Campaign brainstorm: Less is more!

[anglefish]

Have you ever had a game where less was more. A perfect anecdotal story was a 3.0 game I enjoyed once. The set up made us all the teenagers in a small human village. We could only use the race human and create PCs out of the basic book, no multiclassing.

One Race Only: For that game, knowing very little of the world, felt right as young peasants and our first meet up with the elves was scary!

Restricted Classes: I recently finished a Pirate game that was very urban and naval. The jungle was a scary place without a Ranger. In the Human only game, The teamwork started before the first 3d6 was rolled. All of the players wanting to be a fighters got together and decided how they'd work as a team (tank, flanker, etc.) and then built PCs appropriately.

Delayed or Restricted Bestiary: There's also the spin of the delayed release. In one game, a GM said that anything undead didn't exist, except for ghost stories. When the skeletons attacked us at 2nd level, they came with a Save vs. Fear.

Restricted equipment: It's amazing how short our equipment lists would be if we stuck to a more historical context. Never mind having a game based on Imperial Rome or a Dark Sun style world.

[Kaiser_Kris]

anglefish wrote:
Delayed or Restricted Bestiary: There's also the spin of the delayed release. In one game, a GM said that anything undead didn't exist, except for ghost stories. When the skeletons attacked us at 2nd level, they came with a Save vs. Fear.

When you are low-level, ill-equipped and unsure as to the actual existence of a creature, yes, low-level monsters can be frightening. I once had some 1st level adventurers run into a single lemure. Granted, it had a modded ability to induce a state of fear and despair (though the effect was not utterly catastrophic, -1 to attack rolls and Charisma saves), but it was still a rather weak 2 HD monster.

And yet, they were more frightened by that one roughly manshaped misshapen blob of flesh than they would be, many levels later, by the vastly more powerful erinyes. Which feels right to me.

[Rikitiki]

Hmm...not sure if this qualifies, but it feels right:

Some of you may remember the 1E AD&D module "Treasure Hunt", yes?

This was a "zero level" adventure -- characters were just plain folk who

became 1st level adventurers through their actions in surviving the module.

I liked it so much I put together two of my own 'zero level' adventures -- in one the village got over-run by Kobolds and they were the only survivors, having hidden under the tavern trap-door; the adventure was to sneak out of town to the nearest place where they could tell others and seek help/asylum. In the 2nd, while at the grand opening food fest of the newly built temple, an earthquake seals them in and they have to exit via the underground catacombs/crypt.

In both, weapons, supplies, pretty-much-everything was limited unless or until they could steal from the enemy those items they needed.
Added note: for anyone wanting to get a group interested/excited about C&C, whether newbies or other-game-players, having a 'zero level' adventure to play an introduce the concepts is and excellent and fun way to do so.

[Omote]

I'm with Rikitiki. I do like the 0-level adventures as a lead up to 1st level PCs. I've done this with C&C (rules for 0-level PCs in my sig below somehwere). It is tough, but pretty fun I think.

~O
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[serleran]

One of my most favorite games involved every player having a dwarf character. We did a lot of dungeon delving in that one.
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