Adventurers from Other Settings

[dominicreynolds@dial.pip]

It has often been commented at our ADD sessions that if our
established Greyhawk characters stumbled into Birthright they
could mess the setting up fairly quickly.

Even for instance the horde of one character, who carries it
in gems and jewelry would be worth 75gb or so. This character
would give the money to a good cause on a whim, but would not
pay taxes to enter a city legally.

Oh one of the characters has a pet Lizard, which survives on
eating and digesting gems. That could be a problem if the
creature finds its way into a nations treasury, or gets near
the Imperial Crown. It has chameleon like abilities, and the
mage has case many magic mouths on it saying "Im going to eat
a gem" in a squeaky voice.

Now has anyone ever put a group of adventurers from another
game world into their on going birthright setting, and regretted
it. What were the consequences ?








Birthright

Heroic Characters, Moderate Level, Low Magic


Greyhawk

Reluctant Heros (looters), High Level, Powerful Magic


Dom
- ---

mailto:dominicreynolds@dial.pipex.com or mailto:dominicr@bigfoot.com

[Christopher Kira]

> Now has anyone ever put a group of adventurers from another game world
into their on going birthright setting, and regretted it. What were the
consequences ?

Well, my Aebrynis is a bit odd in my weekly game, as it has two sides... one
is Cerilia and surrounding area, the other is called Casryn. Casryn is a
magic rich area. Basically, it is influenced by a different set of dieties,
who had a battle similar to Deismaar (the theme is "history repeats
itself"). There are no blood powers on the other land. The gods of Cerilia
and the gods of Casryn agreed not to interact a great deal, so as to avoid a
deadly war of the gods, or a war of their followers.

The reason I did this was to suit my players (who really were uneaasy about
Cerilia and BR): Feel like a magic rich arena? Take the 18 month sailing
trip to Casryn (It's a BIG world)... feel like intrigue? Stay on Cerilia.
It actually works out, because the people tend to stay in Cerilia. The magic
items don't play much of a role.... and there is a reason. The PCs don't
like to attract attention to themselves. Awnshegh tend to like magic items
and have nasty habits of sending assassins and such to the PC's lands in
Cerilia. You can't be awake all the time, so you can be in big trouble.

Some of the characters came from Sigil (Planescape for those who don't
know). Effectively, they became powerless if they were mages, for they were
unblooded. They had to adapt. Both continental regions are still ruled by
the power of mebhaighl (which works in different ways on Casryn... and
that's WAY too long to explain right now). Paladins and priests were cut
off from their dieties. The only really unaffected people at first were
thieves and fighters, and the thieves soon found guild running was very
difficult, and fighters never became a problem.

Keep in mind, outside magic items may be ruled not to work on Aebrynis.
They have no "link" to the mebhaighl, and I ruled that a great deal of them
were weakened or neutralized by the power of mebhaighl.

Anyways, it's not been a bad deal. It satisfied both sides of the group
(those for BR, and those against), and it leads to interesting plots. But
obviously, it's not for everyone.

CK

[Craig Greeson]

Chris Kira, is there any possibility info. on your other Aebrynnis
continent is posted on a webpage? I'd love to take a look at it. I always
enjoy tinkering with the idea of continents across the sea.

I had a player who was an Oriental Adventures fan. We placed Kara-Tur, the
Asian-based setting TSR published years ago, far to the west of Cerilia.
The players occasionally traveled between the 2 continents, although it was
a very long journey and the campaign was mostly set in Cerilia. The OA
character (a kensai, which is basically a fighter who becomes a master with
one weapon) was the small groups best fighter, but the fact he came from
what was essentially a "different world" was not really the reason.

I don't think characters from other worlds necessarily disrupt a BR
campaign. As long as you keep the same DMing style from one world to the
next, it's not all that much different IMO. A Greyhawk character with 75GB
that he carries around with him (portable hole, perhaps?) can probably buy
his way to power pretty quickly, but you can just as easily play a campaign
in which normal BR characters become supremely rich with just a little
abuse of trade routes. I never wanted my campaign to have characters from
other planets, but I thought the oriental character mentioned above and a
mysterious wizard from another land across the sea were a lot of fun in the
campaign.

Regards
Craig

Christopher Kira wrote:
>
> > Now has anyone ever put a group of adventurers from another game world
> into their on going birthright setting, and regretted it. What were the
> consequences ?
>
> Well, my Aebrynis is a bit odd in my weekly game, as it has two sides... one
> is Cerilia and surrounding area, the other is called Casryn. Casryn is a
> magic rich area. Basically, it is influenced by a different set of dieties,
> who had a battle similar to Deismaar (the theme is "history repeats
> itself"). There are no blood powers on the other land. The gods of Cerilia
> and the gods of Casryn agreed not to interact a great deal, so as to avoid a
> deadly war of the gods, or a war of their followers.

