Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 143 - Inspiration from Other Systems

Episode Date: September 25, 2022

There are a huge number of people and companies producing a plethora of RPG content for various systems out there.  Some of this content makes for greart adventures, location ideas, quest hubs, monsters, NPCs, and anything else you need for your game system.  So what if some of it is written for a game you don't play. In this episode I encourage you to look at other game system content to find what makes sense for you to use in your system. #DungeonsandDragons #DnD #Pathfinder #DMTips Resources: www.drivethrurpg.com www.dmsguild.com www.pathfinderinfinite.com  

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. You can use these materials in multiple ways. For example, you can get ideas for locations and monsters and game mechanics and even adventures from books that weren't even written for your game system. May not even have been written in this decade. Thank you everyone for tuning in to the Taking 20 podcast, episode 143. This week gaining inspiration from other game systems. I'd like to thank this week's sponsor, soccer, or football for my international listeners.

When it comes to football matches, sure, some teams win, some teams draw, but every player suffers the agony of defeat. If you'd like to sponsor a giveaway for a future episode of this podcast, please let me know. I mean, it doesn't matter whether we're talking a gift certificate, acrylic dice, e-book, or a small island somewhere where we can all get together and game. I have a possible sponsor for episode 150,

but that doesn't mean we can't have more than one, because I would love to be able to do a massive giveaway for that episode. Now, this episode is all about gaining inspiration from other game systems. Specifically, I'm going to talk about some of the latest books released by Paizo. The Book of the Dead, The Dark Archive, and Travel Guide. Now starting off, have you ever seen the movie Ratatouille? I have an unabashed love for that film. Beautiful animation, the voice talents of Patton Oswalt, Sir Ian Holm, Brian Dennehy, Peter O'Toole, Janine Garofalo. Not to mention the fact that the movie accurately shows how a fine kitchen operates and has true-to-life representation of cooking techniques and challenges.

If you look closely, if you watch the movie, you can actually see realistic scars on furniture and even on people's arms and sleeves. The reason I mention that movie is that one of the core precepts of the movie is the title of the book written by Chef Gusteau that anyone can cook, and that good ideas can come from anywhere. This is definitely true for RPGs. If you've listened to me for any period of time, you know that one of my core tenets is borrow, borrow, borrow, and steal, steal, steal. There are so many game systems out there. I mean, all the different editions of Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Starfinder, Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, Vampire the Masquerade, Blades in the Dark, Star Wars, Cyberpunk, Warhammer,

and even smaller rules-light RPGs like Fiasco and Goblin Quest and Dread and Mouse Guard. The list goes on and on and on, and I could fill up the episode just listing examples. The sheer number of rulebooks, adventures, materials, and supplements for these many game systems is staggering. As of this recording, 5th edition alone has 7 preview adventures, 10 core and supplemental rulebooks with 2 more planned, 8 campaign guides, 14 adventures with 2 more planned, and I'm not even counting the PDF, print-on-demand, and other online resources that are available. party products from the likes of, I don't know, Matt Colville, Matthew Mercer, Cobalt Press, Green Ronin, Winghorn Press, Frog God Games, Dice Geeks, so many, many, many, many others. These products include new classes, new game mechanics, and new adventures and even new monsters. A lot of this material is available for purchase on websites like Dungeon Masters Guild, Pathfinder Infinite, and DriveThruRPG. You know, you may be like a person who's blindfolded and dumped in a car.

