Okay, this is a bit embarrassing for me because this thread is the result of a small lack of creativity on my part, but here it comes anyway:
I like my games dramatic, with a slight dark fantasy feeling, where the heroes walk through the darkness so that they can truly shine. To compensate, I sprinkle my campaigns with some funnier adventures because, apparently, you can only stomach so much drama.
However, here is my problem:
I'm playing a one on one game with my fiancee and we've been playing together for six years now and nearly every evening. Until recently with no problems but my player created a character one week ago for a classic adventurer campaign and he issued one request: No drama, only happy adventures. Specifically no female humanoid villains, maybe no humanoid villains at all. No nice people dying. No nice people treated badly. At the very least, no female character in the game should be sad (or at least not for long). He hates it when females are treated badly (fine by me) or when he has to treat female characters badly (in case of a villainess).
So far I've stuck to classic adventure plots with a comical twist to make it less generic, but I'm running out of ideas. Looking through encounter and adventure ideas it often revolves around murder, violence and human or humanoid villains. This, I cannot use, at least not without heavy tweaking.
So, I need help here. How do you handle no-drama campaings? Any good alternatives to clever humanoid villains without being too generic? Things to make the hero shine, even without the darkest darkness? How much drama do you have in a campaign? Is drama really necessary?
I would be really, really grateful for some advice or other opinions on this topic.
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BUY
PREPUBLISHED
ADVENTURES
In all sincerity, this is the solution.
I don't know why anyone these days doesn't buy prepublished adventures. Even if one doesn't use them AS WRITTEN, they're still better than the banal stuff that people use who create their own adventures. And even "creative" homewriters become burned out eventually.
Buy some Pathfinder modules or a handful of inexpensive Society Scenarios.
And, yeah, we all run into a gamer occasionally who "prefers" that we didn't use such-n-such in our game. I once had a Player who felt uncomfortable when using "named" devils (such as Mammon or Mephistopheles) for religious reasons so I made sure that the villain behind the Campaign wasn't someone D&D got from real world myth.
I am really confused by all of the gender-related stuff being referred to as "drama".
It seems like your fiance is either very conservative with gender roles, plus an aversion to violence, or that there's something else going on here. Anyway, "drama" isn't precisely the issue.
I wish I could help, but this sounds really complex. You need to try and give the player what he wants, but he's making it sort of difficult to tell a good store. Certainly the terms he's laid out exclude the majority of Paizo's modules — they've never shied away from female villains.
I recommend taking on some new players in the group, and then letting your fiance play a character who feels as exactly as he does. Maybe a Paladin. Give him an earnest chance to intervene and stop these things that bother him?
Man. This is a tough one, Ceres.
Well, after six years playing one on one we have developed a style of play that makes it difficult to add new players. Some evenings pass without anything happening at all, just conversation between the player and the NPCs. We like it that way and don't really want to change it.
I feel the need to clarify: Things like the damsel in distress are fine, because you can help. It's another thing if the fair maid is already treated badly (no need to do this, really).
He's not the conservative type, it's just that lately he's really fed up with how people (especially females) are treated in fantasy stuff (novels and the like) and he wants it to be different in a gameworld that's different from our real life. To quote him: "I don't need a gameworld that reminds me of the bad stuff that happens in our world".
Right now I'm looking through the Kingmaker AP. Maybe there's something to use in it.
You could try and cook up something more cartoonish then?
I've been longing for something like an Adventure Time with Finn and Jake RPG.
Pathfinder is very Swords and Evil.
I wish you luck!
Kingmaker would be very tough for a 1 on 1 adventure. You really do need a group, not just to fill out the kingdom roles but to survive many of the encounters. For example I dont think there is a rational way the encounter at the end of book 1 could be dealt with by a single character who isn't a WAY higher level then he is supposed to be at that point.
I feel the need to clarify: Things like the damsel in distress are fine, because you can help. It's another thing if the fair maid is already treated badly (no need to do this, really).
He's not the conservative type, it's just that lately he's really fed up with how people (especially females) are treated in fantasy stuff (novels and the like) and he wants it to be different in a gameworld that's different from our real life. To quote him: "I don't need a gameworld that reminds me of the bad stuff that happens in our world".
Maybe he doesn't want to have to roleplay being 'mean' to women in front of his fiance, or think about bad stuff happening to women when he's trying to do something fun with her? I don't know the guy, so I won't try to psychoanalyze him, but I could see that being the case.
I'd try out what W.E. Ray is proposing, but maybe go with something other than a straight-up AP. I'd look at the 'Crypt of the Everflame/Mask of the Living God/City of Golden Death' series ( http://paizo.com/pathfinder/modules/pathfinderRPG ). You can build a whole campaign that goes on from there pretty easily with a foundation that's different from the stuff you're trying to avoid. Plus, they're fun.
Just run something heavy on undead or beasts. Most monstrous humanoids don't bring their females to battle, either. Even if you use a published AP, you could simply change the gender of some of the characters with little change, as generally the gender of such-and-such NPC isn't of critical importance to the story.
This isn;t all that uncommon.
I run PF for my GF a couple of times a month and she doesn;t enjoy stories that have too much torture or overt, cruel drama. (Or anything Lovecraftian).
Now, she's a vetran gamer (started back int he late 70s) so shes been through a lot of it. But she prefers games where good can triumph over evil, completely, in the end. And she doesn't like having to fight "normal" animals (packs of wolves, hungry tigers, etc.)
I have modified a bunch of scenarios so that, WITH GOOD ROLEPLAYING(and that's the key) its possible to make things better.
Now, there's much more role playing than combat in our games. And it's never easy to make evil into good. But sometimes it works. And sometimes it doesn't.
But I use a LOT of Published Adventures, with humor and plot changes, to make my life easier.
YOU know your fiancee's preferences. Talk to him and find out how much drama he'll be comfortable with and then modify adventures so that BOTH of you have fun..
