Everybody except PCs is 0-level in this campaign.

[geoffrey]

In my current campaign that I've been conducting for about 3 months, I initially had NPCs with classes and levels vanishingly rare. About a week ago I decided that ALL humans (other than the PCs) in the campaign are 0-level men with 1-6 hit points and no character class.

While this would not be appropriate for all campaigns, I'm eager to give it a spin in mine. It has the advantage of making mankind have a mundane and realistic feel, which serves as a good backdrop and contrast to both the monsters and the PCs.

When an NPC human gets hit with a weapon, he's going to die about 50% of the time, and a second hit will usually kill him.

But what happens when the PCs are high-level? Will they be able to throw their weight around with impunity? Hardly. Remember one of my favorite D&D rules: The Angry Villager Rule", which states, "Anyone who has viewed a horror movie is aware of how dangerous angry villagers are. Whenever the referee finds that some player has committed an unforgiveable outrage this rule can be invoked to harass the offender into line."

So my current campaign has, besides the PCs:

1. zero-level humans
2. real-world animals
3. unique monsters of my own creation, inspired by Thomas Ligotti (quite different from your run-of-the-mill D&D monsters, and also quite different from the monsters in either Carcosa or Isle of the Unknown)

We'll see how things work out. We've been having a good time in the last 3 months, and in that time the PCs encountered only 2 or 3 humans with levels (and they were all 1st-level fighters), so this change is more of a tweak. I went from 3 out of 1,000 humans having class and level to 0 out of 1,000.

Anyone else ever tried this, or am I the only crazy one? ;D

[thorswulf]

"A mob is a terrible thing, undt I think its time we had one!" Inspector Klemp from Young Fankenstien.

I hop your town watch has access to a mid level mage in case of emergencies....

[coffee]

Do you mean that there were never any higher level characters? Or are there just none now?

The reason I ask is because of higher level spells. Will the Magic-Users have to research all their spells themselves?

Will scrolls exist?

How about other magic items, for that matter?

These kinds of things will really affect the campaign. Do keep us posted -- sounds like a fun experiment!

[geoffrey]

Aug 5, 2011 19:57:02 GMT -6 coffee said:

Do you mean that there were never any higher level characters? Or are there just none now?

The reason I ask is because of higher level spells. Will the Magic-Users have to research all their spells themselves?

Will scrolls exist?

How about other magic items, for that matter?

These kinds of things will really affect the campaign. Do keep us posted -- sounds like a fun experiment!

I hadn't thought about the never vs. now angle. That's a good question. I don't know the answer!

I'm being pretty liberal with spells. Whatever spell-casting class you choose, you have all the spells on the spell list of your class in your spell book. (I'm allowing any class: magic-user, illusionist, druid, whatever.)

I'm stingy with magic items (including scrolls). There aren't any unless and until the PCs create them. The campaign is set literally billions of years in the Earth's future (but before the sun goes red giant). Thus, in the far past of the campaign was a high-tech civilization. The current level of technology is pre-Industrial Revolution. Very, very, very rare high-tech items have survived into the campaign's present. These items are as rare as artifacts and relics in a typical D&D campaign.

[darkling]

I'm highly for this and have worked it into a couple of campaigns before. It really depends on the world you are playing in though (e.g. a dark fantasy where humanity has been a slave race for the last century lends itself well to PCs being the only people with level more than say Tolkienesque worlds). But in general I always strive to keep NPCs with class and level to an utter minimum (usually just the PCs and major allies/antagonists).

As for keeping high level PCs in line, I came up with a formula a while back that allowed mobs or units to function as higher hit dice creatures based on the number of people composing them with the value of each hit dice (1-6) being static and determined by the training of the people composing a mob (1 for peasants, 6 for veteran soldiers). It works pretty well as long as you are handling combat abstractly.

[pessimisthalfling]

This game sounds down-right brilliant Geoffrey! I'm really interested in hearing more about your Ligotti-inspired monsters. Were I to create my own game, I'd draw all of my monster inspiration from Mr. Ligotti and Jorge Luis Borges.

It sounds like you and your players are having a blast! I can't wait to hear more.

[Azafuse]

Having 0-level NPCs could be a good idea (if you're weak you need heroes) but that also means you have no veteran soldiers as well (who're supposed to survive at least more than 50% of the time).

