Gaming "Outside the Box"

[etherio]

Let's toss around ideas and strategies...

 

For years now, I've been interested in finding ways (large or small) to enrich the gaming experience by gaming unconventionally here and there. Not necessarily in groundbreaking ways, but in ways that add a little variety to things, and maybe occasionally simulate the storytelling of comics and literature a little better than RPGing usually can.

 

For example, when you read a comic book, you get to see the machinations of the villain mastermind. That rich element of the story is lost to players. Or, when a character loses his memory, it doesn't have the same impact that it would in a story when you just tell his player: "Play like you forgot everything."

 

There was an excellent idea in a Dragon magazine years ago, where the whole campaign starts out with the PC waking up in a dungeon with amnesia, and eventually learning he's a Paladin along the way.

 

Some recent filmmaking innovation, like the movie "Memento" (recommended if you haven't seen it yet), has really spurred my inspiration in this direction.

 

One example of these sorts of things that I've tried recently:

 

The PCs were having a plot arc where they struggled against evil, alternate-dimension versions of themselves and allies. One hero, Vindicator, had a duplicate (Nightstalker) that coveted his life of admiration and honest respect from his peers and the public...So he took his place. The plot was convoluted, but basically the hero had his memories replaced so that he thought he was the villain. Meanwhile, the villain, completely possessed of his original memories, assumed the hero's identity.

 

When the switch took place, I subtly took the trusted player aside and told him was now playing the Nightstalker impersonating his character. It went beautifully. He did a great job at both staying in character and maintaining the ruse when socializing out of game time. When the Vindicator (really the Nightstalker) died in combat, the players and PCs both were shocked and devastated, because they honestly though it was for real. We even broke up early, because the player admirably pulled off a pissed-as-hell attitude and the other players thought I was being a jerk due to my poorly-stifled grin. Vindicator had a funeral "episode" and the whole nine yards (which was of course interrupted by a tastelessly ill-timed bad-guy assault).

 

The hero, an NPC for the time-being, plagued them as Nightstalker for a while, until subtle clues led them to realize what had happened. The player who was in on the ruse was obviously banned from meaningful participation in piecing the clues together.

 

It all was perfect, and it really brought the flavor of a tried-and-true genre convention to our game.

 

Please share any experiments you've tried or ideas that you've been tossing around about ways to "game outside the box."

[etherio]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

By the way,

 

These sorts of things can include clever ways to use props like maps, computers, fake documents, tangible clues that the players can actually hold, etc.

 

It might include radically different adventure structures or resolution methods for tasks...let the brain cells fly.

[ZenStorm]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

I can really relate to what you're saying. As a GM, I've used all kinds of unconventional techniques/tactics in presenting various stories over the years.

 

Some of these would include,...

 

1. Having the players draw up their real-life persona as characters, with no powers or special abilities to start with and then going through the transformative experience of receiving their gifts and powers through the course of play. This, I did many years ago in an Aberrant campaign that ran for about five years. It went over so well that a lot of my players have since duplicated the idea in their own campaigns. One of my players even ran an entire game of his own, with some other friends of his, that was completely based upon the overall story-arc (and even specific story-arcs) of my campaign.

 

2. I wrote up a murder-mystery scenario, generically, that involved a killer who likes to call the authorities and eventually the PCs to give them clues and riddles as he challenges them to stop him. He can have any sick, sadistic, vengeful reason for doing this. I would also leave them clues in other ways, including a letter that held a clue in the first sentence (which was set apart from the others) that their answers could be found in "A Fierce Magazine." The clue is meant to indicate Mad Magazine... and sure enough whence the letter is folded in half and then one half is folded back in half again, the letter says something entirely different ala Mad Fold-In. This was inspired by the Christopher Lambert movie "Knight Moves" in which the killer does this very thing.

