So I have been going back through my many many source and rule books for various TTRPG games I own (far too many) looking for inspiration for the next part of my campaign and have decided to mine my first edition L5R books. So which systems other then DND/pathfinder do you all mine for ideas?
For those who don’t know legend of the 5 rings is set in a Japanese inspired world, Rokugan. It was created in the late 90’s and to this day in my opinion has the best looking, most full of consistent fluff source books and adventures I have seen so a goldmine to delve. The 2 books I dipped back into yesterday are in my opinion 2 of the best written source books for any system. The first is effectively a monster manual and setting book but is written as a series of essays by a gradually more and more insane NPC. It depicts a region full of oni (demons) where just breathing the air will slowly kill a character, or corrupt them to a point they can never again return back to civilization (L5R is famously brutal to PCs). It is a perfect mix of fluff and crunch and parts of it are genuinely disturbing (there is one monster who just reading about put me off eating rice for months and 20 years later I think about it every time I eat it).
The second book is great for a different reason in that it introduces the kolat. In a world where the emperor is litterely the divine blood of a god, the kolat are the ultimate athiests in that they want humans to run humanity. They have been putting in play a 1000 year plan to replace the gods. The book itself is great because it isn’t called the kolat book, it is the merchant guide to Rokugan and the first few pages talk about currency, how to let weather impact prices and ways to handle trade. If a player picked it up and read the start they would have no idea it was more then a DM resource.
Anyone who hasn’t read about the world of L5R I suggest you dip in, there are some amazing themes and story ideas that can be tweaked to a fantasy setting easily. I am probably going to start creating homebrew monsters based on the creatures in the game.
So what settings do other DMs mine for ideas or monsters?
I'm running a baking contest (like Great British Baking Show but with subterfuge, sabotage, betrayal, and possibly murder) and for the actual baking component I'm using special actions I designed with heavy influence from the Monster Of The Week rules, where rolls have more diverse results rather than just pass/fail, so rolls in the contest can have a fail with dire conquers, mixed success with minor consequences, or full success. That way, rather than just an endless series of pass/fail survival checks, the contest is more dynamic and narrative focused.
In theory. The contest hasn't officially begun yet in game so we'll see if the rules require tweaking, but I've shared the rules with the players and they seem excited.
This isn't for in-game mechanics, but rather for my 0-session. After listening to The Adventure Zone's newest campaign, I had the idea of using a heavily edited version of the game "The Quiet Year" To have all my players build the campaign world together (with a little more editing and involvement than the TAZ boys did). That way its not just me, the DM, who has to keep reminding them of common knowledge history events, but everyone is invested in the worlds history and lore because they helped create it!
I'm particularly interested in hearing more about how you incorporated elements of The Quiet Year into your collaborative worldbuilding. Might you perhaps explain on this a bit further, perhaps with some examples?
Specifically, I've heard of The Quiet Year but I don't know anything about it. Worldbuilding is my jam, and my players all really love my worldbuilding so far. I've tried to get my group to start working on a collaborative worldbuilding project together but it's been a tad slow.
I'm particularly interested in hearing more about how you incorporated elements of The Quiet Year into your collaborative worldbuilding. Might you perhaps explain on this a bit further, perhaps with some examples?
Specifically, I've heard of The Quiet Year but I don't know anything about it. Worldbuilding is my jam, and my players all really love my worldbuilding so far. I've tried to get my group to start working on a collaborative worldbuilding project together but it's been a tad slow.
I'm so glad you asked because I've been dying to talk about it lol
SET UP: So first, since I have 7 people in my group (6 players + DM) I got a big paper and divided it in 7 equal segments. I told each person (myself included) to draw a continuous line that connected their segment to the adjacent one. basically, this was just a way of having us collaboratively draw the map of the continent. I then said that in their segment, they were to place a single city, and a terrain feature. The feature could be natural such as a mountain range or a lake, or manmade like a giant ruined temple. Once we all did this, we had a continent with a variety of features and 7 major cities. we then numbered the cities 1-7 for use later
"GAME"play: Just like in the quiet year, I had a deck of cards, each card associated with a pair of questions (minus the face-cards). an example would be like:
"2 of hearts: City number _____ has a disagreement with City ______. What is it over and how do they resolve it? OR City ______ enters a trade agreement with city _____. What is traded, and what prompted the decision?" where the "____" refers to a randomly chosen city
Each turn represents a decade of time
On each players turn, they first draw a card, and answer one of the question options associated with it. As the DM, I had a private doc open where I took notes of their response. whatever they decided, would be "official" I made sure that each player understood going in that there is NO Winningthis game, just building a story so they would understand that the city they placed isn't THEIR city, just A City and if a player makes something BAD happen, its not an attack, just story development.
