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| Aberzanzorax |
 Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 11:04 am Post subject: |
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| I'd be interested in their answer if you get one! |
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| Neostrider |
| Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 3:13 pm Post subject: Next Open Design Project Idea |
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I've always wished that there were adventure paths published that felt more like a legend rather than a series of isolated incidents. Its hard to describe the difference I feel, but I'll try using examples.
Ever watch the new Beowulf movie? Minus the CG and nakedness, why couldn't that play out as an adventure? I feel the adventure paths I run (usually DM) play more like a Die Hard or Mission Impossible movie, where explosions and excitement ensue and when its all over its just onto the next mission.
I know players are adverse to retiring characters but if an adventure could make them into HUGE heroes maybe they'd want to remember them in their moment of triumph. |
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| Wolfgang |
| Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 3:30 pm Post subject: |
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YES! Hell yes! I know the sense of "creeping action movie" that sometimes appears in RPGs, and it annoys me as well.
And in Cthulhu, PC retirement is totally normal and expected. I think the difference is just that it *is* expected.
If you tell players going into a D&D game "We'll run about 6 levels and your characters will either be legends, or they'll be dead" might be interesting.
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| Neostrider |
| Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 4:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Starting with an informal challenge like that could keep players on the edge of their seats since they will know whats at risk. If they are expecting the extremes, be legends or be dead as you said, they'll feel like their characters will have to be at their best to achieve the best ending. |
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| Aberzanzorax |
| Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 5:18 pm Post subject: |
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I'm totally on board!
I just don't want a series of one-shots.
An alternative could also be "character trees" that create several characters...and players might know that they're likely to end with one or none remaining.
I think I even have an idea here that I'm a bit excited about:
Say there is a product with 6 total adventures in it (from level 2 to 7, maybe).
Allow for 3 characters per pc. It is assumed that in each adventure a character or two will die.
Players cannot play pcs in adventure 2 that they used in adventure 1 (regardless of deaths).
So, players will try to have their own pcs survive...their lives might be the best "treasure" they can get!
The idea behind the design would be to give players an emotional investment in all their pcs and also to create tension for player A who had 2 pcs die already while player B has all three remaining. Player B should be taking all the risks in adventure 3+ because player A has no more "aces in the hole".
It could create a very interesting and cool group dynamic as well as allowing for real horror.
One last scenario that I am not sure if I like or not: what if in the final adventure, adventure 6, the players can bring to bear all of their pcs, but only one at a time.
What I mean here is a "tag in" scenario, whether through magic or through story points in which characters can be brought in if one dies.
The biggest challenge I've seen/had in horror writing is to have the characters remain meaningful but also replacable...otherwise, it is just "life resetting".
I dunno, do others think these ideas work, don't work, or have ideas of their own in this regard? |
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| Neostrider |
| Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 5:32 pm Post subject: |
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Another possibility is rather than limit the number of characters that the player can make to replace dead one, each dead character becomes a living villain.
Examples: Player A had his rogue die from a fall into a pit trap. Evil team digs up poor rogue and either Ghoulifies them, turns them into a vampire, or my personal favorite: Raise the poor chump and possess the body. The final case requires either a Magic Jar spell or Demon.
I like Demons as villains, especially with the possession rules provided in the Demon book. (I can't remember the name. something Abyss) There's nothing more horrifying for me as a player to have a DM 'borrow' my character sheet and use it against my fellow companions. If it was a dead character it wouldn't have the sting of removing a player out completely while keeping the 'OH NO!' factor high. |
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| Aberzanzorax |
| Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 6:06 pm Post subject: |
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And that's why I like open design...
Great idea!
Don't die, or there will be a new villian!
Maybe just your idea, or maybe a combo of both of ours? |
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| Aberzanzorax |
| Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 6:14 pm Post subject: Speaking of multiple characters for players... |
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Here's an idea that I'm really fond of meself...
My (3e but would work for 4e) campaign is going to have pcs become demigods who can only be killed by certain severe enemies: other gods or demigods and elder evils...at face to face contact, each side intrinsically knows that they are mortal at the hands of the other...that the stakes are raised. (OF course, they can still be killed by the "mundanes" but that only takes them out of action for an adventure).
Each player will also have a "follower" of their other pc. So they will have someone who is essentially 20+ level and 5+ level.
The lower level guy gets powers from the other pc...so if that one dies in the short term, those bonus powers are lost. If that one dies in the long term, those bonus powers are lost permanently.
I also have it set so that the demigod pcs have to sit out a session if they die nonpermanently....resulting in their herald, an "angel" adventuring in their place. This is not a penalty, but a story "trick" of diversity...the penalty is for the low level pc who loses powers while his god is missing.
