Zornhau Forums

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to attempt to do a few streams of Sword & Scoundrel as a live-play with my home group. I'm going to run these as one-shots on the grand heresy twitch channel when they are live, and then upload them to our youtube channel after the fact. I'll announce the actual dates ahead of time for anyone who enjoys watching that sort of thing, but for now I have a more pressing question:

What kind of scenarios would you want to see? We have two demo scenarios I've written, but the group has already run those. Instead, I'm taking suggestions for adventure concepts, stuff you want to see, etc. They will be one-shots, so it's going to be relatively self-contained, but if there's a particular facet you guys are interested in exploring I can slant this or that to it.

Let me know what you think.

Ideas for settings is what you're looking for?
I have plenty!

I would love to see any of these:

European
-The Hundred Years War
-The Crusades
Near-Eastern
-The Ottoman-Persian Wars
-(could say Saladin, but he was most known for Anti-Crusade stuff.)
Asian
-The Mongol Invasions of Japan
-The Muscovite v Lithuanian Wars

Not to mention the various civil conflicts in China, Japan, Egypt, Lithuania, Etc.

David Mogendo wrote:Ideas for settings is what you're looking for?
I have plenty!

Settings, scenarios, anything you lot want to pitch in. I'm going to do a handful of one-shots and I've got some other stuff planned in the near future as well.

Are you setting these up to be more "quick-start" one-shots with premade characters and scenarios, or are you planning to include character creation and player driven plot?

A middle-ground might also be a good idea. Premake characters and a broad scenario (eg, two thieves guilds fighting over a city) and then start the cameras rolling when everyone just needs to pick drives and how they fit into the setting. Then you can try to thread the needle on showing the game is player driven while still skipping most of the character creation process.

I figure for the purposes of providing demonstrations of play, I'm going to wind up writing the scenario with pregen characters. I may or may not get my players involved in figuring out what the drives of these pregen characters will be. Alternatively, we could do the first one with completely pregen characters (drives and all) and then take your middle ground with one of the subsequent one-shots. If these are at all well-received, we might go on to do a full campaign later. That's something my group has talked about for a while.

For now, the primary purpose is so people can get a feel for the kind of game this is supposed to be and what it looks like in play.

If you're concocting the drives yourself, I'd like to see some conflicting ones.

And you're obviously going to want to showcase some of the unique aspects of the system as well as what you think best represents it. So that means factions, scoundrels, renaissance, guns etc.

Some pirates in Not-Libertatia would be neat.

Conflicting drives are always a plus. Definitely thinking the same thing about the default renaissance setting, firearms, and so forth. I think the big thing will be finding specific scenario premises to play with.

On the plus side, coming up with some of these can easily turn into more ready-made play packs to include later.

Pirates are awesome, though.

Here are some thematic ideas applicable to possibly any era and concept chosen.

• Survival: The party's struggle to survive after a catastrophe.
  Twists:
  • Survivors of a defeated army fleeing through hostile territory after their side lost a deciding battle.
  • Mixed crew of pirates and captives shipwrecked on a remote island inhabited by cannibals (or other friendly neibhours ).

• Against All Odds: A group of people (not necessarily friendly to each other) who are forced to stand and fight against overwhelming odds. Basically the Seven Samurai.

• Whodunnit: Players must pit together wits and resources to find the culprit within a limited amount of time. One of the hardest to design in advance, but most rewarding (when designed properly) one-offs.
  Twists:
  • Find out which one of the two accused generals is the real traitor on the eve of a deciding battle.
  • Reverse whodunnit. Construct a case to frame someone to further one's ends. Failure to do so within time limits would be catastrophic.

Are you still streaming this, Agamemnon? What's your stream schedule if you are? I'd love to see it.