Campaign idea!

[Brutal]

I have this idea about a campaign. I'm wondering what you think of the idea. Or if anyone played a campaign like it before It would be nice of you to tell me how it went. Also I've posted it in the champions forum as well since im not sure which genre to play in yet.

Ideas

* Campaign is not solely a "save the world" campaign

* The backround of the campaign is not always the main plot and all adventures need not be coherent at all times.

* The idea is that the characters wake up somewhere with a memory loss (new characters).

* They have no idea who they are nor where they are from.

* The campaign is as much about them finding out their origin as in survival.

* Mysterious friends and enemies from the PC's past shows up sometimes

* PC's will experience various flashbacks, some of which actually help them but also some which does not help them at all

* Some adventures could be played as "flashbacks". How well the characters succeed in the adventures will significant for how much the PC's remember and what clues they recieve. It's often about moral decisions, but it wont reveal who they are and where they are from too quickly.

* The PC's hunt for answers about their past will lead them new adventures and conflicts where they might not know which side to chose.

* During adventuring some very wierd things can happen that the PCs have no idea whats going on, but as they continue the campaign they could find out later on what happened.

* They could be hunted by someone or something. They dont know what or who it is, however it will keep them fleeing (someone very powerful ). The idea is that sometime in the future they will think of a way to beat him, and possibly succeed.

 

Stuff I need to find out before campaign starts:

 

What are the PC's background, and where do they come from?

Who are they?

How did they lose their memory?

 

Are they some sort of gods that has arrived to to this world for some reason? Are they from another world or dimension? Are they the last decendants from a now dead civilisation? Have they themselves agreed to lose memory, ie, is there something they dont want to remember?

I think it shouldnt be TOO hard to figure out these things because it could put the players off.

I realise also that it probably takes active players to pull something like this off, so some players could need more help along they way than others.

So what do you think? Any ideas?

 

/Brutal

[Curufea]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

I think flashbacks will be tricky - you'll be leaving some PCs with nothing to do. Unless you allow them to play characters other than their own during one persons flashback.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Assuming the characters were all together at the time the adventure took place, a flashback wouldn't leave anyone with nothing to do. My thought on it was that if a player knew this was a flashback, he might get pretty reckless with his character, reasoning that if he's still around to have a flashback, then he obviously survived the adventure.

[Brutal]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Yeah good points, flashbacks perhaps shouldnt be acted out, and just be told to the PC's instead.

[Markdoc]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

I ran a game like this - all the characters were immortals and the orginal people on whom the tarot was based.

 

So we had Death, The Fool, The Devil, The Tower, the Hanged Man and Trey of pentacles.

 

All of them started with false memories - and in different places, so I played a series of solo adventures until they were all together. I got them to hoose a tarot card to represent their character and then made the characters up myself so they did not know what their powers were.

 

The basic plot was that someone/something wanted them out of the way. You couldn't kill the immortals - they'd just pop up again in a new body somewhere else and you couldn't easily imprison them, unless you did it so they could not kill themselves. so wiping their memory - and giving them a fake identity seemed like good plan. Once the players worked this out, they started to try and find out who had done it to them - but there were plenty of other immortals kicking around, most with heir own agenda

 

The game only ran for about 6 months - then shifting house, shifting girlfriends and working on my PhD took over - but it is still remembered fondly by me and the players.

 

cheers, Mark

[Haven Walkur]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Oh, Markdoc, that's a wonderful conceit for a campaign!

 

The concept is imaginative and very creative, but manages to be self-contained and logical...you made the answer to the 'why' question (why were these Immortals robbed of their memories?) inherent to the game. I love the idea of drawing the character inspiration from the Tarot, too; that was inspired, even though the players didn't know that's what they were doing. That's the mark of good players, that they were willing to trust you as GM to guide them fairly through the game.

 

<heartfelt yearning>How I wish I could have been in on that game!

 

(You've got Rep coming as soon as the Board permits.)

[Brutal]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Good idea marcdoc!

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

The amnesia plotline, cliche though it may be, is great for roleplaying, and it sounds like you have some good plot points to explore. I have run a similar idea, but with a pre-existing campaign where suddenly all the characters awoke in the middle of a wasteland with no idea how they got there or how much time had passed since their last memory. The unraveling of the mystery was a lot of fun.

 

A couple of points you might want to consider. First, most characters derive their personalities from their backgrounds, so you might want to let them have something they remember in order to justify their Psych Lims (although it could be fun to discover why a character has a particular Psych Lim).

 

Second, mystery plots like this require a lot a pacing control on the part of the GM; if the information comes out too fast there is little mystery, too slow and players get frustrated. In the campaign I ran, my pacing crutch was a psychotic fairy that was hounding the players and would taunt them with riddles. Whenever they got stuck, the fairy would show up and throw another riddle at them to give them some direction.

 

____________________________________________________________

"Nobody must know my name, for nobody would understand, and you kill what you fear, and you fear what you don't understand." the Guide Vocal from The Duke's Travels

[Brutal]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Yeah, timing and good pace is the key to something like this I think.

