Help me make DARK SOULS ICRPG

#1

Hail!

I hope everyone’s groovy. It’s come to my attention that a bunch of my friends would be psyched for a Dark Souls tabletop campaign, so I’m trying to create one. ICRPG seems like a good choice to accommodate the changes.

Firstly, does anybody know of existing work on this subject? After the great Google Plus Implosion of '18, it’s hard to know what might be lurking in the places between.

Here are my thoughts so far:

  • Losing souls would be too punishing and too fiddly, especially with multiple players. Similar with respawning monsters; fighting the same bunch of dudes again and again would be a lot less fun on tabletop. No xp in ICRPG, so we could do away with souls all together.

  • Dying and respawning at bonfires though, I think that could work. ICRPG seems flexible and robust enough to accommodate that, I think it also suits the deadlier level of encounters.

  • ICRPG also fits because spells and abilities are granted by Loot, rather than being intrinsic to your character. Same as in Dark Souls.

  • So what’s the penalty for dying, if you don’t lose souls? Hollowing. With each death a character becomes more Hollow. The more Hollow you are, the harder the accompanying roll on the insanity table.

  • I want to adapt a lot of the detailed insanity system in Call of Cthulhu, to have interesting and dire consequences for repeatedly dying. It has rules for bouts of temporary insanity, acquiring phobias and manias, long-term madness… there’s like 20 pages on it.

  • Hollowing can be reversed by using Humanity, which is rare. Thus the plays might need to make a judgement on whom to make less crazy.

  • Exactly when the party respawns at the bonfire needs to be worked out. After one character dies? Does it have to be a TPK? If one character dies, could they fight on as a white phantom with reduced capability?

  • I think these choices could keep the tone of Dark Souls, without needing to adapt the mechanics that work better in a video game.

  • What do people think? Do you agree with my choices so far? What haven’t I thought of? What amazing suggestions do you have? What parts of the Dark Souls lore and universe would be most awesome to adapt?

Thanks for reading! Hope everyone’s good :slight_smile:
Marcus

ICRPG Destiny
#2

I like it, dude. I’d give it a play through. :herocoin:

I would keep the Souls and use them as a respawn currency. Maybe 1 Soul per death? Like you’re first one is free, but if you’ve died twice you have to “pay” 2 Souls to resurrect this time, 3 Souls next time. I don’t know, just spitballing.

Could also use the Ghost Mountain Soul Coin or a variation of it.

#3

I’ve been working on various ideas
You might like them you might not
The idea is you can pick and choose what you want to use.
You might find something that inspires .

#4

By all means share this doc about hope be great to get some feedback or anyway it can be improved.

#5

You should share this as a separate topic in the Resources section. Great ideas in there, man. :+1:

#6

I randomly posting it around mate.
Be great to get some feedback.
Its had a bit of overhaul in the layout
The tables section is all clearly labeld now.
For a B&W doc file its looking OK.
Eventually I want to make an actual product.
I’m hoping to get some friends to iluatrate it.
I will be adding more writing to it as and when.
The AE6 idea has been expanded heavily

#7

As far as making the play and difficulty reminiscent of DS, consider applying Blood and Snow. Particularly the SOAK rules and anything else you can think of to increase the deadliness.

#8

@JDStirling Thanks! I like souls as a respawn currency. Maybe if you can’t pay the toll, that’s when you get hollowed.

What’s a Ghost Mountain Soul Coin? Looks like it could be in the Worlds book, but I don’t have that yet.

@RawkinJoe Thanks, I’ll have a look through!

@GmGrizzly Nice idea. The survival aspect would be a departure from DS, but might be a good way to get that grimness in tabletop. It makes sense for magic to be rare too.

#10

@Ezzerharden Hey, thank you, just looking through there’s some great stuff in there. The best way I’ve seen so far of handling DS style death - I love the risk/reward of a dying character appearing as a powerful spectre for 1d4 rounds, and I like that they respawn the next day. They lose time, as well as humanity. I still feel like there could be the issue of one character dying and their player having nothing to do for a while, but I might have missed something.

#12

I would take special care when “converting” a video game to a tabletop game. There are things that work great, and other things that… Don’t.

I would distill Dark Souls into it’s core components, it’s theme, and it’s ways of achieving that theme. Central to all of them is isolation. You are alone in Dark Souls, a tiny creature set against this backdrop of (un)death. Your only interactions with other players is fleeting. They are either there to help you for a short period of time, fragments of themselves and unable to even speak to you, or to invade your world and slay you. Trying to translate that feeling of isolation into a TTRPG is difficult.

Secondarily, you have the extreme difficulty, dark themes, and combat focus. Most of this is easily enough done in a TTRPG. What about souls, revival, bonfires, etc. though? Those are things that are setting specific and unless you’re actually trying to recreate the setting itself too (which, I mean, more power to you), they won’t feel right in a TTRPG. Still, here is my take on it all:

  • Souls should represent something other than just XP/power. If you want to keep souls as a theme, consider the Ghost Mountain use of coins.
  • If you allow respawning at bonfires, there is NO danger to encounters. Only the illusion of it. You could allow bonfires to represent Safe Zones or allow them to restore their healing potions (Estus) there.
  • Spell system/loot/etc. works great, do eet
  • See above about dying, I don’t think there is any bite if you can die more than once. Insanity is totally cool though to accompany Hollowing. Each failed check makes the next ones more frequent or HARD.

In general, I definitely advocate not trying to simulate the Dark Souls mechanics of dying, respawning, etc. You really won’t get a lot of mileage out of that unless you’ve got some special players.

Either way, have fun with it! PRAISE THE SUN! :sunny::crossed_swords:

#13

Thanks for your thoughts!

In truth, I am trying to recreate the setting itself - I want to run an actual Dark Souls game. The Undead Curse, Artorias and the Abyss, the witches of Izalith, all that sweet stuff. I think bonfires are such a core emblem, in both the gameplay and lore, it would be a shame not to have them. And respawning/gradually hollowing is basically the main symptom of the Undead Curse. So I do want to make those things work. That’s the central design problem of this adaptation, but I think it’s worth it. The specific mechanics will need to change, but I’m sure there’s a way to make it compelling on tabletop.

Advancing time could be the way; say you respawn at the next dawn. It’s not that enemies respawn, but that the situation has moved on. Perhaps they’ve reinforced, perhaps they’ve moved to a new hideout all together. I think that, plus rolling for hollowing/sanity, will give enough bite to the threat of dying. What do you think?

A couple of people have mentioned Ghost Mountain, will have to invest in the Worlds book :slight_smile:

I think the theme of isolation can be achieved through tone, description, and NPC interactions. In Dark Souls, few people you meet offer any comfort at all. (In the first game, maybe nobody does.) It’ll be balancing that bleakness with showing that there’s something in that world worth fighting for. People like Solaire, the Fire Keeper, and Anri of Astora give moments of companionship in the games. Praise the sun to you too!

#14

Ah, then I misunderstood. If you’re trying to create “Dark Souls PNP” then go for it.

You got this! :slight_smile: