll get bored of playing that meme character by session 2.
Your players are annoying, attention starved drama queens.
I'm in a campaign that started with me showing the DM a kobold sorcerer I had just made. The first game was just my kobold, then I was joined by a goblin barbarian. Next a goblin bard. We named ourselves Fury of the Small.
The next to join us was a Goliath cleric, then a hobgoblin paladin.
The party ended up different to what we started, but has been a lot of fun for all of us.
I pitched a DnD game where everyone was going to play dwarves. One of the players insisted on playing a halfling. My game was turning into The Hobbit.
I think this was a Matt Colville video
"Outside the country's borders, the land is infested by monsters specifically bred to find and kill humans. The plot is about eventually venturing beyond the magical wards and finding the origin of the monsters that prevent humanity from leaving their prison home."
"I wanna be a human who grew up outside the wards!"
Personally I'd allow it. But the answer would be you take the Haunted background. You've seen some shit. You are always being hunted and this has broken parts of you as a person. So you've had to live as a single being against an army of monsters. Now this party of people comes along and tells you that they're going to fix that. Of course you join up with them, but they need to know you're hunted and haunted by the things you've seen. In short let them and the party know that they're a monster magnet. They are dealing with a lot of horror and this might come up at anytime. So it introduces a horror and unstable element all at once.
Warn them, then let them deal with the consequences.
In this case it'd have been literally impossible without retconning what the monsters are, but I do agree with you on principle!
Shutting down player ideas really sucks especially when they get inspired by the world you made.
Long story short, the party were supposed to find out that the 'monsters' were once humans, the very land outside the wards slowly transforming them.
And having a character just be immune to it wouldn't have worked out. :V
@@pewthepuny2849 Why wouldn’t a single survivor immune to it work? If it was magical, they could be immune to magic (a door that swings both ways, no magic healing from spells, buffs from spells, or magic item use [ other than +X magic weapons, and they would only deal the damage, not affect their “to hit” or have any special powers in their hands] or having a magic using class, for them).
So attack on titan? Just kidding.
It would mainly not work because they'd still have to survive from being a baby until adulthood within a biome specifically created to annihilate them.
Either it would've been an absolute superbaby who didn't need parents even as an infant, or it was raised by people who were somehow also immune to the warping.
Further compounding this is the fact that the monsters sense nearby humans and home in on them.
If the character was also to be immune to that, we'd be talking about a character who just skips all the dangerous elements of the campaign.
It felt a bit like that one time another player wanted me to 'okay' a character who had a magic ring that made him permanently invisible, inaudible and scentless. At that point I asked him whether he thought he'd enjoy a campaign where he could just automatically win every encounter.
I'm all in for fun character concepts, but not ones that necessitate a rewrite of the entire setting, or demand I tailor every encounter to consider their wildly story-inappropriate abilities.
The world outside was meant to be a complete mystery, the monsters were to be alien and unknowable, and having a character in the party who literally lived among all of it would defeat the premise entirely.
One of my most famous & loved games was known as "The Cleric's Game" where everyone was a servant of a different deity that was summoned together to face a threat powerful enough to make the gods set aside their differences.
Ran for almost 4 years. It's been almost 15 years since it ended & my players still reference it
A team of all clerics. Did you call this game.... the A-Men?
That sounds amazing I am very interested in monotypical parties.
@@vernonhampton5863 I don't know why this never occurred to me & I am now disappointed with myself for failing to notice such a beautiful pun for the past decade & a half!
My first campaign was also on this exact theme, based on the homebrew pantheon I had come up with. Party consisted of:
- human cleric of king/storm god
- dwarf fighter/cleric of goddess of justice
- elf cleric/wizard of god of fate
- halfling druid of goddess of nature
- gnome cleric/rogue of goddess of chaos and mystery
- half-drow cleric/monk of god of death
Everybody a servant of a different deity?
That's a damn lot of roleplaying opportunity...
A common occurrence during many D&D/Vampire campaigns I've experienced from 2001 to 2012 was the "party of 13th Warriors". GM would be stoked for an "all orc campaign" or "story of one Tremere chantry", and immediately every player would want to play the unique outsider to avoid being boxed in. They were still excited about the game, but each wanted to be the exception. Those games never lasted long for pretty much the reasons you can assume.
Sounds like you remember that All Tremere LARP we were in...
I remember the dnd horror story where DM offered a campaign with no arcane magic and immediatelly every single player separatelly took him aside and asked if they could be the campaigns one wizard.
That is two rather extremes to jump between.
I think it will be important to take it up in the "Session Zero", to figure out what is going on and/or what people want.
Or deliberately go for "Accidental Themes", just let the players come up with whatever characters they feel for, and then figure out what they can have in common.
I do find that many of the best campaigns I have played in have had a lot of "Accidental Themes" to them.
Heh. That sounds a bit like the campaign I'm currently playing in. The one prerequisite the DM gave us for character creation was that we all hailed from the same (mostly human) village and had decided to go be adventurers together. So what followed was:
- A dwarf warlock/fighter
- His brother/cousin, a dwarf sorcerer
- A gnome rogue
- And me, on the face of it the very template of a fantasy hero, being a human son of farmers turned blacksmith turned forge cleric. Except I'm actually secretly a tiefling. Whose belief in down-to-earth, common values has essentially made him an anarcho-communist.
We're having fun, though, and our common origin and goal has made potential party-splitting conflicts a complete non-issue.
So maybe full themes can suck.
For sure, the player who wants to be the odd one out really is critical to the success of being the odd one out. I remember a themed gamed involving everyone being a medieval Western European Knight, all nobles on horseback; Mostly was a means of practicing horseback mechanics for a game system. Well, Player Five, let's call him Todd, says he wanted to be a Nomadic Horse Archer, like a Mongol or Magyar. That campaign actually worked because Todd decided that he was not trying to be different and insist on being different, but rather that he was a foreigner who wanted to become more like the others. The theme went from "Medieval Knights on Horseback" to "Medieval Warriors on Horseback learning from each other."
The key was Todd made his goal to be "I want to become part of this kingdom the other players are a part of because I love this culture of theirs." His introduction was as a mercenary recruited by a lord of the kingdom who assigned Todd to be a servant to the other PCs. Todd would probe the other players about their ways of life, how they viewed things and so on. Eventually, Todd discovered the beautiful sister of one of the PCs and decided that he had to have her as a wife, but that could only happen if he was knighted. Thus he was hooked in. He would do whatever it took to become a respectable knight, be it learning the language or how to eat with a fork. By the end, he was indeed ennobled, married the noblewoman, and all lived happily ever after.
Just as importantly, Todd encouraged the other PCs to "learn from him." He showed them new approaches to warfare, survivalist skills, and other things that nobles of the kingdom didn't normally have. Indeed, by the end of the campaign, the PCs all banded together to raise a special unit of elite cavalry for the king combining both nomadic horse archer skills with knightly methods, the five PCs naturally becoming the officers of this new elite unit.
Basically a weesternaboo
I know this is an old comment but that is beautiful story. To have players be that focused on the roleplay and their characters progression beautifully campaign.
Blades in the Dark is the best example of how themes can be powerful if system, setting and characters focus on the theme.
The Crew being a “group character” helps immensely. We’re starting Legend of the Five Rings 5e and the setting helps greatly with having vastly disparate characters (a Crane diplomat, Lion soldier and Crab engineer) being able to work and stay together.
I love Blades, was the first thing I thought of when Seth mentioned The Lies of Locke Lamora :D
Blades came to mind for me as well.
@@alderaancrumbs6260 I'd argue that L5R actually works to undermine that sort of stuff, but it does so in a way that makes sense to the setting. Sure those guys can and do work together considering the threat, but just as likely the clans themselves are jockeying for power and influence.
So a character might have one set of desires, meanwhile his duty has a different set. The Crane might think this is the most important mission of his life, but his daimyo might say it doesn't matter, so long as he makes sure the Lion Clan loses face at court.
Blades is one of my favourite systems
The 13th Warrior has disrupted more campaigns than I care to recount. And it's usually a tiefling.
Yes
Unironically, I ban Tieflings for this exact reason. Tiefling characters just have a bad track record for me.
@@CharlesFreck their whole gimmick is usually being the “odd one out”. The issue arises when people add waaay more to the preexisting gimmick
@@CharlesFreck If you can successfully argue why I should allow you to play a Tiefling despite the ban, you've put enough thought into being a Tiefling that I should be allowing it despite the ban. Hasn't happened yet.
What is tiefling posting? I will take another "Things that never happened" for 500!
