Wee folk campaign

[RyanW]

I'm likely to be running a Borrowers-inspired campaign soon. If you aren't familiar, the borrowers are the tiny people who live in the spaces between your walls, under the floorboards, etc. who "borrow" all the little items that go missing around your house. The most likely system is Fate Core. I picked up Phil Masters' The Small Folk, which has proven a good starting off point (though I won't be using it quite as is).

I'm thinking that for the campaign framework I will use several families of borrowers from the the homes of one neighborhood being uprooted by real estate development, and the resulting migration.

Any idea seeds appreciated.

[RyanW]

Some fun trinkets:

An xacto blade makes a wicked axe/sword at that scale, or a paperclip longbow
A portrait on the wall of the great borrower king, US Postage the First (an old George Washington stamp)

[sir_pudding]

It has been thirty-four years or so since I read the books, but I don't recall much or any interactions with other borrower cultures, which could be really interesting. Maybe there are nomadic tribes of street borrowers? Maybe that slick corporate office tower houses a totalitarian police state that uses repurposed web cams to monitor its citizens?

[Flyndaran]

Today's micro-tech would make The Borrowers/Littles much richer. Well off individuals may even have a big screen iPod Nano.

[johndallman]

Terry Pratchett's (non-Discworld) trilogy of novels about small folk who start off living in a department store will have a lot of ideas to steal. The titles are Truckers, Diggers and Wings.

[robkelk]

Have you seen the Japanese take on the story? Not quite the same as the original, and worth seeing to mine some ideas from.

[Flyndaran]

Does anyone else remember the cartoon, The Littles? It's been so long, I don't know how well it holds up to an adult audience.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Does anyone else remember the cartoon, The Littles? It's been so long, I don't know how well it holds up to an adult audience.

When I was a kid and these were juvenile literature options, I distinctly remember finding the Littles books inferior to the Borrowers books.

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Does anyone else remember the cartoon, The Littles? It's been so long, I don't know how well it holds up to an adult audience.

I watched part of an episode. I'd been spoiled on better-drawn better-acted and better-written cartoons starring mice for years so I couldn't really get into it. And now as an adult with more polarized tastes, I'd be even less interested in it because they look more human than suits my preferences.

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

When I was a kid and these were juvenile literature options, I distinctly remember finding the Littles books nferior to the Borrowers books.

I haven't read the books for either franchise, but I did se the Borrowers movie starring John Goodman as the villain. I was aware of the books but never found them in the libraries I visited or anything.

I did read and very much enjoy Pratchett's Bromeliad trilogy mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but I'd probably never have read it if I hadn't read almost all of Discworld and I don't think my library would even have stocked it if I and my family hadn't asked them to get the shelves stocked with the same to begin with.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

It has been thirty-four years or so since I read the books, but I don't recall much or any interactions with other borrower cultures, which could be really interesting.

It's very much inspired by, not based on, the books. I'm going to have something of a barter town (maybe in an abandoned building), serving as a gathering point for traders from a dozen blocks in every direction. Even perhaps occasional "wild" visitors from the Great Forest (read: a wooded park on the edge of town).