You may be wondering where I'm going with this. Wait, no, not dumped in a trunk. No, we're not kidnapping you. No, it's supposed to be a happy surprise. You know, like a birthday party with surprise cookies to eat. Not like, I don't know, surprise cookies in your butt. You know what? I'm going to start this all over again. Where I'm going with this is that products, not even written for your game system, have a ton of ideas that you can use in your game and make it better. You can use these materials in multiple ways. For example, you can get ideas for locations and monsters and game mechanics and even adventures from books that weren't even written for your game system. May not even have been written in this decade. Before I go into any details, let me declare up front that none of these product owners that I'm going to mention have

asked me to talk about their products. They're convenient items available on my bookshelf right over there, and I was not supplied any of those books that I'm going to mention for free, nor am I getting any sort of compensation for mentioning them. They happen to be handy books that I can use as an example for this episode. Now suppose you need an idea for a location. Let's say you're running a fifth edition campaign and you need a remote logging town where criminals and those in debt and people on the run from their past can make a hard but honest living for themselves. In the Paizo product, Towns of the Inner Seas, the town of Falcon's Hollow, which details important NPCs, potential adventurers, town locations like Roots and Remedies,

the shipping town of Diobull and the desert town of Solku and so many others. Sure, the stat blocks that are there are for Pathfinder 1e, but the conversion to other game systems is really, really easy to do and a well-worn path. Or let's say you're running a Starfinder campaign. You need an idea for a hostile, remote prison like a Russian Gulag, but you don't have a lot of detail or maps on hand. How about, I don't know, Revel's End, the frozen prison built into a cliffside and detailed in Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frostmaiden, pages 154 through 161. Change the mooring dock to a landing pad, give it a laser turret of 10, and boom! You got yourself a maximum security prison for the galaxy's most dastardly bastards.

So even just stopping at locations, you can see you can very easily modify some of the material that's produced for other game systems or third-party products for your particular adventure and your particular game system. Okay, another idea. Let's say you need ideas for monsters. Let's move to a smaller RPG like Mutant Year Zero. It's a tabletop RPG that occurs years after humans pretty much went extinct, with survivors mostly becoming mutants of one type or another. There's a book right over there I have on my shelf called Gen Lab Alpha that talks about animals that have been mutated by toxic waste, radiation, and other factors. I've lifted monster mechanics wholesale out of that book

and modified both 5e and Pathfinder creatures to give, for example, minotaurs squid-like tentacles with reach, or dogs' thumbs and the ability to use primitive tools, or one of my favorites, there was a mutated gnoll tribe that had been exposed to raw fey magic, and so they emitted spores whenever they were damaged. The spores provided partial concealment or poisonous to humanoids, but not this particular gnoll family. Does it take a little bit of work to convert stat blocks from one game system to another? Sure it does. But that doesn't mean you have to do a one-for-one conversion.

You can choose a theme or an idea of the stat block and treat the existing creature as a basis for something similar in your game. Again, borrow, borrow, borrow, steal, steal, steal. Okay, those are simple, Jeremy. What about game mechanics? Well, I'm glad you asked, person in my head. I've mentioned before that I am running a pirate campaign, originally written for Pathfinder 1st Edition, called Skull and Shackles. I love the theme, I love the setting, I love the mysteries

that'll be discovered, and the sandbox nature of the adventure where the PCs can become traders, slavers, bounty hunters, or traditional take-everything-and-give-nothing-back pirates. As part of the adventure path, Paizo built a ship combat system that, not to put too crass of a point on it, sucks ought-to-you gas. As designed, the best strategy is always to shoot the rudder of the ship, whether it's a galleon or a rowboat, or anything in between. It seemed unsatisfying, and greatly minimized the character's impact on combat and being on the ship in the first place. Luckily, Starfinder game system, also by Paizo, had a much more fleshed out ship combat

system. It just happened to be starships instead of sailing ships. So I spent a little bit of time and ported that system over to this game that I'm running. It took a few hours and a couple sample ship combats to test it, but I think it's going to work out much better, and it gives the players much more strategic decisions to make rather than just the one presented in the adventure path. Using that system makes the game better. It makes the game more strategic. It makes the players feel like that they are having much more of an impact on the game rather than just being along for the ride until the ships crash together. Another game mechanic that you can borrow, for example, back in episode 45, I talked about the Minions system from 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons.