I was totally thinking of Bilbo Baggins being the classic 13th Warrior....then I watched to the end. And The Hobbit helps punctuate your point that 13th Warriors end up stealing the spotlight.
I also agree completely about the problem with 13th Warriors not having a reason to stick around after the initial adventure. Even Bilbo went back to the Shire. He didn't join in governing Mount Erebor. When you have a 13th Warrior, especially a joke character, just hanging around for no reason it breaks the verisimilitude of the whole game.
I think it's dangerous to confuse what works in a book with what works at the tabletop though. Bilbo's the POV character, something that doesn't exist in an RPG, and the Dwarves in the book were mostly too similar to each other to have been interesting PCs. That can be a danger of a very narrowly focused theme game.
Think about it - for anyone who's not a big Tolkein fan, you've got Thorin ("the leader"), Kili and Fili ("the young ones") , Bombur ("the fat one") - and a bunch of others who feel real interchangeable unless you delve into apocrypha and Tolkein scholarship. Heck, I bet even the Kili and Fili don't register as distinct for some folks.
I wrote, but cut before recording, a portion talking about Bilbo as this dude who walked into this epic Dwarfs Reclaiming Their Homeland campaign by bringing in this middle-class dude who didn't even have any skills as a Rogue, and the GM having to give him a magic sword and Ring of Ultimate Power just to keep up, and him still missing the final battle. Then once the adventure is done, he goes home, missing the next adventure and was the reason Balin died in the Mines of Moria because his homie Bilbo with his invisibility ring and goblin-detecting sword were absent. There's also the weird link that one was the story of Beowulf, while the other was written by the guy who translated Beowulf. But... the problem was the dwarves were all kind of interchangeable idiots. I've never gotten over that part where they saw a couple deer and just emptied all their quivers. Also, as Rich said, he works great as a POV character, which doesn't translate into an RPG group, but millions of fans love him and probably won't hear the full reasoning of why he's a 13th Warrior over the clacking of keys as they jump to defend him.
@@SSkorkowsky Don't forget the hairy-footed little rat also steals the closest thing to the quest item (the Arkenstone) out from under the party, then proceeds to give it away to some NPCs. :)
Just another example of "works in literature, not at the tabletop" in action.
Balin is the wise one and the lookout, Dori is the strongest dwarf, Oin and Gloin are especially good at lighting fires. Wait... did I just out myself as a huge nerd who has read The Hobbit at least once a year for over 30 years?
@@SSkorkowsky I think about a third of your entries in bad dm/player lists come from this category of "works great in fiction, terrible for ttrpgs".
I really like "all characters are the same class/occupation/etc" games.
In something like D&D, that lends itself to a lot of creativity.
I remember once we did a book of 5 rings game where we were all going to be samurai and it was going to be highly political. One of the other players was having a lot of stress at work and was all "I don't have the energy for politics and learning a bunch of cultural rules. I just wanna hit things." me to GM "Can he be a foreign barbarian my character met and befriended?" GM "Sounds good." That worked out really well. When his stress levels went down, he ended up saving the Shogun's life and becoming a samurai in his own right.
That is cool. Not only were you all able to work around that one player's situation, but you were willing to help out a fellow player going through work stress.
AND! They recovered from the high stress eventually. Good friends make good games.
Your friend made Yasuke?
If it's based off the Legend of the Five Rings setting, make the character Crab Clan. He's an ambassador because he drew the short straw. Spent the last few years fighting in the Shadowlands, and needed to rotate out, so the Crab Clan champion sent him off. It explains why he wants to beat everyone up, it gives him an excuse to actively mock political maneuvering, and presents the possibility of real consequences ("Why did you punch the Dragon Clan ambassador in the face? We're at war now, on two fronts."). Plus it's always fun to watch someone like that in a political game. Everyone else is dancing on a tightrope, they're chop that rope with an axe. The whole "We don't do politics, we kill things" is what the Crab Clan is for!
I ran a one-shot session we called “Dirty Dwarves” where everyone played chaotic evil dwarf characters. I can’t remember the plot or any specific details but I do remember everyone laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe and having lots of fun
Did the dwarves work
Dirt cheap
@@ronniedio7013 I believe the “dirty” descriptor came more from grime and gore than hard labor lol
@@TheDoomAbides chaotic evil had to equal some dirt deeds though
@@ronniedio7013 I’m sure it did but it’s been so long that I could not recall specifics. This happened around 20010-2012
I love the teen themed cyberpunk campaign. I did something similar with my two boys when they were younger. They got to create whatever they wanted to be. One chose to be a robot looking to make their own way in the world while the other wanted to just be the coolest guy ever. They got a job in a highrise storage building as security guards so they had a way to earn money and have a place to live. They rented a storage locker to camp out in and had to pay for electricity and water service. After work they'd wander around the city looking for stuff to do. Most of the time they'd get involved in some petty crime but a lot of the fights they got into were at work in the tower. They had to stop thieves and vandals, evict troublemakers and people who didn't pay their rent, they'd clean out lockers that had been abandoned (that's how they made spare cash or even found cool stuff). In general they had fun. One day they met a guy who promised to help the robot get new software mods to upgrade its performance and skills. They went on dumpster dives at high tech factories, work as hired muscle to protect the NPC and all that. The story hit its peak when they were followed by another merc crew. There was a tense chase through the streets and subways and a big firefight at an abandoned mall. They got captured only to find out the NPC was responsible for hiring the second merc team to bring them into his employer's laboratory for R&D.
It ended there when school started back up IRL and they had more important things to do.
Maybe I'll get the game going again for summer of 2022?
If you want an example of how to do a proper "13th warrior" look to Winston from Ghostbusters. The group is a bunch of scientists that figured out how to capture ghosts. Winston is some rando that applied for a job in the wanted ads.
If I recall correctly, he was also a skeptic who believed it would be an easy job.
Um..... he was an electronical engineer with a few degrees in engineering and construction. Check your facts, plz
@@ericwhite1942 Tell 'em.
@@ericwhite1942 He's also a former US Marine and a lover of detective novels!
"I seen shit that'll turn you white."
I'd love to play more thematically focused game. "Kitchen sink" games can be fun, and I like the pretty generic fantasy game I'm in, but I wouldn't mind something different from "random adventure group meets in a tavern."
A way to get there is to become a GM yourself!
The challenge might be to not end up with a group of "13th Warriors" expecting to meet in a tavern...
it's easier to avoid the 13th warrior trope if characters already have some backstory ties to each other, it also really helps with facilitating roleplay moments
Session zero is important!
@@verlandes1 Yup. If you want everyone to be on board with your campaign premise, maybe ... ask them first?
I usually give a very loose themeing to my party because of the fact that I told them that if they can't find a reason to stay with the party by the end of the adventure, they will be able top NPC their character and then make a new one.
These themes are as simple as "You're all disparate adventurers from across the Northern Reach that are given a sealed letter from a noble claiming that they're afraid of a terrible evil lurking under their mansion. If you clear it out, the old man's mansion is yours as he won't need it in death and he's only got a few years left at best. At best everyone that dies on this quest gives you a bigger slice of the mansion, but replacing them won't be a quick, cheap, or easy solution so you may as well share."
This adventure turned into a year long campaign.
My most recent game is a VTM game. "You are a coterie of Anarchs that have been forcibly removed from their haven by a group of Sabbat, firebombing your home to send the prince a message that nobody that associates with him is safe. The prince decided to send you to Las Vegas Nevada. He didn't do this out of good will, instead he did it to get your meddling hands away from his city. You'll meet your newest coterie member at their haven which is an upscale mall, keep in mind he's part of the Camarilla and his first and foremost duty is to serve his prince who is a Malkavian. Start with your best first impressions."
This has already turned into a full on chronicle despite the fact it was originally just going to be a few chapters for the party to learn about VTM:V20 as they're new to it.
I once ran a game where all the characters were members of a thieves guild. They started at 4th level and HAD to pick 3 levels of rogue to start. They could then choose to progress up the levels as they wished. It’s one of the most popular games I’ve ever run.
Love the idea of the PCs all being members of a thieves guild and am unsurprised this worked well for you.
A common employer is an _awesome_ idea. Basically, players can make any PC they want, _provided_ that character would want to work for the employer and whom the employer would want to employ. If a PC quits or is fired, they are out of the campaign and the player has to make that character's replacement. So, should one player decide to start murderhoboing or similar shenanigans, it gives the GM a lever to pull that doesn't ruin the campaign for everyone else.
