thabo
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Posts: 2
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Post by thabo on Jan 28, 2005 23:46:13 GMT -5
I am a DM who has a group of adventurers in the generic DnD world about to travel to the Nyambe continent. Does anyone have any experience or advice about doing this sort of adventure?
The back story is that I have a group that has been playing in the regular DnD campaign, but I really wanted to try out the Nyambe setting. The plan that I have at the moment is that a trading group recently discovered the continent and is establishing a trade route. The characters will be hired to travel in search of an expedition that the trading group sent to deeper Nyambe that has not returned. The usually secretive trading group is looking to hire in this case because so much of their labor is being focused on the work of establishing the trading routes (setting up company warehouses and stores at both ends, acquiring new ships better suited to the journey, etc.)
The missing expedition will have, in their ignorance of the new lands, stumbled into something dark and nasty that has wiped them out/transformed them to one of the continents neat array of undead.
The party is currently a 6 member party of about 5th level.
Anyway, as a basic method for bringing a regular DnD adventuring party to the setting, does this premiss work? Any suggestions for details for the adventure? I'll try to write up the adventure in an accessible format to provide as a guide for other DMs.
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Post by Randy Shipp on Jan 31, 2005 9:38:59 GMT -5
That sounds fine to me. There are just a few things that will need to be kept in mind:
- the language barrier. Unless this trading company has been doing business for some length of time, it's unlikely that the Nyambans will speak any Common at all. Just getting basic communications down (such as "I'm not here to hurt you; please don't hurt me") might prove difficult. Magic can obviously help here.
- Armor issues. If they're in a part of the continent that's hot enough, there will be the heat exhaustion rules to contend with. And, sadly, if they strip off their armor, they'll be sad that all the natives tend to have the Sanguar feat, and they don't. Perhaps there's a reason the first expedition perished? ;-) Could be fun...
- Be sure to have a look through the cultures...the one that has already traded with the "Near East" and "Far East" might be useful gateways...
Just a few thoughts. If your PCs are ever in Shombe-land, give me a call; I have a nice entare they can meet, and a wandering stranger who might not be what he appears... hehe
Randy...
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Post by Nyambefan on Jan 31, 2005 11:32:38 GMT -5
Great potential for a very fun campaign.
The company will have to get interpreters or use magic. Note that wizards will be treated as Mchawi.
Hmm...sleeping evil? Samat? an Mchawi wizard?
Randy - would you be willing to post the nice entare and the old man? It would be fun to have som NPCs that people could download and use.
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thabo
New Member
Posts: 2
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Post by thabo on Jan 31, 2005 11:47:09 GMT -5
To facilitate things, I was going to give each character a bracelet of kordo speaking. It didn't seem like a fun game to make the language barrier difficult to surpass.
The armor issue will likely be a problem, but they will discover that one their own.
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Post by Randy Shipp on Feb 3, 2005 10:09:30 GMT -5
Randy - would you be willing to post the nice entare and the old man? It would be fun to have som NPCs that people could download and use. Well, normally, yes, I'd love to contribute something to your wonderful site. (By the way, if I haven't ever said so, thank you very much for putting this together...I check the forum every day, and I hope to be back in Nyambe soon!) But the truth is that I've never worked up stats for either of these NPCs. Chitendu, the stranger whom my players encountered in Shombe-land, will certainly need stats soon in my game, as I start to try to nail just exactly what he's capable of doing. Or, now that I think about it, there's really no harm in just "winging it" with him...unless there were a direct confrontation between the PCs and him, I don't think I'd even need to know what level he is. If that conflict ever looked likely, I could always work up something then, nailing down his level, etc. If you think it would be valuable, I could just post a quick synopsis of who he is in my game, and what it is that he's up to... As for the entare, well I'm sorry to say that it's more of the same. I'm fairly certain I used the book stats for a basic entare during the party's very unsuccessful scuffle during their coming-of-age ordeal. I described a characteristic dark patch of fur down the chest (so that I could have them meet up with this particular entare again someday), but didn't do anything special with him in d20 terms. Sorry to be of so little help. Again, I'm happy to discuss my story thoughts with others, if that'd help them kickstart their own plans. Randy... |
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Post by Randy Shipp on Feb 3, 2005 10:26:11 GMT -5