And I know 4E gets a lot of shit from a lot of players, but they had some decent ideas buried in that game system. The Minions system makes characters feel like badasses, and it isn't difficult for DMs to run, so it's a win-win. Go give that episode a listen, by the way, for more detail on that. But in short, you can bring that idea into your game system to make the characters feel like they are mowing down low-level baddie troops like wheat in a field. Another thing you can borrow from other game systems is ideas for adventures. Suppose I

were running a 5th edition adventure and I was looking for ideas. I pick up a Delta Green adventure called Last Things Last. Now, because Delta Green adventures are best played when you know nothing about what's coming, I'm not going into any detail about the adventure itself. The basic premise is this. A retired member of a secret society died, and the party is charged with making sure that they didn't leave any clues behind about the secret society's existence. Come to find out, the retired agent also had a remote cabin in the woods, and with just that premise, I would imagine many of my wonderful GMs out there are already starting to think about ideas of where that adventure could go, with double crosses and stolen artifacts and

shared loyalty and backstabbing and all sorts of fun like that. Just by taking the premise, by reading the back cover of an adventure, you could actually get ideas for your own adventures that you want to design down the road. Another adventure that I always liked was Where the Machines Wait by Monty Cook Games. It's a 5e compatible adventure, but I might be running my Pathfinder group through it before too long.

The conversion from 5e to Pathfinder is well understood and all sorts of websites and third-party products that can help you convert locations and monsters even on the fly. So that being said, it's very easy to borrow ideas from other game systems. But let me give you some really concrete examples from some recently released Pathfinder books. And again, I have no skin in this game. You can buy these books, not buy these books. I don't care. I'm not getting paid to pimp these products. But I want to give you an example from some recently released books. But Jeremy, I don't play Pathfinder 2E and Pathfinder 2E sucks. Okay, first of all, no it doesn't. It's different. And different does not mean bad. It just means different. I'll bet if you got in with the right group, you'd have a blast playing Pathfinder 2E.

You could say the same thing about, I don't know, Blades in the Dark, Worlds Without Number, Umlaut, Dread. That's exactly the point of this episode. Don't shit on something because it's different. Steal the good ideas and use them in your game. Anyway, back to the Pathfinder 2 ebooks. Don't construe this segment as a review of those books. That's not what I do in this podcast. I don't review shit. Except for I talked a little bit about Spelljammer when it was released, but that wasn't really a book review so much as a discussion of a theme. Different is not automatically bad. I don't do book reviews, at least not often anyway. First of all, let's talk about a book, The Pathfinder 2E, Lost Omens Travel Guide. Even if you don't play 2E and you never plan on playing 2E, there's some great world-building information in this book. It's relatively short,

there's only 127 pages here, but there is a ton of detail packed into the book. I am fairly confident that any page could give you inspiration, even if you never played it. You know what? I tell you what. I'm going to roll a D100 and see what's on that page. That's how confident I am that you're going to find good information for your game system, no matter what it is. God, I hope this works. 65. Okay, let me turn the page. 65 here, and what do we got? Ooh! Crimes and Punishments. If you're in a civilization, it lists some common punishments for crimes,

such as extortion and robbery and assault, battery, even minor and major unwanted enchantments. If I go one page over, there are eight wanted posters that lists eight different people who have a certain reward or bounty for them, the crimes that they've committed, and maybe their known aliases. So, come on, who wouldn't love a good bounty hunter adventure? Especially in a large city. I don't know, people are helping these wanted persons hide from authorities. If that's not enough detail for a criminal chase

adventure, you can always go right over here to my bookshelf and get Wanted Dead or Alive. It's a third-party book by Adam Hancock, Anne Gregerson, and others for additional details and adventure ideas for doing a bounty hunt. Plenty of ideas in this book for cultures, adventures, and rewards throughout the travel guide, but we're not done. Let's go to another book that they released called The Dark Archive. Now, this is a book all about the paranormal, the weird, the unexplained. Even if you're running a game using 5th edition, Shadowrun, or Worlds Without Number, it's chock full of ideas for adventures and locations with an unusual twist.