What I _don't_ get is the three levels of Rogue requirement. I just don't see how that was necessary. "Rogue" isn't a profession, it's just a game mechanic describing what certain PCs can do. There would be plenty of things a theives guild would need doing that would not require the person doing them to have the skillset that Rogue provides. What Thieves guild wouldn't want a Barbarian's muscle or a Sorcerer's magic? And how would they even _know_ that a Monk or a Ranger or a Bard was ineligible? Is everyone wearing t-shirts with their class written on it?
And sure, you let them take their PC's whatever direction they wanted after that, but some choices synergise well with Rogue and some just don't, privileging some players over others. If someone decided to go Fighter during the campaign, they would have had to wait until Lvl 9 to get their Lvl 5 damage bump, while someone going for Warlock would have got it at Lvl 5 as normal.
If you ever do this again, I'd advise dropping the class restriction entirely. I 100% guarantee that the success of your campaign was due to the common employer (and your skills as GM, of course), not the class restriction.
@@nickwilliams8302 Ehhh, modifying classes work on player level rather than class works better I think.
@@DIEGhostfish I'm sorry, I don't understand that sentence.
@@nickwilliams8302 I am assuming the Warlock's level 5 bonus relies on character level rather than class level. So possibly make all things rely on character level than class level if you're making mandatory class levels a thing.
I'd think that you'd be better ruling that they would just have to have a rogue-ish class.
For example, fiendish warlocks, trickery clerics, rogues, battlemaster fighters, illusionists/enchanters, bards, artificers, shadow monks and urban rangers would all work well.
In Shadow of the Demon Lord, a D20 system that was made by one of the co-creators of 5E has an expansion for its own system that makes it so that you have a bunch of different subtypes of rogue and then when you hit 3rd level for your expert path, you can then further customize your flavor of how you'd like to modify the original rogue concept.
it's a really cool system to say the least, and works amazingly for themed campaigns because of it.
This video explains why I was confused by part of the earlier take. I learned long ago that when someone wants to go against the grain that a lot of times they give up when I go "I can put you in the scene, but getting into the group and staying with the group is going to be on you and I will not force other players to act out of character just to keep you around." And even if they don't give up, I've made it clear that while I'm not going against them, I'm also not going to do any of the heavy lifting to make them fit in with the group. They have to make a character that wants to be there, and enough so that the other PCs will tolerate them.
I fail to see how this is... doing anything at all?
So player made a character that doesn't fit in, you do nothing to accommodate, they persist with the character... so nothing happens? I mean either I've misunderstood your post, or you are saying that if both parties decide to just do their own thing, the game can continue without an issue.
Which is how it also works out. You don't even need 13th warrior situation. It's your regular party of random characters in "generic fantasy" campaign, where they are hanging together, because their players are friends playing the game together and have nothing in common in-universe, yet it doesn't prevent the game from happening.
Which is probably also another reason why I find it so weird that everyone struggles so much with the outliner characters
Just started my first Cyberpunk Red game, and my girlfriend suggested that she, a Medtech, owns a corner shop surgery store, and the other player comes to also work there, being a Techie.
Only two sessions in and it’s already been such a drastic shift in perspective from our normal games that my players have had their minds blown wide open as for the possibility inherent to role-playing games.
That is so awesome!
That sounds great, like there's a normal party of Edgerunners doing the usual Cyberpunk thing of running heists and smoking screwheads but your party has to deal with the consequences of those kinds of missions and maybe fight off assassins trying to break in to finish off a patient they injured.
"We thought we were badasses but we really just wanted to be small-business owners."
@@_Jay_Maker_ The millennial dream of being a small-business owner
that is what i like about theme games, it makes the world an active part of play rather than a prop to look at in the background.
I have sincerely enjoyed listening to you discuss the theory behind being a DM or a player for years. But seeing you actively apply the things you have discussed was very enjoyable in that campaign with Glass Cannon.
I played in one campaign as a 13th warrior.
In a party of humans and elves, I thought it would be enough to say my lizardman was a slave to the wizard in the group but he stuck out like a sore thumb and had little to contribute outside of being good at swimming.
Between having nothing to do and largely staying out of the role-playing moments (the big scary monster making NPCs uncomfortable but not having the right stats to intimidate anyone), I ultimately had the problem that he was the forgotten character.
Probably the best choice I made was to have him sacrifice himself to kill a villain. I got to have a heroic death scene and a chance to play a different character :)
What class was your Lizardman? Why would you create a character able to contribute nothing but swimming? Why did you give the character no “character” other than “big scary monster, slave of Wizard”?
It sounds like the skeleton of a great character that could add some really interesting dynamics with the party handled right. Here are some ways I can see right off the top of my head:
1) Your Lizardman is slave to the Wizard due to a life debt (to the Wizard or the Wizard’s mentor/parent) so he will protect his charge in any way possible. Class: Fighter that will multi class to a class that can heal at first opportunity, or a Paladin, or tank Cleric, flavor the classes as seems appropriate.
2) Your tribe gave you to the Wizard as a child to be his slave because you were a Sorcerer and your early signs of magic frightened the tribe/caused a lot of damage (works best if the Wizard is older than you by a good margin).
3) The Wizard (or their mentor/parent) saved you from being sacrificed (actively or just by being dumped somewhere you wouldn’t survive) when you were younger (perhaps just a hatchling) because you have a mark (a particular marking in your scales or something odd about one or both of your eyes, for example) that is associated with a history of disasters for the tribe, be it from the ones with the mark or something come hunting them. What is the mark tied to? Who or those that come hunting those marked? This one works well for a Sorcerer or Warlock (that inherits the pact, some deal made long ago by the leader/founder of the tribe that crops up every so many generations).
4) You are last of your tribe, bought by the Wizard from slavers those that slaughtered your tribe sold you to. You wish to find them and discover why they did this to your people, ultimately with the goal of revenge and rebuilding your tribe.
@@nvfury13 The goal was that he would be a stealthy scout/skirmisher. I went with open hand monk, and it worked okay for a little bit, but pretty soon everyone else could either do way more damage or take way more damage than me (my issue with the monk class more than anything) and I rarely got any opportunities to scout ahead. (DM forcing 2 or 3 stealth checks a round, or every single time I moved outside combat, told me I was not supposed to be stealthy in his game and that he was trying to discourage the tactic.) I had the highest AC, but the DM enjoyed dropping area effects and charm monsters (while also running them wrong so that the whole party got frozen for 7 rounds and had to save again immediately with no chance to take a turn if they broke out of it. I finally figured out what he was going for and shoved cotton in my ears to stop the stupid siren song effect).
I'll probably make a rogue, gloomstalker ranger, or some kind of spell-caster if I try lizardman again.
I actually went over the backstory with the wizard player, and what we had settled on was that since the wizard was several hundred years old, then my character's entire tribe was descended from a lizardman that owed a life-debt to the wizard and had sworn eternal servitude to the wizard and his family. Didn't stop me from being essentially barred from RP moments, as all the humans and elves didn't want to talk to a lizardman and I had too low Charisma for intimidation rolls to ever work.
I still blame the DM for a lot of this, and I do wish he had just told me "no lizardman PCs" instead of going through all that, but a lizard monk did not fit with the party or the campaign, which is why this video reminded me of that character.
@@beowulfshaeffer8444 Yeah, definitely a messed up DM ruining a good character (not sure how a Monk fell behind the tanky and dps curve though), and everybody but the Wizard sounds like an arse if the other players were also completely cold shouldering you.
You were the Ookla (from Thundarr the Barbarian)/Chewbacca to the Wizard, such a great thing for RP and story if there is a quarter decent DM.
@@nvfury13 "not sure how a Monk fell behind the tanky and dps curve though"
Monks are pretty weak mechanically in 5e. Treantmonk has a pretty good breakdown video on it.
ruclips.net/video/Aaqq7iZUmMk/видео.html
@@nvfury13 you really do love to dump on DMs trying to juggle players purposely adding more work onto their plate, don't you
Victarion Greyjoy from A song of Ice and Fire would make a good way to have a cleric wearing plate armour also be a pirate. Basically his god is the Drowned god and in the books he has a whole inner monologue about how other men are scared of drowning so they don't wear plate armour at sea but that true believers of the drowned god don't fear drowning.
I'm gming a D&D 5e pseudo viking campaign in which the characters are and have to be all human and come from the same small village. It is a stop the evil dragon queen campaign in my own setting and it is the best one I've ever run. The players just love it. And they especially liked the fact that they have grown up together and that each one had to have some personal memory of something that happened in their past. That has lead to some romantic roleplay. So great.
