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PostPosted: Fri Dec 08, 2017 10:24 am 
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Kharille wrote:
Now that’s a thought. Maybe a dragwars expansion on a player characters obligations? Having to take care of family members, make cash donations and all. I think the background information in DW book 6 mentions that assassins are typically being hunted. What about a supplement on goodwill from the church, barons and dukes or maybe your favourite shopkeeper? It would be hard to give precise values but it might be good for a looks specific expansion of the dragwars rules. Not just to the conventional living but also obligations to ghosts, undead, curses, maybe adventures based on finding the cure to a curse or the acquisition of prosthetic limbs?

I'm not sure I see the connection to Looks, but I like the idea of a more fleshed-out social background that obligates characters to contribute to social programmes and care for family members, etc. With no social welfare system, everyone had to look out for their own and, yes, the tired trope of the orphan adventurer would still work, but most adventurers are likely to have family (possibly even adopted family) they would want to sponsor, churches to which they would tithe, lords to which they would pay tax, villages that need repairs, new wells, and whatever else, etc. An outline of typical obligations might make an interesting article, should someone be minded to research and write it (are you volunteering?)

Kharille wrote:
Also debts in its various forms. That includes acts of vengeance on evil NPCs and having a common cause with other wronged individuals? Perhaps it is possible for players to gain gratitude with some of their encounters and thus a favour in the future. Or maybe obligations to repay a dragon some generations later (the present generation), in exchange for services.

I always encourage my characters to come up with backgrounds - the best ones include backgrounds on their families as well as their individual characters. Long-standing emnity with another family or a curse with which generations of a character's family has wrestled are great hooks for adventure!

Kharille wrote:
Would it be worthwhile to create background information on noble titles for players? I have some recollection of entries in White Dwarf magazines meant for the WFRP system on nobility. Since its so prominent in the medieval world perhaps some supplement on noble titles, etiquette and other courtly politics would be in order?

WFRP is set in a much later age than the Lands of Legend so noble titles aren't quite the same between DW and WFRP. In the Dark Ages, you basically just have the king at the top, his barons, knights, then commoners (which themselves had a sort of hierarchy, but as they're basically all just peasants, we don't care about them :)). Of the barons (the nobles), there is no clear hierarchy of titles that would indicate rank or status - land ownership and influence at court were much more important. Etiquette, too, was much less entrenched, although the Pendragon system has lots of interesting background in this area that could easily be ported (and is something i've been tinkering with in my own Knight's Handbook for my players). A starting place would be to define the feudal code that applies in your Lands of Legend - a lot of the rest of the social context around nobility in your campaign will cascade down from that.

That said, make your Lands of Legend your own - the beauty of the DW setting and the simplicity of the system is that it is flexible around era-specific context, so could be set during a late Mediaeval period or the Dark Ages with very little tweaking. In fact, a guide to making DW fit into different pseudo-historical eras might itself make for an interesting supplement.

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PostPosted: Fri Dec 08, 2017 3:45 pm 
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Cobwebbed Dragon wrote:
Kharille wrote:
Now that’s a thought. Maybe a dragwars expansion on a player characters obligations? Having to take care of family members, make cash donations and all. I think the background information in DW book 6 mentions that assassins are typically being hunted. What about a supplement on goodwill from the church, barons and dukes or maybe your favourite shopkeeper? It would be hard to give precise values but it might be good for a looks specific expansion of the dragwars rules. Not just to the conventional living but also obligations to ghosts, undead, curses, maybe adventures based on finding the cure to a curse or the acquisition of prosthetic limbs?

I'm not sure I see the connection to Looks, but I like the idea of a more fleshed-out social background that obligates characters to contribute to social programmes and care for family members, etc. With no social welfare system, everyone had to look out for their own and, yes, the tired trope of the orphan adventurer would still work, but most adventurers are likely to have family (possibly even adopted family) they would want to sponsor, churches to which they would tithe, lords to which they would pay tax, villages that need repairs, new wells, and whatever else, etc. An outline of typical obligations might make an interesting article, should someone be minded to research and write it (are you volunteering?)

Well... Looks is something that would be more apparent in relations and very applicable whether that is family, friends or your business associates. Could be that a high looks score character got all the benefits, promotions and thus all the resentment from their less gifted peers. Maybe the youngest son got all the inheritance and the elder brother turned nasty. Or maybe the eldest brother got the girl and is hated by his younger brother. I'm sure the church would respect certain donations from people just because their families are powerful, which is independent of looks score, maybe, to some extent. I am curious as to whether intelligence could signify a certain empathy and correct management style / leadership stat as opposed to just 'looks'.

Can't spare much time. After developing the Sapper rules, I realized that we need terrain rules. Not cumbersome rules but some basic guidelines that might help people get ideas about their combat maps. I don't think people should be playing a complex chess game. Its fantasy fiction so I like to inspire ideas. Bloodsword certainly had some interesting combat environments, like on a bridge suspended above lava (blood sword book 1) or some bridge with flying adversaries (book 5). There were also those lava skiapyrs in book 1 that could move easily in lava terrain. I wouldn't want the rules to be more cumbersome than that, but I feel that assassins and barbarians can do stuff in terrain, or at least their native terrain. Think of Teutoberg forest and the 3 selentine legions that were wasted by barbarians in their own forest environment.

Perhaps under certain circumstances, it is better to wield shortswords and spears in a dense forest rather than... zweihanders....






Kharille wrote:
Also debts in its various forms. That includes acts of vengeance on evil NPCs and having a common cause with other wronged individuals? Perhaps it is possible for players to gain gratitude with some of their encounters and thus a favour in the future. Or maybe obligations to repay a dragon some generations later (the present generation), in exchange for services.

I always encourage my characters to come up with backgrounds - the best ones include backgrounds on their families as well as their individual characters. Long-standing emnity with another family or a curse with which generations of a character's family has wrestled are great hooks for adventure!

Kharille wrote:
Would it be worthwhile to create background information on noble titles for players? I have some recollection of entries in White Dwarf magazines meant for the WFRP system on nobility. Since its so prominent in the medieval world perhaps some supplement on noble titles, etiquette and other courtly politics would be in order?

WFRP is set in a much later age than the Lands of Legend so noble titles aren't quite the same between DW and WFRP. In the Dark Ages, you basically just have the king at the top, his barons, knights, then commoners (which themselves had a sort of hierarchy, but as they're basically all just peasants, we don't care about them :)). Of the barons (the nobles), there is no clear hierarchy of titles that would indicate rank or status - land ownership and influence at court were much more important. Etiquette, too, was much less entrenched, although the Pendragon system has lots of interesting background in this area that could easily be ported (and is something i've been tinkering with in my own Knight's Handbook for my players). A starting place would be to define the feudal code that applies in your Lands of Legend - a lot of the rest of the social context around nobility in your campaign will cascade down from that.


Really need to read up on Pendragon. Bought the bundle when it came out and ain't had time to do anything. Did transfer it to one of my mobile devices recently, got a 200 gig microsd card. Must read it some time.

That said, make your Lands of Legend your own - the beauty of the DW setting and the simplicity of the system is that it is flexible around era-specific context, so could be set during a late Mediaeval period or the Dark Ages with very little tweaking. In fact, a guide to making DW fit into different pseudo-historical eras might itself make for an interesting supplement.

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