Twokinds Forums

Hello Internet,

I would like to get some help designing a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that takes place in the TwoKinds universe. If you are interested in helping, throw your comments and ideas here.

Thanks!

Count me interested! This sounds like a lot of fun.

You could also run a D&D-like RP here on the forums. Might be a bit confusing, though, with the rolling..

InceptionBwaaa wrote:Count me interested! This sounds like a lot of fun.

You could also run a D&D-like RP here on the forums. Might be a bit confusing, though, with the rolling..

No, a dedicated Tabletop RPG would not work on this forum. A Post by Post Method is not quite as flexible as an actual RPG session.

Before I start, allow me to state that I have neither played or run D&D. I own a few PDFs of 3.5 but I have never actually played it. I don't like D20 systems and I generally run other systems. Therefore, keep that in mind when reading over my recommendations. To the point, I've run quite a few campaigns before; several of which were set in other settings that the system was not made for. Optimally, I find that running this type of game using a generic system such as GURPS, FATE, FATE Accelerated Edition, or FUDGE is better since it's always difficult to directly graph a setting's mechanics directly onto another system.

Fortunately, the D&D system is pretty robust and works pretty well for wandering adventurers that do a lot of dungeon crawling both literal and metaphorical. Like I stated previously, the main difficulty would be to emulate the feeling of the Twokinds setting into your campaign. While it is a pipe dream to directly have a perfect replication of the Twokinds setting in D&D, you want to get the feeling of the setting into the campaign. The act of capturing the feeling of the setting in your campaign will greatly assist in making it feel like you're playing characters that live in the setting even though the system is not a perfect match for the setting.

Cutting to the mechanics, I would first of all suggest removing all the other races in the core book besides humans and then trying to find some homebrewed races for the various keidran races and try to find something similar to Bastians. Next, I would suggest either entirely removing the more religious/spiritual aspects of the classes or replace them with something more inline with the Twokinds setting. After this, someone else or you will have to figure things out. The extent of my knowledge of D&D ends here.

Thanks for that suggestion. I have already started working on custom races for NPC's, but all of the players will be coming on a ship from a different continent, so the races can still stand. They won't encounter anyone like them in the realm though

Or you could make a plot where the players have been sent to a different realm of existence.

In my current campaign, our characters went from the broken realms into an old school setting set in post apocolyptia. So imagine knights/paladins/clerics/wizards just ending up in a fallout setting but with more mutants.

Right now our fighter and my wizard believe we must have been transported to another plane of existence. So now we must learn the language and weapons to survive. (Screw using guns when I got fireballs and shields, faggots).

Maybe you can incorporate something along those lines. This way there is a perfectly explainable way as to why the PCs are the standard D&D races.

Could we maybe... Make something in Tabletop Simulator? It's literally meant for this kind of thing, and if someone can do some 3D modelling with custom figures, it would make for a great experience.

Envy661 wrote:Could we maybe... Make something in Tabletop Simulator? It's literally meant for this kind of thing, and if someone can do some 3D modelling with custom figures, it would make for a great experience.

Tabletop simulator is terrible for capturing the tabletop RPG feeling. I find Roll20 and Skype/TeamSpeak to be miles better than anything tabletop simulator can provide. I mean, half the fun of tabletop RPGs is just straight up describing the crazy [censored] you pull off and how you pull it off or abusing the fact that nobody ever asks for the description of an NPC to sneak in a bad guy into their midst.

Schrodinger wrote:If you're going to do it in d20 I'd recommend picking up the Pathfinder Advanced Races Guide. It has tools and abilities you could use to build the races in the Twokinds world. That said, I agree with Y7 that d20 may not be the best option as it's very mechanics heavy and rigid. A more free-form system like FATE would apply here.

It's not even the fact that d20 isn't a good option. It's just inherently difficult to graft the mechanics of a different setting to a system that wasn't designed with it in mind. I will also support Schrodinger's suggestion for Pathfinder. From what I know of it, there is plenty of free stuff for it out there which means you can legally access a wider variety of material to build your campaign with. Furthermore, it's similar enough to D&D that it won't be too difficult to transition from D&D to Pathfinder.