Every time I run a themed game, there's always at least one player who is determined to play a character that does not fit the theme. I have seen it in several games but it seems to be most prevalent on World of Darkness. If I am running Changeling, someone has to play a werewolf. If I am running Werewolf, someone has to play a vampire. If I am running Camarilla game, someone has to play some non-Camarilla bloodline. It's always something. For D&D, I always get at least one highly improbable character from some distant part or the setting or some other setting entirely. I am running a game set on the Sword Coast. What are people playing? I wanna be a samurai. I wanna be a warforged. My character is from Al-Qadim. et cetera. Does anyone have an idea for a character that is from the Sword Coast? *blank looks* No? Some people act like expecting them to make a character to fit the theme of the game they agreed to play is some sort of affront to their creativity or something. I have actually been accused of trampling a player's creativity for saying, "no" to a character that was wildly out of place and made no sense at all. This is a one-shot about a group of lighthouse keepers working at the most isolated lighthouse in North America. You can't play a debutante actress with a credit rating on 90%. No, that makes no sense at all. Wealthy actresses who have never had to cook their own food in their lives do not work as lighthouse keepers. No, no one just drops by Stannard Rock Lighthouse. It's called the loneliest place in North America for a reason. How about using that creativity you keep talking about to make a character that fits this game?
This is just my pain made into a proper comment.
So tell them no?
"No, but..." is the equally important flip side of "Yes, and..."
@@Michael-bn1oi I do tell them no but that doesn't keep them from arguing, complaining or coming up with other characters that are just as out of place as the first one. Fighting with players who insist on making a character that doesn't fit the theme of the game I am running and they agreed to play is a headache that I don't need.
The Wealthy Actress fleeing to a remote lighthouse to escape a persistent suitor, having to constantly use their acting skills to pretend they know what they are doing, so that nobody turns them in for the reward. (Because of course there's a reward, she's a rich heiress who's gone missing.) Making the 13th Warrior a constant source of internal tension for the party is a GREAT way of reinforcing to players that they shouldn't make those kinds of characters.
@@JGregory32 Instead of renting a nice place on an island somewhere under a fake name and paying in cash? She concocts this persona complete with fake papers, joins the Lighthouse Service and gets a spot at this isolated lighthouse where her smooth, uncallosed hands would mark her as completely out of place no matter what her acting skills might be? Sorry but that's not even a little bit believable and doesn't fit the scenario at all. The player signed up for this game knowing what it was going to be, made a character that made no sense at all and then tried to play the victim when I said, "No'.
This was a one-shot as I said before so I'm not sure that's relevant. The person doing this is very unlikely to learn any sort of lesson anyway. Most of the time, that's why they are making such an obviously out of place character in the first place and why they are so insistent on it. Games with these wildly out of place characters tend to become all about those characters and how out of place they are pretty quickly. That's what most people who make these characters want. The 13th Warrior wasn't just out of place. He was the main character because he was out of place.The only lesson they will learn is that making a character that doesn't fit the game will put the spotlight on their character which is what they wanted.
19:24. Okay, that makes so much more sense. Thanks Seth, I’m happy that you explained the 13th Warrior concept that way.
It’s totally in line with Main Character Syndrome.
Currently in a game where all characters are failed side-show artists, look-a-likes, bearded dragon, solo acrobat. We were told by our agent to take our acts "where the sun don't shine". Hence we all arrived by boat in Ice Wind Dale.
Failing to command an audience for our actual work we have had to take on the mantle of heroes in order to earn a room at the inn. Layers of deceit as we all pretend to the villagers that we are heroes and dissemble to each other to hide our individual secrets.
So, it's the circus bugs from A Bug’s Life?
An interesting distinction: in most RPG scenarios, your party's strengths will come from their diversity. Each player has to buy into the theme / common cause, then build their characters to be complimentary to each other as you described.
that is probably one of the key components, to make the scenario play to the strengths of the limitations.
Man, I do love themed campaigns. Constraints breed creativity.
Which is why I don't like the new developments in character creation that Tasha’s brought.
Like I always say: “Suboptimal doesn't mean isn't fun.” and my Orc War Cleric proves that quite well.
@Rolling Crits Thanks for the tip.
Reading through other comments on this video, I get the impression that where it inspires most creativity is in coming up with "13th Warriors".
@@Lobsterwithinternet Which is true, but doesn't make the inverse not true. Sometimes you have a cool character idea, but stats say screw you and no one wants to feel like they're dragging the party down by not being able to contribute enough. Which is the real answer, your mileage will vary, because every table is different and what works for one isn't going to work for them all.
@@Lobsterwithinternet Not sure if switching to a new system would help out with it. Remember: Tasha's an optional thing much like the other expansions. If anything the gm and the group can decide what's in or not in their sessions.
If anything, these optional character creation changes are a response to those who lament they can only play certain races for certain classes due to stat bumps benefitting said classes while not being able to play other classes, uninspiring perhaps to an extent but it would be nice to have say protector aasimars viable for clerics as an example. If it isnt a problem with your table then you can safely continue to create characters as is w/o using the new character creation rules from tasha's.
Oh jeez, your pirate Cleric hits too close to home. I also have a fantasy pirate themed adventure at the moment and a new player joined several months in and plopped this 6 page backstory in front of me about this far future earth mad max dimension hopping survivor... sad to say I did not veto it. I hope I learned my lesson.
This might have worked if the player was willing to compromise.
The ship's cleric in my pirate game worshipped was a time displaced pirate that worshiped a kraken god. He had visions that the parties ship would witness the end of the world and thinks he has to sail on this ship and bear witness for his god.
I find asking people "can you get closer to the theme?" can help build middle ground.
I really appreciate the amount of nuance in this video. When I had an off theme character before, he was always a guest character in one of my brother's games.
Most of his players were not super experienced and had a tendency to be very weak against melee threats. I ended up creating a Ronin that didn't speak the language.
I did that to keep from hijacking role playing or decisions from the main party. I only used rough instructions, drawings and hand signs in combat. (This really helped inspire the other group to use items and environmental items in fun ways.)
He had a book of prophecy that he would read and follow, so he had a built in reason to join or leave the party based on guest status.
From a technical standpoint, he wasn't off the campaign theme, he was just a foreigner.
Maybe it is just my inner DM, but I like to let new players do new player things. It leads to interesting situations that a table of old hats often avoid.
I ramble. Thanks for the video!
This is a great way to make a 13th warrior, intentionally design them to be a strong supporting character. Anyone who reads this ramble might get wise advice.
That character is pretty much the 13th Warrior, but the cool kind.
i disagree, that character WAS the theme. it was a new player game, and that character was made *for* new players.
Now that Seth brought it up, I have been reminded that ad&d 2nd edition was the original source or at least the hotbed for a lot of campaign settings. I mean it wasn't too long ago that I myself managed to pick up what I think maybe the entire collection of Dark Sun supplements including the boxed set. I also managed to get my hands on the Viking sourcebook; if for no other reason then to have access to information on rune magic so that I could fully utilize the full power some of the members of my favorite family of dragons, the linnorms; a.k.a. the norse dragons. Man I wish Dungeons & Dragons would revisit those bad boys.
Surprisingly enough, I'm a BIG fan of the 2e Ravenloft setting (it was where I first made my Version 1.0 "Nate Trevelyan, PI" and fell in love with Noir) and have 90-95 percent of the materials. I'm even using it to run a 5e Ravenloft Campaign. Younger people would be surprised what you can get out of older material (especially if you just use the Information and not the Stats)...
Question is w/ the current climate of wotc and the designers for dnd, what will be retained and what will be lost for the 5e version of Dark Sun? And what will it mean for future settings that desired to have an official version such as planescape or heck Greyhawk?
If anything, the multiverse angle wotc's been going at would mean anyone with some elbow grease could make it possible to join two different settings together. Forgotten realms connected to Golarion anyone?
Oddly enough, I have a 13th Warrior in one of my current campaigns and it has worked pretty well. The character is a Doomguy knock-off who is obsessed with his eternal crusade against "demons" (he lumps devils, daemons, kytons and the like into that one category), even though the campaign is actually about battling drow and uncovering the secrets of ancient aliens. The player did this as a joke with the full knowledge of the true theme. Fortunately, he has been a good sport and the character consistently interprets anything the party needs to fight as "demonic" or "demon-worshipping" even though it isn't, so he rarely inhibits the team. The joke isn't "ha ha, the rest of you followed the theme", it's "ha ha, my character is delusional while still being helpful", and it's worked pretty well. I did throw in a sideplot involving a tiefling doing a mysterious ritual to give the character some room to grow, and decisions he made there eventually ended up causing another fun sidequest where the party got sued in Hell Court. Other than that, the only real trouble his character has caused for the group was that he believed the Lawful Evil cult's good public image rhetoric for a while before he learned of their involvement with the aliens.
