Planning to DM a skyrim campaign. Need advice.

[jcdman1]

The most important character to the skyrim game is obviously the dragonborn. Should I make a GMPC that the other PC's should help or should I randomly pick a PC to be the dragonborn. Pros and cons to each option. The GMPC I'm afraid would take the limelight away from the PCs if I'm not careful in how I utilize him, but it would avoid giving 1 PC really powerful abilities while the other PC's are average.

Thoughts and suggestions? I know running campaigns off from video games is risky and prone to meta gaming but none of my players have played the game in it's entirety. I would also add new enemies and encounters and storylines just to make it not so "copy paste".

[quibblemuch]

How committed are you to the original conceit of the game?

Because if you're open to slightly modifying it, you could make the thuum a collective enterprise, where each PC has a piece of the ability, knowledge of a syllable of a word. They could act in concert to shout, instead of a single PC having that ability while everybody else played second fiddle to them.

[Bardarok]

I strongly recomend you do something that effects all the PCs equally. And making everyone dragonborn would be a bit silly.

I like quibblemuch's idea. If you want to fit it in with the cannon you could say that there is no dragonborn or there was a dragonborn but they died. Now in a last desperate attempt to save the world the blades (or whatever organization you like) has collected a group of adventures who it is predicted might have the ability to collectively master the thuum in time. No dragon souls absorbed but instead every four character levels each PC may unlock one word and they can combine words with other PCs to make the greater shouts.

[Glorf Fei-Hung]

Alternatively, you could have the Dragonborn be Random NPC that maybe starts off as someone that's been captured and locked away. Having a Thu'um doesn't make a person unbeatable, heck a flimsy cloth gag was enough to stop Ulfric from using his Thu'um!

The PC's can then be members of the Blades that hear about what he's capable of and who's holding him (This would be early in the story, the dragonborn has just discovered his Thu'um and it's still widely unknown that there is a true dragonborn, so the Blades only suspect this rumor may in fact be him) and they set off initially to rescue him. They could save him when he's on the edge of death and have him be too weak to do much of anything so they start going around hunting the dragons and dragon-shrines, and for a long time he's just tagging along to learn the words and suck up dragon essences.

Then as you bring the dragonborn up and reach a point where you think he might outshine the party he can start going off doing random things on his own while the party keeps working to track down and clear out dungeons.

Finally, if the Players are ok with one of them being "The Dragonborn" maybe work it so one of the casters gains it. Then you can tie the Thu'um to spell power, make each single word of power in a shout requires burning the power of a level 1 spell. So a 3 word shout would be 3 lvl 1 spells, or 1 level 3 spell, or some combination of spells (level 2 and a level 1). maybe even 'overcharge' a shout by spending even more spells for longer duration of effect or more damage done. Maybe make it like a cleric Archetype, they lose the ability to spontaneously cast a heal, but instead spontaneously transform spells into Thu'um.

[jcdman1]

I thought about the idea of having all the PC's learn a word to a shout but I wanted to stay with the lore of having a dragonborn ... also if a PC dies then a word of a shout is lost and they can only use 2 words.

But I also figured even though there's a dragonborn NPC the PC's could still learn words to shouts through greybeards but it will just take some time.

[Darigaaz the Igniter]

I would make it so each PC has the potential to learn to use The Voice, but not make it mandatory. Ulfric learned to at least use disarm and unrelenting force and he's just a middle-aged former career soldier. Likewise you can play Skyrim and never actually become the Dragonborn by simply never going in to Bleak Falls.

Story-wise, perhaps have the Dragonborn be an NPC who's already stopped Alduin but gone missing after venturing to Solstheim. Of course, I'm of the mind that it's not impossible for there to be multiple Dragonborn even after 4e 201. Miraak showing back up is evidence enough of that.

[Athaleon]

As Darigaaz mentioned, the Thu'um can be learned by "ordinary" people with enough time and effort. It's just that the Dragonborn learns them instantly and effortlessly (not counting the effort required to kill a dragon). Just for a quick idea off the top of my head, what if the Voice was its own skill, with a relatively high DC to use successfully, and players know one syllable per two skill ranks? What stat would be most appropriate for it?

Edit: Also, the answer to "Should I make a GMPC?" is always "no".

[Glorf Fei-Hung]

Athaleon wrote:

As Darigaaz mentioned, the Thu'um can be learned by "ordinary" people with enough time and effort. It's just that the Dragonborn learns them instantly and effortlessly (not counting the effort required to kill a dragon). Just for a quick idea off the top of my head, what if the Voice was its own skill, with a relatively high DC to use successfully, and players know one syllable per two skill ranks? What stat would be most appropriate for it?

