Thinking about running a game based on Dark Souls, but from the perspective of people who aren't undead. Yet. A bunch of questions keep coming up though, and I want to stay as true to the source material as possible.
What's the world of Dark Souls like through the eyes of someone who isn't undead? How does a kingdom of perfectly alive and normal humans react to hollows suddenly appearing in their midst? What questions would this raise in the general populace, and how would they react if their loved ones could degrade into a hollow with little warning? Or would there be enough warning to know ahead of time? How long before everyone begins to catch on to what's happening?
What's the threat level of a typical, non-PC undead, and how do the rules of Dark Souls undead make them a danger to a kingdom with a standing army? Would the undead attempt to fight back against hunting squads trying to round them up and ship them to an asylum or prison? Can full hollows be lead or directed in any way that would make them useful for military tactics? Where do bonfires come from, and how can undead or hollows use them to their advantage in combat or war overall? Is it possible to make a mobile bonfire, and would undead be able to warp to it? Does estus allow an undead to shrug off otherwise mortal blows, and how many undead can be expected to have access to an estus flask, and how many uses? What effect does Lifedrain have on living humans, if Kaathe were to show up and start sowing temptation and dissent? Can the curse of undeath be actively spread in any way? Is there a point where undead finally stay dead, or will they continue resurrecting eternally?
If the undead could be organized into an army and marched against a kingdom of living humans, how would they be stopped? What measures would a kingdom take to deal with it? Are there specific weaknesses the undead have that could be exploited? How to deal with an enemy that just comes back when you kill them?
>>45918799
The game itself answer all of this. Did you not play?
>>45919011
Except it doesnt explain all of that. Did YOU play the game?
>>45918799
The good news is that you usually get a couple of deaths before you go ''Hollow'. So you are going to freak the fuck out of your family the first time, and you are going to look gross, but it takes a while for your mind to start to fade and for you to become a danger to those around you.
So it won't seem that bad at first, just really spooky, until it gets bad in a hurry. Undead/Hollows don't stay dead. Fullstop. They need to be locked up somehow (burying them counts) because otherwise they just come back time and time again. Most hollows are not especially strong, they are just hard to kill and if you don't find a way to deal with them they become a problem again later.
So expect Hollows to get rounded up and locked away somewhere, such as the Undead Asylum or the Lost Bastille.
Op, there just are no answers for some of those questions. You could probably fill in the blanks yourself if ypu felt so inclined
>>45918799
>What's the world of Dark Souls like through the eyes of someone who isn't undead?
Ask Sieglinde.
>How does a kingdom of perfectly alive and normal humans react to hollows suddenly appearing in their midst?
Send them to the Undead Asylum or have them do the Pilgrimage to Lordran
>What questions would this raise in the general populace, and how would they react if their loved ones could degrade into a hollow with little warning? Or would there be enough warning to know ahead of time?
All undead bear the Darksign. It'd be pretty obvious if someone in your close family would turn.
>How long before everyone begins to catch on to what's happening?
I think most people would be aware of the Undead Curse.
>>45919074
If the answers don't exist in the canon, then that's what would have to happen. So, I'd need to figure out a way to present it that doesn't feel like it's playing merry hell with the rules.
Could start by saying losing your soul turns a person undead. Hollows and undead consume the souls of those they kill for strength, and lifedrain steals souls without necessarily killing. Would probably be better than saying "suddenly, the king became a zombie", and gives the players something to actively work against.
An undying enemy necessitates imprisonment. Finding a way to do so on a large scale becomes a plot point. Finding a way to do so against a mobilized army of undying enemies becomes a nearly insurmountable problem, but if something exists that could cause that in the first place then we've already reached end game.
>>45919121
Forgot about the Darksign. Having that be a factor could be the impetus for some witch hunt/ inquisition type shit. And the inevitable charlatans pretending to be witch hunters, of course.
Trying to imagine a world where the Undead Curse hasn't happened in living or written memory, though, so people wouldn't necessarily know about it before hand. Probably a new cycle or something.
Its treated like a plague. No one knows what causes it and people, the clergy and doctors are all coming up with different pseudo-cures like sniffing glue all the time. Everyone tries their hardest not to seem infected, even those who actually are.