So it CAN work, but it requires a player who is well-intentioned and understands that they have chosen to do more work than the other players to make the game work well.
gaAAAAWBLINS!.slayer
They are fighting Drow…plenty of fiends (and Drow/fiend crossbreeds) to toss at them with that.
Reminds me of a one-shot game I played in years ago. It was in a modern setting, something like the X-Files, and we were investigating a werewolf attack, I think. Most of the party treated it as just that. My character was a UFO conspiracy theorist, who was convinced all mysteries were the work of aliens, so werewolves were just another alien to him.
Rip and tear until done
I'm running a themed Eberron game at the moment. I players are all Warforged that rolled straight out of the creation forge onto the frontline of the Last War. It's been great so far, the players are having a blast ;-)
Was that a pun at the end?
@@MonkeyJedi99 Well they have been quite liberal with using the grenades I gave them each mission.
@@jasongaylard2547 And why not? No point getting to your afterlife, knowing you left unused explosives on your corporeal self.
That was your most disliked video?.....Really? Dude, that video was what got me into your channel. I loved it. "So what does your character have?" Thinks....."I'm gonna have a jumping horse!" "So guys, the theme is gonna be your characters are all mercenaries. Your tuff, highly trained, and know no mercy and best of all, your totally expendable. You are (quea the pictures) John Matrix, Rambo, Dutch Smith, and Bill Mria the science guy" I almost pissed myself, I laughed so hard.
I love these videos! The info, the skits, the argumentation....
But one of the things that doesn't get enough love is the stellar Photoshop job - every time I see a generic stock photo with a GM screen, I lose it :D Seth even goes through the trouble of using GM screens from different systems (which is a really cool attention to detail)!
I know, it’s one of my favorite things he does.
The Cleric in a group of pirates could be a Shepherd Book type character.
Yep, book was a cleric but his past was dark enough that he fit
I started immediately imagining Simon lol.
cleric of the Bitch Queen, the pirates would want to keep around as to anger the goddess of the seas, now why a full plate cleric would stick around is in the player of the cleric's court
You can sometimes push a theme pretty far without being the 13th warrior. You need to check with the DM what the boundaries are and adjust the character so they don't go beyond that. Like a cleric in a pirate game could be a former priest before they joined the crew, or maybe they serve the sea god or thief god.
"Call of Cthulu is horror"
I thought this too. Until one day, Seth posted a two part one shot stream. I didn't realize the horror aspect was all the innuendo and bad puns that players made!
My guess it was mainly how the keeper handles it
@@v0dka885 Heh heh, I was more just making a joke :-) I have never had opportunity to play CoC. So that one shot was my first experience of an actual full game session. Was great watching Seth play, but it well showed how theme can change on setting as was mentioned a bit. 2020 modern dating site vs 1920s haunted mansion.
I mean... it's CoC for short ;)
@@russelljacob7955 i ran a slender the eight pages campaign for CoC and I blended the case of the murder that took place when those 2 girls tried to kill their friend as a sacrifice to slenderman and the game Slender the eight pages. but the twist is when the police went to the spot where the girl was stabbed, her body was missing and no trails of blood were left other than on the rock where she was brutally murdered. If you’re doing a cop scenario it can be the police and lawyers investigating the sight or if it’s gangsters it could be the group hiding and stashing moonshine and honestly it was actually pretty creepy. I’d love to make the adventure downloadable for free but it depends on if peoples want it or not
@@v0dka885 Yeah. Am aware Cthulhu is mainly a gritty psychological horror experience. I love that about it which us why I want to play, but never can find peeps. On PC play, less interest since I think I would best enjoy with theatre of the mind in person. Heck, even Puffin Forest can tell CoC stories and have them spooky still!
I love GMing spooky too. One of my favorite one shots for Pathfinder 2e (Friendly and happy Paizo!) Had a school ghost story one. It was written like a fun ghost haunt. But on PC, I used dynamic lighting without shared vision on our online tabletop system (roll20) to really make it a horror one. P2E, online really is the better way to be spooky because of all the tools online brings that are impossible on a classic map in person. I absolutely love running horror!
Loved this video. I'm running a home brew that's pretty much crashing and burning 8 sessions in for this exact reason. Told the party for months i was prepping a low magic/Game of thrones style world so everyone decides they want to be a mercenary company except our one friend who decides he is a druid from the opposite side of the continent who doesn't speak the language and constantly wanders off for his own secretive purposes. Literally watching my players fall asleep when his turn comes up and he actually said to me the other day that he thinks it's cool that he's kind of becoming the main character of the story...
Ugh. How good a friend is he? How GoT is the campaign? An awful lot of “main characters” died in that story…
What do you mean secretive purposes? You're the DM you have to know what he is doing lol
I always saw this as the loner, edge lord player. You are right on about it too! I always wanted to stick them in as an Ettin (a different player as the other head) so they were forced to be part of the party. Then I realized you can't make people join in. I guess it ends up as your table, your rules.
It boils down to the same question. "This is the theme, so why is your character in this world with this theme?". If they can't answer that, I have some NPC's I need voiced that are odd balls, but not sticking around. That's what's in the bag.
It's the only answer that still lets this player play that I have found. Especially since you know they are doing it every game.
gotta say, this comment section is explaining a lot of problems i have heard with gamers. i did not realize how frequent the special snow flake syndrome was. still i rather like your solution, so this is an attempt at a bump.
@@vidard9863
Weeeeelllllll...
If you are an edgelord, play Vampire the Masquerade. You will be much happier. D & D isn't your game probably.
That said, I want you to play or I wouldn't have invited you as a DM. So, that "snowflake" is my friend already normally. On the off chance they invited themselves, then yes they need to work with the other players or simply be happy to be there (play along). Which comes to the question I asked.
"Why is your character adventuring with us?", is another way to say it. This is the ride, so is you character on board or off? If they want to cry over their dead parents in a tavern, then the party isn't going to sit there and watch it. It is boring to everyone else.
Also, this is the parties epic adventure, not your story. Write a book if it is all about your character alone. Again, you would be happier.
Still, the worst edgelords, *that I have met,* aren't those that would be called "snowflakes" in my experience. The worst are people so certain they are tough that nothing could be allowed to contradict that in their character. They can't handle the idea that they might be flawed or fail. Not in real life & definitely not in game.
To prove this their character has dug themselves out of a pit, climbed the highest mountain, & then came back down just to climb it again for fun. All this they did BEFORE adventuring with this party, and yet they are still *first level.* If they are that much of a bad ass, they should be higher level and that would be fine as your end goal for this character, but not your start position. You can be that cool, awesome, absolutely great character, and you will be if you just play along.
Play the game and in D & D you could be that bad ass, but you are just a farmers son that had his parents killed by orc's. How does your character over come that? Paladin of the god of light? Cunning Rogue watching your friends backs from the shadows to make sure it never happens again? Maybe a Warlock who made a deal to ensure they had the power to change things.
Whatever you want, except the guy in the corner to badass to play the game they agreed to play. If you are a such a bad ass, bring it. Otherwise, we are going to play and you can hang if you want. I have some NPC's you can voice so this doesn't bore you.
I used to be in a punk/metal band called "Wendol" that was named after the antagonists in the book Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton which was later turned into a movie with Antonio Banderas called... The 13th warrior, this is exactly how I explained it every time
One of my favorite recent Settings/Themes is Brancalonia Spaghetti Fantasy for 5e. It does include a setting guide, but I didn't think it was anything to write home about. Instead what I love about it is the assumptions about the world and the characters. Everybody plays criminals, but the sort of likeable rogues and dashing bandits, the Robin Hoods and Han Solos of the world, with a heavy dash of Italian flavor. You get a mercenary band, with a hideout you can customize and there's loads of option rules for things like bounties and bar fights, including post fight etiquette.
I ended up combining the optional rules with Kobold Press' Midgard setting, which has a much better defined Italian flavored area I think.
A lawful good cleric on a pirate ship sounds amazing! Father Rodriguez returning from the new world after failing to convert natives and losing his whole company. The lone survivor, he eventually hooks up with these pirates and while originally he was just using them to get home, he grows to view them as his flock. He watches them raid and kill and gives them communion and hears confession. The fish out of water aspect is kind of the whole point. Over time he starts to turn less and less lawful and worries that he might be falling into sin but is determined to save the souls of this crew even if it means losing his own. This is riveting stuff. Over the course of the campaign you learn about his previous adventures among the savages and you see why his regret and hubris killed his former party and why they keep him here.
Dam I might have to sample a part of this.
I totally loved the cleric idea of him losing his crew.
Am joining a campaign as a cleric (first time I switch class I've play barbarian for 7 years now) and I needed a background.