Basically, I have two sets of alternating adventures going, and both sets of players characters are intertwined. The low level guy's job is to convert worshippers and successful adventures on his part are how the high level guy gains more power.
The idea here is to spread story and power across epic and "average joe" and have them impact one another's lives and stories.
I'd love to see something like this done professionally, and with Open Design patron feedback. I think it is unique enough, and also may appeal to people of both the "gritty low level" and "sweeping high level" persuasions.
What do others think? Too stratified/gamey/other objection? |
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| varianor |
| Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 5:53 am Post subject: |
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That's an interesting idea. I think it would be huge in terms of word count to achieve that. The question is, what's the core campaign? Is it being a demigod? That's a 100 page OD project. Is it being a follower in a low level campaign? That's another project. What's the appeal for the player, given that Open Design attracts both creative DMs and unusual players?
(It happens to sound a lot like parts of the Scion game by the way.)
What's the hook for the purchaser if this flies? (Put differently, what would the back cover blurb look like?) |
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| Aberzanzorax |
| Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 7:11 am Post subject: |
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That's just it. The core campaign is BOTH.
What links them would be the Inneffable Evil. That could be a demon prince, for instance, or an elder evil, or an evil god manipulating the first two.
The demigod pcs would be on the ground floor fighting the big bad evils face to face.
The "follower" pcs would be working to disrupt magical rituals of the Inneffable Evil's cults. Both the protagonsists and antagonists would have the multi-level layer to this.
In my campaign, for instance, the veil between the far realm/chtulhuland is going to have a hole in it. The high level guys are gong to be taking on elder evils. The lower level guys are going to play Crucible of Chaos.
SPOILER ALERT!!! The low level guys can activate the fallen flying city and provide it to the high level guys so that they can mount a final assault.
The hook for the purchaser/back cover blurb, hmmm. Here's a first shot at it:
Divine Heroes
The world needs heroes great and small. Even the gods need the help and worship of the most seemingly insignifcant of their followers. However, for too long, gods have seemed distant, uncaring, and removed from their clergy, hardly worthy of the worship they are supposed to recieve.
Now, the Innefable Evil has come. The very world and afterlife will be changed as the result of your actions. The soldier and apprentice wizard are as badly needed as the famed general and the archmage, powerful and on the cusp of ascension to godhood. The world will shake, the heavens will warp, and everything will be changed. Only by working together can gods and their servants overcome. Divine worship just got personal.
The selling points of this, in my mind, are:
1. You really "feel" the difference between various levels of play. There is the sense of direct comparison. It would be fun to have the same bbeg monster type for the low level guys be in swarms for the high level guys to enhance this (eg aboleth versus aboleth swarm in a city). For me, high level play is too mundane in some cases as the balance of level 20 guy versus cr 22 monster is about the same experience of level 1 guy versus cr 3 monster (more or less, I'm being broad here). I never "feel" powerful per se, as the challenges are (rightly) scaled to my level. However, juxtapose my playing of two linked characters of different levels and the differences start to become more meainingful.
2. Creating a personal relationship between worshipers and their gods Sure, clerics pay lip service to a god during play, but do the players really care about good old Aumunator or Bahamut? In this scenario, players would really, really care about their god, because they are playing it. They would feel the impact of their character on the god, and the reciprocal relationship on themselves.
3. Reciprocal relationships. The god characters grant spells to the followers. If the god is temporarily dead, these are diminished. That's the penalty for that...not a level loss, but less power for the follower. If the god does well, it can grant a new domain to followers (as the god gains power). Followers can help the god gain power by successful missions as well. Convert others, stop evil gods, do great deeds that spread the message of their own god, etc.
4. A chance to create a religion. Maybe I'm thinking a bit like nobilis or exalted or scion here. I don't know, I've read ABOUT those systems, but haven't read them. How I'm working it is that the gods get domain access as they gain in power. This doesn't affect them per se (but could) but it affects the followers. The idea is that the tenets, focus, holy days, etc, are defined by the character itself. It is a way to build on your own world and introduce meaningful gods that have real stories the players care about. "The high holy day of Bursting Light? That's when we honor the Radiant one for banishing the darkness. Lamps are lit throughout the town, making night as bright as day and a nightlong party ensues, the likes of which you've never seen."
5. Long term campaign impact. Fundamentally, I see this ending with the god characters retiring (to become full time gods) and the low level guys becoming the remainder of the campaign (when this adventure/series is through). This would be a way to connect old campaigns and new...to build the world with the impact of the high level pcs and to create new heroes with strong and independent histories, while still honoring the characters of the past.