For the creepy phone conversations I went to Radio Shack and picked up a cheap two-way intercom system to simulate the speaker phone that everyone would speak to the killer on. I then went into another room to speak to them. I also had the killer mask his (or her) voice using some kind of modulating distortion aparatus, which I made by hanging strips of aluminum foil down a long, cardboard wrapping-paper tube and speaking through it to the intercom. My players hadn't been expecting my voice to sound different and the way that the little make-shift device made my voice sound was so creepy they said they all got chills, as this pang of horrified surprise went through the room.

This "scenario" I've used in a couple of different campaigns based on how well it went over the first time. The first time was in a Mage: the Ascension campaign. The killer turned out to be a Marauder who was trapped, by his madness, into playing endless games where murder is his goal. I've also used the scenario in Aberrant, Nightbane and a later Mage game. I may use it for my current Champions game, but I don't know.

 

3. In that very successful Aberrant campaign I pulled some uber-shananigans on my PCs at one point. They had started off as covert agents of a secret government organization. Over the course of years of play, they had been the central catalyst in a war that pitted supers against the world and each other. Afterward, due to the events of the war, there was no longer anyway for them to hide their identity. Therefore, the game transitioned for the next year or so to a story about very public heroes. Later, an enemy from their early past prove to be very very not-dead. This foe had since acquired an ability known as Information Manipulaton. I also gave him "Mastery" over this power. (Mastery is the Aberrant equivalent to "Megascale") In order to resume his old battle against the PCs on the type of terms that they had originally been under, he utilized this power to erase all public knowledge of the PCs' existence. Everything from material books, to information stored in computers, to the very memories and knowledge in the minds of the masses, was altered to lead them to believe that other beings were responsible for the PCs' actions and heroics.

This enabled them to once again take covert action as they sought to undo this menace. Just the discovery that they had been forgotten was a fun session in and of itself as they struggled to figure out what had happened. Why the statue in Washington DC was of another group of people, why articles in USA Today's archives were either non-existent or unrelated.

 

All good stuff.

 

I once played in a DnD campaign a friend of mine was running in which he used a published adventure module set in Ravenloft. This plot had to do with these creepy little puppets called "Carrionettes." At one point, the carrionettes attack the PCs by jumping onto them and attempting to stab little needles into them. The fight continues until a couple of PCs get "stuck", then the PCs are allowed to win as the unending tide of carrionettes begins to become far less 'unending.'

 

Later in a moment of downtime, the DM seizes control of the PC(s) who were stuck and traps the other PCs in a steel-mesh net.

What really happened was that the needles transferred the carrionettes' souls into the PCs bodies and they began manipulating the PC like a puppet. The players of the characters in question are never informed of this until later whence they are told that the carrionettes are such gifted puppet-masters and that their performances are so convincing that there was simply no need to take control of the characters from the players, until the moment the trap is sprung.

 

When the PCs awake they slowly realize that they are in a little birdcage suspended high above a toymaker's shop. They further realize that they have all been implanted into the bodies of little marrionettes themselves and must now brave the wilds of the toymaker's house, facing such horrors as cavernous aisles, the mountainous staircase, the toymaker's sadistic cat and of course, other demonic puppets.

 

That one gave me nightmares. Very cool.

[AngryBug]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

Inspired by the Teen Titan's Terra (The Judas Contract ), I once gave a trusted player who wanted a new character the role of a "mole" for the PC team's archenemy, the relentlessly evil ruler of Draconia, Bloodmoon.

"Defender" befriended the Crusaders who, needing to bolster their ranks, invited him to join the team. A Nightwing clone, his brilliant tactics and natural charisma soon made him the team's unofficial leader...

So it was all the more shocking when he betrayed the team to Bloodmoon, leaving them helpless prisoners of the world-beater villain as he stood poised for world domination, their powers neutralized through Defender's inside knowledge.

