Non-House Centered Campaigns

[Totoro]

So, I am about to start running a very occasional campaign (about 1/two months) and I want to use a different focus than a group of PCs all members of the same house (e.g., a Nights Watch campaign, or one about a mercenary group). How many of you are running/playing a campaign than centers around a different concept?

[Zeroed]

I am currently playing in a campaign where I play a hedge knight and the other player is my squire. Think of it like the short stories Dunk & Egg. We are travelling a lot, offering our services to different Houses to solve a wide variety of problems (bandits, kidnapping, wars, etc.).

[Mat]

I am actually playing a campaign in which there is a Hedge Knight and a Merchant with its business set up in Oldtown.

Well it is not so easy to go through it but there are dealing with all the problems, scheming involving inside the city.

[DaimosofRedstone]

Leaving the House makes it definitivly rules light(er).
We found that timescale becomes a lot less important, as well as planning.
Makes a lot of sense for a casual game.

[Owlhunter]

@zeroed: is there a campaign log available somewhere? This sounds like an interedting idea for a campaign!

[Zeroed]

@zeroed: is there a campaign log available somewhere? This sounds like an interedting idea for a campaign!

Alas, no, there is no log, unfortunately.

[Yospeck]

I'm using the SOFAIC ruleset but not in the SOFAIC setting (my own homemade world) so we opted to scrap the House stuff. The biggest thing is that it means crawling through the rulebook and cutting out a lot of Specialties, Qualities and the entire "Houses" section. Also, the amount of money your characters gain needs to be significantly tweaked as they no longer have a House to pump it into, so something to be mindful of.

One of the main things as far as the game is concerned is to ensure you create a similar tie to keep your group together, which being part of a House provides. Other than that it's just like any DnD game, but with a considerable lack of ghost and ghouls (other than the obvious) having the House element really does add something else to the Campaign.

[Totoro]

One of the main things as far as the game is concerned is to ensure you create a similar tie to keep your group together, which being part of a House provides.

Exactly. The easiest way of doing this in this Setting is playing a Night's Watch campaign, but my players have already stated that they don't want to play Brothers.

One idea I thought of was making the players members of a recently destroyed House. How do you think this would work?

I mean, imagine they were members of a House loyal to the Targaryen during Robert's Rebellion, whose Castle was ravaged, lands were taken and Head of House killed... what would happen to these people?

It's not an idea I love, but I find it more interesting than playing mercenaries...

[LordValorna]

My idea : War begins without the PC, because all of them are wards of one dangerous house (maybe they come for a tourney and can't go after that). So they can come from everywhere they want (no problem because their lifes are in danger, i suppose they will join to flee). But they need to be nobles or/and knights.

[Roadspike]

I'm actually doing a similar thing to LordValorna's campaign. I'm starting all the players as Wards of the Court of King Robert (not exactly a canon concept, I know) from houses that supported the Targaryens during the Rebellion. The campaign is starting at the Tourney of Joffery's Name Day just prior to the death of Jon Arryn, so the PCs have been away from their houses for 15 years.

Because of that separation, their houses won't be nearly as important, but I'm hoping that they'll still use them as inspiration for who to plot against (we did create a house for each of them).