|
I am a historian. I love history.
I am also a DM for my group (No, I don't care if Wizards has Dungeon Master trademarked. I'm a DM, and I claim the damn title.)
But the fact of the matter is, I need help getting excited about Golarion again. I had a few bad games, some players who overanalyzed things, picked apart what I did, the setting, and dictated to me how things should and should not happen. It wasn't a pleasant experience. I'm all for player interaction and direction, but rule 0 has gotta be observed.
In the end,one of my complaints with Golarion as a setting; I can never seem to make it "dark" or even all that "dark-agey" it's too high adventure, too renaissance; women are treated equitably, racism is at low usually, even though looking deeper it should be a VERY dark setting, but I can't seem to make it feel like such.
The setting itself is in a dark age; enlightenment; gone, hope, failing. it's called the Age of Lost Omens,the major Christ figure, Aroden, broke his promises and failed to appear when he said he would; His empire on earth collapsed into a literal hell-hole of opression and hatred, countries were swallowed by hurricanes, and others had gaping holes to the abyss ripped into them.
At least one of my players tells me it feels at the level of depth and darkness I want to give it, I enjoy dark because it makes the light stand out all the more.
But the fact of the matter is, I feel am misrepresenting the setting. It feels to nice, too pleasant; not that it needs to become a hell hole, but right now it lacks depth; it feels like I'm glossing over plenty of the stuff that's interesting.
To the synisthetic among you, right now my game feels grey, and pastel-ish; I want what I see in the art style of the books; high contrast, "Savage Sword of Conan" sorts of things.
Perhaps part of it has to do with how I think of it, because in the end, my last group of players helped make me feel this way; They divorced me of the setting so much that I can't help but think of it as being wrapped in cotton batting. I want Golarion to feel *real*. A fantastic world with all the variety and moral depth that can be attained.
I'm rather at the end of my rope. I suppose the majority of it is all based in how I feel about the setting, but I don't really know how to get that back.
In the end,one of my complaints with Golarion as a setting; I can never seem to make it "dark" or even all that "dark-agey" it's too high adventure, too renaissance; women are treated equitably, racism is at low usually, even though looking deeper it should be a VERY dark setting, but I can't seem to make it feel like such.The setting itself is in a dark age; enlightenment; gone, hope, failing. it's called the Age of Lost Omens,the major Christ figure, Aroden, broke his promises and failed to appear when he said he would; His empire on earth collapsed into a literal hell-hole of opression and hatred, countries were swallowed by hurricanes, and others had gaping holes to the abyss ripped into them.
At least one of my players tells me it feels at the level of depth and darkness I want to give it, I enjoy dark because it makes the light stand out all the more.
But the fact of the matter is, I feel am misrepresenting the setting. It feels to nice, too pleasant; not that it needs to become a hell hole, but right now it lacks depth; it feels like I'm glossing over plenty of the stuff that's interesting.
Oooh. A problem I can try and get my teeth into properly!
Lets see... I would suggest looking at ways to get that gritty feel without contradicting canon, as from what you say I'm assuming you don't want to go to the level of dropping cities around Golarion into their own mini-worldwounds.
If you're familiar with the 4E default setting and the "points of light" feel they gave it, then that could be a good starting point. Make it more dangerous outside the city walls. Anything from roaming bandit gangs to wandering monster tribes. Have the standing armies stretched, having hardly anyone to spare after ensuring the walls are guarded, with adventurers being the only real difference-makers in the wilderness. Show NPCs as being afraid to travel outside of armed caravans. Small villages without defenses could be surviving from one threat to the next, surviving only because of the actions of the PCs when the nearest city fails to respond to their pleas for help.
You could possibly push the Pathfinder Society here, almost acting to some degree as an unofficial ranger force in between their travels investigating ruins and rumors. At low levels, encountering a traveller that helps them fight off a party of monsters before announcing themselves as a Pathfinder could be like meeting some kind of legend. At mid levels, you could have the PCs working with the society, becoming those travellers encountered in the wilderness by grateful NPCs. At high level, the society can direct them towards the great threats they'll need in order to challenge them.
You could also look into border conflicts between nations - both those referenced in canon and those that appear likely to start. There's nothing like a good war to bring the comfort levels down! :) Making it about something important within the Golarion setting could also give your game the extra setting investment you're looking for.
If all else fails... well... maybe it's time for a good old-fashioned plague. It could be something that's just there in the background, causing a lot of suffering, or you could take it a step further and have the PCs gradually discover that it has an artificial cause, something they can eventually do something about. Oh, and I kinda hesitate to mention this for fear of overdoing something that's doing the rounds nowadays... but maybe, when the PCs start coming to terms with how cruddy life is getting, those plague casualties could start getting up and shambling around
One of my favorite setting to play and run in are frontier settings. Essentially, you and your group are exploring uncharted lands filled with lost ruins, several tribes, and all sorts of flora and fauna that want you and your party dead. I like this kind of setting because you get to throw a lot of different types of monsters and obstacles at the players, while making them use skills they aren't used to using. Everything from floods to the weather to giant crocodiles to tribal vegepygmies, these all make for great encounters that aren't necessarily handled by combat. I mean, you can't stab a flood, right? Better hope you put ranks in swim!