6. A great way to end one campaign and start a new one. An adventure for those who have long term, beloved characters that really should get retired, and who want to introduce new characters into the world that players have come to know and enjoy. Speaking of blurbs: End your campaign without ending your campaign. The heroes move on, but the world keeps on turning.
7. Players don't get bored with just one guy. Sometimes it is fun to have a break from a specific character. This would allow that break without going to a completely different campaign and the risk of never coming back to character A.
In terms of layout, I'd imagine a total of maybe 5 adventures. 2 would be low level. 2 would be high level. 1 (the finale) would be a side by side snippet of flashing back and forth (like cutscenes). It could be like the end of the lord of the rings trilogy (where the hobbits destroy the ring while the tough army takes on Sauron's army). Or, less directly, the low level guys have to destroy the phylactery while the high level guys have to kill the lich.
Actually, I think it would work even better if in the first four adventures there was a "focus" of maybe 80% of the adventure on one group (low level guys or high level) and a 20% "scene" in which we see what the other characters are doing, and how it is related to either this particular adventure or the upcoming one that the characters in the "scene" are doing next.
I look at it like a novel. One where there is an ensemble of characters who don't really know each other and have exclusivity in some chapters, but eventually meet and their stories entwine. I don't think that a project such as this necessitates more word count than any other, just that the story being told has more characters and so less focus on a given character as the main one.
Sorry for the semi-disjointed ideas here. My campaign is set in the Midnight setting and I'm heavily homebrewing the god rules and the impact on the lower level pcs, but in a product this could be done as much as I am doing it, but refined, or very minimally (maybe with access to a prestige class of "godfollower" or somesuch). So, I'm doing a buch of "on the fly" translation without giving all the backstory of my changes/ideas in total. |
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| Neostrider |
| Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 11:18 am Post subject: |
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Sounds less like a horror story at that point, but I don't think we're committed to horror, right?
Its hard to reign in gods, just as a warning. 20% of every adventure would probably be spent with every character's god creating and distributing the most powerful magic item they can. Also, fights between gods are some of the longest and tedious things I've ran. The big finale you've desribed for adventure 5 would also be hard to pull off correctly because anything that would challenge the low level team would die in a glance from the god patron.
The idea of having a deity sponsor is fun though, just not horror fun. Its definitely another idea to add to the poll of what the next one should be.
Going along the horror road, isolation is probably one of the bigger ways to scare people at the table. Jump out horror or gory horror are hard to pull off because people's minds shelter them from this as they imagine. Describe the bloodiest room in the world, and most players will go "Blood, check. yeah." and try to forgot the unsettlingness of it.
I would start the horror game with a campy "Evil dungeon over there," a skip and a jog to grandmother's house, and then I'd trap them in the dungeon, split the party up for adventure 1, smile as they burn through their potions without a shop in sight, and wrap up adventure 1 by having a glimpse of the big bad guy and an encounter the players must run from to survive.
The players will go through these steps: Gee this is fun, Ha ha easy exp, ok we're trapped its not so bad, where's the healer/tank/mage we need him!, oh god why is this happening, YAY we found the others, OMG we're suppose to fight THAT! Game over man, Game over. |
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| Neal |
| Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 11:43 am Post subject: |
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Aberzanzorax:
I personally like the idea, but think it's probably unworkable as an Open Design project.
First of all, I'd think to do the idea justice you'd need more than five sessions - a lot more. I don't think 2 sessions with each character leading up to the finale is enough time for players to become invested in the characters. The finale, to work the way it needs to, seems to me to be the kind of thing that's most effective when the players are invested in the characters - and having alternating characters doesn't really give them enough time to really get into the characters' heads.
Not for my group, at least. We need two games just to get to know them.
Secondly, there's a problem with which system to use for this game. I don't think 3e works terribly well - this setting involves epic level heroes, which is always a problem. 4e would work slightly better insofar as it's epic tier handled a bit better - but handling epic play slightly better than 3e is really just me damning with faint praise. There's no reason to think either set of mechanics will work to the strength of the idea.
I wouldn't want to play this type of game in any edition of D&D - though I would want to play it quite a bit if it used another system. Exalted, perhaps - or Reign, with some modifications. Hell, a homebrewed Unknown Armies would work pretty well, too.
Basically, anything that avoids the mapping of character's power by levels would be ideal. The mental leap of going from a Lev. 30 character to a Lev. 5 character is pretty huge in any edition of D&D (especially 3rd, given the paralyzing number of options available at 30), and I'd want to make sure the rules avoid making either character less fun to play than the other.