[The Monster]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Another possible approach: inspired by Robocop. The PCs are an experiment in brain rebooting, seeing what happens when a new, largely "blank" personality is overwritten onto a brain. Thus the players end up sorting out two personalities: the one they start play with, which is largely a blank slate and determined as they go, and their original personality which begins resurfacing when triggered by certain events, phrases, images, as well as spontaneously. How the two mix is up to the players (mostly).

[UltraRob]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Since this is a fantasy game, they're probably people who were part of some prophecy but the bad guys couldn't kill because that was also forbidden. So they had their memories magically wiped and were dumped out to fend for themselves.

 

 

Rob

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Just a couple of things to be careful of: don't randomize the flashbacks TOO much. By that I mean, if your players are going to have a flashback whether they do anything or not, why bother doing anything at all? Don't make them bystanders just observing this cool scenario; make them participate in the retrieval of memories. Set up triggers, so that winning against outnumbered odds triggers a flashback of another time they did that, or going to a particular place reminds them of the last time they were there.

 

Another thing to look out for is having them be well-fleshed-out characters without their memories. I've seen amnesia played 2 ways; first, a character trying to figure out who she was and why she was the way she was, and second, a player who didn't want to bother writing a background or doing anything out of combat. Steer them away from the second; encourage the first.

 

Overall, though, I think it sounds like it could work really well.

[Beetle]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Sounds like an interesting concept. I just have a couple of cautions for you, though

 

First - how well do you know the players and what they like to play? You may end up with unhappy players if they discover their character is the sort of character they really don't like to play.

 

Second (Alice touched on this above) - be careful that your players don't feel like their being railroaded. This concept can easily lend itself to the players being more spectators than drivers of the actions (with no backgrounds they lack hooks to push the story forward themselves).

[UltraRob]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Something I had a lot of fun doing in more random games (like V&V and MSH) back in the day was give characters powers and equipment, but have the players not know what they were. Watching PCs spend hours trying to figure out what they can do, or discovering what they can do is loads of fun.

 

I don't suppose it would work well with HERO though, unless you made them set aside some points during character creation for "surprises" which would be planned by you, the GM.

 

Rob

[gewing]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

The amnesia plotline, cliche though it may be, is great for roleplaying, and it sounds like you have some good plot points to explore. I have run a similar idea, but with a pre-existing campaign where suddenly all the characters awoke in the middle of a wasteland with no idea how they got there or how much time had passed since their last memory. The unraveling of the mystery was a lot of fun.

 

A couple of points you might want to consider. First, most characters derive their personalities from their backgrounds, so you might want to let them have something they remember in order to justify their Psych Lims (although it could be fun to discover why a character has a particular Psych Lim).

 

Second, mystery plots like this require a lot a pacing control on the part of the GM; if the information comes out too fast there is little mystery, too slow and players get frustrated. In the campaign I ran, my pacing crutch was a psychotic fairy that was hounding the players and would taunt them with riddles. Whenever they got stuck, the fairy would show up and throw another riddle at them to give them some direction.

 

____________________________________________________________

"Nobody must know my name, for nobody would understand, and you kill what you fear, and you fear what you don't understand." the Guide Vocal from The Duke's Travels

 

 

I made a character once based on a combination of the "Eternal Champion" from Three Hearts and Three Lions and "Highlander".

 

He had regeneration, but when the campaign started he was found on a small battlefield with an axe stuck in his head, more or less. Just because he is nearly immortal doesn't mean he can't get brain damage.

 

I gave him a power called "DM PLOT HOOK" that was a no conscious control extradimensional teleport.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Alice said some of this, and Beetle agreed with her, so I'm going to add my opinion in with theirs. While I like the general concept, it sounds like you're looking to plan out a vast amount of events, and giving the players minimal choice over what they're doing. That being said.

 

- Most players don't like being 'told' what's going on in a flashback; this makes flashbacks tricky if have metagamers. They'll realize that they can't "die" because it's a flashback. You have a work around for this. Make the flashback tangibly real. In other words, instead of 'flashbacks' to what happened, they're closer to 'time twists' in which the PCs are literally reliving the events that led up to where they are. This promptly introduces two things:

 

Fear of Death, and Death. I'm a firm believer in the theory that a PC should, especially during combat, be genuinely afraid for their lives. In premise one, 'flashback as story' the PCs could get bored and/or disgruntled. I have plot hounds, so while I wouldn't have that particular problem, I've seen flash backs screwed up before, so I strongly encourage going with 'flash back as relived reality.' Otherwise, in option two, they play it, but are immune. Think of it like The Matrix (another my world does not equal does not equal the real world setting conceit).

 

Originally Posted by Captain Obvious

Assuming the characters were all together at the time the adventure took place, a flashback wouldn't leave anyone with nothing to do. My thought on it was that if a player knew this was a flashback, he might get pretty reckless with his character, reasoning that if he's still around to have a flashback, then he obviously survived the adventure.[/Quote]

 

CQ has an excellent point here as well; in... what was it? Curse of the Azure Bonds? You have a group of PCs who wake up with no memory, but bound together by the bands around their arms, which occassionally compel them to do crazy things, and have them wake up in weird places. Because they're never separated, you sidestep the need to tell a flashback to an individual.