After resolving their card, the player would have the choice of one of 3 "actions": Create an Event, Make a Discovery, or Follow Through CREATE AN EVENT: The player causes something to happen in either the current decade, or any past decade freehanded. the outcome is similar to resolving a card, but rather than relying on a prompt, the player gets to come up with something on their own. These events must be open ended with no clear resolution. For example, a player could create the event such as "an expedition funded by Professor such-n-such was sent into X ruins to search for artifacts to use against the evil emperor" but they can't include the resolution to it. (This will be addressed later)****
MAKE A DISCOVERY: The player adds something new to the map, there are no limits to what they find. it could be a new cave system, or a magical hotspring, or even something a bit more abstract like a new way to use magic or a specific offshoot of a long forgotten race.
FOLLOW THROUGH: This one addresses the "open-endedness" of the CREATE AN EVENT action. On your turn you can choose to "follow through" with an event created by another player where you narrate and decide how the event is resolved. ***once again, your players have to understand that there is NO competition here and the fact that the outcome wasn't what you expected better reflects the random nature of life!
**** When the round is over, and it gets back to your turn, if no other players "Followed Through" on your event, Then before you resolve your next card, you can resolve your previous event, no action needed
After going through 40 cards, you have 400 years of "recent history" that all your players know about thus giving them a deeper connection to the world (cause they're the ones who made it!) and you STILL have mysteries (discoveries, consequences of events, etc...) that you can work with for plot points when you start!
So this is kinda the "sparknotes" version of my edited version of the quiet year, I'm aware that its rough because I've only ever used this with my friends and its not really something i thought I would be describing to other people lol
Thank you so much for taking the time to type all that up! That's a fantastic explanation, and a really awesome idea. Now I want to do something like this with my group, just for the worldbuilding aspect alone. Seems like it'd be really fun!
The world/mythos built around the In Nomine game from the 90s have been useful to me in "fleshing out" (though angelic and demonic incarnations in that game are a bit transcendent of flesh, with the advantages and limitations of that as consequence) Celestials and Fiends and other extra planar power structures and personalities in my D&D game.
The Quiet Year variations (which sounds really cool) reminds me of The Great Game that Game Designers Workshop played to world build their Traveller 2300 (eventually just 2300AD) from the endpoint of their Twilight:2000 game. Really though that was just a war-game that realigned the Earth as we knew it in the late 80s after a WWIII where nuclear weapons were used sparingly but still with devastating repercussions, and then saw how the new superpowers of the Earth became space faring powers over the next three centuries. It was more a war game, than Quiet Year laid out, but it's still kinda neat that a game was used to bridge two (at the time fairly popular) game systems.
So I have been going back through my many many source and rule books for various TTRPG games I own (far too many) looking for inspiration for the next part of my campaign and have decided to mine my first edition L5R books. So which systems other then DND/pathfinder do you all mine for ideas?
For those who don’t know legend of the 5 rings is set in a Japanese inspired world, Rokugan. It was created in the late 90’s and to this day in my opinion has the best looking, most full of consistent fluff source books and adventures I have seen so a goldmine to delve. The 2 books I dipped back into yesterday are in my opinion 2 of the best written source books for any system. The first is effectively a monster manual and setting book but is written as a series of essays by a gradually more and more insane NPC. It depicts a region full of oni (demons) where just breathing the air will slowly kill a character, or corrupt them to a point they can never again return back to civilization (L5R is famously brutal to PCs). It is a perfect mix of fluff and crunch and parts of it are genuinely disturbing (there is one monster who just reading about put me off eating rice for months and 20 years later I think about it every time I eat it).
The second book is great for a different reason in that it introduces the kolat. In a world where the emperor is litterely the divine blood of a god, the kolat are the ultimate athiests in that they want humans to run humanity. They have been putting in play a 1000 year plan to replace the gods. The book itself is great because it isn’t called the kolat book, it is the merchant guide to Rokugan and the first few pages talk about currency, how to let weather impact prices and ways to handle trade. If a player picked it up and read the start they would have no idea it was more then a DM resource.
Anyone who hasn’t read about the world of L5R I suggest you dip in, there are some amazing themes and story ideas that can be tweaked to a fantasy setting easily. I am probably going to start creating homebrew monsters based on the creatures in the game.
So what settings do other DMs mine for ideas or monsters?
I'm running a baking contest (like Great British Baking Show but with subterfuge, sabotage, betrayal, and possibly murder) and for the actual baking component I'm using special actions I designed with heavy influence from the Monster Of The Week rules, where rolls have more diverse results rather than just pass/fail, so rolls in the contest can have a fail with dire conquers, mixed success with minor consequences, or full success. That way, rather than just an endless series of pass/fail survival checks, the contest is more dynamic and narrative focused.
In theory. The contest hasn't officially begun yet in game so we'll see if the rules require tweaking, but I've shared the rules with the players and they seem excited.
