In Fires Deep - Agenda, Inspiration, Setting
“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
As a GM, I am a sucker for a high-concept game.
In the past few years, my players have been subjected to: a Dune-meets-Homeworld-meets-Pirates of the Caribbean game about interstellar revolutionaries, a police procedural game about fighting fascists in fantasy Egypt-meets-1920s-New-York, and a brain-bending Mothership-based time travel adventure, to name just a few.
It is at least a decade since I ran anything that could remotely be considered "Dungeons & Dragons". Elves and dwarves and orcs rarely appear. Precious few dungeons have been delved and fewer dragons slain.
After my last game ended, I thought it was time for a change.
Agenda
My newest campaign, In Fires Deep, is an attempt at a back-to-basics dungeon-crawling adventure game. I've been looking for an chance to put the Designing Dungeons guide by Josh McCrowell and Warren D. to use. I want to bring life to a world full of elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, dungeons, and not least, dragons.
It is back-to-basics in the sense of going back to an old school setting, but as a long-term story-gamer, dungeon-crawling adventures have never been my style.
I have run a few dungeon-ish games recently. Mothership adventures are essentially dungeons set in space, and I've found them a breeze to run. After having spent my entire GMing life from age 13 onwards either improvising or writing bespoke content, it was a refreshing change to have the world set for me. I've also enjoyed a more procedural approach to gameplay, most obviously in the Myth-driven hexcrawling of Mythic Bastionland.
I know I don't want to run a board game designed as an RPG. As fun as Fourth Edition style combat can be to play, it is not easy to keep fresh as a GM. And it takes so much time. I have a small child, a busy job, and a limited window to play RPGs every week - I can't afford to have a two-hour-long session taken up by a two-hour-long combat. So I'm going with a custom cobbled-together ruleset with rustic combat rules - inspired in equal parts by Chris McDowell's primordial system and Jay Dragon's Three Hole Punch.
I have had feedback from my players too. Random character creation is great for kicking off adventures quickly, but it has not always left my players with a strong sense of their character or to the world. While it worked well for Mythic Bastionland, some have asked that the next game feature stronger character creation and stronger character ties to the world. I have taken a page out of Mindstorm's book given them all a dead linchpin character to relate to.
I've always liked Vincent Baker's approach to laying out a GM Agenda for his games. Given the above, this is mine:
- Breathe life into a fantasy world
- Give the dungeon a sense of reality
- Monsters are challenges, not bundles of hit points
- Feed the PCs with regular hooks for drama
Inspiration
In Fires Deep will take place in a vanilla fantasy setting, full of goblins and wizards. I don't want that to mean that it dissolves into a tasteless brown slime, or a self-referential parody - I want to give the world heft.
Picking a few strong touchstones will help. Here's my starting list:
- The Hobbit and Middle-Earth; particularly as re-envisioned by Josh McCrowell in his Wilderlands posts. The magic system will be stolen wholesale.
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay; the sense of a boiling fantasy world on the edge of the Renaissance
- Diablo; at least in terms of atmosphere and architecture
- Discworld; particularly the earlier books where the Disc isn't quite settled into its final form
Setting
Here's the six truths I have chosen to give my players a sense of the setting:
- Shadowy fires burn deep within the Earth. The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep; they awoke dragons - and older, more terrible things.
- Adventurers seek their fortunes in the ruined keeps, temples, and holdfasts of the Highlands.
- Magic is rare and costly; wise wizards are cautious with its use.
- The orcish clans roam much of the Highlands now, but fear dragons as much as any other.
- The elves have for the most part fled into the West; those that remain are all broken in some way.
- Men and halflings busy themselves in commerce and art; most have forgotten the terror of dragons.
While there is more worldbuilding to be done - lots more - I wouldn't expect my players to know anything more than this, their character's name, and the name of the dwarf runepriest who lies dead before them in the Highland holdfast of Caboni Village. Let the games begin.