To facilitate things, I was going to give each character a bracelet of kordo speaking. It didn't seem like a fun game to make the language barrier difficult to surpass. The armor issue will likely be a problem, but they will discover that one their own. It's just my personal style, but I'd avoid "giving" them any such thing. I'd consider two different approaches to solving the language probem. Here they are, in order of my preference: 1) Take the "13th Warrior" approach: In the movie, The 13th Warrior, Antonio Banderas's Arab is stranded among Norsemen whose language is utterly unknown to him. Put bluntly, this must have been a pregnant dog. Instead of spending a ton of screen time having people talk with hand signals and grunts, the filmmakers chose to have a campfire scene during which we're supposed to get the idea that months pass. During that time, we're supposed to see, the Arab learns how to speak their language well enough. A few thoughts: the Arab was a diplomat, or some other kind of learned man, so it's not implausible that he could figure out a new language within the space of several months of solid study...at least enough to get by, but probably not enough to compose stirring poetry. If one or more of your characters is already a linguist (a wizard, perhaps, who has already mastered several other languages), then you can have them pick up the language more quickly, perhaps greatly aided by magic. Encourage the others to talk through him, though make it clear at first that he's still not sure he's catching every nuance of the warning of the chieftain (or was that a threat? ...) Basically, though, this approach would entail doing an adventure or two where the party completely cannot verbally communicate with the natives without magic (and cannot communicate *with* magic without arousing serious suspicion...something they should not be able to predict...hijinks ensue!), followed by a GM pronouncement of something like "...after rescuing the chieftain's daughter from the clutches of the River Demons, you are shown to your own hut, and proceed to spend the next few months resting, training, and studying the culture and language of these, your strange hosts, never quite shaking the feeling that they're studying you just as much as you are observing them..." (here you can encourage them to sock away a skill point or two in a language skill), then an adventure or two where they can speak in Tarzan-ese. From there, you tailor your descriptions of others' speech to basically how high their language skills are. 2) If you feel it's better to have them use some sort of magic item, I certainly wouldn't just give it to them. I'd make it the prize for some quest or another, although I'm not sure how they'd learn where to find such a thing when they can't hear the local legends, etc. Basically, I wouldn't use such a device, as I think it makes the setting less mysterious. I would think that the main reason for bringing a party from a more familiar setting to Nyambe would be to shake things up and make everything feel a little different. I think learning the language and culture are key to that, even if the "messy bits" are glossed over with a little bit of GM hand-waving between adventures. Just my thoughts. Randy... |
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Post by Nyambefan on Mar 6, 2005 22:35:37 GMT -5
But the truth is that I've never worked up stats for either of these NPCs. Chitendu, the stranger whom my players encountered in Shombe-land, will certainly need stats soon in my game, as I start to try to nail just exactly what he's capable of doing. Or, now that I think about it, there's really no harm in just "winging it" with him...unless there were a direct confrontation between the PCs and him, I don't think I'd even need to know what level he is. If that conflict ever looked likely, I could always work up something then, nailing down his level, etc. If you think it would be valuable, I could just post a quick synopsis of who he is in my game, and what it is that he's up to... Randy... Please post any descriptions, mannerisms, plots, schemes, descriptions, backgrounds and goals you have for these NPCs. I am sure anything you post will be useful to someone here! Heck, even a description of where they live and what their daily routine consists of would be useful. |
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Post by icarus on Oct 25, 2012 23:06:07 GMT -5
Alright ... so ... here's the thing: I know this forum is not recent, but, I'm trying to see if anyone out there would still get notification emails from the forum.
I'm a Greyhawk DM who's played in Greyhawk since the 80s. I love the continent of Hepmonaland (also called Melavi), and I think that Nyambe is a great resource for that. So, I'm interested in just talking to folks about this type of setting - whether in Greyhawk or Norhtern Crown, or in a homebrew campaign.
This particuar topic about the languages and differences that people of Oerth (or whatever world) would have to face, in phenomenally fascinating. Mostly because that's the kind of thing that is often difficult to remember as a DM - the DM has the job of conveying every bit of setting "feel" to the players.
Anywho ... if anyone actually sees this, feel free to post back, send me a Private Message here, or to email me at KristophNolen(at)yahoo(dot)com. Would love to talk about the campaign with other Nyambe fans!
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Post by bigmac on Nov 9, 2014 5:22:47 GMT -5
I'm a Greyhawk DM who's played in Greyhawk since the 80s. I love the continent of Hepmonaland (also called Melavi), and I think that Nyambe is a great resource for that. So, I'm interested in just talking to folks about this type of setting - whether in Greyhawk or Norhtern Crown, or in a homebrew campaign. This particuar topic about the languages and differences that people of Oerth (or whatever world) would have to face, in phenomenally fascinating. Mostly because that's the kind of thing that is often difficult to remember as a DM - the DM has the job of conveying every bit of setting "feel" to the players. Icarus has written about how he has moved the locations from Nyambe onto Hepmonaland elsewhere. You can read about what he has done in a thread called [Hepmonaland][Nyambe] Hepmonaland-Nyambe map conversion at the Greyhawk forum at The Piazza. |
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