This is what I ran briefly in the last couple of months. While it was set in a Renaissance/Colonial, pseudo-Caribbean setting, the tone was darker as the players were exploring a harsh jungle island and dealing with the natives (both good and bad) as well as the invaders of their colonies. So while their colony was a "point of light", even that had the chance for adventure when the players were tired of dealing with malaria and man-eating plants.
Shame I'm probably not going to run for my group ever again.
Also, don't push the whole "remove equality" thing. It can make people uncomfortable, especially if your players are female or not-white. Sometimes reality is best left for reality.
A point to remember about the real world. Everything - everything - is based around and over transport routes. Even modern warfare is basically fought down roads and the couple of miles or so either side of them. People don't just go into the wilderness for no reason to set up a town, they'll always be a reason, nor do they patrol wildernesses in force. (And armies do not move cross country: warfare is decided as much bat logisitics and tactics, if not more so.)
4E's "points of light" aside from making everywhere further apart than it needed to be (though Golarion avoids this, not everything is a day's march apart, for example) is actually not all that far from the truth. You don't need to go very far off the roads to be completely in the wilderness, where you could run into anything!
So you don't need to do all that much to make things more dangerous, just emphasise that fact a bit more, which should at least help what you're going for.
Pathfinder is not dark ages or rennissance, it is post apocalypse.
My best advice for grimming it up would be to dump any tech you don't like, pick a place where people are likely to be jerks and lower the economy of the world. Make things scarce arbitrarily get rid of any org nicer than the hellknights or just replace most orgs with bandits/mafia types. Hoard knowledge checks, where even success won't give names, no one around here knows but it's worth trying fire.
And just make the average NPC a whiny, oppressed, casually greedy, petty jerk.
Just a warning. In the quest for making things grimdark, your players will reflect the genre. If all of your NPCs are oppressed, backstabbing knaves, then your players will grow distrustful of any NPC and in some cases will just cease to care about any NPC and treat them, at worst, as pest only fit for killing and looting.
Journ-O-LST-3 I went your route.
My campaign is in Taldor and I depict most villages as a depressed (and opressed) lot of half starving wretches. Ridonport is a failing city where corruption, greed, guild infighting and artistocratic decadence has reduced it to a swill of the poor, the criminal and the hopeless. The countryside is ripe with banditry and whole regions of once noble-held land is sliding back into wildnerness. Dismal little farms, most abandoned, dot the landscape and groups of refugees wander the roads looking for opportunity elswhere, threatened at ever hamlet to be enslaved by the local land baron and put to labor.
In fact, Im a bit afraid that its TOO DARK. In contrast my players look like beacons of hope in a blighted land.
Ill agree with you that much of the published material doesnt appeal to this approach, both in word and art, but it can be done with a little tweaking and careful attention to atmosphere.
The taverns are dark, rumor filled dens of shifting eyes and muttered curses instead of the party atmosphere most expect. Instead of "Mully's Golden Mushroom Stew" they serve "Mutt" (a watery soup) and grog. The entertainer isnt a brightly clad minstrel but instead a one-armed juggler in rags, begging for coppers who drops the mugs he juggles and is soundly beaten and thrown into the muck for it.
Wrap yourself around your vision of Golarion and unleash it.
Not gaming in midieval europe. Dramatic flare is thr goal here.
The classic way to grim and gritty is the threat level of encounters, especially at low levels.
The characters become quickly aware that the powers of Evil are POWERFUL, and they are everywhere. Anyone who is 'having it easy' is either oppressing someone else, or is completely unaware of the misery outside the comfort of their own homes.
Instead of running CR 0 to +3 Encounters, you have to throw in fights that will kill them unless they are very, very prepared and very, very lucky...>CR +2 to +5, and not saving the tough ones for the end of the storyline.
Kick your players around. Trounce them. Let them get away and lick their wounds, and then realize that's going down all around them, all the time.
If they want to be heroes, make them be Big Damn Heroes by giving them Big Damn Villains. Make them work for their successes, and make them be consequences for their victories and loses.
I mean, seriously...in Magnimar, it's a city basically NG, sponsored by Empyreal Lords. The Merchants Guild, which is all shipownersm, continually recruits and sponsors bandits to plague the overland routes to drive traffic to their shipping businesses.
That kind of stuff goes on all the time. Work with it.
==Aelryinth
Varisia is probably the best area for a "points of light" campaign, since the area is still very wild and only has three main city-states that can act as the beacons of light (well, maybe not Korvosa). Not to mention it has a lot of information about it, from the monster city of Kaer Maga to the Shoanti of the Cinderlands.
|
You could do the Falcon's Hollow adventures.
1. Hollow's Last Hope.
2. Crown of the Kobold King
3. Carnival of Tears
4. Revenge of the Kobold King
5. Hungry are the Dead.
Or, if you want to make up your own story, you could old-man-Logan them.