>>45919195
That reminds me of Bloodborne, where people believed the "Bad Blood" rose up through your right foot so hunters would tie up their right leg to avoid infection.
I hope DS3 has a world structured like DS1, but a narrative closer to how Bloodborne did it.
>>45919175
I wouldnt touch on the process of becoming hollow as that could possibly be explained in dks3
>>45919235
That is kind of a running theme so far, isn't it? No one can figure out what's causing people to become undead, and the only thing they can do is hide the aftermath.
I don't think the players would like it if they couldn't nip the problem at its root, though. Two of them, at least, would be actively searching for some method of transmission the whole time, and "sometimes people just don't stay dead" probably won't satisfy them. They're also the biggest fans of the game though, so maybe they'd accept an indirect answer like that. From a story perspective, at least. Maybe not so much from a rules angle.
Thanks for your help, /tg/. I think I know what angle I'm going for now.
Feel free to use this thread for further discussion, if you want. Or just let it die.
>>45919235
The mist comes, and with it the undead. Lordron falls to undead and they send their knights to try and find a stop to it or a cure.
They fail, and you find them through the first part of the game.
Tarkus alone is the only mortal to set foot in Anor Londo, and he dies somewhere in the cathedral. which implies the journey so far has failed and your character The Lost Undead is the only one to finish the pilgrimage and link the flame which in theory would stop the mist or something.
>>45918799
I will attempt to help anon but keep in mind that Dark Souls is headcannon The Game. So...yeah
>What's the world of Dark Souls like through the eyes of someone who isn't undead? How does a kingdom of perfectly alive and normal humans react to hollows suddenly appearing in their midst?
The public panic. Fucking hard, and they flock to the Churches. Prior to the first Dark Souls everyone was living in a "Golden age of Light" The God's were very much alive and the Churches had direct guidance from them in someway or form, or at least so they may think (that is up to you I guess) but when the dead start getting back up they act like any normal fantasy peasent acts in this situation. They go to the church and pray for divine guidance. Which would be delivered by Church Knights purging the dead. This however does not work as intended, the Undead that until previously were still clinging on to their sanity are slowly driven "Hollow" by the mental strain of being killed repeatedly. Keep in mind that this is the first time that anyone has SEEN a hollow whom was no a member of the race of Giants, the god kin like Gwyn, or the Witches of Izalith. So the public have no idea whats going on.
>How long before everyone begins to catch on to what's happening?
Very quickly. It's start with isolated cases being brought to the church, assuming this is typical high fantasy life style. A sudden explosion of people not dying with occur in heavily populated areas.
>What's the threat level of a typical, non-PC undead
It would appear that undead retain all the skills of their life. A farmer is still a farmer even though hes dead, likewise so is a soldier. We can observe this by fighting Hollow Soldiers in Dark Souls, they appear to be clinging onto what they were in life despite losing all sense of self.
>>45919421
The mist? Are you sure you aint thinking of demon souls
Oh man we played a dark souls game, it was fun but tragic for the players who weren't familiar with the game or setting.
>>45919469
Yea. The mist comes in darksouls too, it's a recurring thing. It brings the undead and monsters.
>>45919437
con'd
>and how do the rules of Dark Souls undead make them a danger to a kingdom with a standing army
Zombie Apocalypse rules now apply here. Just... less brain eating and more "Oh shi- why is Jack alive? I saw him take a sword through the neck!"
>Would the undead attempt to fight back against hunting squads trying to round them up and ship them to an asylum or prison?
Depends, the devoit who come back would probbaly accept it. Others may not.
>Can full hollows be lead or directed in any way that would make them useful for military tactics?
No, full Hollows are seeking Humanity in a primal way, unable to find any they kind of just mope around or attack living people. (the PC in Dark Souls more then likely is a source of Humanity, at least I assume so)
>Where do bonfires come from, and how can undead or hollows use them to their advantage in combat or war overall?
All the Bonfires seem to have been overseen by an Undead at some point. All the firekeepers are most certainly Undead, as we can revive on with her soul. I am of the opinion that an Undead that retains its humanity for long enough and remains in the same place for long enough becomes linked to the fires they light for light/warmth (assuming they can feel warmth)
>s it possible to make a mobile bonfire, and would undead be able to warp to it?
