I am toying with the idea of running a Dungeons & Dragons (4th edition) campaign in the realm of Albion from that world.
The landscape, monsters, townsfolk and visuals are so strongly engrained in my mind, that I could easily describe and enliven such a world to my players (who, by the way, have never played that computer game ... so it would be fresh and strange to them).
Have fun and enjoy it and that is half the battle to having your players enjoy it as well.
By the way the races of albion and the races of D&D 4e arent exactly the same. Have you thought about how you would handle that?
I do not worry about races too much: they are just fluff which cna be reflavoured.
If I can work out a rationalization, elves (both high elves and wood elves), gnomes (instead of Lurikeen), dwarves, goliaths and half-orcs (to replace the trolls of Midgard) could be integrated in later. I suppose tieflings replace shar.
Just make sure the party finds a nice set of clubs before visiting the back 9 of Hibernia. :D
One thing I vividly remember when I first played in Dark Age of Camelot was how impressive the high level players were ... I think I would have many high-level non-player former adventurers in the world: except they would be too busy fighting other demigods on the frontiers to meddle in the affairs of the mundane world. Sort of like Elminster et alia.
I personally never played DAoC but I have played its competitor EQ which I really enjoyed and its the same senario and makes a DM's job alot simpler, ya just need to be able to think fast on your feet when you find something that conflicts with D&D rules since they ussually pop up in the heat of battle
In the computer game the character popped back with everything minus some experience, but I am thinking that the opposite should be true: the spirit and memory retain the experience and knowledge, but all the material goods are back in the dungeon.
Of course, with a party at hand, the character might be revived or, failing that, his loot hauled back to town for him.
There is no reason for this binding-the-spirit stuff except nostalgia for the computer game. :P
Paranoia RPG just flat-out gives each player six clones, because death is common and to be expected. It's a very vicious, backstabbing game, that's made a lot more fun by being able to slide right back in.
I've also run an MMORPG-based game, where the world was literally an MMORPG. NPCs repeating the same dialogue, quest logs, the occasional clipping error causing someone to fall through the world. Very much a humor-based campaign.
The big question in all of these cases was to deal with why others don't have this (or if they do, how it affects the world and the adventurers!). If that camp of orcs will respawn in a few days, why are the adventurers wiping it out? If it's divine grace, shouldn't the BBEG also respawn? (Interesting campaign goal, there - learning how to stop his/her/it's respawning)
The MMO-based game I ran actually had, as a major premise, trying to cure the static nature of the world, even though it would mean an end to respawns. Alas, the players never got to the conclusion
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Having also played DAOC, that seems like a neat idea. It's one of the few MMORPG worlds I've really felt immersed in.
The big question in all of these cases was to deal with why others don't have this (or if they do, how it affects the world and the adventurers!). If that camp of orcs will respawn in a few days, why are the adventurers wiping it out? If it's divine grace, shouldn't the BBEG also respawn? (Interesting campaign goal, there - learning how to stop his/her/it's respawning.)
I am thinking of an heroic world where there is good and evil. The gods favour the good heroes with a destiny which cannot be cut short by death ... yet. But the gods have no mercy towards the great villains, indeed their justice awaits them.
However, I was thinking that the various villainous forces, like the druids, the drakorans, the stygian forces of haunted Atlantis, and the denizens of the Catacombs under the earth, that these would have means to respawn their lesser minions. Destroying the overlords therefore would stop the orcs, minotaurs, goblins et cetera from respawning.
Here is my current proposal for easily recreating said class in 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons:
Have an Avenger take the Cleric Multi-Class feat for once-a-day healing.
Then at 4th level, have him take the Cleric Novice feat and the 1st level encounter prayer Healing Strike. Unfortunately, this means the Avenger will have to put some points into strength like a cleric does, mais c'est la vie.
Create a new weapon, the Heavy Shod Staff, a two-handed superior melee weapon (with which a feat is required to train) with +3 proficiency and 1d10 damage.
Leather robes.
Basically the theurgist would summon small elementals in a constant stream and they would pile up on a big bad enemy: in that game, the more attackers there were, the easier it was to hit the monsters.
Theurgists also had a pulsing baldeturn spell: every few seconds (rounds) it would block an attack entirely. This could also protect a whole party once the theurgist was of a high enough level.
I also am thinking that a melee-oriented cleric could call himself a friar: it fits better into fantastic and mediaeval literature anyways. Friar Tuck and all that.
One thing I vividly remember when I first played in Dark Age of Camelot was how impressive the high level players were ... I think I would have many high-level non-player former adventurers in the world: except they would be too busy fighting other demigods on the frontiers to meddle in the affairs of the mundane world. Sort of like Elminster et alia.
for the friar I would use cleric/monk/sacred fist (a bit of homebrew to make him into a sacred staff[friar as a prestige class]).
It would require a bit of balancing but to me it would be a bit closer to the daoc friar