The risk is playing a sort of Little House on the Prairie version of OD&D.

[Falconer]

Aug 5, 2011 19:07:41 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

But what happens when the PCs are high-level? Will they be able to throw their weight around with impunity? Hardly. Remember one of my favorite D&D rules: The Angry Villager Rule", which states, "Anyone who has viewed a horror movie is aware of how dangerous angry villagers are. Whenever the referee finds that some player has committed an unforgiveable outrage this rule can be invoked to harass the offender into line."

“Also possible is the insertion of some character like Conan to bring matters into line.”

I’m currently experimenting in the opposite direction. Think CSIO, where every shopkeeper has levels, sometimes a lot (sometimes they’re gods in disguise)! I know this approach is also considered one of the flaws of FR, but I think there’s a subtle but important difference. In FR, the NPCs are always adventurers who are just as likely as the PCs—if not more so—to solve the world’s problems. In CSIO, unless you’re really out to pick a fight with lawfuls all the time, you can go about your business assuming that 99% of the people you encounter are Ø-level, and never discover otherwise. And if you pick a fight with one guy who you decide is your archnemesis, well, maybe it will take more than one hit to kill him, and I’m fine with that.

I guess to me it’s all about maintaining a balance between the “small world” feel (the PCs are big fish, their actions are important) and the “big world” feel (what the PCs see isn’t the only thing going on). It’s like in Star Trek. The Enterprise always seems to be “the only ship in the sector” that has to deal with the plot all by itself. On the other hand, one gets the sense that there are other capable starship captains and Vulcan first officers in the fleet.

[oldkat]

Personally, I dont see the necessity of going to either extreme. But, I give you a big thumbs up and say "go for it"...just keep us up to date on the results.

[snorri]

That's more or less what I do as well for most NPCs : 1d6 hp, no other special feature, including for most soldiers, town watch, and so on. Some NPCs have a level, but I don't care too much about their stats.

[darkling]

Even if you want to use more powerful NPCs, I find it easier just to record HD and special qualities rather than giving them a class, level, and ability scores. To me those have always seemed a player exclusive thing.

[Mushgnome]

Go for it! Sounds fun. I've done an "everyone is 0 level (including PCs)" campaign in the past, and it was a blast.

[Deleted]

I've done the same thing, although magic is extremely rare in my campaign, so I didn't run into any of the problems Coffee mentioned.

[kenmeister]

It isn't Swords & Sorcery without the Sorcery, but you can take the Tolkien route and say that the wizards in the world aren't actually mortals.

But I'm curious what you tell the players who are running spell-casters; did they find some lost book and are the only known magicians?

[geoffrey]

Aug 10, 2011 21:10:38 GMT -6 kenmeister said:

I'm curious what you tell the players who are running spell-casters; did they find some lost book and are the only known magicians?

It's actually the other way around. The players tell me. They tell me whether their spell-casters are:

1. from another world (Greyhawk, the Wilderlands, or wherever)
2. mutants
3. born with a natural and intuitive ability to cast spells
4. found a spellbook that is gibberish to everyone else, but they somehow understand it
5. given spells by the gods
6. uncertain as to how they can cast spells
7. creations of nanotech
8. etc.

I generate the campaign world, and the players generate their PCs.

[kenmeister]

Aug 10, 2011 21:40:53 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Aug 10, 2011 21:10:38 GMT -6 kenmeister said:

I'm curious what you tell the players who are running spell-casters; did they find some lost book and are the only known magicians?

It's actually the other way around. The players tell me. They tell me whether their spell-casters are:

1. from another world (Greyhawk, the Wilderlands, or wherever)
2. mutants
3. born with a natural and intuitive ability to cast spells
4. found a spellbook that is gibberish to everyone else, but they somehow understand it
5. given spells by the gods
6. uncertain as to how they can cast spells
7. creations of nanotech
8. etc.

I generate the campaign world, and the players generate their PCs.

Neat, can I join?

[geoffrey]

Sure! Just show up at my house in Pueblo, Colorado tomorrow at 1:30. We'll play until 5:30. All I bring to the game is the following:

Lamentations of the Flame Princess rulebook
Lamentations of the Flame Princess spellbook
Random Esoteric Creature Generator
dice
maps, notes, and blank paper
pen and pencil

If you want/need other sources for your characters, then you'll need to bring those books.

