besm D&D Game: basics

Premise: Think lolad, except as monsters set in a D&Desque fantasy setting.

Themes: Survival, The Quest(tm, patent pending), the reservation system

System: BESM 3, 250 points. This game will use the heroic level benchmarks except skills are not necessary: only get what fits the character, if any.

Characters: Build something from the monsters manual in D&D, or even another source entirely. Players are encouraged to make up as detailed a culture as they want to make their 'monsters' as civilized as they wish. (Think of how the old world viewed the new for human attitudes regarding the Pcs.)

Setting: Your Ye Olde Fantasy Worlde. The world has never been named – though the humans are working on that – and used to be pretty generic and normal until the humans perfected hot air balloons and zeppellins and began to travel into lands they couldn't reach. The missionaries of the three-faced God and Goddess plunged into the wilds of the world and innovation after innovation strengthened the human nations until they had continent-wide empires stretching from sea to shining sea. In the past two hundred years the humans have advanced (and bred) ferociously to engulf other lands and progress has never seemed so sweet a mistress.

In their fabled towers, the mighty and awful wizards work magics that keep the empires growing, gathering apprentices to make fabled magical items a step at a time, saving time and energy and equipping the armies of man with weapons to slay even the greatest of monsters. Of these wizards, the most famous are Morinehtar (the darkness-slayer) who destroyed the last of the Great Wyrms with a single word of power and Romestamo the earth-helper, who forged the alliances with the dwarves that benefited both mighty races and cleansed the underworld of many old monsters.

And as above, so below for the dwarves have supplied metals and wondrous smithing to the humans in exchange for the fabled 'industry' of the magicians and applied that to making their own marvels; armed with human magics and their own weapons, they have conquered the lands under the earth as they own. Each mighty empire leaves the other alone, content for now to secure their own dominions.

Which brings up to the Dark Wood that winds through the Everglass Mountains. These were mined dry by the dwarven ancestors centuries past and were refuge for the last of the gnomes before the dwarves destroyed them all. Now they are one of the few blank spots on the map, a place of monsters and the wild that the armies and desires of man have yet to conquer. It is your home, for however long it lasts.


Notes on races:
Elves serve the humans, acting as messengers and court jesters and wonders as the pygmies on earth did for the courts of Europe. There are few of them left, and most believe they can wait out these empires and times and the world will again be theirs. (The extermination of the dark elves under the earth does not bother them, as those were not real elves.)
Gnomes: Extinct, thanks to the dwarves.
Halflings; Someone has to work the mines the humans have, after all. Most are considered just short humans and not a separate race at all.
Half-orc/whatevers: Very rare, all considered monsters.

Notes on classes:
Barbarians: Some exist, though the northern wastes are not very empty any longer. Most are considered scum by the empires and end up in the Dark Wood and places like it to test themselves against the last remnants of the world of their father's stories and the legends of their father's father's, despite knowing their may be none left for them to pass those stories onto. This does not stop them from wishing to hunt and destroy monsters, naturally.
Bards: Next? Seriously they're bards.
Clerics: The followers of the God and Goddess have spread far and wide. While they don't have political power in most lands, they have much popular support and gather many followers to try and 'cure' the monsters and make them human again, or yoke them to the will of humanity like they did the horses, wemics, centaurs and griffins. Unlike other classes, they would rather find a use for monsters than destroy them.
Druids: The druids are the only humans on the side of monsters, if at all, as much as they are on the side of the woods themselves. (Though the woods would be safer and nicer without all those monsters in them.) They tend to be rare and distrusted by all sides but are generally the only humans who will not attack monsters on sight.
Fighters: S.e. Knights are basically fighters in magical armour whose goal is to destroy monsters, and they are very, very good at it.
Monks: Warriors who often protect the clerics, monks are capable of taking down monsters without weapons at all and rely on the strength of the gods and the magic of their prayer to defend themselves. Some of them are not, always, horrible, and they tend to view the world differently from the clerics but are wise enough to keep their views to themselves.
Rangers: Big game hunters. They are often the most dangerous foe of the monster in the woods since they have studied the tracks, habitat and such of monsters.
Rogues: No one trust them. Obviously.
Sorcerer: Those who have made deals with monsters (and worse things) for power. They can be human or monster but serve masters and forced beyond the ken of others. Wizards tend to kill them on sight if given the chance, if only to tidy up the world a little bit.
Wizards: Mighty and scary magicians, often enough, who are the backbone of the human empires. They tend not to interfere directly in the empire and seek other things than mere temporal power.

Monsters:
The ones that exist will depend on the PCs and characters they make.