Ever do this?

[Jkeown]

Last night, my PCs needed to hear a story from some old guy about a book on channelling the power of Chaos. I could have just made up an "old man accent" and winged it, but I wanted to involve the players a bit.

 

As he started telling the story, I pulled from my backpack new character sheets, and naming each character in the legend, handed the sheet to the player who would portray each one.

 

The look on each person's face as they were handed a sheet for a hero 10,000 years buried was priceless. They were suprised, I think, by the point totals. We've been at this game for years, and most PCs are pushing 300 points. The characters they got last night were 50+50 newbies. Names that had been larger than life were now just a buncha wet behind the ears nobodies. I think it put the legends in proper perspective.

 

They had a blast, and next week we're continuing to play the legends, just to see how the rest of the story goes. I guess I'll slip into the old guy's voice again and give an intro, then on the action!

[Eosin]

Re: Ever do this?

 

No, but I might try now.

[War Cry]

Re: Ever do this?

 

That is pretty kewl. I did something similar years ago. The PC's were trying to track down and find an artifact of power before the bad guys did. They eventually met up with an old witch who told them where it could be found - the lair of Lord Tiberius of the Many Colors, father of all dragons. I turned off all the lights, lit a candle, and told them how their NPC ancestors were the first great heroes to confront the greatest dragon the world had ever seen. After I told them the story, I blew out the candle, turned on the lights, packed up my stuff and went home without saying another word. The next week I handed them the character sheets for their great-great-great-great grandparents and let them pick up the story where the witch let off with the telling.

[Manic Typist]

Re: Ever do this?

 

I'm so stealing this. That is awesome!

[Curufea]

Re: Ever do this?

 

Likewise!

 

Although I think at least one of my players will whinge the entire time - he's a Monty Haul (is that the right term?) - someone too concerned with material goods and obtaining power for their character.

[Jkeown]

Re: Ever do this?

 

The shift in thinking will be difficult for PCs in this kind of scenario. One thing I did for them was tell them they could apply the XP recieved in the "wayback" story to either the new character or their "modern" character. 100% of them thought that was a very nice gesture on my part, and they are spending it as you might expect.

 

As for not being as powerful as their normal character, not much can be done aside from sudden gratutious leaps in power (since you aren't going to be playing these guys again, right) that won't affect the normal campaign much at all.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: Ever do this?

 

You really got to have the right Gamers to try something like this, I tell yah if you pull it off by gods it would be fun.

 

Plagiarism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism

 

QM

 

P.S.: In otherwords SNAGGED!!!

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Ever do this?

 

The 2nd Ed D&D scenario Vecna Lives does something like this, and a Ravenloft scenario did something along these lines, with a twist.

 

 

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IS THAT ENOUGH SPACES? BETTER BE SURE!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, the scenario starts off with players running the Circle of 8 (primarily the named wizards of the various spells - Bigby, Otiluke, etc.) That lasts about one encounter, where they all get killed. [They're D&D wizards - they'll be back...] The game then shifts to the "real characters", friends and contacts of the 8, a more balanced party.

 

In the Ravenloft scenario, the PCs are captive and their souls sent back in time to possess people during a horrific massacre by a very powerful being. Their goal is to get a specific item to safety so they can find it in the present and use it to defeat this being. Their advantage? They can be sent back repeatedly to possess different bodies. The drawback? No one at the massacre is leveled - they have to use 0 level bodies. Oh, and each failure carries an XP cost as their souls are ripped across time.

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Ever do this?

 

We've never done that exactly, but we did do an "in the past" game. I was tired of fantasy games where the past was always golden, with great heroes who did great epic things that the PCs could never hope to match, but maybe they can find some of their minor discarded stuff.

 

So I convinced a friend to run an "Age of Legends" campaign, where we would be in the old times, and epic adventures would ensue. It was an AD&D (2nd ed) game, and over the course of the game also introduced origins for some things into the world - downfall of the elves, spread of humanoids like Orcs and Goblins, creation of Trolls, introduction of Negative Plane energy and undead into the world, etc. Fun game.

[mikesama]

Re: Ever do this?

 

Pulled that in the oposite direction where I had a bunch of low level starting characters getting to play thier patrons for one adventure.