How are people introducing their players to Yoon-Suin?

How are people introducing their players to Yoon-Suin? Has the notion of playing as Slug-Men rather than Orcs or Elves put off players?

More generally, what successful methods have people found over the years for selling/engaging players with settings which are different from the normal quasi-medieval fare? How do you get them to 'get' it?

Comments

  1. The biggest hurdle imho is the lack of illustration for crab-men. It's kinda difficult to get what they look like. Never had any issue with the other species.

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  2. I imagine they look like Crablante from One Punch Man :)

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  3. I used Yoon-Suin for my touchstone for a far-eastern country in my USR Sword & Sorcery game. Being a human-centric world the different races and creatures of the city proper became caste labels. In fact Slug became known as the same as noble, or lord for the PC's.

    The charts and tables were used straight out of the book for random street and wilderness encounters and the customs of this foreign city were generated as play developed.

    I instantly had a country much like Khita in the Conan stories using it as a systemless campaign setting!

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  4. Although I don't recommend the "start in a tavern" approach, here's 20 Tea Houses I put together a while back that could be useful for a Yellow City based starting point: drive.google.com - Yoon-Suin - Twenty Tea Houses.pdf - Google Drive

    Here's a dungeon:
    https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B18gUV3KYFQmeHZnYXl3N3BhYk0

    Oh, and some OSR-y Character Sheets:
    https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B18gUV3KYFQmSjJnRjVjSU5xd2s
    Quick Encumbrance/Equipment:
    https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B18gUV3KYFQmVlFlODFidUpZbjg

    It's all about flavor. Telegraphing the differences in setting to the players with florid descriptions, exotic equipment/character options, and use other senses than sight:

    300 Smells for Yoon Suin:
    https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B18gUV3KYFQmc1JveFF4ZjFLZUU

    A one shot to "try something new/different" works as a good gateway. If you have an existing campaign, placing it far away from the "typical Medieval Fantasy" area, but having things like a port town trade deal gone south or the odd Yoon-Suin NPC, etc trickle it to your players can work too.

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  5. ktrey parker wow this stuff is all incredible! Do you have any other resources at-hand?

    Whidou I'm sure there are crab-man illustrations? p.140 is a slug-man with a crab-man porter I thought?

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  6. Alasdair Lawrence Those are just things I whipped up some time ago. I really need to put 'em all on a page somewhere on my blog for easy reference. I think I have some more toner-hungry full color character sheets somewhere.

    Here's one I missed, some Social Status procedures I worked on:
    drive.google.com - Social Status Procedures in the Yellow City.pdf - Google Drive

    This could incentivize playing a Slug-Man for sure. When every roll against you is penalize by the Social Rank of your lessers, players definitely "feel" superior (if slimy) :).

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  7. Alasdair Lawrence Oh, good catch, thanks!

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  8. Scott McClellan be careful about turning every exotic NOC race into a PC because you as a DM will lose some of the mystery of the place. Ogre Mages are mysterious until one of your PC just plays them like big humans.

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  9. Scott McClellan that's a good point actually - how are people representing Slug Men mechanically?

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  10. I think Slugmen are special in that by rules they ONLY are magic users/holy-men(slugs). And they should have an inherent noble status.

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  11. I see it almost like Holmes D&D. Race as Class, but with a few weird outliers that would later show up in AD&D (Dwarf Thieves for example). I don't really do much by way of making Race influence ability scores (other than giving Crab Men more carrying capacity...everything is pretty similar mechanically).
    I've used Whitehack to run Yoon-Suin, which has a nifty way of handling Species via Tags to ability scores, but for the most part I usually try to enforce the differences by Status/Rivals/Access to parts of the Yellow City. It's a meaningful difference in a Cosmopolitan City Crawl, there are certain situations an all Crab-Man party can't get involved with, while having a Slug-Man might grant you access to places you wouldn't normally be able to go, etc.

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  12. Scott McClellan I think Yak-Man came from Noism's read through of the Monster Manual. Here they are from Al-Qadim in a pinch:

    lomion.de - Yak-Man (Monstrous Manual)

    The Ogre Mage illustration from the MM is also pretty good. DiTerlizzi forever!

    http://www.lomion.de/cmm/ogre.php

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  13. Yes, Yak Men are from Al-Qadim originally. A great ogre mage illo as ktrey parker points out is from the 2nd edition MM. Diterlizzi is always a good touchstone.

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  14. Scott McClellan ktrey parker I meant to tag you both into that last comment. Regarding race-as-class, dwarfs and slug-men are not mechanically differentiated from humans of the same class. I did that deliberately to try to keep things broad and also to get away from the BECMI dwarf class, which calls to mind Tolkien/D&D standard dwarfs too much.

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