[Alaric]

> Now has anyone ever put a group of adventurers from another
> game world into their on going birthright setting, and regretted
> it. What were the consequences ?
>

OK, I guess I'm going to have to put in my two copper pieces on this
one. I ran a campaign a few years back in a custom game world that
resembled Forgotten Realms in statistics (that is, gods and characters
tended towards the powerful). The character in question was a priest,
and made it to 10th level before the campaign ended due to entropy.
So when that same player came back into my
Birthright campaign (he'd played a thief regent who became an awnshegh
and a Great Captain who became [self proclaimed] Emperor of Northern
Aduria, but left for a while after that), I let him import his Priest
from the other world into my campaign...ok, before you guys lynch my,
here's the story:

This character was Very influential back on his world, could have been
High Priest if he hadn't been so much of a crusader. He was a priest of
a war god, so no one in the priesthood really wanted the position
anyway. Either way, Kage (this guy's god) was in the process of testing
Janos (the character) to see if he had what it takes to serve him on a
higher level (as a proxy or chancellor or even maybe a Godling), but he
needed to see if Janos had the leadership skills to be able to go to a
world in his name and start up a church. Kage made a deal with Haelyn
(we were never sure if maybe Kage was just another aspect of Cuireacen,
that is I never decided, but it was a possibility) that allowed Janos to
come to Aebrynis as long as he served Haelyn for his time there. (All
Janos was told was something about his God losing a bet to another God,
and his service was the loss). This all worked out great for the
Cerilian deities, because this upcoming crisis is one of those 'testing
the worth of humanity' sort of things, and they were restricted from
aiding the people of Cerilia..this allowed them to slip in a powerful
and charismatic leader under the guise of an accident (or as a
loophole...now it may sound as if I have all the Gods acting in concert
here, that's not true, but since the PCs only see their final decisions,
then that's all that matters, right?).

To get back to my story, Janos came to Cerilia and quickly took over
Haelyn's Aegis (due to clever use of divine revelations and the fact
that he really Did have Haelyn's blessing in the matter...and a little
retroactive rewriting of holy scripture to talk about a 'Savior' to come
from another world in a time of great need) in Mhoried, where the party
was based at the time. Basically all the problems he had were these:
Priests in Birthright are far less powerful than those in FR (and his
world), so he often (as a character) had a problem about why Haelyn
wouldn't aid his followers as much as his God had, was it that he cared
less? (his Gods had restricted themselves from putting in an appearance
on that game world as well, but not to the same degree). Also, the low
magic level of the world meant that when he sat down and re-created some
of the magic items and spells that were common on his world (or
described them to mages or priests, he was a scholar of that sort of
thing), the power level went up a notch, but that never bothered me
much. The only real problem I had was when he finally discovered a way
to open up a portal to his home world again, and let some of his past
companions through (he had at one point formed an adventuring guild).
Obviously he didn't get any farther with his plans than I let him, but I
still had to stay one step ahead of him to keep him from harming my
plots. Sorry to ramble so much, but I felt you had to have the
background.

Final opinion: if you're willing to change the feel of your Birthright
Campaign (we're pretty much almost not playing Birthright any more),
then adding powerful players from drastically different settings can
be...interesting. Otherwise, stick to importing only low-powered
characters or not doing it at all. Other option is to make sure that
your new characters aren't too power-hungry, but that's more work than a
DM should need to add to himself. Just my opinion, of course.

Thx,
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[geeman]

dominicreynolds@dial.pipex.com wrote:

> Now has anyone ever put a group of adventurers from another
> game world into their on going birthright setting, and regretted
> it. What were the consequences ?

Actually, I have and I don't regret it. In fact, it turned out to be a lot of
fun. This happened just recently. For those of you who are fans of diabolical
DMing, I think you'll get a kick out of this....

First of all, I wasn't the DM, but the PC. When I picked up BR and began
running it as a world, I told my players right up front: No cross-overs. The
low-level nature of the setting spooked me, and I was concerned about the
effects of high-level non-BR PCs on Cerilia. Despite the fact that there are
some real baddies in the published materials, a casual glance at the setting
led me to believe that an established set of FR or GH PCs would easily upset
the balance of the campaign. I mean, the same party that had gone from G1-Q1
would wreak havoc on Cerlia, right? No way, I ruled. Keep 'em out! I was
surprised when a friend of mine had Maglor arrive on Cerilia.

By way of background, I should mention that Maglor is one of my first
characters. I started playing him when I was fourteen, which means if Maglor
was "born" on the day I first played him, he would be old enough to vote right
now. He is also a bard. Now, anyone familiar with the old style bards in the
1st ed. PHB knows what a pain in the butt that was. You had to start as a
fighter, get to 5th to 7th level, dual class to thief in which you could rise
to 8th level, and then become a bard. It was amazingly time consuming. That
was how Maglor started out. As the character class changed with additional
materials, the PC was translated, but my DM was kind enough to allow me to keep
all the levels I had worked for over the years. [OK, I insisted. As a player
there was just no way I was going to let all that work and RPing get tossed.
Besides, having been a 7th level fighter doesn't really make a 16th level bard
all that much more powerful. (Maglor's thief class disappeared with the
release of 2nd ed. which makes bards all part of the "Rogue" class, and does
not allow dual classing within the same group.)]