The payoff came in a truly inspired piece of roleplaying by the player running Defender as, at the last possible moment and completely in character, the example of the Crusaders' heroic ideals Bloodmoon's young apprentice had been exposed to finally overwhelmed the years of the villain's corrupting influence. Growing realization of the evil that Bloodmoon represented, and that he himself was becoming, finally blossomed into horror as Defender, his face and arm now permanently marked with Bloodmoon's dragon emblem as a sign of his status as heir apparent to the Draconian throne, glimpsed his own future in his "father's" villainous joy in the pain and suffering of others. Overcome with remorse over what he had done and rage at what he was becoming, Defender rebelled against Bloodmoon, freeing the Crusaders and saving the world, and earning his erstwhile "father's" eternal enmity in the process.

He even remained with the Crusaders, bearing Bloodmoon's mark upon his face and the new identity of "Redeemer" as permanent reminders of the life of evil he had rejected.

[Prometheus]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

I introduced a scenario by handing out character sheets for a team of U.N.T.I.L agents to the players. Their mission was relatively simple, but I gave it a twist and used as the springboard for the rest of the adventure involving their superheroes.

 

An occasional change in P.O.V. can be a fun, and is a good trick for fleshing out a story and campaign universe. The players got to try something different and I got a prologue that set up the rest of the game.

[TheEmerged]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

I still have very fond memories of a stunt our DM pulled on us under AD&D back in the early 80's (1982 I think). He had us build characters using monster races, and our adventure was to break into the castle and kidnap the princess. It was different and fun; I think nostalgia for those adventures is one reason I still run villain campaigns.

 

My favorite stunt I've ever pulled as a GM was the beginning of our "Emergence" campaign, about a world where super powers are just arriving. But I didn't tell the players that This was under GURPS so I told the players to build themselves as mildly "heroic" characters (about 200 points if I remember right), and to expect a combination martial arts/conspriacy theory campaign. I also told them the writeups had to be done a week in advance. I spent the extra week rewriting those writeups with superpowers.

 

I ran the first session completely, 100% straight. It ended with the players settling in for the night at a farmhouse. The next session began with them all waking up from a bad dream they had collectively (everyone had the same dream but from a different perspective). I continued to run it "straight"... but whenever something happened that might trigger their new powers, I flipped a coin.

 

The fun started when one of the players jumped out the door into the new-fallen snow -- and the coin came up heads. Since the resulting character had Flight...

 

It wasn't long before we did this a second time under HERO (no one in the group was satisfied with GURPS performance in this genre), but that first attempt still ranks as a favorite gaming experience.

[Vorsch]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

I ran a vampire campaign in which i had asked a friend of mine to knock on the door at exactly 3 oclock and announce he was the prince of the city, i conviently left so the players had to deal face to face with this guy with no backup from me. The look on there face was priceless, as they realised it was "in game".

 

I also liked giving handouts written in angelic script, a font i found, one of the players could actually read angelic by thy end of the game and refused to take translations, dedication, cheers Kev.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

I played in a game where PCs were individually working with the GM to do secret things with the characters - not player vs player - but plot ideas.

 

We had one character who was kidnapped by the bad guys, and when he returned he was a clone, but we didn't know that. He had something of a personality adjustment (the character was actually sort of a twit, and was now nicer) but when the reveal came, it was a nice surprise.

 

About the same time I told the GM I wanted to run a long term plot for my character. I was playing Black Cat (see my avatar above). Originally a Martial Artists with Darkforce powers- I wanted her to loose her powers, but in a dramatic way so....

She got killed (Dive for cover to save another character). The PCs went looking in other dimensions for the soul of another NPC and found Cat's Soul. She came back but had lost all of the MA ability (in actuality the powers were possessing the character but even she didn't know that. As time went on, I played her nastier and nastier; very slowly over the course of about 6 months. Cat had a thing about racism and she killed the leader of a neonazi supergroup. The team gets back to base and a very large argument ensues. Cat decides to take them all into the danger room to let off steam (she was the teams combat trainer), whereupon she trashes the rest of team and goes to kill a local industrialist that has been a thorn in thier side since the beginning of the game. She then get depowered and realized she had been possessed.

No one else knew all the details there until the reveal.

The reaction when Cat killed the nazi was priceless.

