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The way I and an associate have taken to running our games we tend to make human antagonists the main bad guys, with little to no magic in our campaigns. In trying to get away from the typical high fantasy droll and into the land of hard core grittyness we've taken to useing a simple rule to handle monsters and magic in our campaigns...

- monsters to the PC's are like UFO's to us -
We've all heard about them, and if you look hard enough you can even find crazy people who've claimed to see them.
But nobody actually believes that crap.

It's all fairy tales and make believe.

For instance: if the PC's walk into a tavern and openly talk of how they just whacked 14 GOL the other week, they'll be laughed out or have to kill everyone in duels of honor for calling them liars.

 For some reason the "real" world i.e - humans, are often seen as "not worthy" as the main opponents for PC's.
For "real adventure" you need monsters and magic - well, that just isn't so.

Plus it does make the rare monster encounter that much more shocking, memorable, and meaningful.

Also Magic:

 The PC's in TROS veiw magic the same way we view Ms Cleo and David Copperfield - looks and sounds good, but we all know it's not real.

  With the added provision that in the TROS universe such decivers who practice false arts should be summarily lynched and burned alive as heretics.

 Try running your next campaign following these simple guidelines and you will never go back.

Humans can also be much more frightening, its the cunning and ferocity of the human mind that can be frightening. A dragon will simply burn the pc's to a crisp or munch them down. a human will lull them into trust, then stab them in the back at the worst moment, then steal the girl etc...

Its all about SA's, you wont have any directed towards monsters as there's no fun in that. they either don't exist or wont care about the measly human PC most likely and are not very dynamic.  

Also, if a PC runs into a monster they should be played appropriately, monsters are rare and scary, if you see one the first reaction should be doubt/misgiving, followed by crappinf of ones shorts and a hasty retreat in a most unmanly fashion.
Ex: Bob, as you round the corner you see a big 7 foot tall vaguely human shaped creature with nasty tusks prtruding from under its lower jaw, its heavily muscled and looks rather nasty, especially with the entrails hanging off its chin like that

bob: I hesitate for a moment to see if its not just a man

Gm: It aint bob and now its looking at you like a cat who just heard teh can opener turn on...

Bob: I suddenly wonder where I left my brown pants and decide that now is a good time to scream like a sissy and run like a little girl.

Jaeger, I like the principle under which you're operating in general. OTOH, there's a lot of question as to how you make this all plausible. In the RW, things are as they are because (I believe) there are no monsters or fairies. OTOH, even though there weren't any in previous ages, the people really did believe in them in many cases. So the question becomes, why are these superstitious people so dubious of monsters. Heck, in Salem they were so ready to believe in witches that they burned folks alive.

So, I think that it's a noble idea to make monsters mythic and mysterious, and to keep humans the center of attention. The question is how do you keep it plausible using the UFO idea?

To me, simply making the monsters vanishingly rare is probably solution enough. But I'm sure this is a YMMV thing.

Mike

Also, how do you get your players to play along when the usual response is:

"Bob, as you round the corner you see a big 7 foot tall vaguely human shaped creature with nasty tusks prtruding from under its lower jaw, its heavily muscled and looks rather nasty, especially with the entrails hanging off its chin like that "

Bob:  I waste em with my crossbow!

How to make it all possible... Hmmmmm.

You simply make all thier legends real. But rare enough that they still maintain thier legend status!

They may all have "believed" it but thier reaction was just as Ashren of all people stated: doubtful disbelief, followed by realization of thier fears, followed by the desire to runaway or kill it.

But I don't belive we in the modern age are any less superstious than people of medieval times. They had thier way of dealing with the unexplained and we have ours.

We are just superstitious about different things.

JFK Conspiracies, UFO's, and bigfoot  have taken the place of the old time dragons,faries and evil legends of yesteryear. You mentioned salem and witches; I give you McCarthyism and russian spies.

And just as you said there were people who really belived all the old legends, I could walk out into the street today and find people who believe in UFO's, bigfoot, etc. etc. etc.

Kenjib...


 That reaction is only common because the vast majority of gamers have never quite gotten out of thier D&D mindset. (that most horrible of games)

This is a mindset where magic and monsters are the norm, and non-magic human antagonists the exception to the cheesy high fantasy rule.

It is a mindset where all opponents can be beaten if you can just keep ahead of them in the HP count. Where a man can stand toe to toe exchanging blows with three orcs because he has 100 hp to thier 10 each.

This is a mindset that needs to be cured...

SO: "Bob, as you round the corner you see a big 7 foot tall vaguely human shaped creature with nasty tusks protruding from under its lower jaw, its heavily muscled and looks rather nasty, especially with the entrails hanging off its chin like that "

Bob: I waste em with my crossbow!

"AHH Bob, but you know not what it is and as you ready your crossbow he unleashes a deafening roar as he smashes trees out of the way heading your direction... Please roll willpower to see if you beat his STR / Intimidation roll... good luck Bob."

If you don't think the modern mindset is any different from today to yesterday in terms of superstition and such, I refer you to the show Connections (BBC thing). One of the series was entirely devoted over the course of several shows of demonstrating just how different that mindset was from today's.

I mean, you talk as though you're a skeptic, but then you say that others are not. I think that bigfoot and UFOs serve the same place as myths in the modern day in general terms, but that's not to say that people believe in them. They're informative, entertaining and spiritual - certainly you don't think that anyone believes in Middle Earth? Well, I think that most attention paid to Bigfoot has about the same level of interest. "Wouldn't it be cool," but "Nah, I don't really believe it."

That's where I, and about everybody I know are at. Aliens...get real.