I somehow doubt it. You find old Fires and relight them. So it would appear that once they are created they are perminate fixtures in both the physical and supernatural sense.
>Does estus allow an undead to shrug off otherwise mortal blows, and how many undead can be expected to have access to an estus flask, and how many uses?
Estus flasks apear to "Bottle the fire of the Bonfires" Firelight has a magical nature to the undead, more then likely a link to the the first flame. Just like how the Bonfires repair the bodies of Undead a bottled essence of if would do the same thing.
>>45919587
con'd again
The Estus Flasks more then likely were made by the Churches, a lucky coincidence. I have no explanation for that. But they seem common enough.
>What effect does Lifedrain have on living humans, if Kaathe were to show up and start sowing temptation and dissent? Can the curse of undeath be actively spread in any way?
I have NO idea, I suspect that without Humanity a living person would die. Kaathe's MO seems to be spreading the Curse of Undeath so the Age of Dark can start. So it makes sense that he would attempt to spread the art of Lifedrain and as a result, spread undeath by the predatory nature of Undead, hollow or not.
>Is there a point where undead finally stay dead, or will they continue resurrecting eternally?
Based on the First Dark Souls, they are immortal and will never perminatly die. Dark Souls 2 appears to place a limit on this but that is more then likely mechanical.
>If the undead could be organized into an army and marched against a kingdom of living humans, how would they be stopped? What measures would a kingdom take to deal with it? Are there specific weaknesses the undead have that could be exploited? How to deal with an enemy that just comes back when you kill them?
You can't stop an army of organised Undead. That is why the churches and kingdoms of the world responded with such a kneejerk reaction of "Round them up and ship them out of sight".
Ignoring the religious responcibilities of the church, any smart ruler would see an enemy that cannot be permanently killed as a threat to his sovereignty. Unfortunately the only measure you can take when faced with an unstoppable foe is to fight until you're defeated or flee.
I feel it should be noted at this point that the Curse of Undeath and traditional Undead are two different things. We see examples of Skeletons which are very different from the Hollows you fight. Church Knights more then likely already exist for fighting undead that are created through necromancy.
>>45919515
Well i have played dks1 and 2 quite a lot, and i have never seen anything or heard anything relating to any kind of mist at all. Could ypu tell me where the mist is mentioned in either dks1 or 2?
>>45919587
Average undead cant take a sword to the neck. They function the same as people, but they just show up again after they die.
>>45919790
Well play it more? I'm lazy and never played demon souls and know about it. So it's a thing.
Go watch Vaati's videos about it.
>>45919826
My point was that Jack had recovered from his sudden neck injury and was back in the rank with his buddies. But yeah, the real question is how they show up again the first time. Do they like, just sit back up?
I'm glad to see /tg/ has come around on Dark Souls, last time I made a thread about running a Dark Souls game I got lambasted because the Dark Sign/bonfire system is "railroading."
>>45919587
Why would you assume the pc in dks1 is a source of humanity? You have to obtain it to use it. You dont just generate humanity like a machine.
>>45919883
>telling somebody to watch vaati
Anon, please think before posting. Also, vaati has never mentioned any kind of mist in dks. What brings the undead is the end of the cycle when the flames start to fade.
>>45919068
Don't bonfires burn on the bones of the Undead? And the Homeward Bone is an Undead bone? Wouldn't that suggest that Undead are capable of a final death under certain conditions?
>>45919725
Kaathe spreading the Curse would make him the root cause of everything wrong in Dark Souls' universe, wouldn't it? Considering he's also the prime suspect behind the events leading to the Abyss's creation. Makes me wonder if he's having his Darkwraiths bring him Humanity specifically so he can add it to the Abyss and make it grow faster than it would on its own?
Might be taking liberties with the lore to assume that using Lifedrain on living humans would cause them to turn Undead, but in this case it would allow for one character to play the role of a very large-scale enemy (Kaathe), inserting his agents into large populations and spreading the curse through either force or indoctrination, and even selling it as a sort of immortality along with some basic illusion rings to hide the visible effects of Undeath, probably even teaching Lifedrain to a few promising people or those in position to cause enough damage, then pulling out just as shit hits the fan and the Hollows start cropping up and bringing a whole town's worth of Humanity back with them.