That_Violin_Guy wrote:Thanks for that suggestion. I have already started working on custom races for NPC's, but all of the players will be coming on a ship from a different continent, so the races can still stand. They won't encounter anyone like them in the realm though

A word of warning if you decide to continue with your current idea is that you might run into the CrossFic problem where, upon combining multiple settings, one of them either becomes immensely overpowered, one of them immediately falls to pieces due to having to interact with elements and material that was never taken into consideration when being created, or you go massively off the rails and the settings just fail to mix. Not trying to discourage you but I am warning you that these are problems that do occur when mixing multiple settings together.

y7h65 wrote:

Envy661 wrote:Could we maybe... Make something in Tabletop Simulator? It's literally meant for this kind of thing, and if someone can do some 3D modelling with custom figures, it would make for a great experience.

Tabletop simulator is terrible for capturing the tabletop RPG feeling. I find Roll20 and Skype/TeamSpeak to be miles better than anything tabletop simulator can provide. I mean, half the fun of tabletop RPGs is just straight up describing the crazy [censored] you pull off and how you pull it off or abusing the fact that nobody ever asks for the description of an NPC to sneak in a bad guy into their midst.

I'd also point you to Maptools which is the program I use with my tabletop group.

y7h65 wrote:

Schrodinger wrote:If you're going to do it in d20 I'd recommend picking up the Pathfinder Advanced Races Guide. It has tools and abilities you could use to build the races in the Twokinds world. That said, I agree with Y7 that d20 may not be the best option as it's very mechanics heavy and rigid. A more free-form system like FATE would apply here.

It's not even the fact that d20 isn't a good option. It's just inherently difficult to graft the mechanics of a different setting to a system that wasn't designed with it in mind. I will also support Schrodinger's suggestion for Pathfinder. From what I know of it, there is plenty of free stuff for it out there which means you can legally access a wider variety of material to build your campaign with. Furthermore, it's similar enough to D&D that it won't be too difficult to transition from D&D to Pathfinder.

Pathfinder is known colloquially as D&D 3.75 for a reason. It was developed in response to 4th Edition drastically altering the system, so they endeavored to fix as much of 3.X's flaws as they could. You can find most of the rules here: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/

Schrodinger wrote:

y7h65 wrote:

Envy661 wrote:Could we maybe... Make something in Tabletop Simulator? It's literally meant for this kind of thing, and if someone can do some 3D modelling with custom figures, it would make for a great experience.

Tabletop simulator is terrible for capturing the tabletop RPG feeling. I find Roll20 and Skype/TeamSpeak to be miles better than anything tabletop simulator can provide. I mean, half the fun of tabletop RPGs is just straight up describing the crazy [censored] you pull off and how you pull it off or abusing the fact that nobody ever asks for the description of an NPC to sneak in a bad guy into their midst.

I'd also point you to Maptools which is the program I use with my tabletop group.

Maptools and I disagree, mostly due to connection issues and problems with having resource tiles. I made elaborate as hell maps and Maptools really didn't like that.

y7h65 wrote:Maptools and I disagree, mostly due to connection issues and problems with having resource tiles. I made elaborate as hell maps and Maptools really didn't like that.

That is a common issue, yes.

At least for now, I am not going to try to incorporate anything digital into my setting. I have Dry Erase Tiles, and scenery pieces and miniatures that fit the TwoKinds Universe. I am also not really trying to copy the twokinds story at all. I may have the group interact with some of the canon characters, and they may have to battle evil trace, but I was mainly wanting to use the terrain and design of the physical world. The keidran races are a bonus to the game. I have already written a book that is set in this world, and I will adapt a lot of that for the D&D. I will definitely check out the Pathfinder Advanced Races Guide to get good stats for everything. I also made a laminated 11x17 copy of the map to keep track of where everyone is going. (does the TwoKinds realm have a name? sort of like the planet for skyrim is called Nirn...)

That_Violin_Guy wrote:(does the TwoKinds realm have a name? sort of like the planet for skyrim is called Nirn...)

The name of the world is Mekkan.

Thanks A Bunch