So, our group is starting in Osiria in the Pathfinder setting. For our Session Zero we ended up with three elves born on Golarion. A Gunslinger, a Bard, and a Sorceress. They all three are refugees from a kaiju attack on an island 20 years prior to the game starting (We're going to have the panicked run to the docks and the ships trying to escape the little island).
Where my problem sits is that one of my players has been playing with me for almost 10 years, the other has been playing with me since 1991. I don't want to fall back unconsciously on any stuff I usually do. While I plan on cribbing a little bit from Secret World's Egypt section for a couple of the hidden cities, I don't want to fall back on my typical stuff.
All three players are women. Our Session Zero ended up where jewelry and clothing and makeup (the body paint used in ancient Egypt) doesn't count against their Wealth per Level as long as they don't sell it (They know they'll get copper pieces on the gold pieces if they try to sell their jewelry). It's more of their 'social status score' makeup. Instead of bathing with water, it's the whole 'body oil and carding' thing for bathing. I'm making sure the city is both high luxury and grinding poverty side by side, and they're 1st level so their poised on the edge of being able to move from working in dive bars and waterfront bars and the slums into moving into better society.
They want to start 20 years after they fled (not long for an elf), having finally scraped their way up from penniless refugees in a semi-hostile city (the whole fishing rights part in the book) to first level adventurers. We generated NPC's that the characters know, are acquaintances with, are friends with, are super-close friends, and each got one family that they've known for 20 years to be right below henchmen.
I want to do the whole Ancient Desert Kingdom with a long history with sand covered ruins, forgotten threats, and old legacies, but I'm worried about falling back on some of my favorite stuff out of laziness.
Any ideas for ways to punch it up a little, maybe some little adventure stuff for those of you who have played a lot of Golarion?
Oh, and we threw away the "Space Elves" shit and went with the elves hid in an demi-plane because Space Elves are fucking stupid.
One of the funny things is we did the NPC generation again, instead of "You know a guard, a shopkeeper, and a beekeeper" we used the GM's Guide and the Ultimate Campaign books to spice things up again. Ended up with one PC knowing a shopkeeper who was a former prostitute with a flipper arm who talks to a puppet that will help them hide bodies if they need it as well as arrange boycotts. The bard ended up with a 'not boyfriend' that she ends up getting drunk and in trouble with, but he's a member of the city guard with some rank, so they end up in jail a lot in the drunk tank and they're fairly well known for hijinks.
They also wanted to play through zero level, which was just making a few decisions here and there. The island they grew up on, which was vineyards and olive trees, got attacked by kaiju and they had to run for it (West of Absalom) through the town and to the docks. They decided to run for the human merchant docks, made a charisma check, and got to choose between the merchant which was packing all the people on it and the warship which the Osirion troops were hurrying onto. They chose the warship, made charisma checks to get up (The bard got a 22). Then, when the ship got to port, I figured they'd get off and we'd just fast forward 20 years.
Nope, they wanted to stay on the warship, which I had already established had women on board. They ended up staying in the Osirion Navy for those 20 years. A little random choice, rolls here and there for skill checks. The backgrounds are solid for the three players now. They're all tatted up (All three have the kiaju tattooed on their backs, an Osirion Navy brand on their forearm, and a kraken on their chests (head between, tentacles wrapped around their breasts, their idea), and various tattoos. Everyone had a good time, and we're starting with them leaving the Osirion Navy after 20 years and starting their lives on land now in El-Shelad.
A couple rolls and we determined they aren't like those "thieving elves" because their all three bronzed skin, tatted up, branded Navy vets, so the locals don't consider them the same type of elves who caused all the problems. They're also Osirion loyalists, because "Fuck Kalesh and Quidira" and they've been involved in a few navy scraps against them.
So the game took a sharp turn from Session Zero's initial ideas.
We've got a stand offish gunslinger packing heat that was an Osirion Navy "gunner's mate" and then shipboard Marine, a bard who was in charge of beating the drum and singing the sea shanties who is a drunken reprobate and has a crazy guardsman friend, and a sorceress who has a shaved head except for a long queue that goes to her waist and carries a flogger and whip for her weapons who was the assistant bosun.
We decided that shaved heads are wizards, sorceresses, scholars, and priests. That body painting with copper, silver, gold, ground gems, and the like are status symbols. Jewelry is status symbols big time. Tattoos are fairly common, usually regarding guild allegiance, divine allegiance, gang affiliation, stuff like that. Lots of gold, lots of cats, lots of ancestor worship and we're going with Egyptian dieties in a lot of cases. Evil cults, monuments out in the desert of previous dynasties or rulers. Horses, camels, giant emus you can ride.
I think this game is going to be really interesting in a weird way.
Like I said, anyone who's got experience with Golarion and can help me out with some adventures that I might not have thought of for level 1 characters in Osirion.