It's a single change, but it allows for an awful lot of things that would give a game momentum and direction.
>>45919896
I assume they show up at a bonfire, but it has never been explained so its up to op what he decides to do
>>45919909
It probably helps that the main idea of the thread flips the concept on its head. The players aren't undead, so bonfires and railroading doesn't even factor in.
>>45919925
I base this on a theory I had a while ago. It was that the Player character doesn't go Hollow until you put down the controller and give up on the game.
My opinion is that Humanity sprites are a kind of physical Willingness to exist that can be consumed, but all Human's Undead or not are capible of creating there own Humanity. Kind of like how Manus' humanity was about to spread super rapidly, shit multiplies. Since the player is still chugging along and refusing to give up, he still has a willingness to hold onto his sense of self and thus has "Humanity". I support this with The Crestfallen Warrior, he gives up, then goes hollow.
>>45919969
Honestly? That's the as good an explanation as any, I assumed that since he Is a Primordial being of some kind that originally his habitat was something like the Abyss, and so he is attempting to recreate it.
>>45919725
>I feel it should be noted at this point that the Curse of Undeath and traditional Undead are two different things. We see examples of Skeletons which are very different from the Hollows you fight. Church Knights more then likely already exist for fighting undead that are created through necromancy.
And the divine weapons don't get their bonus damage against Hollows, but do get it against skeletons, Nito, the Four Kings, and the blobs in New Londo. Not the standard Darkwraith enemies though, oddly.
>>45919969
This theory has nothing to back it up, but you know how you usually pick up items off of withered bodies? I think that either those are undeAd that have withered so far away that they cant do anything but lay there, or that after a ton of deaths they eventually do die permanantly
Instead of taking the system or world from Dark Souls, I decided to run a game using the themes it presents into a 5e game.
The players seek a powerful throne of an old king in a lost land, ravaged by undead. The king sealed away his greatest paladin, using his power as a seal on the abyss. He had his children gather the power of the Great Elemental Dragon Gods and rip the entire land from its foundations, sending it into its own pocket dimension, as a final resort to keep the darkness from spreading all across Faerun.
I wrote a poem for it that was sung to them by a bard in the first session.
Amidst the waves of chaos and ire
There stood the kingdom of the fall of Spyre
The great king ruled with courage and pride
With iron fist and gods on his side
But as hearts would cave to selfish end
graves would fill with endless dead
the gods soon left the island be
At the end of the forsaken sea
Where flowers bloomed, where children sang
The dead now dance in endless pain
The old king sits in his darkened keep
Past last light seen, he softly weeps
His throne imbued with his faded might
Never he rests, he keeps vigilant sight
For so whoever takes his keep would come to know
That what they reaped, they so would sow
So traveler, to you I say
Should you wish to enter this calmless fray
Seek the ferryman at Gimseul's Peak
And pray the gods avert the weak
>>45920045
Actually, that ties into what I was thinking here >>45920027
You can scrape humanity together from killing Hollows, so perhaps when you have absolutely no humanity left, not even a sliver, you finally actually die.
I'm kind of depressed now anon :(
>>45920069
Also instead of just promoting my own shitty game, i guess I could add that the 5e general homebrew list has a few Dark Souls spells and monsters. Pretty Nito.
>>45919068
Although, even the wretched, almost naked ones with a stick or broken sword can be shockingly powerful in an explosive, wiry way.
They might also be clumsy and relatively unskilled even by the standard of hollows, but they also hit like a truck when they come out swinging.
And even the weak ones have scary levels of endurance, and can maintain a base level of effort as long as they want. (The ones that cling to the side of buildings or ledges to ambush you, etc.) And while some of them involuntarily mutter or grunt or make noise, some of the more treacherously cunning ones also make no noise at all until they are attacking.
They really have a grab bag of zombie tricks, basically. (Ambush, stronger than they look, patience/endurance tactics) and this is from what would seem to be from all but the most totally catatonic ones. And even the catatonic ones get nasty if provoked.
And a lot of them seem like normal people, too.
>>45920027
It might be far-fetched to include this bit. But in Dark Souls 1 you also gain soft humanity from just playing through zones. Rather than picking them up, they just 'appear' in your humanity counter once you've killed enough enemies.
