H1: Game Theme

The DM's reward for gaming is very different from the players' rewards. In a way, the DM gets shafted - it's a lot more work, and I don't get to go up in levels, or defeat opponents, or root for my team in the face of terrible odds. But what I do get is to create an interesting world. So as my prerogative, I always impose one rule at the start of the game: the game needs a theme and the characters have to fit tightly within it. This really gives me something to work with. It gives me the inspiration and framework to take premade purchased modules and tailor them to the group. It gives ideas for quests, villains, and mood. So I sent out this email:

Depending on how much roleplaying vs. rollplaying you wish to do, having a more cohesive theme than "A fighter, a cleric, a thief, and a wizard walk into a tavern..." can be fun. If you have any ideas for giving the group a reason to be together, such as:

• you are all in the employ of an agency or ruler
• everyone has the same class or at least has multiclassed a little bit into a class (one of my best campaigns was when the PCs were members of a secret order of arcanists seeking forgotten lore in an empire where magic was illegal, everyone had at least one level of wizard. A party can be remarkably clever and inventive when they have 20+ spells per day among them!)
• the party consists of basically good but still pretty shady heroes in the vein of Han Solo/Conan/Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser, etc. who are always looking for the "big score" but always manage to piss away their treasure in binges of various excesses
• the setting has a particular "feel" (e.g. exotic Arabia or Asia, pirates & buccaneers, mega-city like Grayhawk or Waterdeep)
• the party consists of ex-pats who have been displaced and have banded together as unlikely comrades (e.g. the dwarf whose homeland has been overrun by orcs, the half-elf banished from the elf kingdom, the halfling who has served in prison and can't ever get back into "proper" society due to stigma, and the spellcaster whose future in the Order was sabotaged by a rival).

then speak up, it makes my job more fun if I have a theme or context to work with and it'll help folks decide what character they want to make.

I got back some interesting responses, but the one that really resonated with me was M's:

ok - I have a proposal for our party - came out of H. going to mexico

The party are dirt farmers from semi-tropical area, driven from the fertile valley floor by large ranchers. We leave our families to cross the border - promising to messenger money back from our menial labor jobs in a richer nation. Once we get there we decide short order cooking sucks and so does construction - we're forming a gang of alien cousins to make money by illegal short cuts, looting tombs, selling outlaw services and commodities, protection rackets - whatever works.

From our background we are more or less acquainted with poison darts and blowguns, clubs with sharks teeth embedded in them and obsidian knives. Maybe some forest herbalism or primitive magic (more primitive than the fancy magic in this new country).

Unfortunately we look like immigrant labor and cant go to the best places in town - but then we have no social roots here and hardly view the people around us as people, so morally our hands are "less tied". I'm not married to this idea - so if you hate it say so now, before we cross the Rio Grande....

We had an interesting discussion about how much to draw on the real world for inspiration and when does analogy cross into racism. Didn't see that coming from a request for a party concept... But I really liked the core idea - I really like reading history and following current events and the opportunity to creatively weave them into the game. It also had jogged my memory about Eberron. I vaguely recall being amused about goblins and illegal immigration in Eberron. While I've completely dropped any reference to Mexico or anything like that, there's no direct analogy here, playing out some of the experiences of an immigrant underclass is a really interesting D&D premise. I did a bit more research and we settled on the party being Goblinoid immigrants from Darguun living in the shady lower levels of Sharn who reluctantly get caught up in the underworld.

Inspirations

Links:
Goblin Uprising Dragonshard
Heirs of Dhakaan Dragonshard

Books:

Bandits, Eric Hobsbawm - Eberron hints at the plague of unemployed soldiers and rise of banditry. I wanted to play this up, along with non-human banditry, and integrate more of the "dark world with a few points of light" feel that core 4th ed. contains. OK book, a bit dry, but very illuminating.

Boss Ruef's San Francisco, Walton Bean - I was curious what old school "Boss" politics was like and whether I wanted to integrate it into the setting. I think in my mind it will be, especially in a place like Breland that is limping towards democracy, but only in the background. I don't think I'll use this material in the game, but it's still an interesting read.

Merchant of Death, Douglas Farah & Stephen Braun - it's the only book I own that really touches on how transnational smuggling (arms trading, in this case) works. I can't say I own many books on the black market. How does all that contraband (Sharn, pg 160) get into Breland? What about the barrels of blood shipped around the continent by the Blood of Vol? This gave me some ideas.

In the end, this is the final "game theme" email I sent out:

So I’ve really come to like the idea of characters from an underclass who escape their bonds of poverty and alienation to become heroes. As P astutely noted this is not a cogent metaphor or commentary on current events. Certainly some contemporary or historical themes will make their way into the game – things like organizations that both prey upon and create community for immigrants (e.g. the Chinese Tongs from San Francisco’s history in the late 1800s, Irish-American gangs in New York during the early and mid-1800s, and even contemporary criminal organizations that fulfill similar roles today). These are fascinating and rich concepts for gaming, but let’s be tasteful about it.

The Vibe

The characters should be basically good – at worst they are benign scoundrels in the Han Solo or Fafhrd & Gray Mouser line of heroes. By dint of race and class, the characters begin the game in the seedy metropolis of Sharn. For whatever reason you are reluctantly tied to the criminal world that both protects and preys on your kind. Feel free to rationalize your relationship to the underworld however you see fit, just keep me posted on your thoughts. Some ideas that you may like are:

• You owe human traffickers a lot of money because they smuggled you and/or your family into Sharn. You’re desperate for a “job” – one with a big payoff.
• You needed money and did a minor thing to make ends meet. But now you find yourself caught up in things bigger than you intended.
• You’re an enforcer. Muscle for hire. You don’t really think about what you’re doing – you just follow the coin.
• You work for someone else – you’re a spy or an informer, or maybe even a freelance information broker in your own right. Every contact you make, every favor you bank, every face you see is valuable to someone.

The game will begin with a local boss sending you on a mission to find out what happened to a missing shipment. Please figure out how your character gets involved with this hook. This feeling of being tied to the underworld will recur throughout the early levels, the eventually you can outgrow it.

Character Races & Classes

The players should all be from the kingdom of Darguun. Darguun is a goblinoid kingdom fairly near to the human kingdom of Breland (and the continent’s major metropolis – Sharn). Playable races are Bugbears, Goblins, and Hobgoblins. Darguun is well-known for hiring out mercenaries (primarily hobgoblins and bugbears). Much like the ancient Romans had Germanic bodyguards, it is often a point of pride (and forethought) for merchants and nobility to have Darguun mercenaries. Sometimes the mercenaries stay on past their contracts as illegal freelancers. This would be a great hook for some characters. It should also be noted that rulers of Darguun secretly use these mercenaries as spies and informants.

Goblins are scattered about the continent as an unskilled and semiskilled labor pool. Contingents of laborers are frequently contracted out of Darguun. Many have settled outside of Darguun, often illegally, and an especially large population lives in Sharn. Many goblins attempt to flee Darguun to make a better life in Sharn and elsewhere – “goblin traffickers” both aid and exploit this need. These are great hooks for goblin characters.

Players are not limited to these three races if they can come up with another elegant way to integrate themselves into the storyline. It would be my preference for an all-Darguun party, but my job isn’t to limit peoples’ imaginations and I’ll be happy to work with you.

Any classes are allowed, although the goblinoid races and the game vibe really favor a subset of them (fighter, rogue, warlock, and warlord)

A long post, but hopefully there's something interesting or useful in there for you.