[zornwil]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

One thing along the lines that Etherio mentioned, lemming's character was partially possessed by 3 different personalities. I talked to lemming about it and he agreed to pick a different personality to occasionally manifest each session, as appropriate. At times I'd give him a subtle (though as time went by increasingly non-subtle) cue that his PC was no longer entirely in control. He did a great job - the team noticed changes but they were subtle and it took them a while to realize just what was going on. Then again, one time his PC's personality went along with something that she normally wouldn't ahve, and the team, who wanted her to do so, just looked the other way for the moment even though they realized she wasn't quite herself. But she was also drinking a lot in general then and they thought it was "just" alcoholism.

 

One thing I think is interesting is to pick some slice of life that actually happens unique to your campaign world and make a session/plot based just on that. I did one session based around the mutant slave trade that the rich can afford to enage in, wherein they frequently use them as house-servants, often rationalizing that they're doing the right thing by "looking out" for the mutants. This worked into our campaign as a PC (once again lemming's actually) is rich and has a family that I could work this into easily.

[travellerne]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

Hi All,

 

Here's something I've done with great success. I call it the "Interrogation Format." It works well as a change to your regular campaign and as a convention scenario.

 

Here's how it works:

The players gather for the game and the first thing the GM does is ask which player is "first?" They won't know what's happening but eventually a volunteer will say "I am."

 

The GM then starts running the session. The scene is a one-on-one with the volunteer's character and an interrogator. The interrogator is asking the character questions about act 1 of the session and is rather forceful about it. Of course, none of the players know the answer but you've really got their attention at this point (they might think you're insane). Don't do this for too long (you need to be a alert to the edge between suspense and frustration). Then you step back and say, "Oh you don't know. Well, let's role play the events leading up to the question." Now the players have an idea where the story should go but they don't yet know how to get there--what really happened is still a mystery. So you all play for a while, until the events leading up to question 1 occur.

 

Then you repeat the interrogation scene with a different volunteer (and they'll volunteer more quickly this time). Another question, more roleplaying up to that question, etc.

 

At the end, they've uncovered the important clues they need for the rest of the campaign, exposed a conspiracy, whatever. Themes for the interrogation can be the murder of an important NPC (who helps the players during the adventure and ends up dead because of it), the theft of an item that eventually the PC's realize they know where it is, or any PC involvement in any conspiracy that fits in your campaign.

 

Following is a four chapter sample of questions I once used. Note that the PCs didn't steal or kill anyone, they were just under suspicion and eventually revealed who the murderer/thief was at the end of chapter 4.

1: “I hope that you slept well in your cell last night. Let’s review what you told me yesterday. Why were you looking for Collins? How did you find him?â€

2: “What did Collins say was stolen? Why did you steal it?"

3: “Before you killed Collins, what information did you torture from him?â€

4: “What do you know about the Dragon?â€

 

Enjoy, and let me know if this ever works for you.

K.

[Lightray]

This is not Champions-related, but I've been thinking how to port the idea to Hero...

 

We were playing L5R (d10 rules, not d20) in a long-running campaign where bandits along the borders of three clans were leading up to the cause of a cross-clan war. I'd told the players that the next session would resolve the war itself.

 

When they showed up, I handed out L5R card decks of the appropriate clans -- with cards mocked up for their characters, NPCs, etc. We played out the game to determine which clan won the war, and interpreted the card plays for how they affected the characters. Several characters were captured early in the war, and a few minor characters were suddenly pushed into the spotlight. It was fun.

 

Now they want me to do it again, though, and I'm wondering if some HeroClix mod might work for Champions...

[Eclectic Wave]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

I started my current campaign by telling everyone that it was a typical sunny tuesday morning and for everyone to discribe for me what thier characters were doing. After they all finished, I said that everyones visions fades out for a moment and that you all find your selves in a ornate office at night with a number of well dressed thug types holding guns on you, and it's phase 12. The idea was that someone had broken a magical dohickey that had erased everyones memories of the last week, and they were in the office of the 2nd most powerfull mob boss in the city (The game is set in 1937). They had to fight thier way out, then try to figure out what had happened for the last week that was missing. Got everyone's attention let me tell you.