This likely either means that the hollows and indeed any living creature found around in Lordran is not completely devoid of humanity, OR it means that the player character is capable of reigniting his own scraps of humanity by succeeding and maintaining the will to live and push on.
>>45920190
Honestly im pretty sure it is just thereas a game mechanic for players to get some humanity to coop a boss if they are having trouble
>>45920264
Yeah but then bonfires are just checkpoints. Come on anon use your IMAGINATION!
>>45920290
What imeant is that stuff like bonfires and such have lore reasoning, but the softhumanity gain is purely a mechanic that has no lore and is purely mechanical for the sake of convenience
>>45920334
Considering the game had very little explanation of lore and preferred to show you shit rather than exposition on you, you can take your small-minded view and fuck off.
>>45920334
That can't be true, since it isn't all enemies that give it. Only specific ones like Hollows, the firebugs at the bottom of Blighttown, the crow ladies in the Painted World, etc. Certain enemies even give higher scores towards extra humanity than others, especially non-respawning ones like the butchers at the start of the Depths.
It might be a gameplay mechanic, but the fact that only certain types of enemies count towards it and even among those certain others have greater values towards it than others suggests that a certain amount of lore is behind it.
>>45920358
That's not exactly conducive to discussion, anon. He does bring up a good point that certain aspects of the game may not necessarily be story canon.
>>45920388
Yeah but it is fundamentally left up to our interpretation of the presented fact, and there is very little other then the environment and the small sets of text on items. In a situation like that i argue that even gameplay mechanics might contribute in some way to story.
>>45920401
Seconded. Game mechanics tend to have an in lore reason in Souls game.
>>45920358
Wow, pretty rude for no reason.
It isnt really shallow, its just a different way of approaching it.
Dark souls is fost and foremost a videogame. Some design aspects are purely there for the player, and nothing else. And as literally nothing in the game mentions this mechanic from a lore perspective, it is fair tocome to the conclusion it is just there for convenience.
>>45921367
Also, no sort of mechanic was present in 2, so that lends to the idea of it just being a mechanic. This could just be attributed to it being the B team, and if this mechanic comes back for dks3 i will rethink my stance on this, but as it stands it appears to just be a gameplay consideration
>>45921490
You say that, but DaS2 also had no humanity which we know for a fact exists in the lore.
>>45921490
2 also changed the Humanity and hollowing mechanics completely, so it wouldn't work in its original form anyways.
People (mostly /v/) talk about how 2 ruined the lore and isn't canon. It's got Fromsoft's seal of approval so it probably is canon, but it's a fact that a number of mechanics and a handful of lore points were changed from 1 to 2, most of them involving Humanity and things that relate to Humanity like Abyss magic becoming hexes.
OP is talking about Darkwraiths and Kaathe, so I'd assume he isn't thinking about 2 too much.
>>45921655
I wouldn't go that far.
>>45921709
No through humanity though, it happened through "Effigies" and considering that all other mechanics surrounding humanity are gone I wouldn't place any faith in DaS2 as a good source for lore. Even more so because it's lore was shitty and just boiled down to re-using and making references to DaS1 lore.
>>45921698
Yes anon, i know that humanity isnt in dks2. My point is if the soft humanity gain really was a art of the lore, there would have even been a mentioning of it in any of the item descriptions or some form of the mechanic would have been in 2
>>45921765
The stat screen is a source of lore, too. Press select and highlight humanity, and it says something about it being the number of tiny black sprites writhing in your character's bosom.
>>45921804
Ok? The most you can draw from that is that enemies have partial humanity that you take when you kill them, but that feels like a stretch
>>45921832
Is it really a stretch when that's what happens in the game itself?
>>45921851
Yes, as there is no mention of partial humanity anywhere in the game. Even if that happened to be the case, there is still no information on the soft humanity gain lore wise.
>>45921879
Oh, you meant that specifically.
Well, we know "soft" humanity itself exists from the Humanity stat description, and we know it's possible to steal it due to the Dark Hand. We also know that stealing humanity is supposed to be a trick inherent to the dark soul itself (Dark Hand again). It ain't illogical to assume that this mechanic that involves killing things to gather humanity may be a reference to the same thing.
