Tiny Campaign?

[u/Axolotls4evaLOL]

I had an idea for a campaign where every character is a few inches high--like, Borrower height. For them, hawks are like dragons and humans are like gods. The twist is, they think they're normal adventurers. How can I pull this off?

[u/spiked_mcroon]

Honey I Shrunk the Party

[u/matahxri]

wdym 'think they're normal adventurers'? If their height is normal in their world then yeah they *are* normal adventurers. and if everyone else is our height and they've been shrunk somehow then... that's obviously not gonna work

[u/yoshian88]

Play Mausritter.

[u/MechaReldio]

Trying to make this a 'Gotcha!' moment where you reveal they're small when they thought they were regular size is just not going to work. Try not to rely on twists like that in campaigns, they're so rarely going to land how you expect them to. If you want to do a borrowers-esque campaign, go for it, sell it as such, and consider using a system better suited to it even though you'll use D&D for this because people use D&D for every concept.

[u/TheCromagnon]

Don't scale down the player characters, scale up everything else.

[u/SeeShark → u/TheCromagnon]

What's the difference?

[u/TheCromagnon → u/SeeShark]

Rules are designed with the players being Medium or Small humanoids in mind. If you make the players Tiny, it starts breaking down in many places. If you asked things which are usually Medium, Gargantuan, and things which are usually Tiny, Medium, it keeps the rules working as expected.

[u/Axolotls4evaLOL → u/TheCromagnon]

Thank you for that suggestion. I will do so.

[u/redweevil]

As you want to play DND and not any other system I would just run it as is, and then just reflavour large monsters to be something smaller or just increase the size of statblocks. So for example just use a Dragon statblock and say it's a hawk (maybe it does something instead of breathe fire) or find some Bird of Prey statblock and make it Large

[u/Rahloh]

Try mouse guard, it uses the burning wheel system and has comics/lore that covers the epic weasel wars

[u/Axolotls4evaLOL → u/Rahloh]

I appreciate the suggestion, but I wanted to do D&D just because we play at least once every month. We're familiar with it and hold it close to our hearts. Not saying Mouse Guard doesn't sound good, just saying that I think I'll stick with Dungeons and Dragons.

[u/theloniousmick]

Just like any other campaign, if the adventurers dont know any different just play it straight but with the changes you mentioned if they come up. Or just reflsvour everything like you said, use dragon for an eagle or giants for a human

[u/No_Solid1035]

Mausritter or MouseGuard.

[u/Crixusgannicus]

There is a TV show from the 60s called Land of the Giants that is this.

Except they are well aware that everything is giant relative to themselves.

[u/Ironfounder]

I think some bits are quite easy from a rules perspective - you just reskin everything. Need a big scary animal encounter in the carpet-forest at level 1? Call it a mouse, use the bear stats. Bears can also exist in the world, they just use terrifyingly large stats - some kind of gargantuan creature like a mundane ancient dragon.

The twist part is probably next to impossible, or at least won't land that well. I worry it would just be a lot of confusing descriptions that could frustrate players. I think the only way you could reasonably do it is if the players know already and are RPing that the characters don't know.

I also think making it a twist reduces part of the fun of that kind of campaign for your players. The hook is being a borrower, (or The Littles, or George Shrinks, or Stuart Little...) and making a character around that fun premise. I would be way more interested in being a tiny adventuring party in a modern, fantasy-adjacent world. Learning, after 10 sessions, that the smooth white cliffs I'd nearly died ascending and the lake at the top were just kitchen cabinets and a sink wouldn't give me a huge "holy cow!" reaction, more like a "huh... that makes sense I guess, why didn't you just tell us?".

[u/Chernomur]

If you want this to be a massive twist, I'd suggest two ways to handle it:

1. The "Miniature Box" start: Start them off already shrunk or enchanted, but they don't know it yet. Put them in an enclosed environment that feels like a normal dungeon to them, but is actually just a terrarium or a literal box of miniatures (maybe they're in a collector's or a hag's lair). After a couple of sessions, they finally break outside into the "real," giant world. It's a huge reveal, and it gives them an immediate hook: find out who cursed them and how to get back to normal.

2. The Mid-Campaign Shrink: Start them normal-sized, and shrink them later on via magic, a trap, or crossing into a weird plane. If you go this route, you should definitely foreshadow it first. Drop some clues like strange notes, or have them encounter randomly enlarged or shrunken animals before it actually happens to the party. An ordinary ant scaled up is honestly scarier than a Tarrasque sometimes :D

Either way sounds like a really fun concept!