This isn't for in-game mechanics, but rather for my 0-session. After listening to The Adventure Zone's newest campaign, I had the idea of using a heavily edited version of the game "The Quiet Year" To have all my players build the campaign world together (with a little more editing and involvement than the TAZ boys did). That way its not just me, the DM, who has to keep reminding them of common knowledge history events, but everyone is invested in the worlds history and lore because they helped create it!
Ooh hey I also got my idea from listening to TAZ!
For a bunch o' boys who have no idea how to play DnD, they sure do have good ideas for DnD lol
I'm particularly interested in hearing more about how you incorporated elements of The Quiet Year into your collaborative worldbuilding. Might you perhaps explain on this a bit further, perhaps with some examples?
Specifically, I've heard of The Quiet Year but I don't know anything about it. Worldbuilding is my jam, and my players all really love my worldbuilding so far. I've tried to get my group to start working on a collaborative worldbuilding project together but it's been a tad slow.
I'm so glad you asked because I've been dying to talk about it lol
SET UP: So first, since I have 7 people in my group (6 players + DM) I got a big paper and divided it in 7 equal segments. I told each person (myself included) to draw a continuous line that connected their segment to the adjacent one. basically, this was just a way of having us collaboratively draw the map of the continent. I then said that in their segment, they were to place a single city, and a terrain feature. The feature could be natural such as a mountain range or a lake, or manmade like a giant ruined temple. Once we all did this, we had a continent with a variety of features and 7 major cities. we then numbered the cities 1-7 for use later
"GAME"play: Just like in the quiet year, I had a deck of cards, each card associated with a pair of questions (minus the face-cards). an example would be like:
"2 of hearts: City number _____ has a disagreement with City ______. What is it over and how do they resolve it? OR City ______ enters a trade agreement with city _____. What is traded, and what prompted the decision?" where the "____" refers to a randomly chosen city
Each turn represents a decade of time
On each players turn, they first draw a card, and answer one of the question options associated with it. As the DM, I had a private doc open where I took notes of their response. whatever they decided, would be "official" I made sure that each player understood going in that there is NO Winning this game, just building a story so they would understand that the city they placed isn't THEIR city, just A City and if a player makes something BAD happen, its not an attack, just story development.
After resolving their card, the player would have the choice of one of 3 "actions": Create an Event, Make a Discovery, or Follow Through
CREATE AN EVENT: The player causes something to happen in either the current decade, or any past decade freehanded. the outcome is similar to resolving a card, but rather than relying on a prompt, the player gets to come up with something on their own. These events must be open ended with no clear resolution. For example, a player could create the event such as "an expedition funded by Professor such-n-such was sent into X ruins to search for artifacts to use against the evil emperor" but they can't include the resolution to it. (This will be addressed later)****
MAKE A DISCOVERY: The player adds something new to the map, there are no limits to what they find. it could be a new cave system, or a magical hotspring, or even something a bit more abstract like a new way to use magic or a specific offshoot of a long forgotten race.
FOLLOW THROUGH: This one addresses the "open-endedness" of the CREATE AN EVENT action. On your turn you can choose to "follow through" with an event created by another player where you narrate and decide how the event is resolved. ***once again, your players have to understand that there is NO competition here and the fact that the outcome wasn't what you expected better reflects the random nature of life!
**** When the round is over, and it gets back to your turn, if no other players "Followed Through" on your event, Then before you resolve your next card, you can resolve your previous event, no action needed
After going through 40 cards, you have 400 years of "recent history" that all your players know about thus giving them a deeper connection to the world (cause they're the ones who made it!) and you STILL have mysteries (discoveries, consequences of events, etc...) that you can work with for plot points when you start!
So this is kinda the "sparknotes" version of my edited version of the quiet year, I'm aware that its rough because I've only ever used this with my friends and its not really something i thought I would be describing to other people lol
Side note, for some reason, I turned on italics around "CREATE AN EVENT" and they wouldn't turn off for some reason.... hmm....
Yeah, that happens sometimes.
Thank you so much for taking the time to type all that up! That's a fantastic explanation, and a really awesome idea. Now I want to do something like this with my group, just for the worldbuilding aspect alone. Seems like it'd be really fun!
The world/mythos built around the In Nomine game from the 90s have been useful to me in "fleshing out" (though angelic and demonic incarnations in that game are a bit transcendent of flesh, with the advantages and limitations of that as consequence) Celestials and Fiends and other extra planar power structures and personalities in my D&D game.
The Quiet Year variations (which sounds really cool) reminds me of The Great Game that Game Designers Workshop played to world build their Traveller 2300 (eventually just 2300AD) from the endpoint of their Twilight:2000 game. Really though that was just a war-game that realigned the Earth as we knew it in the late 80s after a WWIII where nuclear weapons were used sparingly but still with devastating repercussions, and then saw how the new superpowers of the Earth became space faring powers over the next three centuries. It was more a war game, than Quiet Year laid out, but it's still kinda neat that a game was used to bridge two (at the time fairly popular) game systems.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.