Do you guys remember the Worldscape stuff from 1e? I'm talking about Tarzan and John Carter and Red Sonja showing up in Golarion. I've always dug the idea of setting-inappropriate dudes coming in from far corners of the multiverse: Crichton from Farscape, Samurai Jack, and Ash form Army of Darkness are a few of my favorites.
By the same token though, I sympathize with GMs who feel like these character concepts mess with the tone of a campaign. So to the point: do you allow this kind of stuff in your game? Or would you kindly ask a player to reconsider a "worldscape" type PC?
One of the few times I was a player, my GM loved this sort of thing. Rasputin Must Die was his favorite adventure he ever ran.
Later, when he ran Skull & Shackles, one of our PCs was someone who got displaced from Germany to Golarion, and we also had a run-in with the Red Baron.
It was a bit silly, but the campaign was a silly campaign overall, how we approached it.
I tend to be a bit more serious with my games, but I'll allow concepts like that for one-shots or if people are willing to handle it maturely instead of as a joke.
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My girlfriend's next campaign is going to be in the Planescape setting, and all of us are doing exactly this. Although it's hard to say something I setting-inappropriate in Planescape given what's canon there. Our party is going to be:
A princess from a fairly standard fantasy world. I don't know the specifics, but she's the most setting-appropriate (Human Tiefling Witch)
A schoolteacher from real-world Victorian London (Human Investigator)
An alcoholic from Russia in a version of Earth where all mythology is real (Human Witch)
And my character, a child of one of the legendary Gorgons from the same world as the Russian but about 3500 years earlier (Human Half-Gorgon Wizard)
I've always wanted to do something like this, but i think it'd be tricky to do it without making it too gimmicky that it becomes disruptive, or putting my character at too much of a disadvantage.
I think to get it down right, you definitely want a character that excels at something that is useful in the new setting. I think that's usually why it's easier to fall back to a martial class. Anywhere you adventure, there will probably be some fighting that'll happen. You could also do a more social focused character that can use their charisma in encounters. Though with that, the biggest block would be a language barrier.
Magic would be odd because you have to have magic in the stranger's homeland and it has to be the same mechanically as magic in the main setting. Though I'm sure creative GMs and players can work around that a bit.
It's a cool concept but one that really needs the full buy-in from the group.
Also i like the name Worldscape. I've always just called them fish-outta-water (FOTs) but Worldspace is better.
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I feel like a character like this demands an explanation, and the adventure should to at least some extent focus on the 'Wait, what the hell?!' nature of their presence.
Now, that doesn't make them a bad thing by any means, but it does make them only appropriate with by in from the whole group and in certain specific campaigns (ie: I think this would fit poorly in most APs...Reign of Winter is a notable exception).
I like it as an adventure focus (like a "hey guys let's do this for a month or two") but it is a little weird for, say, an AP, speaking as someone who *likes* that kind of thing.
Hell, I even (halfway) built Aldia's Keep from Dark Souls 2 as a map for a oneshot with the excuse of "oh yeah, you gotta go in to the Worldscape"...
I tried playing a character once who got rescued from an "adventurers failed" world or plane by a higher-level teacher using their last moments to save him. The low-level translation spell he had was fun to write for- I only used monosyllabic words for anything but proper nouns. Couldn't really get into the character, though.
I appreciate the Isekai genre of the anime/light-novel medium which I spent my middle/high school days with, so yes.
It should be constructed with care, like any other character/idea/etc., though...
I feel like a character like this demands an explanation, and the adventure should to at least some extent focus on the 'Wait, what the hell?!' nature of their presence.
Weirdly, I think that the Ravenloft setting nails it in that regard. The central premise is that heroes from across the multiverse have been summoned to play "The Most Dangerous Game" with the BBEG. Plus it's already a bit of a genre mashup putting gothic horror in the same room with sword and sorcery fantasy.
Last time I sat down for that game, I was an Elizabeth Swann type character from a magcial version of golden-age-of-piracy Jamaica. It worked pretty well since the whole party was doing the fish out of water thing, but I doubt it would have played quite the same in another adventure.
I think the idea is cool but should have some explanation (maybe both the Pathfinder multiverse and where ever they from exist in the whole omniverse (or whatever word you want to use for "everything that exists") and they somehow slipped between multiverses.)
I also hope they make a 2e AP where the players go to Earth again so they can meet more historical people.
I think there's a way you can do it that doesn't put too much strain on the GM and can fit in the campaign.
One interesting way to do a Worldscape character is to make them a living anachronism. Instead of being from another world, you're from the past ala Tidus from FFX. You could even tie an event that happens during the past to what's going on in the campaign.
Alternatively, you could just be from Earth. I think that's kind of the easiest way to do it, but at the same time, it's ripe for in-game jokes that distract from the main campaign. If you tie your arrival to being summoned for the campaign, that would work. Basically make your character every child protagonist from most 90's kids movies (I'm looking at you, Warriors of Virtue).
Something I feel you also need to make this work... you need a Local Guide character. Most movies and such have a character that is basically their window into the history of the world. In a RPG, I'd actually try and spread that around to the group. FFX is actually a good example of this. All of the characters have to guide Tidus through the customs, society, bestiary, and geography of Spira through most of the game. They even do it in different ways. Some nicely and flirtaciously, some spitefully, and some kinda awkwardly.
But I think the most important thing is, your character has to be competent in something that is important to the campaign that the other characters need. Otherwise, why would they put up with you?
