I started a new campaign recently for people from my church who are completely new to RPGs. I thought this would be an excellent time to introduce them to OSR and NSR concepts with them having no preconceptions about DnD or RPGs.
Saying that, I did realize that DnD has definitely been absorbed into the cultural consciousness. I had initial ideas about running my hack of different OSR concepts for them but I quickly realized they did have preconceptions about things like race and class combos, 20s being crits, and a few things they had picked up by being aware of DnD 5E without actually having played that.
With that in mind I decided to approach this as a minimal version of DnD for them where we had a limited amount of races and classes to combo together. So I settled on Human, Elf, Dwarf, Ratfolk, and Dragonborn as the playable races and Cleric, Fighter, Wizard, and Ranger as the classes.
I really, really wanted to have an equal amount of classes as races for this homebrew and I struggled with what that last one should be. I thought about a rogue or thief class, but I tend to avoid those as I like my players to each be doing thief-y sorts of things in dungeons and what not. Druid-ish sorts of characters could already be created with my Ranger or my Wizard class with a specific domain. Finally I settled on a character who interacts in a way with the lore of the world: the Bard.
Here is what I started with for the class:
Tells stories
and plays music to inspire, lead, and teach their teammates.
Has an
inventory slot for a musical instrument of their choice.
Can quickly
learn any musical instrument.
They know two
extra languages over any languages they know based on their intelligence.
Knowledge of
the Old Tales-
There is a 2-in-6
chance the bard knows lore about any monster, magic item, hero, or legend. This
also gives info about the abilities of a monster and magical items.
So as you can see, I was very inspired by the more poetic idea of a historical Bard and the closely related idea of the Skald. Someone who knows the old stories of heroes and adventurers could be a really interesting character to play. However, I once again had to deal with the preconceptions my players had coming from the ideas they had about Bards from popular culture. To deal with that, I wanted to come up with something for the class that really evokes the idea of someone who composes and teaches based on ideas about the old stories and myths. Here is what I came up with for one last ability to really bring out the popular culture idea of a bard who plays music or recites poetry to inspire their teammate:
Compose a story in the form of a song or poem to illustrate important life lessons to your party.
At the beginning of the day decide the song, poem, or story you will perform by choosing the order of the parts of the piece. Your current level determines how complex of a piece you can create:
Level 1: 3-part composition
Level 2: 4-part composition
Level 3: 5-part composition
Level 4: 5-part composition and a refrain
Level 5: 6-part composition and a refrain
You begin not having started your composition. Any time, as a free action, even when it is not your turn, you start playing or reciting the 1st part of your composition receiving the immediate benefit and start its ongoing benefit.
At any point after that, you may proceed to the next part of your composition, receiving the immediate benefit of doing so, and start to receive the ongoing benefit of the new part. You may continue to proceed along to each of the next parts in your composition, but you can never go back to an earlier part of your composition.
If you are level 4 or above, you gain the ability to add a refrain, which is a part that you can go to after performing any normal part. You do not have to go from a normal part to the refrain and may instead go to the next part as normal. You receive the immediate benefit and then start to receive the ongoing benefit. The next part you go to must be the next part in the main composition.
I also whipped up a few potential part ideas. I mostly wanted to just get them down on paper so who knows if there are any broken combos or not with these and the idea of refrains. The top of each card is the immediate effect, the bottom is the ongoing effect:
Let me know what you guys think of this system. I want to theme the cards a bit so that some make more sense at the start of a day and some more as the last choice, such as how Apotheosis and Deus Ex Machina make more sense as the last choice of a composition, but I also do not want to railroad the choices. I also would like them to work as both musical or poetic parts of a composition. I also have some ideas of the Bard characters learning new ones over time based on the adventures they have had.
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