In any case, you've made my point by saying that they were indeed superstitious. That's all I was getting at. And I'm not saying that it wouldn't mean that people wouldn't behave in a shocked fashion when actually encountering such a thing, just that they'd be much more inclined to believe an account, IMO.  

Further, as soon as there's a dead Gol lying on the floor of the inn, you suddenly have a room of converts. This is, perhaps the primary difference between there being a real existence of creatures and bigfoot, which is a crock of crap. I'll believe it when I see it in a museum.

In any case, we seem to have the same way to make this all work in any case: just make the damn things rare. One monster per adventure if that is my general rule. :-)

Mike

I know it Weyrth proper the superstition is taken quite seriously. One way to make this hit home is to make the superstition and the reality not match up, and keep things as rare as possible. Alternately, make the beasties rare anyway, but superstion is correct (frex: walk around a toadstool three times to prevent attacks by Loup Garou...and it really works). Thus you get to punish the ever-so-scientific types with your Aliens.

There is an exception in Weyrth, however. The first is any large metropolitan area. Monsters aren't an issue there, really. The second is Stahl. Stahlnish atheism denies the existance of any such thing as monster, magic, or religion. Those are characters that would really have to struggle with what they're looking at.

And, as they say, "there are no atheists on the battlefield."

Jake

One monster per adventure, huh?

Hm. I wonder how I'm doing.. So far, I've got two.. more than that if you count the mysterious NPC sorcerer, and the handful of Cymric druids.

But for all of that, monsters should be either "holy-shit I'm gonna die!" encounters, or plot points in Weyrthian TRoS play. As I've already mentioned, two of my players met up with a Walking Dead. One of them is no longer with us, and hopefully his player learned the lesson. One of those same players has encountered a badly wounded dragon, being tended by the druids. The game is, so far, very human-centric; The players-characters, being in the mystical land of Angharad, know that critters exist. Half the city's population though is Stahlnish, and would try to deny it if it bit off their nose.

Err. Yeah. I guess I'm saying that I agree. Quality, not quantity, yo.

Heck, I'm a Stahlnish halfling sorcerer, and certain parts of me deny they exist with the same ferocity.

I'm somewhat conflicted.

Okay, so far in the adventure I am currently in... magic has been limited to one spectacular instance where a guy was thrown across the room into a wall. Impressive it was, and my Stahlnish mercenary responded by releasing an arrow from the shadows and thus killing her. Having seen such a thing happen not only made my jaw drop from both an OOC and IC mindset... it was no wonder that my character soon fired his arrow. Of course, after picking his jaw up off the floor and rubbing his eyes and doing three double-takes.. if you understand my thinking there.
Magic and magical beings are much much more superb when used on a very limited basis. It's like popcorn and salt. Sure the popcorn is good, but if you put waaaaaay too much salt on it, you don't want to eat it. Or some people won't.. there's occasionally the salt obsessed person out there.
Which makes me realize that TROS is exactly the inverse of D&D in terms of magic and magical beings. It works perfectly and harmoniously. TROS sorcery even comes with discouragement for the magic system.. i.e. it isn't used daily like D&D magic is. It isn't meant to be. It would be putting too much damned salt on the popcorn.
Even for a guy from Stahl, I'll roleplay him in the future as having doubts as to wether there is or is not the existance of magic or a higher-power so to speak. So you could say he's agnostic then. That is, if I DO want to play him after finding out he should have died in the first session... but that's neither here nor there.
So I think that addressed all concerns everyone had.

-Ingenious

Quote from: Jake Norwood
There is an exception in Weyrth, however. The first is any large metropolitan area. Monsters aren't an issue there, really. The second is Stahl. Stahlnish atheism denies the existance of any such thing as monster, magic, or religion. Those are characters that would really have to struggle with what they're looking at.

Well, if this is a world were monsters exist - the standard distinction between fantasy and reality - then the existance of monsters and/or magic is not superstition.  The Stahlnish "atheists" are not atheists at all, they are in gross denial.  As Pratchett once remarked, its hard to be an atheist in a world were gods come and throw rocks through your windows.

Quote
And, as they say, "there are no atheists on the battlefield."

They do so that, and its exceedingly annoying.  I usually counter by claiming that there are no theists in fox holes, for otherwise why do they fear a death that takes them on to immortality?  The sample character annoys the hell out of me every time I see it.

...and here I was thinking that I'd never be able to agree with contracycle on *anything*.

Well, I don't actually buy into the "there are no atheists in the foxholes" bit myself, but there is something to seeing atheists pray "just in case."

Quotewhy do they fear a death that takes them on to immortality? The sample character annoys the hell out of me every time I see it.

I'm scared to death of hyperdermic needles, even though they've always made my life better.

Here's the real question here, though: how does this take on faith, etc. apply to TROS? It certainly should.

Jake

The atheist praying in a foxhole is a form of Pascals Wager, I guess, the argument that you might as well pray as you have little to lose.  The only problem is, which god do you pray to?  All of them?  Then there may be said to be Buddhists in foxholes.  Several gods are exclusive clubs which take a dim view on the veneration of other gods, however, so the wager can still be very risky.

In the TROS context, in which the objective truth of the major religion and its schisms is admirably vague, atheism would probably be restricted to the non-belief in a life after death.  So doing something now for a reward in the hereafter would not make sense; there being no post mortem rewards or punishments, in their view, the only things that matter are the ones that change the real, material world for better or worse.

But this fits quite well with stahl as written; "Trust in steel, not the gods" you could imagine them saying, which is perhaps why they wear so much.  I should also moderate my criticism, as the charsheet does allow this atheism to be a creed, my reaction is much more toward the depiction of atheism as a faith, which gets up my nose.