Midnight campaign setting

daddystabz · Post by **daddystabz** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 1:54 am

I have recently become enthralled with the Midnight campaign setting and have been considering using it for a C&C campaign where the players start out as nobodies and eventually and heroically attempt to overthrow the shadow that has now taken over the entire world. This setting has a lot of Tolkienesque goodness and the potential for a truly epic campaign story in which the players can fight against the shadow and even try to retake their world.

It seems this might be easier to adapt to C&C than into D&D 4e. Any of you out there tried it or familiar with it?
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/midnight.html
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DangerDwarf · Post by **DangerDwarf** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 2:40 am

I've run a Midnight C&C campaign. Not a tough convert, and fun as hell to run.

Class-wise the only ones I was concerned with actual conversions was the channelers, everything else I used the C&C classes, modified with flavor text. I posted my channeler conversions on the board HERE.

I also posted some of my race conversions HERE.

At one time I planned on doing a spiffy PDF document for a C&Cized Midnight but, it suffered due to my work schedule and work on other gaming stuff for my group. So, I ended up with a campaign notebook with a lot of stuf fin it but no workable file at the moment.

For the most part, its an easy run. I prefer simple conversions over exact ones. The game works really well in C&C and my group had a blast with our mini-campaign.

tex · Post by **tex** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 2:48 am

I really like Midnight, though I've only thumbed through the big book once. I found it compelling in a sort of poetic sense, which I imagine is rare for a d20 campaign setting.

I think C&C would be a good fit for the setting, mechanics-wise.

For those unfamiliar, the setting is "Tolkienesque" in this sense: Imagine if Sauron had won.

daddystabz · Post by **daddystabz** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 3:15 am

Thanks DangerDwarf! I really appreciate the comments and links! I saw that you are currently having fun with 4e and I have been too. Do you think that 4e would be a bad choice/extremely difficult to adapt to Midnight?
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DangerDwarf · Post by **DangerDwarf** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 4:22 am

My initial thought would to go C&C over 4e when running a Midnight game. I haven't given a 4e/Midnight game a thought (been busy doing my homebrew for it) but I think I'd wait until I saw a monk and druid class for 4e before trying to go Midnight with it.

C&C fits really well for Midnight with little modification.

tex · Post by **tex** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 12:06 pm

You guys may know this already, but the 4th Edition PHB explicitly promises monks and druids in a future supplement.

My own impression of Midnight's typical player character is that they need to be subtle. I don't think 4th Edition player characters are subtle at all. Subtlety can naturally always be provided by roleplaying, but I would think that C&C would fit better. Consider that 1st level 4th Edition wizards must spend 35% to 40% of their magical learning on attack spells.

Then you have the problem of everyone being wolverine. It's hard for a setting to be dark and gritty when no injury short of a mortal wound lasts longer than six hours. You'd have to house-rule it pretty heavily.

Omote · Post by **Omote** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 1:17 pm

Big fan of the Midnight setting. And honestly, I think you can drop the setting in C&C purely with little to no modification. Just don't allow good clerics.
There is plenty of room for converting over certain aspects (like the lifepath thingys) but since the real heart of Midnight is the setting, I think that little conversion is needed. Though, characters do need to be a little tougher then standard C&C fare.

-O
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> Omote's Advanced C&C stuff <
Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

DangerDwarf · Post by **DangerDwarf** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 3:03 pm

Yeah, C&C works great as is with Midnight, the only think that I feel is necessary is changing the spell casters. I didn't care for Midnight with regular Wizards.

Omote · Post by **Omote** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 3:17 pm

One of the thoughts I had regarding wizards in a C&C Midnight setting would be to convert spells to spell points. Every 1st level spell is 1 point to cast, 2nd level spells would be 2 points, etc. Have acquiring spells a bit more difficult, and limit the amount of spell points. Spell pointscould be derived from a combo of (CON mod + INT mod), plus 1 per level (+ CON mod) orsomething along those lines.

-O
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> Omote's Advanced C&C stuff <
Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

serleran · Post by **serleran** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 3:18 pm

I highly doubt 4e can work with Midnight as it appears every class/race has magical abilities of at will, per day, and per encounter, but that is based solely on what people say - not what I have read - and Midnight is sort of the anti-magic setting, in a sense. d20, C&C, Warhammer Fantasy... these are more "modern" (and by modern I only mean released in the last decade - Warhammer Fantasy 2 is very different than Warhammer 1) games that could do it no problem, but there are several others such as The Arcanum, Basic Roleplay, and so on and so forth. Midnight is a decent setting, so if you really wanted to do it, I'm sure you could find a way... but, it is a setting where the rules matter.

DangerDwarf · Post by **DangerDwarf** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 3:29 pm

serleran wrote:
but that is based solely on what people say

Most of those people are wrong. Swiping a coin purse while making a melee attack is not a magical power. A commander type character shouting at his comrades to shake off their fear and charge the enemy, granting them the ability to try to save is not a magical power. Attacking with two weapons is not a magical power.

The powers/abilities of 4e I don't think would cause any problems in Midnight. Especially when you consider the Midnight PC's all have Heroic Paths where they get special abilities at every level. Many have magical abilities.

My only real concern with Midnight in 4e would be the magic users. I think you'd need to make them be far more Ritual magic based.

Post by **Breakdaddy** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 3:43 pm

DangerDwarf wrote:
Most of those people are wrong. Swiping a coin purse while making a melee attack is not a magical power. A commander type character shouting at his comrades to shake off their fear and charge the enemy, granting them the ability to try to save is not a magical power. Attacking with two weapons is not a magical power.

The powers/abilities of 4e I don't think would cause any problems in Midnight. Especially when you consider the Midnight PC's all have Heroic Paths where they get special abilities at every level. Many have magical abilities.