They start in a small village where they live. They are supposed to add loved ones in their backstory. A big dragon swoops into town to demand taxes, the players won't be able to afford it. They'll have to make a deal with the dragon to get enough time to be able to pay for themselves and their relatives. They head of into adventure and return with more than enough gold to cover their taxes. Sure enough, they'll find their village razed and their families dead.
The dragon needs to be impossible for them to defeat at first. You do need to get that through to your players, perhaps by killing a peasant right in front of the PCs. Dangle a few hooks with promises of gold in front of your players and let them decide the way they are heading so they won't think of it as a railroad. If you do it right, they will hate the dragon instead of you.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'd make sure to get constant feedback from your players to make sure they are enjoying themselves. Often, what works in movies and books don't translate as well into games, since the characters are much more personal. Watching a main character of a book fail, get tormented, or backstabbed constantly is fine, but if feels different when that main character is you. Again, really gauge the grim-darkness of what you're running for you players.
Also, re-reading your post, your players kinda sound like dicks. You may want to talk with them next time you run and ask them to chill out and stop being jerks. Seriously, criticism is fine, but you're a GM, not George R.R. Martin. You can't be expected to constantly have complex plots left and right AND have the players tell you how to run your game at every step of the way. They need to stop picking apart every minor quibble they have and try and have fun for once. Definitely talk to them and I think that'll solve half of your problem right there.
If you build a world where no one can be trusted and everyone is out for themselves, you can expect the players to act accordingly. Remember, even in Lankhmar, Gray Mouser found a friend in Fafhrd.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Seriously, criticism is fine, but you're a GM, not George R.R. Martin.
Although, if you remove his middle initials... ;)
|
Have a read of the setting books. I read parts of Irrisen yesterday and the Worldwound a few weeks ago. And Lands of the Linnorm Kings a few months before that.
Most of the places are both politically dangerous and awful to live in, with many terrible monsters lurking just outside the walls. I actually end up wondering how commoners can stay alive long enough to have children in this world.
You are hitting upon a problem I have been dealing with for a very long time as an FR DM (and a GH DM before that, but not nearly as problematic).
Your players know as much, if not more, then you do about your game world.
The solution is both very simple, yet very hard to impliment - create your own world. It fixes that pronblem with your players, but then forces you to create everything whole-cloth. What we need is some sort of in-between solution, that would allow us to use published lore without being a slave to it.
Thus, a few years ago, I decided on a plan - my world wasn't the Forgotten Realms - my world was an alternate reality from that one, related to it, but NOT it. I am now on my third campaign in an 'alternate realms', and with each iteration it has grown further and further from the canon one. In fact, I have completely merged it with both Golarion and Mystara (OD&D) and call it 'The Misbegotten Realms'. It allows me to use prefab adventures from all three settings with minimal fuss, and anywhere else I may feel like borrowing from. I'm fairly good at making maps, so this was a labor of love for me, but others can still do this to a lesser degree.
When your players start to act like they know more then you, simply tell them your world is NOT Golarion - it is a very similar, but DIFFERENT world. Many things remain the same, but many details are different. If something bothers you about the published setting, CHANGE IT. Tweak the hell out of everything - I think thats what we are supposed to do anyway (at least, thats how it was in the beginning of D&D). Your players should never know whats around the next corner - it ruins the game for both them and you.
All IMHO, of curse.
|
|
I think that light hearted adventure tends to make us shrug off the terrible implicated realities and gruesome moments Pathfinder and Golarion gives us. A few brief descriptions are easy to over look and under think. Making a super depressing and dark adventure is more about the story and atmosphere, and there are plenty of places on Golarion for that. For example in Crimson Throne, we're on a standard adventure. We don't have to think too hard about what is happening in Korvosa with the Grey Maidens and what happens to the commoners or people who oppose them. What about about Lamm and his gang of kids? It would just take one scene to take him from a cruel villain to something sickening. I think the writers probably limit themselves from certain details for the sake of good taste but as a dm, you're not limited. I recently started a Skulls and Shackles game and let the players be as evil as they want and now usually end up depressed after every game at the monsters they have become.
May I kindly suggest that the OP, my fellow historian, may have a skewed perspective on Golarion as a whole? Yes, it is in the Age of Lost Omens, Aroden died, and so on and so on. What he pointed out in his OP.
But that doesn't affect all the world in the same way. A campaign in Cheliax will be very different than a campaign in Andoran. Reading the Worldwound setting book, all the grimdark he seems to crave is there and the Irrisen book isn't much better. But, yes, there are large points of light in the game and not every nation on Golarion is a hellhole of grimdark unhappyness. And Aroden wasn't the only good god, there are quite a few other widely worshipped good deities.
In my view, his problem is that his expectations of the setting are too all-encompassing. He thinks every spot in Avistan should be grimdark.
So, my advice would be to not grimdark-ify everything in the setting, but rather let your campaign take place in one of those dark places of Golarion and live out all your "life is short and dirty and sucks" fantasies there.
Put the Inner Sea World Guide away.
Remember some part of the setting that you feel kinda had the ambiance you desire.
Write your adventure content in total ignorance of what is actually there.
Setting material is weird. It is meant to make the GM's job easier and get the creative juices flowing, but for a certain kind of GM it has the exact opposite effect.