(At which airport will you arrive? )

[kent]

Here are a couple of thoughts knowing from previous discussions with you that you are made of stern stuff:

1. It is not magic or fantasy that creates hierarchies of talent and distinction it is unavoidable in large populations and the cramming of abilities of NPCs into a narrow window would make me wonder if the entire population were clones.

2. I like Ligotti and have created monsters like you have described but sparingly. If this is all the players encounter it would feel samey as would the overuse of random monsters from Raggi's book. They are not inexhaustibly interesting, as a player I would find Raggi's monsters tiresome after a while especially as they are generated from tables and not by thought.

3. Im not sure that DMs present familiar creatures, apemen, gnolls ... in the same way, in fact Im not sure DMs would describe a 30 foot stretch of tunnel in the same way so it doesn't worry me that other peoples cliches could affect my game. To me a gnoll is more colourful than a 'blue man'.

4. A lone gnoll is not the same beast as a band of 30 gnolls which in turn is not the same beast as a gnoll civilisation. I am not just talking about tactical difficulty but the *mentality* of different sized groups which allows a DM to think about race and culture. Unique monsters by definition are meagre creations in comparison.

5. It seems to me that you are hopping from one quirky campaign idea with arbitrary restrictions to another. Couldn't the demonology of Carcosa exist in world where much more was going on besides? Isn''t the Isle of the Unknown just like an island in any campaign and not a campaign itself. I always DM, but if you were my DM I would hope to see you integrate your various ideas into a single campaign world and not "innovate" mechanics which do not grow out from the needs of a developing campaign.

6. Unique monsters and unique and geographically distributed spells are the norm for most creative DMs. I use mathematical dice to determine the kind of magic-user.
somekingskent.blogspot.com/2011/07/using-mathematicians-dice-to-determine.html
but these ideas don't necessitate the creation of a tiny new campaign each time.

[geoffrey]

Aug 19, 2011 15:10:11 GMT -6 kent said:

Here are a couple of thoughts knowing from previous discussions with you that you are made of stern stuff:

1. It is not magic or fantasy that creates hierarchies of talent and distinction it is unavoidable in large populations and the cramming of abilities of NPCs into a narrow window would make me wonder if the entire population were clones.

2. I like Ligotti and have created monsters like you have described but sparingly. If this is all the players encounter it would feel samey as would the overuse of random monsters from Raggi's book. They are not inexhaustibly interesting, as a player I would find Raggi's monsters tiresome after a while especially as they are generated from tables and not by thought.

3. Im not sure that DMs present familiar creatures, apemen, gnolls ... in the same way, in fact Im not sure DMs would describe a 30 foot stretch of tunnel in the same way so it doesn't worry me that other peoples cliches could affect my game. To me a gnoll is more colourful than a 'blue man'.

4. A lone gnoll is not the same beast as a band of 30 gnolls which in turn is not the same beast as a gnoll civilisation. I am not just talking about tactical difficulty but the *mentality* of different sized groups which allows a DM to think about race and culture. Unique monsters by definition are meagre creations in comparison.

5. It seems to me that you are hopping from one quirky campaign idea with arbitrary restrictions to another. Couldn't the demonology of Carcosa exist in world where much more was going on besides? Isn''t the Isle of the Unknown just like an island in any campaign and not a campaign itself. I always DM, but if you were my DM I would hope to see you integrate your various ideas into a single campaign world and not "innovate" mechanics which do not grow out from the needs of a developing campaign.

6. Unique monsters and unique and geographically distributed spells are the norm for most creative DMs. I use mathematical dice to determine the kind of magic-user.
somekingskent.blogspot.com/2011/07/using-mathematicians-dice-to-determine.html
but these ideas don't necessitate the creation of a tiny new campaign each time.

1. Well, the 0-level NPCs aren't clones. They are as varied as people on Earth today. It's just that none of them has super-powers, which keeps the campaign world feeling more "real". I have no mechanics that I use to differentiate between the abilities of (for example) a chemist and a prostitute. I simply use DM fiat.

2. I use the monsters sparingly. There aren't any dungeons full of Ligottian horrors. Rather, each one exists in its own separate nightmare, so to speak. They are not part of an "ecology", nor do they interact with each other. As such, each monster is typically the focus of an adventure rather than a speed bump. I agree that no sort of monster is endlessly interesting. Thus my different campaigns. ("Enough of Carcosa for now. Let's do something else." Or whatever.)