Edit: Also, the answer to "Should I make a GMPC?" is always "no".

I don't know about always, but it should be a very minimal role if you ever do so. Which is why I was pushing for it to be a tag-along character or someone that's doing other stuff maybe as his "main quest". While the PC's are helping out with "side quests".

On the PC's learning the voice, we have no clue what sort of effect might occur if a group of people were always around everytime the Dragonborn absorbed a soul. they could leach of a bit of each dragon's power themselves, which might help them to learn shouts faster, and do them more easily than a normal person (though not as naturally as the dragonborn). Then you could have those portions of absorbed soul allow events to happen to the party as though they were dragonborn. Dragons could attack them because the remnants of power they've absorbed called out to the dragons drawing it to the party. Or objects that would only activate in the presence of the dragonborn might act weakly in their presense, helping to guide/draw them specific directions.

[Bardarok]

Thinking about the plot there is not much that the dragonborn did that actually required him to use the thu'um.

Skyrim Plot:

While it isn't an option in the game the dragonborn theoretically could have talked his way into the graybeards, they do take on people to train occasionally as they did with Ulfric. Also it must be possible to join the blades without being the dragonborn so he could have joined them to. The only shouts that are mechanically important are dragonrend and call dragon. It should be possible to think of some other way to lure a dragon so really the only thing that the dragonborn did that required him to be dragonborn was learn dragonrend instantly.

Dragonrend was created and used by the ancient heroes who were not dragonborn. So... it wouldn't take much plot reworking to remove the necessity of the dragonborn all together.

[Bob Bob Bob]

So there's really only two correct options. Either make everyone special or make no one (player) special. It prevents making a single point of failure ("Dragonborn can't come, game's off"). Honestly, most single-player video games don't really translate well to this medium. You're going to end up compromising on some part of the setting, might as well make it something that makes the game run smoother and your life easier.

I've always been personally tempted to run the "one powerful NPC, players are their party/minions" but it's a fairly complicated game to run. If the NPC is close in level it just ends up feeling like an escort mission in which the NPC is better than the players. If the NPC is significantly higher level (what I'd recommend) then traditional encounter design (here's some monsters, go fight them) is basically right out. If you split the encounter (one powerful thing for the NPC, some minions for the players) then it just feels like the NPC is showing off (and should they fail, the party is boned hard). That doesn't mean don't throw in some minions, but they can't be the only thing the players can contribute. So you need to make things they can do to contribute. Sneak past the boss and rescue the hostages, distract the boss with readied actions, buff/debuff, etc. It depends on the NPC too. A spellcaster might need a party of bodyguards to protect them to pull off the longer spells. A big beatstick would need casters to buff/protect them and maybe an archer for support. And above all else, you'd need player buy-in before starting. It's a very different kind of campaign.

If you want to run something a lot more like Skyrim have you considered Mutants and Masterminds? I seem to promote it a lot but for what you want it's a much better fit than Pathfinder. Pathfinder is a very strict class-based game. M&M is a point build game where you can invest new points anywhere you want. If you want to dabble in magic in Pathfinder you need to wait until level up and commit your entire level to a magic-using class. In M&M you just drop a few points in.

[darkerthought7]

If you want Dragonborn, Words of Power are your friend. If someone wants to play a Dragon sorcerer, there's your Dragonborn. Just don't make a DMPC that's the center of the action. It tends not to work well.

[Pollyen]

Personally I'd avoid a GMPC wherever possible, it is very easy to unintentionally steal the spotlight from other players when you become a part of the party.

As for making the the story about the players, I'd agree with some of the above comments that the Thu'um isn't really all that important for the majority of the story.

You could easily give each of the players the ability to learn Thu'ums and absorb dragon souls... but maybe to prevent them just wrecking combat by constantly using them, I'd give them a requirement of something like spending points (earned when slaying a dragon) so that they use them a bit more sparingly.

Alternatively, giving each player some kind of specialisation against a type of dragon might be another way to make them special but not too overpowered for a campaign. As the plot of Skyrim is more about the threat of Alduin destroying the world than anything else, the players don't have to be Dragonborn to shape the plot.
Thinking about it, perhaps they could be a band of adventurers (agents of the Thalmer, ex-Blades, Companions or something else) who are competing with the Dragonborn to claim the glory of vanquishing the great threat. You could then make them occasionally run into a Dragonborn NPC and possibly even have a couple of scraps with him/her. I can't speak for everyone, but I love a good rivalry when I'm playing.