I'm often pondering unusual or interesting possibilities for a campaigns, be they big or mini. In this case "mini" is apt, because I was thinking it would be cool to take a box of mini's like the above Grenadier Fighting Men set (or maybe a big box of these guys), hand them out to the players (splitting them up evenly so each player has 2-4 minis), and have them roll up characters based on those minis. Then give them a few Fighting Man missions, like "wipe out the border fort", or "sack and loot the Frog Temple", or so on, and watch the body count rise! Heck, you could just throw them all in a longboat and let them ravage the coast as much as possible before the Dark Lord catches up with them. Any setting would do, but the idea of this in the Wilderlands or Sword & Sorcery Baltic seems particularly appealing to me.
Just to be clear, I'm not proposing a campaign without other classes, just that those classes are exclusively NPCs.
Wiping out the option to play three other main class types (Magic User, Thief, Cleric) makes for some interesting paradigms. Magic spells will be solely the purveyance of those foul, evil, Fighting-Man-hating wizards. Clerical healing won't be there to fall back on - every single wound will suck and should be avoided at all costs. Traps will be detected not by the party scout, but by the first guy in line who gets chopped in half, falls into the crocodile pit, blows up, etc.
Sounds fun to me; to play or to run. Ever try anything like this?
In the dim and dusty past of long ago yes. But it wasn't by choice. It was just what we brought to the table (minus the one guy who turned up with a cleric who thought "Fighter-only dungeon-bash, cool!" and rolled up a new character). It was a great fun-filled evening. We all laughed and poked fun at each other as we died (messily) one by one. It was only a one-off pick up game, but it was great fun.
ReplyDeleteI always meant to try out one of the Fighter-only campaign suggestions in the old AD&D Fighters handbook, but we never seemed to get round to it.
I've done all-fighters in a pbp game, all-MUs and all-Clerics in a campaign and tournament. I was planning a couple of missions based on the films Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare using just fighters but haven't got round to it. There's no reason it can't work, I've been playing in a magic-less dark ages email game for months and you just learn to cope!
ReplyDeleteI remember to campaigns that worked like this and were both a lot of fun. The first was a city-based all thief game in 1st edition AD&D. The second was 2nd Edition, all bards of different kits. We were a traveling adventure/performance group. The bard game was a blast but only lasted a few sessions. The thief game lasted a surprisingly long time and was a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteP.S We weren't exactly trying hard to keep our characters alive(we must have been all of ten or twelve at the time). I think a proper fighter only campaign could be very successful, adding a certain element of spice to the game without having clerics and the like to fall back on.
ReplyDeleteThe 2e Complete books had notes for running single class games. I ran an all thief game back in the late '90s in Lankhmar. It was all kinds of excellent.
ReplyDeleteOnce ran a very brief all-clerics campaign. They were all clerics of the same god sent on a mission that was to last 4-5 sessions. They did have some men at arms backups (1st level fighters) but for the most part were pretty effective without the other classes helping out.
ReplyDeleteI've never done this myself, but it certainly does sound entertaining.
ReplyDeleteThe first attempt at my Cave man setting was bassicaly a Rules Cyclopedia game where everyone played a fighter and there was no weapon specialties (although skills were used.) It wasn't long before we changed the rules to add some more variaty.
ReplyDeleteNever done it, but I'd play it.
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me though, have you done any further work on S&S Baltic?
I love It! Sign me up. I was just wondering about an all Ranger game that would be like "Man vs. Wild" meets D&D. The details are still rumbling around in my brain...
ReplyDeleteB2
I saw an old (used) D20 book by Monte Cook or Jonathan Tweet or someone that seemed to be a setting for a game/campaign like this...but I don't remember the name (since I don't play D20, I didn't pick it up).
ReplyDelete@Matthew - Not really, but I did have Kinkos print me up a giant, numbered hexmap.
ReplyDeleteMan, that fights set was awesome. Sadly many of my figures from that set are broken or lost.
ReplyDeleteI think "Searchers of the Unknown" (a one-page RPG) would probably be perfect for what you have in mind.
For the most part that is my campaign setting, the normal man and fighting-man compose most of the encounters, thieves are urban brigands (see MMI) thus normal men and fighting man leaders (with a small component of d6 applied or static abilities that describe them as thieves), 'magic users' are sages or tribal spell casters (i.e. a witch or witch doctor) (so very low magic with a set spell list for the campaign), clerics are scribes (monastic or temple), prophets (hermit type with limited spell list and turn undead abilities), or tribal spellcasters (again limited spell list and turn undead ablilities). Grenadier's Fighting-man box and figures is one of my favorites.
ReplyDeleteI had the all-fighter party idea a while back but haven't run it yet.
ReplyDeleteSo you wouldn't give fighters a chance to detect any traps before they go off?
@Shooter - watching the guy in front explode is kind of a detection, isn't it? :)
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, there's always a chance (the usual 1 in 6 for instance), or provided the players describe what they're doing. But I can still hope they don't right?
Interesting idea, although I'd add thieves. Then all those clerics and magic-users can get turned into the extra-powerful types that they so often are in S&S fiction.
ReplyDeleteNot sure I'd like it in the long term, though. I always play magic-users...
I have a soft spot for all-fighter campaigns. The d20 Conan game is somewhat like this, and I think @JB means "Iron Heroes," a Mike Mearls book for 3.5. there's a number of games that try to make magic more weird and mysterious and for NPCs. You have to make some accommodations but it can be really good fun. And it makes the players have to go get NPCs to help if magic is needed, which is great for character interaction and plot hooks.
ReplyDeleteDid this back in 2e days, 7 Fighters and well OK the party had a Wizard but otherwise it worked great.
ReplyDeleteIt works even better in 0E where Fighting Man is stand in for "non spell using guy" but thats kind of a cheat as the net effect is party of non magic adventurers which can be pretty diverse.
I've also run entire campaigns with all thieves. The adventures pretty much write themselves there...