 

I later introduced a villian who could "Steal your face", he had shape change, face only, with the added power usable on others, linked. He had to touch someone, and then his face would appear on you, and your face appear on him. I kidnapped a PC and then had the PC replaced with the face-changing villian, and told the player that he was now running the villian and to lead the players into a death-trap. He did a good job, and would have killed a pc, if he hadn't rolled a 1 on a KA for body (ah the fickle dice).

 

A long time ago I ran a Call of Cthulhu game in which one character died in a remote location. Next week when the player came in early to roll up a new character I told him that his character stumbles into the hotel people were staying at, alive with no memory of what had occured. The PC's never figured out what that was all about before the campaign died, so that was one really good plot idea lost.

[Tom McCarthy]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

Pretty standard Champions fare, but I caught some real breaks with this one. A simple bit of guest GMing allowed me to be the 'inside man'.

 

Foxbat was about to transition from his archnemesis psychosis/fixation on the hero Wall-E to becoming Wall-E's follower, aide de camp and sidekick. But Wall-E died on Destruga, and the world (and Freddy Foswell) mourned.

 

Since a guest GM was taking over from me for a short arc next, I took Foxbat's character sheet and made him into the heroic Cannoneer (complete with Meaningful Kirby Poses TM) and presented him as my PC. The guest GM blinked a bit about 'Hunted by Champions' and 'Hunted by PRIMUS' and 'Obsessive rivalry with Wall-E', but went with it. A few of the players thought I was insensitive for having Cannoneer talk at length about how he was inspired by, and superior to, the recently deceased Wall-E. Oh, and the closest matching figure I could use was my buddy Meat's HeroClix mod of Foxbat...

 

So the first adventure goes by, with Cannoneer doing far better than Foxbat usually does, and I'm then back in the GM chair. Wall-E's player still hasn't finished his new character, so he asks to play Cannoneer. I allow it, and he doesn't even twig to the disads, cheerfully playing the Cannoneer as a true blue hero for two story arcs.

 

Eventually the Cannoneer returns to being an NPC, then falls under the mind control of an evil villain. When the team finally breaks him out, I reveal to the players that the Cannoneer is actually Foxbat. Priceless.

 

Then I run 'Let's Go To The Maul'. And everyone's taking every opportunity to beat on Foxbat very personally. Classic.

[etherio]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

Setup...

In my supers game, we have a running theme where PCs do the whole crosstime caper, alternate dimension thingamajigee. Some dimensions are very close to theirs, some very different, some displaced in time. A few PCs have "Sliders"-type gadgets that let them travel randomly to other universes...Anyway...

 

The players were given 48 hours of in-game "downtime" where they were researching ways to stop the evil alien menace from eventually setting off their doomsday devices. They were supposed to report to their boss at the end of that period. During the briefing (the beginning of that day's game session), they saw a commotion on the street below. When they went to investigate, they found that the aliens had planted one of the "implosion devices" under the street. While they were working on disarming it, one by one the neighboring burroughs were wiped out by the devices...seemed like the whole world was being destroyed. Just when the one near them was about to blow, the 3 PCs present saved themselves at the last moment by zapping into another dimension.

 

They arrived in another world that was almost exactly identical to their own, but 48 hours behind. The players were shocked..totally tripping on this development and in denial. I convinced them that it was no dream...it had really happened. Depressed and grieving for their lost loved ones, comrades, and entire civilization, wondering what the hell had happened to the campaign, they made their way to that world's equivalent of their HQ to tell their alternates what they were facing, if all was the same here.

The alternates of the same 3 characters (NPCs of course) met them and, once convinced they were all good-guys, began to share info and discuss plans.