3.-4. I'm generally bored of all the D&D standard monsters. We do break them out a couple times a year for Auld Lang Syne, but after doing so we have had our fill of them for another 6 months or so. Perhaps other DMs make the monsters interesting. I don't feel the incentive to even try.

5.-6. Guilty as charged. I have spent my 31 years as a referee going from one campaign world to another. I guess a mish-mash campaign world isn't ultimately satisfying for me. I'm always wondering what the ultimate ground of Reality is in a campaign world. Carcosa exists in a conceptual universe that is atheistic. Isle of the Unknown exists in a conceptual universe that is basically Catholic. My current campaign is not only atheistic but also lacks the relative solidity of Carcosa. ("Did that really happen? Or was it a dream? Or do these categories break down?" Etc.) I would think it silly to have Christian clerics fighting Cthulhu, or Cthulhu smashing a Ligottian carnival dummy, or fire giants fighting for their life against a Ligottian infant, etc. Besides, the definitive mish-mash world already exists: Arduin. I can't equal that on its own terms.

Besides, look at Gary's old campaign. The PCs not infrequently travelled to other planets and planes. The PCs in a "standard" D&D campaign could make trips to Carcosa, as Gary's did to Barsoom. The Isle of the Unknown could be tossed into any old ocean of the planet of the standard D&D campaign world. My current campaign could be the far future of the standard campaign world (if it's set on Earth), or it could be another planet.

[kent]

Geoffrey, I enjoy discussing things with you because you don't take umbrage.

1. I suppose what Im saying is if you take a couple of hundred village bozos, nevermind larger populations, you can't avoid that some of them have the wherewithal to bully others which requires statistical biases which can not be reflected in an absolutely flat 0-lvl population. This for example is reflected in the leader types of races/bandits in the MM who are not restricted to default level.

3-4. "Perhaps other DMs make the monsters interesting. I don't feel the incentive to even try."

Orcs, ogres and apemen are really just specifically named beastmen and beastmen are important archetypes that most of us have a visceral reaction to because they are almost human. In some ways it takes great subtlety to work with these monsters. I not saying you should use some variation of them but I think if a DM can't make fairy archteypes interesting one of his DMing skills has atrophied.

5. "My current campaign is not only atheistic but also lacks the relative solidity of Carcosa. ("Did that really happen? Or was it a dream? Or do these categories break down?" "

Yes I like this kind of playing with reality.

"I would think it silly to have Christian clerics fighting Cthulhu, or Cthulhu smashing a Ligottian carnival dummy, or fire giants fighting for their life against a Ligottian infant."

These all sound like great ideas to me!

[darkling]

Aug 21, 2011 18:03:01 GMT -6 kent said:

1. I suppose what Im saying is if you take a couple of hundred village bozos, nevermind larger populations, you can't avoid that some of them have the wherewithal to bully others which requires statistical biases which can not be reflected in an absolutely flat 0-lvl population. This for example is reflected in the leader types of races/bandits in the MM who are not restricted to default level.

I think it is more a matter of scale, which is something each referee sets for their own world. You have to decide just how big the gulf is between a leveled character and a 0 level character. If it's tiny, then yeah, there should be level variation among townsfolk with certain NPCs having an extra level or two. But if its large then yes, there is statistical variation amongst the townsfolk, but it is not enough to push any of them into the realm of a first level character.

Personally I use the latter. In my games a level 1 character has luck and a borderline mentally ill dose of willpower or direct divine intervention or magical arts. Normal Men cannot cross that gulf between level 0 and level 1. Period.

You just have to decide for yourself what scale your campaign world has.

[kent]

Aug 21, 2011 19:08:53 GMT -6 darkling said:

You have to decide just how big the gulf is between a leveled character and a 0 level character.

I agree with this to some extent. The DM should have an idea what kind of power is wielded at each level or at least every few levels. I don't like the randomly leveled CSIO ordinary npcs. However my point is that if you take a 100 non-entities its hard to justify that some in the population are not superior, say in combat, and harder when you take a thousand. At the top of the bell curve there are npcs who could easily kill an average npc and this can only be reflected in the slight biases resulting from a level or two. As I said otherwise it seems as if npcs are cloned.

It was only a minor point and I think Ive said enough about it now.