Someday, I want to either run or play a campaign, modeled after D&D (in GURPS), that does everything wrong. Not your usual band of misfits that is any adventuring party, a band of misfits carefully calculated to have extra misfit-ery.
Every race can be assumed to have all of the various roles, but usually 90% of half orc PC's are barbarians or fighters, gnomes and half elves are bards, halfings are rogues, etc. Humans are about the only race you ever see in every role. I want to see that party that doesn't follow the "class specialty" conventions.
Cleric? The half orc. He's a chef, fights with a war-ladle, and uses the top of his cookpot (complete with all his spices and such) as a wooden shield.
Bard? The dwarf. Plays something like bagpipes or the concertina.
Barbarian? The gnome. Works his day job as a gardener, chops the knees out from under his enemies with a sharpened shovel-axe.
Fighter? The halfling. He'll stab your shins so hard you won't know what hit you. Probably a smith or something for his day job.
Wizard? This one's a bit hard to pick out a "wrong" race without repeats. I'd go for troll, if troll PCs are available (think Shadowrun trolls). He also has a cart, and the critter that draws it is his familiar. Spends his time studying while leaving the familiar to guide the thing.
Rogue/ranger? Warforged/golem, perhaps, something big and heavy and built to be a bruiser by nature. Troll and half orc would also work.
And so on. Every race has classes that seem most likely, and classes that seem least likely, and THAT'S where I want to put them. If anyone who happens to read this can come up with other "wrong" professions, that'd be just swell.
Considering how apeshit the players went when I created a world where the languages were national not racial...
ReplyDeleteI actually have a few friends who are totally on board with this, but 3 guys does not a proper adventuring party with a GM make.
DeleteAlso, I can only imagine the rage caused by national languages, well done.
Even more linguistic fun. We ran several interdimensional nexus worlds. Languages got numbers. English would be "Human 5" or something like that. The players were REALLY pissed that there wasn't _AN_ Elvish. Like all elves everywhere coordinated language across dimensions.
ReplyDeleteFrance shares a border with Italy and Spain. French, Italian and Spanish were all Latin once... Why would elves who'd never met each other because of a dimensional rift speak the same language when a river can keep two peoples from speaking the same?
That is pretty great. I salute your efforts, sir.
DeleteI'm leaning towards doing something vaguely similar with the Wastelands, have language be primarily national, but with a racial base. For example, two predominantly Dwarven nations will both speak languages based on a common language, but they will at best be of broken comprehension to one another. Only things that live ridiculously long lives (1000+ years) will have one common language (with dialects).