I totally enjoyed yours.
But with your permission can I use the part where I lost my crew?
Am gonna be meeting the campaign in prison as a prisoner. So I'd like to say am in prison for bring dishonor to the kingdom due to the atrocities my crew commited.
LOVE IT
dunno. Sounds cool, but less if the Cleric is a player. I could see it work better in a book, or movie.
I still love the campaign I played where we ended up going with a group composed of circus performers left unemployed once the circus broke up. I loved my lion-taming bard who claimed to be a wandering noble.
Funny side note about Crichton's Eaters of the Dead. I remember from an earlier edition of the book, Crichton included an afterword describing how the book came about. While he was in college he and a friend and classmate were studying epics like Beowulf and the classmate argued that Beowulf was a boring story to which Crichton disagreed saying that it could be much more interesting if written the right way and so they challenged each other to do so. Crichton's classmate was impressed with how he had not only included the details of the epic but historical details like Ahmad ibn Fadlan accounts.
So glad you didn't stop making videos after the response to that first one. I love your stuff and find videos like this, that aren't so D&D-specific, really helpful.
Once had a player who wanted to play a goose (like an actual goose) in a sci fi setting.
If I was playing that Cleric, I could make my character into something like Shepherd Book from Firefly. I am staying with this crew, as "I got heathens a plenty right here". I also might have just genuinely befriended that crew, and didn't want to leave.
Playing the 13th warrior CAN be done, IF you are willing to adapt your starting place, into something else, and take special care not to hog the spotlight.
Everything you said is completely true and I agree, I'm just offering ways for players to re-work the campaign breaking concept into something more in line with the theme
One of the big (and lengthiest) points was about how the character (once introduced) needs to come up with a reason to stay and be accepted. Shepherd Book is a good example of a character coming up with a reason to stick around after being introduced. However, Shepherd Book also came armed with a never-fully-revealed backstory that eluded to him being far from a simple priest. He also sat out most of the space crime. If it were a RPG, that would translate to a player's character spending most sessions back at the ship while the other characters were off adventuring. Then, in the end, even Shepherd Book eventually left the Serenity crew.
I think a relatively easy way to solve it was if the Cleric worshipped some type of sea or weather god, and had similar ideals to the pirates. To play a Cleric in plate mail on a pirate crew is workable, since that's really more of a playstyle, but if the Cleric is going for the more traditional churchgoing goodie-two-shoes type, then yeah, that might be a problem.
@@SSkorkowsky Feel like Shep was clearly going to become more involved in the crime as the series went on, same as Simon. Even if they're both more non-combat characters
"Without fail, every time a group I'm in decides on a monoclass/monorace campaign there is always someone who bucks the trend." - Matt Colville ranting about this issue.
It's amusing that it never fails. It's always "Four Vampire hunters and a guy who is secretly a vampire" or "Dwarves plus Halfling go on an epic quest." Or "Pirates plus one upstanding citizen; but isn't nearly as entertaining as Black Lagoon."
I remember when I was gonna test out Coriolis Third Horizon with some of the people from my Pathfinder game. One specific friend of mine I knew would want to be the charismatic Mal from Firefly, ACDC blasting captain. But as we started and they had to come up with the name for the ships AI, and one just mentioned Solan (the hedgehog from Pinchcliffe Grand Prix), I ended up naming their patron Ben Redic Fy Fazan (the oil sheik), and then their ship ended up being named Il Tempo Gigante. And it just derailed from there. Fantastic test session.
"Jai masse penga - do, raka blakk!"
My sister is about to get started running a theme game where we're all island hopping sailors of some kind. The idea is it'll be in a One Piece style setting where each island we visit can be drastically different from the last. (like leaving a jungle island and sailing a week to wind up on an island in perpetual winter) Her only stipulations is our characters are a crew, and that we get bonuses if we can get the whole table to sing a shanty properly. I personally am excited for it. :D
I personally recommend you play The Longest Johns Sea Shanties at the table and lip synch it....;)
@@johnnysizemore5797 I was going to try and convince for a couple of Shanty renditions courtesy of Pirates for Sail. Longest Johns is a good second tho.
Longest Johns, yes. I actually first heard them because of their cover of "We All Lift Together" from Warframe, but I've loved the other stuff I've heard from them. In fact, I think I'll listen to "Here's a Health to the Company " now.
The cyberpunk campaign pitch was brilliant, I love it, and it has such potential to keep going on too! Imagine after creating this kinda bond between players and characters in a "season 1" you go for a "let's conquer the city" kinda Saint's Row season 2?
So close to 100k my dude! Love to see it keep up the good work.
I've seen multiple 13th Warriors over the years, when the player in question works with the GM/party and lets the character evolve to become more like the rest of the party. I can't think of an example of a 13th Warrior that rigidly stuck to their original concept who didn't turn into a bit of a buzz kill.
Guardians of the Shire sprung to mind immediately.
Great video. The explanation of “how to” for other GMs was particularly good. I also enjoyed the description of your two most popular campaign.
Great video Seth! Thanks for sharing!
Whenever players come in with a 13th warrior kind of character I tell them to come back with something that fits. Because I put in a lot of work to run a game and I can find additional players if needed. Dealing with someone who's not willing to come along with the fun just isn't worth it
Well yeah. They’re sending up a big red flag telling you that they 1. Want to be the center of attention and 2. They are willing to attempt to push the boundaries and break the rules to get what they want. Who needs it?
Huh. Theres a shadobanned comment here. Annoying.
Anyway, the "take my ball and go home" method of dm'ing SOUNDS good know paper but most people playing don't have that option "I can find more players". Eh.
One couple, 2 brothers, a best friend, are a lot of party to replace. So OFTEN players are a package deal, and just saying "I don't need u" can end up with not only bad feelings but your friends* assuming u play w/friends just deciding D&D isn't the best use of their free time collectively. Collaborative storytelling is hard because it collaborative.
I remember playing the Storm King's Thunder campaign as a group of only giant kin (Goliaths and Furbolg), we called our troop "We Might be Giants", nothing was funnier than witnessing our goliath wizard win a fist fight against a barbarian chieftain.
Outstanding video, as usual. Thank you for posting.
This is a great video. My group has often talked about doing themed campaigns and we like the idea. I shared this video with them as well.
I have a player who always plays a cutesy, sweet Anime style character every game. Sometimes that sort of character has become the Heart of the party, but most of the time, they end up leaving the game because they realize they don't fit the theme of the game. It sucks cause they're a great player, they just love this one archetype of "OMG Kawaii Desu" for DnD games. Again, it's not that we don't try to accommodate them, but they often have a hard time staying motivated to stay in some games. There was one time this player made their character to fit a theme: A Thieves Guild, and they rocked! They broke from their usual character profile to make a fighter. But they weren't as happy during that game, and that made me feel bad because I want my players to love who they play and what they're playing.
It sounds like a problem I have seen far too often:
One player only wants to play in one specific way.
That restricts everyone else, either that player is happy or everyone else is happy.
I know how frustrating it is to want to have that person along (Good friend, or whatever.).
But at the same know that everyone else will be better off without that player.
Which, sadly enough, is the most common way that problem gets solved.
I think it is still better than the other common outcome: People stop playing entirely.
I do think there is a way to actually fix it:
Let them GM their own campaign! (Yes, that is a way to get them to "expand their horizon".)
The tough challenge is to convince such a person to be GM.
I know this'll sound counter intuitive to this video, but hear me out: have the player start the first Storyline out as a light version of "The 13th Warrior" trope. She's a foreigner from a far off place in the World setting here for any number of reasons (exchange student for teen games, job specialist for their company, etc.) and, instead of leaving like Antonio "Spy Dad" Banderas did at the end, they stay around because they made good friends and don't want to leave them in the lurch.
This really is just my honest opinion but Anime fans....real core Anime fans...need to branch out a little bit in their media. Because it is so, so rare to find Anime that don't feel like Anime, therefore characters that feel like they belong anywhere else. It's kind of like trying to adapt them to live action. A lot of their style is derived from animation and is frankly silly in live action.
@@Amrylin1337 Akira would be a good idea to recommend them, as it fits really well in the Noire/Cyberpunk genre. Ghost in the Shell(specifically Stand Alone Complex) works too. My brother happens to be a major Anime fanboy, so I've unfortunately seen a lot of them....
@@Amrylin1337 It isn't that the style isn't suited for our tables. We've had campaigns with this player whose cute character became the heart of the party-- hell I'm a player beside them in one and my character has a crush on their sweet and kind character! But there have been other games where the idea didn't mesh as well.