 

They eventually figured out, through casual marks made by me about past game sessions, that their (the players') memories did not exactly match with their characters' recollections of the last couple of weeks...some details were slightly different. They eventually figured out that they had been playing the alternates for that session and I had been NPCing their characters. It played out pretty cool.

 

I then gave back control of the PCs to the players and had them "give" their alternate to another player to be played as a second PC for that story arc as they tried to save the world from armageddon in 48 hours. It gave opportunities for each player to get a shot at the cool stuff other players' characters had for a while, and a chance for role-playing interaction between PCs that are essentially the same, but becoming slightly different people due to their differing circumstances. It also gave each player some inspiration for his own character seeing how another player used his abilities in and out of combat.

[austenandrews]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

I once switched a PC for a clone, then killed the clone. That was a fun bit of drama.

 

-AA

[Guest Worldmaker]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

I once told my players that I needed to take a break from the usual Champions campaign (we had been going full tilt for close to 8 years by that point). I also told them that since this was going to be a short-term break I went ahead and created characters for them.

 

When I then proceeded to hand out was their own characters as seen by someone other than themselves, stripped of any superhuman abilities or skills. I basically had taken each player's character sheet, wrote up a third party description of the character, cut away anything that kept the character from being Joe or Jane Middle America, and then randomly handed them back. I made sure only that they didn't end up with the same characters.

 

I then plunged them into a world where the United States was a fascistic dictatorship ruled over by one of the Champions campaign's biggest bad guys. It took them a full three months of game time to realize that a) the bad guy had somehow acquired time travel technology and had used it to prevent the characters from becoming superheroes, which allowed him to c) take over the world. Oh, and d) they had been playing each other's characters all along.

 

The resultant quest to restore time was amazingly fun.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

I once told my players that I needed to take a break from the usual Champions campaign (we had been going full tilt for close to 8 years by that point). I also told them that since this was going to be a short-term break I went ahead and created characters for them.

 

When I then proceeded to hand out was their own characters as seen by someone other than themselves, stripped of any superhuman abilities or skills. I basically had taken each player's character sheet, wrote up a third party description of the character, cut away anything that kept the character from being Joe or Jane Middle America, and then randomly handed them back. I made sure only that they didn't end up with the same characters.

 

I then plunged them into a world where the United States was a fascistic dictatorship ruled over by one of the Champions campaign's biggest bad guys. It took them a full three months of game time to realize that a) the bad guy had somehow acquired time travel technology and had used it to prevent the characters from becoming superheroes, which allowed him to c) take over the world. Oh, and d) they had been playing each other's characters all along.

 

The resultant quest to restore time was amazingly fun.

You, sir, are an evil evil man. I salute you.

[Agemegos]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

It took them a full three months of game time to realize that a) the bad guy had somehow acquired time travel technology and had used it to prevent the characters from becoming superheroes, which allowed him to c) take over the world. Oh, and d) they had been playing each other's characters all along.

 

The resultant quest to restore time was amazingly fun.

 

Kudos!

 

It is campaign planning like that that makes me want to crawl back under my rock.

 

You are the fake-out king!

[Guest Worldmaker]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

You' date=' sir, are an evil evil man. I salute you. [/quote']

 

Thank you, thank you... no need for applause, just sent money.

 

 

BTW, I like the new sig. "Joy to the just to do judgment, but destruction to the workers of iniquity." Very good verse.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

 

BTW' date=' I like the new sig. "Joy to the just to do judgment, but destruction to the workers of iniquity." Very good verse.[/quote']Thanks. It's a quote my character Zl'f used in an interview when asked why she's a superheroine. (Unlike me, she's very devout.) I used the version from the YLT (Young's Literal Translation) in the interview IIRC, but I used it from the Vulgate for my sig just 'cause Latin is cool. (I've got 4 different Bibles on my PDA. I'm a weird agnostic.)

 

A friend asked me today why I didn't do it in Hebrew; I told him I don't think Hero's boards can handle Hebrew text. (I have Hebrew and Greek versions for my PDA as well on my PC; but I can't read either so I don't keep them on the handheld device.)