My only real concern with Midnight in 4e would be the magic users. I think you'd need to make them be far more Ritual magic based.

Which would bite since one of the best things about 4e is what theyve done to mitigate the Wizard/Controller ability to become uber mega leatherman multi tool-ish at mid to high levels while allowing them to remain viable at low levels.

Omote · Post by **Omote** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 4:07 pm

C'mon guys, let's not turn this into a 4E thread. It's all about MADNIGHT.

-O
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> Omote's Advanced C&C stuff <
Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

DangerDwarf · Post by **DangerDwarf** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 4:19 pm

Madnight rocks.

tex · Post by **tex** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 4:20 pm

DangerDwarf wrote:
Most of those people are wrong.

Well, sorta. "Powers" are not all magical, but many of them are. Only Rangers, Rogues, Warlords, and Fighters are not magical in their power source, which is half the classes. I don't know the breakdown interally though, because I already got rid of my 4th Ed PHB.

tex · Post by **tex** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 4:21 pm

DangerDwarf wrote:
Madnight rocks.

YA IT IS MAI FAVOREET SATTENG!

daddystabz · Post by **daddystabz** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 9:36 pm

Come on guys! Don't make fun of my typo!
My typo racks!!!!
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tex · Post by **tex** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 3:50 am

daddystabz wrote:
Come on guys! Don't make fun of my typo!

My typo racks!!!!

Yeah it . . . hey, where'd it go?

I AM SO CONFUSED. O_O

In all seriousness, would you be interested in an attempt at collaborating on some kind of document that would, er, document how to play Midnight with C&C? I can borrow the book from a friend and it would help me learn C&C which I want to do anyway.

daddystabz · Post by **daddystabz** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 4:04 am

I would be EXTREMELY interested in doing so. I starting getting out all my C&C material tonight to start working on a campaign doc. We should also ask DangerDwarf to be a part of this. We all three can work together and make docs for a nice and proper conversion and then host a Midnight conversion thread here on the forums. Would you be interested as well, DangerDwarf?
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tex · Post by **tex** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 4:08 am

Okay, cool. : ] I can't get the setting book until Saturday probably so you'll have to start without me, but I'm willing to dedicate some time to this.

Shall we invite anyone else to pitch in?

daddystabz · Post by **daddystabz** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 4:09 am

See my edit of my original post just above.
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DangerDwarf · Post by **DangerDwarf** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 5:45 am

Definitely interested, just unsure I'll have much time to devote to it. Between my home game and developing my homebrew setting I'm using up a lot of my free time there. I'll try and pull my old computer out of storage sometime this week too and see what parts of my own C&C conversion I already typed up.

tex · Post by **tex** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 2:05 pm

Okay, I'll poke my pal for the Midnight setting book and start reading through it.

Like DangerDwarf I have limited time too, but I'll contribute what I can.

I have an especial itch to write rules-mechanical stuff, if there's a need, but I can write guidelines and I'm a good copy-editor too.

tex · Post by **tex** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 2:31 pm

I borrowed the Midnight Campaign Setting (2nd Edition) from my friend and I've been reading. It seems as if C&C needs a little extra crunch to accomodate Midnight mechanically, mostly because the system uses feats to give every character the chance to learn to cast spells. I'm not sure I want to introduce feats to C&C to achieve this, though, because then C&C loses some of its beautiful elegance.

What if instead of adding d20-style automatic feat attainment for every character, we instead institute a system of tradeoffs. For instance, a character can earn a spellcasting-related feat by sacrificing something that their character has:

* a point of BtH (if +0 due to being low-level then it becomes -1),

* a class ability,

* a level of hit points for their class?

* two points off any save bonus?

I have no idea if this is fair at all, and it would require some additional prohibitions (channelers perhaps shouldn't be allowed to do this since they earn spellcasting automatically?) but I think it's elegant.

How's it coming with you guys?

DangerDwarf · Post by **DangerDwarf** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 2:40 pm

In my Midnight C&C game I used the CZ: Class Skills & Options PDF and implemented the secondary skills rules. Using those rules I added some new ones like Arcane Initiate and the like to allow any character to learn minor spellcasting.

However, doing that isn't even necessary. As long as you maintain the overall feel of Midnight in your running of it, the extra crunch is uneeded. The extra crunch is optional. Fun admittedly, but optional.

The primary area I felt it was necessary to change was spellcasting classes. After that, all other changes were optional to me and my group.

daddystabz · Post by **daddystabz** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 5:28 pm

I agree with our dorf friend. I think primarily we should just change the mage classes to fit the setting and the rest is just fluff. My 2e campaign book came in yesterday. Now to absorb it all.
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tex · Post by **tex** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 6:24 pm

ah I see what you two are getting at. I was going to attempt to go for a more detailed conversion. I don't know the S&P book so I can't compare much.

DangerDwarf · Post by **DangerDwarf** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 6:33 pm

tex wrote:
ah I see what you two are getting at. I was going to attempt to go for a more detailed conversion. I don't know the S&P book so I can't compare much.

You can get the C&C Class options PDF HERE for free.

The Highway Man · Post by **The Highway Man** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 8:33 pm

DangerDwarf wrote:
My initial thought would to go C&C over 4e when running a Midnight game.

That would be my take as well, particularly given the fact that C&C shares more common grounds with OGL products (by virtue of being one itself) than 4E ever will.

daddystabz · Post by **daddystabz** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 10:30 pm

tex wrote:
ah I see what you two are getting at. I was going to attempt to go for a more detailed conversion. I don't know the S&P book so I can't compare much.

I'd be willing to go a bit more detailed to if you want to. What ideas do you have after reading through some of the cam[aign setting material?
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