You'd be honestly surprised how creative you can really be if you can only work within a theme. I had a Ranger that was made in an only Urban setting (kinda like what Dimension 20 did with Unsleeping City). He had a very Noire feel to him, it was fantastic...Note: I just found my old Character sheet for him(I hord PC sheets. I have over 22 sheets for the various versions of "Nate Trevelyan, PI" alone...)! He used to be a City Guard(re:Cop) that got let go due to Campaign Villain Shenanigans and apparently (according to my notes on the back) hooked up with the Party cause he "needed some decent muscle" to find out what was going on....
You have read the Garrett PI novels by Glen Cook, right? Inspirational for that kind of PC. Might also look at the Lord Darcy stories, who's a bit more fantasy cop/secret agent - that was originally Randall Garrett's baby, and when he died Michael Kurland took over (seamlessly, IMO) for a few more books. All good reads if you haven't seen them.
@@richmcgee434 I'm more of a Raymond Chandler reader, so I used that type of idea and explained away his Ranger powers(Favored Enemy, Spells, etc ) as "Trained Skills" or hunches. I explained the Favored Enemy as him just seaming to have bad run-in's with just the Worst sort of that race(specifically Goblinoids)...
@@johnnysizemore5797 I'm a Chandler fan too (as is anyone who's ever read him, I suspect) and I'll tell you, you really need to look up the Garret PI books. They're about a gumshoe detective in a fantasy setting, and while Cook isn't quite the master of the English language Chandler was he's still very good. Solid plots that don't rely on the fantasy elements too much to lose the mystery plots , good characterizations throughout, and clever dialog. The nods to Chandler, Stout, Hammett and others don't hurt either.
The individual books are long out of print but they've been bundled into several three-book compilations. Start with the one that contains Sweet Silver Blues if you want a look - the books were printed in chronological order and people and situations do slowly change over time.
@@richmcgee434 alright, I'll give 'em a read. I just finished reading the last Odd Thomas book, so I need a new book set to get into(was gonna start on Mikey Spellain's Mike Hammer stuff, as I remember watching old episodes of the TV series as a kid in the 80's).Thanks for the recommendations....
@@johnnysizemore5797 I think you'll like them. The series starts out fairly strong and just gets more polished as time goes by - and he's done 14 of them over the last 35 years, so if you do, you can find plenty to read for a while.
This is fantastic stuff Seth. Perhaps, I dare say, your best so far. It is something I talk about a lot with my players and on my blog but you really nail it. Great stuff.
I ran a mounted game, where everyone was mounted on a horse. The fantasy troupe of the mounted knight is hardly played because of how often we do dungeon crawls. By setting the encounters outside, every encounter was done from the saddle. It was great fun.
Sounds fun!
The 13th Warrior Problem can be subverted by a good game master. I remember my first game of Call of Cthulhu, we were all to make criminals in a gang. I asked the GM if I could make an undercover cop. He said says. So after about three hours of the gang trying to investigate a rival gang that has access to the Mythos and having killed a dimensional shambler, we find the bad guys warehouse and prepare for an all out assault. But before we go in, another a member of the gang confides in me that he's an undercover cop. And then it dawned on me.
All of us were undercover cops. We were all undercover cops and none of us relaized it up until that point.
So then we just called in a swat team and let them deal with the monster the rival gang was summoning.
My point being that in wanted to be different, we all made exactly the same character and the GM has us going until an extremely funny twist.
I guess it only worked because of that twist.
But your story along with other comments on this video highlight why the 13th warrior is even a problem: To much players want to be the oddball standing out, make the GM figure how it could work and hug the spotlight.
@@ismirdochegal4804 Absolutely it is still a problem. And as you said the exact thing we wanted to do was avoid the spotlight. I'm just pointing out how a really good GM can find a good way to make it work. That being said it's not really that responsibility if they are running a game where there are certain restrictions, nor is someone a bad deal if they can't do this kind of mental gymnastics to make this work.
Basically being able to do it is the mark of a good GM, but not being able to do it is not a sign of of them being a bad GM.
One of the best campaign's that I have run is an Everquest based game where all of the characters are Halflings. The fight the neighboring goblins, defend against wasps that are attacking the "domesticated" bees that produce honey for a meadery in town, do courier work to the main human cities, etc. I did not restrict the characters to specific classes like EQ does and the Halfling Barbarian never fails to make the entire table laugh. Seeing this video, I now want to start developing the various holidays and such. Great stuff as always, Seth. Thanks
In case you want to use it, the stuff that I showed when talking about Halfling holidays, most of it came from the old 1e AD&D Unearthed Arcana, with the main god info coming from the 1e Deities and Demigods book. Might give you some ideas to start building from. I always thought it'd be neat to have those cultural holidays be regularly used in a campaign as part of the calendar. Like, "OK, we have to finish the adventure and get back for the Bla-Bla celebration because I'm one of the candle-bearers this month," and then another going, "Don't worry, "I'm one of the people making beer for it, so I promise we'll be back in time." Not even priest characters, but just regular characters.
I saw that first vid and I appreciate the difference in quality between then and now. Keep doing what you're doing👍
You are one of my favorite content creators! I have watched many of your videos more than once over the years. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experience. I live a better life knowing Seth Skorkowsky lives in this world :)
That halfling thing is actually pretty common campagin type for Warhammer Fantasy, at least when your not in Marienburg yet again.
that could absolutely work, even if there's not much in terms of halflings bg in WFRP; I always found them to be an half-baked idea in that setting.
@@alessandroraviolo1305 Outside of WFRP there is quite a bit of lore on the moot, unlike the boarder princes. So there is more to work with then you might think. Far more lore then halflings gets in D&D even.
I never minded the in-your-face style. It's punchy, and gets your point across, even if some details are lost on me. Ive never 100% agreed with you, but Im not gonna get my knickers in a twist about it and post vitriolic comments somewhere.
Thanks for all your content Seth! Ive put a lot of to great use over the years.
Happy to be here since the original bit with the 13th Warrior. Great job with your channel, Seth.
I love that you save the old skit videos. It is fun to watch them again. I have also learned where exactly your scooby doo plot came from. You always mention the travelling band when mentioning horror games for some reason.
When hearing the anecdote of the plate-clad LG Cleric on a pirate ship, my first thought turned to Dr Doppler from Treasure Planet and his clunky enviro/space suit. In the game, the cleric could be a naive chaplain or a missionary who's happened to throw their lot in with pirates. Their love of the sea (possibly worshipping an oceanic deity) is tempered that they, alas, cannot swim so for self-preservation they wear a clunky diving/safety suit (the plate mail) whilst at sea. They see themselves as spiritual guidance for their motley crew and the crew in turn, being a superstitious lot, reckon having a god-talker on their ship is lucky and largely aren't bothered by the sanctimonious character - just as long as they aren't attracting ill winds!
"For God's sake, Jim, I'm a scientist, not a doctor! I mean I am a doctor but not that kind of doctor! I have a doctorate, it's not the same thing!"
Ironically I created a 13th warrior accidentally in a situation that was strikingly similar to your "Pirate Cleric" - in my case, I specifically asked if it was going to be a pirate campaign, since we were starting as captives/press ganged crewmen, and was told no... so I created an aquatic themed chaotic good cleric with the expectation that the party was going to free themselves from the starting pirates. The early sessions had the pirates trying to recruit the players, which the rest of the party embraced.... leaving me with a character that's entirely inappropriate for the campaign despite being given, and following, the same starting thematic criteria. I felt like I was holding the party back despite deliberately going into the campaign as a healer - the role that keeps the party going.
I hated that campaign.
It affected the way I made characters going forward and I now completely understand why some players spend basically no time on backstory. Some players care deeply about their own backstories. If I want something that makes sense, I need to riff off the other players.
Group mileage may vary.
Not going to lie, your group sounds frustrating.
As a DM with ~30 years experience, if you *aren’t* aiming for a pirate themed campaign, don’t have the game start with the PCs prisoners to pirates that try to recruit them.
If a single decision will completely alter the course of the campaign, that *is* the choice the party will make.
In your place, I’d have definitely made a Neutral Cleric of a sea god or a sea themed Druid, mostly because my experience would make me realize the direction this was most likely going to go. Even if they didn’t join the pirates, the high seas were definitely calling, which usually leads to pirate or pirate hunter game.
Great video as usual, and thanks for the Righteous Blood shoutout. That was a big surprise as I was watching the video!
Another great video with valuable information! Thanks.
A halfling has to leave his village to venture into the lands where giants dwell...... so.... Willow. Still sounds like fun.
