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Oct. 30th, 2008
Discuss.
I've been noodling around the edges of a Discworld campaign concept for some time now, looking for a good campaign hook. Pratchett's style is very difficult to emulate because the humor comes from a conversation of his ability to merge accepted genre tropes (such as the Newspaper as fictional centerpoint aspects) with eccentric characters (ala Otto the light obsessed vampire photographer) using such a keen eye for human nature that the characters demand to be taken seriously and the genere tropes illuminate our own world, all swimming in the stew of Pratchett's masterful descriptive prose.
Take out any one of those and it's not really Pratchett's discworld. The trick is trying to capture all of them without it seeming forced. To do that I think I would have to exit Ankh-Morpork and the Ramtops. I think I could hadle Ankh Morpork a little better since there's more social room for our characters to not be overshadowed by the existing protagonists, but I suspect I'd be happier filling in somewhere that is known but not well known. Hence Sto Lat. And the very true statement that it is the "Second City" of the plains both encapuslates a dynamic with Ankh Morpork and opens up the tropes of Chicago to be running in the background of the game. I include the great Sto Lat Pastry School just as a reason for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
adoxograph to kill me.
The current operating premise is Susan Sto-Helit (or someone else) opening a practical school to educate tradesmen in Sto Lat, the first college for nights and weekends for people to better themselves in the century of the anchovy. The PCs would be a combination of professors and students in a setting mirroring the "working class/outcast kids bettering themselves" movies with "adults getting a second chance" films. Students would be people trying to get away from the primitive Ankh Morpork theives guild, seamstresses looking for a real profession, edisonade kids working on engineering projects that will change the world, aspiring artists in bad situations (the line from Moving Pictures about the "saddest thing in the world is being born with innate talent in a field that you will never encounter" sticks with me here) and similar archetypes, while the teachers will be earnest and hardworking tradesmen banished from their guild, an ex-assassin passing along the culture and refinement without so much of the killing and so on.
Thoughts? Input?whswhs , how is your Discworld game going?
I've been noodling around the edges of a Discworld campaign concept for some time now, looking for a good campaign hook. Pratchett's style is very difficult to emulate because the humor comes from a conversation of his ability to merge accepted genre tropes (such as the Newspaper as fictional centerpoint aspects) with eccentric characters (ala Otto the light obsessed vampire photographer) using such a keen eye for human nature that the characters demand to be taken seriously and the genere tropes illuminate our own world, all swimming in the stew of Pratchett's masterful descriptive prose.
Take out any one of those and it's not really Pratchett's discworld. The trick is trying to capture all of them without it seeming forced. To do that I think I would have to exit Ankh-Morpork and the Ramtops. I think I could hadle Ankh Morpork a little better since there's more social room for our characters to not be overshadowed by the existing protagonists, but I suspect I'd be happier filling in somewhere that is known but not well known. Hence Sto Lat. And the very true statement that it is the "Second City" of the plains both encapuslates a dynamic with Ankh Morpork and opens up the tropes of Chicago to be running in the background of the game. I include the great Sto Lat Pastry School just as a reason for
adoxograph to kill me. The current operating premise is Susan Sto-Helit (or someone else) opening a practical school to educate tradesmen in Sto Lat, the first college for nights and weekends for people to better themselves in the century of the anchovy. The PCs would be a combination of professors and students in a setting mirroring the "working class/outcast kids bettering themselves" movies with "adults getting a second chance" films. Students would be people trying to get away from the primitive Ankh Morpork theives guild, seamstresses looking for a real profession, edisonade kids working on engineering projects that will change the world, aspiring artists in bad situations (the line from Moving Pictures about the "saddest thing in the world is being born with innate talent in a field that you will never encounter" sticks with me here) and similar archetypes, while the teachers will be earnest and hardworking tradesmen banished from their guild, an ex-assassin passing along the culture and refinement without so much of the killing and so on.
Thoughts? Input?
whswhs , how is your Discworld game going?