In my experience other games do this better than D&D - and in fact, there's not a lot in D&D's mechanics to recommend this sort of play. Thank god there are other options!
-neal
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| Aberzanzorax |
| Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 11:53 am Post subject: |
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To Neostrider.
For my idea:
Yeah, I agree, not horror. Maybe far realm or fiendish dark fantasy, but no, not horror. The over the top aspect of near gods just takes away the "vulnerability" that is needed for good horror.
Also, I've somewhat misrepresented my idea with the term "gods". "Godlings" might be a better word. I was more thinking of level 25-27 (or even 27-30) for the high level pcs and level 5-7 for the lower level ones. They'd be just developing into gods...maybe only able to provide minimal spell choices/levels. They couldn't make magic items any more than a level 25 wizard can (which is substantial, but not super crazy).
Also, rather than magic items, the low level guys would be granted "divine abilities" so they wouldn't need to all be clerics of the gods either (normal party makeup would be fine).
For the final adventure, I also was unclear. I did not mean that they were in the same room. I meant that they were both working on parts of the same task and the "action scene" would cut from one group to the other, giving each group 50/50 spotlight. By the same goal, I mean that, say the final evil is some elder evil. The godlings have to fight it in some way. It is in its prision dimension and is coming out now. If the followers stop an evil ritual, it will be weakened. If they don't, the godlings will have to fight it as uberpowerful. Sort of like at the end of Savage Tide SPOILER ALERT where the players fight demogorgon, but he's vastly diminished because of their earlier actions...only that it would be simultaneous actions of their other pcs in this case.
So, yeah, if others like this idea, it wouldn't be part of horror, but would be a different option.
For your horror mentions, I totally agree! I've dabbled a bit in horror and blood and gruesome, no matter how well described in battles isn't horror, it is slasher. Open design has done horror very well in Blood of the Gorgon (as --I think it was Varianor-- stated). I wouldn't worry about that.
One example of horror really well done (that my players thought was very scary) is a free module called "Child of the House" at fraternityofshadows, a ravenloft fansite.
http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/Library.html
Last edited by Aberzanzorax on Thu Jun 04, 2009 12:09 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| Aberzanzorax |
| Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 12:09 pm Post subject: |
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To Neal,
Good points. I think the strongest two you make are the length needed (2 sessions being insufficient) and epic being wonky in D&D.
I would say, though, that it needn't be two sessions, but rather, two adventures. I'm basically using the "Halls of the Mountain King" structure here. I look at that as a campaign of about 5 adventure modules. Maybe I'm overestimating it, I don't know. But over the course of two modules, I'm pretty invested in a character. In this case, there would be interrelatednes between the characters as well...so maybe each character would get 2.2 modules before they each got to the finale.
Epic is wonky. No doubt about it. And yet people do play at that level. I think if such a project were attempted, I'd want to post over at Dicefreaks and get the Epic experts involved. I also think that it would call for bizarre planes and perhaps unusual monsters beyond the epic SRD (Mongoose has a bunch as well) to challenge players of that level.
Another possibility is that this could be used with existing characters. I'd even go so far as to suggest it. Take high level guys that the players already are playing and perhaps have a "level up macguffin" that brings them to godhood.
In my mind, a part of the point of this design is to have the mental leap of level 5 versus level 25. It is to point out exactly how different the characters are. Personally, I find all levels of play exciting, and very different (at least in 3e. I haven't played anything above Heroic in 4e, so I don't know).
I do agree that other systems than D&D might be better for an adventure such as this. However, I don't know that it is unworkable in D&D itself. Maybe it is, but I'm constantly surprised how far the limits of the system can be pushed, and the varieties of genres represented.
If it's not good for open design, that's totally cool (or if it's just not a favored idea, also totally cool). I just thought I'd toss it out there as the core idea of playing multiple characters at different levels, and having their successes and failures be reciprocal is one that is something I have't seen before. |
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| Neostrider |
| Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 12:15 pm Post subject: |
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I think its a good idea, I just don't think it would work as an open design. I'd rather see your idea done as a sourcebook (like deities and demigods 2: Mortal Interaction) ... that'd be a cool movie. I've lost my train of thought.
The difficulty I see with making your idea a published adventure is published adventures usually have 3 or 4 branches and eventually everything gets visited. With epic characters and gods, ANYTHING could happen. Every scene would need a long list of "If they dimension anchor the villian who's supposed to escape; If they don't happen to have planar shift available; For the spellcasters who don't have epic spell slots....
I like your idea, and if you make any notes I'd post them somewhere, but its just hard to put down in the format people are expecting from a printed adventure book. |
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