I will say this. Currently playing a Legend of the 5 rings 5th edition campaign and I am the 13th warrior. In a world of Samurai, I'm the norseman who traveled to Rokugan looking to sell his services. However because the players are unfamiliar with all the lore and history of L5R but the characters *would* be it effectively allows the DM to not pull a "as you all know..." because instead it's the NPCs talking to a foreigner and explaining things in simple terms. I did talk it through with the DM first mind you, even though I'm using official books (Path of Waves has rules for creating Gajin characters) I wanted to make sure it was ok with him. He has actually worked it into the campaign really well and due to the part of character creation where you pick another PC and make backstory with them, I still had ties within the group. Plus he could speak the language so there was no barrier there and he has to follow most of the rules of Rokugan because not doing so...well...lets just say there are major consequences.
Now if he'd have said "ok everyone is from the Crab Clan" I wouldn't have done it and just made a Crab clan person but because this was a 'everyone is from different clans, all coming together under a single Damiyo for the purposes of Winter Court stuffs' it was a bit more open.
As for the reason he's stuck around, one, he's a glory seeker...to the point of it even being a detriment to himself sometimes and being in the service of a Damiyo will allow him to gain fame and glory whilst also finding safety amongst the group thanks to their social standing. The reason the PCs keep him around is because he's a foreigner, he's not quite bound as tightly by the social rules which means they can have him do mildly questionable things and write it off as "oh the stupid foreigner doesn't understand what he did..." which allows them to make underhanded moves because I'm basically the patsy for their shenanigans.
That sound like a 13th warrior on the face if it, but since you really tied them into the theme, not actually.
Our most recent themed campaign was that we all went to the same military school in session 0, but by the end of the prolouge sessions (essentially multiple level 0 sessions) we uncovered a terrible secret and then some other stuff happened and we all had to leave together. Now we all have different goals but we all want to stay together since most of our needs align and we know we can trust each other more than anyone else. Especially back in our home country.. 😅
Righteous Blood Ruthless Blades gets another mention! And good video on themed campaigns. Always enjoyable to be reminded what is out there. And the campaigns you ran sound very fun. Thank you!
I started reading RBRB recently and really want to try it out. I hope Osprey releases more materiel for it because it looks fun as hell.
@@SSkorkowsky The author told me that Osprey aren't interested in anything more for it (I had asked if there would be more adventures). Which is a shame. But maybe if sales pick up, they'll change their minds. I have set it up on a VTT, and really must actually run it. I agree with you, it looks very fun.
That's disappointing to hear. Osprey won their first ENnie with it. Kinda sad they'd follow that up with nothing more.
@@SSkorkowsky Osprey's track record for supporting games beyond an initial release is really hit or miss, mostly miss IME. There are some exceptions, but unless your name is McCullough or Krone even getting two books is an accomplishment - barring teh juggernaut called Bolt Action. Even the wargame designers that have more than one book with them are mostly folks who've written multiple single-volume rule sets (eg Sfiligoi, Mersey).
I think the only RPG they've done that got anything past the core book is Jackals.
Themed Campaigns are the best. Honestly, I usually just GM those kinds of campaigns. I don't have the problem of having a 13th warrior because I'm clear beforehand with the theme and the characters are created with me to develop it's story, family and connection with other PCs. Examples of theme campaigns I run:
- The Postapocalyptic Crew of a huge custom Electric Tank that moves from the center of Russia to Eastern Europe escaping the advance of an invading Eastern Army.
- Highschoolers that live in a small fictional oregonian town (rich hockey player, poor drug seller, army brat new arrival, secret internet gossip guy) and get sacred powers after a tragic accident.
- Students in a magical university going throuigh the years together.
Etc...
I never gamemaster a non-themed campaign. It doesn't make sense to me to always play the "standard adventurer group".
I have a Star Wars D6 Mandalorian game that everyone LOVED. It worked really well. I think I need to revisit themed campaigns. 🤔
So I'm the DM of dark military themed game of post apocalyptic calamity. One player is a quiet sniper. Another player is an amalgamation of every super soldier stereotype. The last player is a hapless taxman. We spent a few months in a bit of the 13th warrior situation. However getting to the point where the Taxman decided he's dealt with enough bullshit and is ready smash heads was pretty glorious. The 13th warrior can potentially be swung back around into the theme with some narrative effort. (provided the players are on board)
First video I have check out. Nailed it. Literally sent the link to one of my groups. All players especially beginning players should see it.
This is why I've been really enjoying Pathfinder 2e where building a unique themed character is easier with the alternate rule of free archetype (pathfinders multi classing)
People need to stop equating Rogues to thieves
That was my absolute favorite video of yours I have been trying to find it the last 2 years!!! I understood it all and agree
I love your videos and the comments so much. I'm an aspiring GM with an intention to start with Traveller. I'm writing a one-shot to try first and a longer, 2-4 session campaign as well. The juvie gang idea for a Cyberpunk campaign blew my mind and I loved the details you shared, like being scared of venturing out of their neighborhood. Everything you and your commenters share is so inspirational. It all pushes me closer to being an actual GM with every minute I spend watching and reading.
Happy to help. Best of luck on the Traveller game.
Also, if you want more on the Juvie Gang campaign, check out my video The Bonsai of Death.
Funnily enough, the main themed campaigns I've been in or ran were usually all Dwarven campaigns, they were a lot of fun. I've seen a few instances of one player wanting to play something different but the big difference in my personal experiences is they still worked with the GM to give good reason as to why they're allied with the rest of the party.
It's a two-way street while I personally prefer GMs who work with their players to ensure everyone is having fun (its how I try to run my games) if a player is very adamant about a concept that is against the grain they really need to help the GM and the rest of the party in return. Otherwise the GM should absolutely tell them hell no try again.
I'm running a magic school campaign in 5e d&d and I adamantly stuck to that only classes who get spell slots can be chosen. We narrowly dodged having to work a barbarian into the campaign. :D
Technically, you could've had one. In 2e, they had a Barbarian kit that was a Spellcaster called a Bearzerker(it became a Prestige class for Wizard's In 3e and then got removed entirely in 4 and 5e).
Multiclassing is your friend sometimes. I had a lot of fun playing an Int 6, Cha 17 sorcerer/barbarian in the early days of D&D 3.0. I could easily see a younger version of him at a magic school as the stereotypical "muttonhead who's there on a sports scholarship but actually wants to get a real education" character. "Gull flunked the transcendent summoning test?!? Rage!!!"
@@richmcgee434 I could picture him being "Buddies"(re:Hired Muscle) for my 24th version of "Nate Trevelyan, PI"(technically a Ranger IS a Spellcaster class,just more Divine) who's there cause his parents wanted him to get a better education
"What you mean you have no "City walks?!", You have Nature-walks for those Snooty Druids..."
@@johnnysizemore5797 Aren't "city walks" for students just another name for bar-hopping? I think they might be onto you. :)
Nothing wrong with a good fantasy PI, as Glen Cook's Garrett books have proven.
16:30 - SO MUCH THIS!
I made a mystery campaign that required all the players to have a backstory with a wealthy NPC as the hook.
One of my players came up with an influencer instagrammer who went to school with him.
Another player created an 80 year old history teacher he was studying under.
The two players immediately looked at each other and went "I remember you!"
It was awesome.
Perfect posting time so I can listen to this on my commute 😍👍
I find themes make it easier to introduce replacement characters if there is a death.
As does the use of a society/department etc that all characters belong to. Delta Green or the Gaslight "Hudson and Brand".
On that note, is there a video on ways of introducing replacement characters?
I have the rough outline for one (more of a list of incomplete sentences) in my ever-long "Future Video Ideas" folder. I'll definitely bring up Themes and Organizations as great ways of bringing in new PCs.
@@SSkorkowsky in the early 80s we always found replacement characters in chests or cages...
I think my favorite way of bringing a new PC mid-session was in the original Ravenloft module. They were in the crypt and a PC died. A minute later a lone guy came rappelling down the tower shaft and into the crypt all, "Oh, hi."
@@SSkorkowsky 😆 excellent.
@@AngryPict We had one time when we'd lost half the party early in a delve out in the middle of nowhere and the DM's cunning solution to bring in new characters was to hand the survivors a stone-to-flesh wand in the loot and our next fight was with a medusa with a statue collection that became the new PCs. Rather liked playing a very confused fighter who'd been solid rock for so long he couldn't even recognize current place names or kingdoms any more. "Where'd this swamp come from?"
Guardians of the Shire has kind of been done in The One Ring Starter Set which is about playing a party of Hobbits in the shire.
Pretty much the gist of D&D's old Five Shires Gazetteer too.
This was a great video, thank you for making it.
Great video, my man. Thanks!