I feel like a character like this demands an explanation, and the adventure should to at least some extent focus on the 'Wait, what the hell?!' nature of their presence.
Generally, yes, but you can build something into a context of the character that makes basically everything alien about them easily dismissed by anybody inclined to do so.
Like one would not expect a cleric of the Lantern King to be telling you the truth abut most things (after all "Be completely honest" is anathema for them). So if a player came to me with a proposal like "the one thing that my character is allowed to be completely honest about (because the Lantern King thinks this is funny as literally no one would believe you) is how they were born in Cleveland and got here mysteriously."
What book talked about "worldscape" btw?
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It was a Pathfinder comic series. I don't think there were any rules/setting books that used it.
There were rules in the back of said books, including PF1 class options for people like Red Sonja, John Carter, and Tarzan and a Green Martian Race.
But no, no actual sourcebooks.
What book talked about "worldscape" btw?
The concept precedes Pathfinder by quite a bit.
Raymond Feist, who based his novels on his personal DnD campaign, used the idea. It began with the famous Rift that connected Japanese-themed & Euro-themed fantasy cultures. Later there was the Hall of Worlds (https://midkemia.fandom.com/wiki/Hall_of_Worlds) which connected everywhere & everywhen, so even sci-fi characters could interweave into the story. Notably, Feist hardly used this device as rich an environment as it was. I think a distinctly separate series would be interesting though. I vaguely remember there was a setting published way back when.Not that other authors haven't had similar venues, like those pools in the Narnia series. I believe in its earliest incarnation that the Forgotten Realms had influx from many world's pantheons, including Earth gods (i.e. Baldur) who'd later be phased out (Baldur becoming a person). Plus many historical shifts and the diversity of races were rooted in massive migrations through Gates. The Realms were sort of a depository, forgotten in a sense by the rest of the multiverse. (Note: I have not double-checked this aged memory!)
BTW, I ran a Scooby-Doo Dragon's Demand. The gang's van (soon to be wagon) was transported (Ravenloft style) to Golarion. I'd already played it so knew it'd be easy enough to run in a comic style.
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I think, as others noted, some of the trouble is that the alien nature of PCs from other realities can overshadow the adventure itself or the other "mundane" PCs. It also makes it difficult to integrate their backstory into future events, which to me is a shame for longer campaigns.
I started a thread in the 1e forum for ideas for how to make Pathfinder version of characters from other works if anyone is curious
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42ylp?Pathfinder-versions-of-characters-from-o ther
edit" I can't get the space to disappear in the url for some reason
Pathfinder versions of characters from other media
Looks like this, without the spaces in the surrounding tags:
[ url=https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42ylp?Pathfinder-versions-of-characters-from-other#1 ] Pathfinder versions of characters from other media [/ url ]
THanks
Zelazny's Amber was another early take.
As I said above, I'd want to make it the focus of the game - either a multiverse travelling game or one set in some sort of nexus where dimensions meet.
Heh. I'm on "The Hand of Oberon" at the moment. First read-through of Amber since I was a kid.
Another fun version is Gamers 3: Hands of Fate. The fictional card game was all about different factions (including some dislocated American GIs) fighting for supremacy.
Full movie over here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTRaBNafaU0
Not-so-fictional card game here:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143701/romance-nine-empires
I keep wanting to run another Amber game, but not having the time for anything that ambitious.
I've been considering it myself. Is it a hard system to pick up, or just intimidating to try and get the flavor right?
I have an idea for a campaign setting that is essentially a bunch of different worlds clanking into each other in one giant mess of monsters and men of all these different lands learning to mesh with one another. Some Witcher monsters here, a Berserk Apostle there, a few random mages from like, Fate/ and Elric trying to figure out how the other's magic works, a whole mess that I have a bunch of notes for and few people willing to try it :P
Apologies if it's off topic, but the Amber talk has me curious. How are games like Rifts (Savage Worlds Ed.) and Torg Eternity? They both seem similar, where you go jumping to other cosms. Was curious how they played and if there are other examples of games like those and Amber.
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Apologies if it's off topic, but the Amber talk has me curious. How are games like Rifts (Savage Worlds Ed.) and Torg Eternity? They both seem similar, where you go jumping to other cosms. Was curious how they played and if there are other examples of games like those and Amber.
I can't speak to the Savage Worlds version of Rifts, but TORG is solid and very interesting. The system shows that it was originally developed quite some time ago, but the current iteration is fine, and the rules for switching Cosm and thus genre and world rules, or imposing rules from your home reality on the one you're in, are very well done IMO. The setting is also pretty fun.
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I've been running the same homebrew setting for 25+ years. I encourage players to make setting appropriate characters, but I let them do whatever. My spiel is this: If you want to make a character with a joke name, or a trademarked name, like spiderman or whatever, I won't stop you. We're all here to have fun, and if that's your jam then go for it. However, such characters will be forgotten by history, nobody in world will remember your name. I update the world after each campaign, incorporating the pcs and their deeds into the setting. I rarely get players that don't choose setting appropriate names.
PFS on the other hand was always the place to do those kind of characters. I frequently see a Harley Quinn, or bad pun names, or just weirdly inappropriate ones as well. I feel like that sort of thing is fine for the casual one off type games, but not for regular campaigns where roleplaying characters is the main interest.
Personally, I hate Isekai style characters and I think its usually a low quality "twist" in mediums other than rpgs as well.