Ooh, this would be a great source book for ideas for Delta Green. Hmm. Okay. On page 73 of this book, there's a one-page description of a village where every birth there is a set of twins, sometimes identical, sometimes fraternal, but always two and always linked in some way, usually via dreams. Okay, creative GMs out there. linked in some way, usually via dreams. Okay, creative GMs out there, why would every birth be a set of twins? Is there an explanation that involves the shadow realm, the fae, a curse? You could build an entire adventure around this one idea. Oh, wait, the first single birth just happened in 200 years, and there's something off about the child. Go, go make that adventure. That sounds fun as hell. Let me know when you're done because I want to play in it. A few pages later in this

book is a secret society called the Way of the Kirin who believe that certain knowledge is dangerous and must be kept from the world. I mean, is there a method to their madness? Are they the unknowing arm of a powerful being secreting away artifacts for knowledge that could stop its return from beyond the veil? Go a few more pages down the line and 86 has a map of a full-blown opera house. Just looking at this makes me want to start an adventure with a murder at a theater. In the middle of the play, maybe the leading actor drops dead, whether the prop dagger turned out to be a real one, poison in the makeup that he was wearing, or maybe a small dart in his neck that can only have come from someone in the orchestra pit or backstage. Why them? Were

they the target, or is someone sending a message to the theater owner? Is there a jealous spouse involved? Gambling debt? And these are just ideas just from a map in a book. The book also contains deviant abilities that aren't spells but are manifestations from beyond. Using mirrors as portals to other planes, rules and examples of curses and packs with powerful creatures from the great beyond. That book is chock full of good ideas. And another creepy fun book that they just released is the Book of the Dead. It contains rules from running undead PCs,

a treatise of various undead like gravenights and Ghouls and what makes them tick, advanced and exceptional undead monsters, lich rituals, the mummification process, and ideas for lands ruled by the undead, where the living are ostracized, chattel, or far, far worse. far worse. And why did I talk about those two books with scary themes last? Because next month is Horror Month. Horror. Horror. Hit that last er pretty hard. Horror Month. I'm going to talk all month about running scary adventures and campaigns and talk about some scary topics, and I cannot wait. Look for that series starting next week. Friends, if you've listened this long, I have a challenge for you. At some point this week, I would like you to look online or go to a bookstore, your friendly local game store, and look at an RPG product that isn't necessarily made for the RPG you're playing or running, whether it's a third-party product or another major manufacturer. Glance through there, take a look at some of the ideas,

and see if there's some that you could steal and use in your adventure. If there's not a game store close to you, head to Dungeon Masters Guild or drive through RPG and check out some of the material there. There are, quite literally, thousands of creative minds out there creating content for game systems big and small. If you've listened to me for a while, you know I love getting good ideas wherever you can. Movies, books, TV series, and yes, other RPG systems. Just because a book isn't written for your game system doesn't mean you

can't use it in your game. If you find yourself coming back to looking at a particular source over and over again, purchase it, support the author, support the creator. Take a few minutes, though. Look at some of the great material that's out there and borrow the ideas that you would like. I'd be willing to bet you and your players would have fun doing it. If you liked the episode, please consider sharing it on IG, Twitter, Reddit, or other social media. It'll help me get the word out to others who may be looking for a podcast to learn more about tabletop RPGs.

By the way, tune in next week when we will begin Horror Month, where we'll be focusing on scary topics and running games with a horror theme. But before I go, I once again want to thank this week's sponsor, Soccer. If you find someone that you find attractive

and they're wearing oversized sticky gloves, they're probably a keeper. This has been episode 143, Finding Inspiration from Other Systems. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2022. References to game system content are copyrighted by their respective publishers.