To make matters worse, about two years ago (in real time) Maglor dual classed
again to a druid, and he's now 12th level....

Before everyone out there starts screaming "Munchkin!" at me, I feel the need
to reiterate that the PC is almost 20 years old, and I played him nearly once a
week for YEARS. This was all before story awards too, kids, so the only XP I
got was for killing things and stealing their stuff, which Maglor did not
really do a lot of. He was much more the lover than the fighter, and spent
most of his time exploring new worlds. Maglor was a planewalker before we knew
what planewalkers were. He started out on Greyhawk, the only TSR world at the
time and, using a Well of Many Worlds (with a Ring of Feather Falling...) and a
Cubic Gate, Maglor would dive into new Prime Material worlds and planes. Often
these were worlds that we (rather, the DM) had encountered in fantasy
literature. Maglor has been to and lived on Gor, Barsoom, Pern and Xanth to
name a few. He's met Conan (whom he found VERY tiresome) Elric (too
depressing) and a person that I'm still not sure was Gandalf or not. He's been
to about all the published AD&D worlds, though a few have skipped by him in
recent years. Plus, he's been to modern day Earth--well, back in the 80's--the
"Western" setting, Boot Hill, and a few sci-fi "dimensions". I mentioned the
modules G1-Q1 a minute ago. Well, Maglor had been on those adventures. How
scary could Cerilia be after the Demonweb Pits, hm? You know the old cover of
the 1st ed. DMG with the guys fighting the Lord of Efreet in the City of
Brass? Maglor did that. (With a party of other high level PCs, of course.)

So, I suppose you can see why I was surprised that the DM would put him on
Cerilia, huh? A 7th/16th/11th level fighter/bard/druid on Cerilia? "Man, I'll
end up runnin' the place," I thought. The DM had made a big mistake, opening
THAT floodgate, and I was pretty prepared to dive through it. It only took
three rulings, however, to totally throw a wrench in that plan..

1. Spells, part 1. Maglor's bardly spellcasting abilities were reduced to
those available to BR bards. Illusion, divination and charm spheres.
(Similarly, I later ruled that a non-BR mage could only cast spells available
to the Magician class.)

2. Spells, part 2: No more praying for spells from his non-BR god because he
can't get through to him. In order to rememorize spells he had to leave
Cerilia, which was a problem because:

3. Magic items. Now, this next bit was a really good idea, and I immediately
stole it. Only magic items manufactured on Aebrynis have any powers there.
The rationale is quiet simple; only items manufactured by natives have the
connection to the magical nature of the world because they get it from their
creator. This was particularly a problem for Maglor because.... the Cubic Gate
no longer worked! That's right. He was STUCK there! He had to enlist the aid
of the Swan Mage in order to get home (Maglor arrived on the Min Dhousai/Magian
border--I'm pretty sure just so the DM could have him face a few of the
Magian's riders to make me think he was back on Middle Earth. A plan that
actually worked for a while....) and the old gal was pretty much immune to his
charming ways and boyish grin too.

Anyway, I ran a similar adventure for a party of non-BR generated characters
about a month later and it went just fine. It was actually a pretty good way
deal with high level PCs and all the magic items they rely on. I highly
recommend it. You get two things right up front.

1. You strip PCs of their magic items, so you can challenge even high-level
PCs.

2. You give them a really good reason to adventure... so they can get the #@($
out of there!

About the only problem I think you might have is if you let one of these non-BR
PCs get ahold of a bloodline, but that shouldn't be a problem if you have
something in mind for it. There really is a lot of potential for high-level
adventuring on Cerilia, so I think you could have a blast bringing in PCs from
other worlds with the above modifications.

Laters,
Gary
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[Pieter Sleijpen]

> Now has anyone ever put a group of adventurers from another
> game world into their on going birthright setting, and regretted
> it. What were the consequences ?
>

Well, I am currently running an adventure from Middle Earth Roleplaying
Game. Rest assured, I use AD&D and not MERP ;-)

Anyway, one of the PC's friends, prince Malik was abducted by the gnolls
of the Black Spear Tribes during an invasion from said gnolls into
Djafra. Due to events Malik also happens to be the only heir. Anyway,
the PC's have very strong reasons (love is one among them) to free him
and have followed his trail streight into Ras Ghul. This gave me a
problem, since I do not really like designing huge dungeons. So I went
into my local game shop and started looking into all available game
material for a nice large dungeon that I could use with little change.
There I found "Dol Guldor" and I must say it is absolutely perfect.
There we have a large dungeon, inhabited by a powerful sorcerer
(Necromancer --> The Ghul Lord) who wants to keep his real power secret
at the moment, because he is not ready yet for a full fledged attack.

Anyway, with the help of a powerful illusionist the PC's have finally
entered the place. Looking like orogs they are wondering around in the
Web and I am greatly enjoying it. The only problem is that they do not
speak orogs :-) Already caused some problems, wonder what will happen if
they get into the central fortress :-)

The included adventure "Into Darkness" gave me some great idea's and I
even got the idea for some minor new magical items.

Pieter Sleijpen
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