Dungeon Crawl Classics: Fellowship of the Goose

    Hey Fellows of the Goose. I have got a Christmas present for you: I actually wrote Gildorel's background.
    I think it is even better than Clio's one!
    you can find it here
    http://uz.sns.it/~Psilvi/nav/junk/Gil_Background.pdf
    and I will also update it in obsidian. There are some blanks in the text (contries and cities), I kindly ask the DMs to help me fill those, thanks.


    Sorry if I won't be partecipating at the session on the 13th of Jan, but I am in Brussels for work on that day.
    Merry Xmas and happy new year. May the Goose be with you

    Hey, English gaming group. :)


    I want to steer our Dungeon Crawl Classics experience in a different direction:


    The point - for me - of adding an additional hit die was to make characters more robust so that players would not need to rely on two characters. Constantly splitting the party this way and that way and putting some players only in one of them is unmanageable and not in tune with the wish some of you expressed of fleshing out the characters. I don't want to constantly handle two separate groups anymore, the experience from the last sessions before the Dirty Dungeon show that it just produces a lot of weird stuff, like the two separate groups advancing in sight of each other.


    What I want to do instead is the following - each player picks one favorite character and sticks with him or her. The party is accompanied by some hirelings who are to be paid and learn the trade. They will help carry stuff and with other tasks, but they will not act as meatshields or human trap detectors. If a character actually dies, a hireling might step in so that the player is not an observer only. The remaining characters may stay in Cillamar and serve as a pool for replacement characters when needed.

    I apologize for the lenght of the following comment. What I am trying to express is complicated so it takes a bit of space. Thanks for understanding:


    Normally, I would very much approve this direction of roleplay for more than one reason. First, dealing with a huge bunch of characters makes the game itslef slower and messier, so it is technically challenging without adding interesting mechanics to the storytelling: it is almost as bad as having a huge group of players... ohman, did you every play with 14 pleayers? Worst experience of my life. Ahem. Another reason for supporting in general the single-character trend is that it allows the controlling player to focus on character detail, interplay and growth, ultimately leading to a character-driven storytelling (to make myself clear: the Song of Ice and Fire-way, or the Mass Effect-way of telling stories) in a roleplay experience. Resuming: one player to one character is a very meaningful way of doing things in my opinion, probably the best option for creating believable characters in a tabletop rolegame, as we ourselves proved in the Finding Redemption setting.


    That said, let me tell you that the idea of forcing this line of thinking NOW in the Fellowship of the Goose makes me sad. A lot. I guess it might work fairly well for those players who managed to dish out one 'story-main' character and one 'story-support' character (which is the case of Mattia, Thomas, and somehow Sebastian). It does not apply smooth for me (nor for Kasia I think), who made quite some effort in characterizing in detail two different individuals, giving them personality quirks to make them fairly distinct, and provided for both a (catchy?) background including a central conflict and an adventure-hanger. Walking this road will force me to throw away Gildorel (it is not that I really have a choice: it is Clio who bears the Goose of the Fellowship after all) before knowing if his art will become famous so he can show that a-hole of his former father who rockz! (even if that does not happen, at least he would like to find his sister Lori again, as you know). Should I also mention that Gil offers a possibility to introduce elements of political intrigue to the campaign, due to the occupation of his family? (Yes I know, I am the only player who wants more Political Intrigue and less Dungeon Crawl, I will democratically respect the will of the group regarding this issue). Even death would be better than disappearance for Gildorel (as long as it is a meaningful death: see below) in my opinion: so I advise the master(s) to try and kill Gil around every corner... sure as hell I will NOT be helping them though.


    The other thing that I would like to comment is the idea of henchmen/hirelings. I very much dislike this idea, for two reasons. First, It creates a bunch of pseudo-recurring characters which are totally uninteresting. You know how much i HATE nameless NPCs! These henchmen are not so far from those. It reminds me the concept of the Dwarves in the Hobbit book from Tolkien. Apart from Thorin, those dwarves SUCK SO MUCH as characters! They are practically identical apart from some minor detail that the reader forgets right-away... they are just action-fodder. Ohgosh, if we can help avoiding this, please let us do so. The second reason for not liking the hirelings is that it makes the death of a PC much less important. "Oh my PC died, who cares, there is a bunch of replacement seats!" WTF?!? The death of a PC should be a DRAMATIC moment (like Boromir, like Eddard Stark... hell, like Mordin Solus), it should be instrumental in the storyline, like a turning point. As I see it, PCs should NOT be easily replaced.


    Thanks for reading my ramblings and sorry for being so contrarian. I am just trying to make my point.

    Hello, PSI.


    I see where you are coming from.


    From my point of view there are two options: Two parties can follow different stories, even in different lands with a different direction. (Not in the same session, obviously.) Or there's a core party in one campaign and we swap characters out according to story line or player interest.


    Half of the players have written multi-page backgrounds for one of their characters - you did two. My problem with this development is that several characters develop more off-screen than in actual adventures because there's too many of them. There's a big amount of character background which is virtually guaranteed to not pervade the game very much because I have over a dozen characters to distribute screen time between on any given session.


    So, we could interchange two stories - the Fellowship campaign and a second one with two sets of protagonists. Or we could decide who stays at home and who goes on adventures on any return to town. From my point of view there's little chance that we see an unfolding of any character's story on-screen as long as I'm busy with juggling back and forth this horde. By holding on to what we have now we kind of give away the chance to actually tell these stories at the table together, don't you think?

    Oliver, thanks for listening to my pleas. :rolleyes:


    The solutions that you propose might actually work. Although I don't have a defined preference between the two of them. I am interested in hearing other players' opinions on the matter as well.

    Hey Guys and Girls,
    sadly, i write with bad news. I will be too caught up in writing my bachelor thesis the next few weeks. I need to put a hold on all my freetime activities until this is done. So for the next 3-4weeks I will not be able to join any roleplay. I'm very sorry about that and I will miss playing with you guys even if it only is for one month.
    Best Wishes,
    Endocrine