First, some history;

Several months ago I had an idea for Palladium Fantasy for a mini-campaign of only small monster races - goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, gnomes, troglodytes, and kobolds.

While 2nd edition PFRPG has its good points, it also has too many bad points and I found myself spending more time examining and changing rules instead of working on the setting and campaign itself. So I switched to 1st edition. However, I have no sourcebooks for 1st edition and was getting annoyed at converting monsters and such from 2nd edition (for example; 2nd edition Sahtalus (Satan) has several thousand HP and SDC, but only has 666 HP in 1st edition)

Then I started looking at AD&D. My only real experiences with AD&D was 2nd edition and I pretty much hated it. Mostly because I despise THAC0, and find the writing style to be incredibly dull.

Then I came across Castles and Crusades and Lamentation of the Flame Princess.

I choose C&C over the latter because I like how races can have classes, which was central to my original idea. I also like the complete lack of skills, as I feel it opens up the game for players to attempt anything they want to do, rather than put them in the box of, "I don't have the skill, so I can't do that." Which was/is one of my problems with Palladium Fantasy.

I also like the simplicity of the mechanic and the ease at which I could manipulate it.


Anyway (I hate reading long posts of some geek spouting bullshit about systems and reasoning, so I won't keep boring you)...

My mini-campaign is basically about a group of monsters (goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, kobolds, and troglodytes) who live in a valley that is being invaded by the "Heroic" races (humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes).

I like the Palladium versions of these races so I converted them to Castles and Crusades, rather than use the "Standard" D&D based versions.

The players choose a race, then choose a class (the idea being that their characters sort of know they are in a game - breaking the 4th wall in a way) in order to best fight off the invaders.

For the first time in my game mastering life, I've been using adventure modules. Specifically, LotFP's Grinding Gears (which was awesome) and Death Frost Doom (which is upcoming in the campaign).  I've mixed in my own self-made encounters as well.

The one problem I've had is that these characters are evil. At first, I wanted them to be "evil" races, but who viewed themselves as good and did good things for their own people (much like D&D teaches players to do with humans, elves, dwarves, etc).

However, monster races are pretty fucking evil towards each other too. As one of my players put it, "Running away faster than (another player) is the goblin way!"

So I'm working on making the campaign more conducive to being "evil" while at the same time keeping the player's goals for their character's conducive to team play.

The next session sees the characters at a goblin village that is preparing for a futile defense against an army of heroes. Some of the players have already expressed the desire to leave ASAP before the heroes arrive. I'm okay with this, but I plan on making sure the player's know the possible benefits of staying, and the possible penalties of leaving.

By staying and helping the defense of the village, the character's will gain substantial reputation within the monster communities of the valley. They will also get cool loot from the heroes they kill. They will also get to enjoy laying traps and ambushes, rather than waiting for bad shit to happen to them.

On the other hand, leaving means they escape with their skins. Until the next adventure, of course.

That's it for now. I've written enough boring crap already.

C&C + Palladium's setting = Good Stuff

You may want to bring along Palladium's alignment system. That may help with the evil issues.  A principled Wolfen has no problem slaying a principled Human in battle to defend his own kind.  

If using LE/NE/CE, then play up the differences in those three.  Perhaps you want to break down the alignments into Primary / Secondary so a character is now Lawful / Evil or Evil / Lawful and their behavior leans more toward the primary than the secondary aspect of their persona.

Also, be careful how you present viewpoints.  Heroes are not coming to the village.  Human marauders are coming to steal and kill and burn because they hate us and our god!

I used the term "heroes" in my description simply because I couldn't think of a better blanket term for the humans and other races. In-game, I refer to them as invaders or monsters - the campaign began with the player-character's returning to their village, deep within the Happy Goblin Forest, after a day of Stinkberry picking, only to find the village razed and everyone brutally murdered!

I've been injecting humor into it whenever I can.

That's a pretty interesting suggestion about using Palladium's alignments. I like that. The Primary/Secondary seems a bit complicated and messy though.

Originally, I wasn't going to use an alignment system at all. I only ever use alignments if I'm running a "good" game, and then it is only to keep the players on track. I didn't think having strict alignments in this would matter.  But all the players just sort of decided to pick alignments (evil ones at that) and I decided just to run with it. So far, they haven't really done any sick or twisted shit yet.

Also, as part of the mish-mash, I'm using a modified version of these rules for gaining bonus XP.

I would also like to point out that my inspiration for the whole thing came from the following webcomic - Goblins