 

Third, and the major sticking point for me, is that you're talking about doing a ton of writing, which I'm down for. Very much so, I'm a storyteller, that's what I do. But gaming is interactive storytelling; if you just want PCs to play out predesignated roles, you're going to have some really unhappy people if they sniff the oil and burning coal from those train tracks. I know, because I used to be entirely guilty of it; took me a long time to get the players I could trust to take care of the story, and participate in its unfolding as much as I respected their PCs and what they wanted to accomplish within the confines of the game. It's not that it isn't a valid approach, all approaches are 'valid' but if you're wondering whether that would be fun for your players, odds are it wouldn't be.

 

False Memories: Allow the PCs to build their own pasts, and then using those pasts as a spring board, search for (or when in doubt, create) common ground among them, then draft the "true" histories for each of them. You may want to unite them under a common banner prior to launching their character history drafts. For example: You all server for this specific corps, under this commanding officer. You've all been to this enchanted shrine. You all come from families which were influential in the capital. You all love earthworms. Whatever. Then use that unifying concept to tie the PCs together within the confines of the "true" history which brought them to where they are.

 

This also allows you to be much more liberal with NPCs, as they say things like "I haven't seen you guys since the Duke's wedding banquet, why haven't you returned my letters?" The NPC in question has at least passing knowledge of the PCs, may have a crush on a PC, may be trying to curry favor with one of the noble families, etc. Tons of options, and some very confused PCs. Also, when you have encounters like this, make sure they're in the open, unless you want your PCs taking prisoners and interrogating them. Just a thought.

 

Everyone loves a good conspiracy, it's just a matter of how deep the rabbit hole goes. Hope that helps somewhat.

[Brutal]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Yeah, well at any rate, If I have flashbacks, it wont be roleplayed I think. Since its probably more fitting with handing out notes that says what the PC remembers for that.

[i3ullseye]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

One game I used flashbacks in went well, but i had to tailor the sessions for it. Here is how it normally went.

 

The players were retracing the steps of a legendary band of adventurers, to obtain an item of power once again needed to save the world. But the item was in pieces, and they needed to find those pieces. I had a sort of mmory storage device that hey could peer into, and it was said to give them glimpses into their future by revealing a key past. IE... plot device for seeing the flashbacks as a group.

 

Now when they found a key device, they often didn't know where the second part might be, or how to use it. So I woudl hand out the character sheets for the earlier gorup, and the entire game would shift for a time... now they were plaing these legendary heroes.

 

I set up scenarios where this device first becomes seperated in the past, or stolen, and playing throguh that even gave them the clues they needed to follow up on it in the present. Sometimes the villain of the past woudl utter the key words needed to use an item in the present. Soemtimes, the way they played out in the past could change dramatically what they needed to do in the present, and that was something i had to plan for by having 2 or 3 very clear options in case thigns didn't go as planned.

 

This same group later had to travel to alternate dimensions for this quest, and I had some real fun with that. I actually had them trade character sheets, and play as each other. they got more XP for really playing the other person well. I even had them swap characters to replay the past once,... an exact session we had a few months before. those who matched it closely were rewarded, but the end result was drastically differrent than the first time around.

 

Flashbacks can be rough, but if you have a lot of Player and GM trust, they can be some of the most fun you will ever have in a game.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Actually, that's how a lot of FF8 was handled. It's an intriguing concept . . .

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Wait... I remember 8 as being fairly straight forward, story telling wise. Am I forgetting something key? It's early I might be, you never know...

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

The scenes with . . . um . . . Laguna, that's his name! The scenes with him and his friends were flashbacks.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

*blank stare* I'm willing to bet you're right, because my memory is ****e for this sort of thing, but for the life of me I don't recall in the slightest. Are you sure you mean 8? Squall, Seifer, crazy lady with the headress? The big dance scene?

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

Positive. That's the first video game I ever picked up of my own volition, and I've played through it 3 times. I remember being sooooo frustrated that first time, leveling and junctioning spells and such only to lose all that stuff when I went back to Squall. Eck.

 

It was really only during the first half of the game, I believe, and was only there to emphasize the wonkiness of time, or something.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

This explains why I have limited memory of it; all I remember of that game is snoozing while drawing gobs of spells from specific MOBs in a specific zone. Right now I'm playing Dragon Quest VIII, but that'll get shelved while I give my shiny new Xbox 360 sweet, sweet lovin'.

[Markdoc]

Re: Campaign idea!

 

I gave him a power called "DM PLOT HOOK" that was a no conscious control extradimensional teleport.

 

In the Immortal Tarot Game I mentioned, Death had XD Teleport (only to areas where Mass Death is occurring, -1). The power was not "no conscious control" but since the character did not know originally he had the power, he used it reflexively - meaning he often teleported without intending to, just by expressing a desire to go somewhere.

 

It really messed with the player for a while, because he flitted from battlefields, to plagues, to earthquakes, and the idea planted by some evil GM or other (the rumour of the "Knight of the Black Rose" who appeared as a sign of evil) was that he was *causing* these events, instead of just using the lost lifeforce to power his movement.

 

cheers, Mark