Chris-M Posted July 17, 2008 Report Share Posted July 17, 2008 Something I've always wanted to do as a GM is to start a new campaign for a specific genre -- Star Hero space knights, Western Hero gunslingers, maybe Dark Champions special forces operatives, or whatever -- have the players make up characters, get halfway into the first session, and then have some sort of cosmical event hurl the party to another time/dimension where the real campaign is going to be set. So we'd end up with a group of Space Knights in Hudson City, Old West gunslingers in a planetary romance, or special forces soldiers in fantasy world. I've never done it, though, because in my experience players hate being faked out in this fashion, not that I blame them. When I put together a new campaign, I want the players to put a lot of thought into building their characters -- not just their backstories but how the player wants the character to grow and evolve as well. In experience, with a system like Hero, most players are already thinking along these lines anyway. So the problem is that when you pull the ol' cross-genre bait-and-switch, you screw up the vision in the players' heads of how they saw their characters growing in the future. I’m sure some players would be excited and up for the challenge, but for others the shift in setting would “break” their characters and they’d lose a lot of enthusiasm for the campaign (which, again, I can understand). The reason I'd want to do it as a surprise and not let the players in on what I'm going to do from the beginning is that I think the surprise adds to the fun, and also, gamers being gamers, you'd get players who were built to be effective in the setting the action is going to shift to, no matter how shaky the rationalization. Of course, if you do try the bait-and-switch I think you have to try to win over your players as quickly as possible by focusing on what’s cool and fun about the situation, which I think means giving them an opportunity to do cool and heroic things with their out-of-genre skills and abilities (in support of all the usual stuff that makes campaigns fun – good story, good characters, good situations that can go several different ways, etc.). I’ve also thought about doing this as a con session, although the concern still remains. On the one hand, since you’re talking about a one-off session, hopefully players would be more inclined to roll with the twist. On the other hand, you might have players who chose your session over another precisely because they wanted to play in an Old West gunslinger adventure and now you’re dumping them in some swords-and-Martians planetary romance thing. So maybe a con isn’t the right place to try to pull this off. Thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Obvious Posted July 17, 2008 Report Share Posted July 17, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch Don't do it with strangers. Only do it if your players are game for crazy twists like that, and give them SOME warning beforehand. Maybe not "We're playing cowboys on Mars", but at least "it's going to be a pretty wild, non-standard Western game". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yamamura Posted July 17, 2008 Report Share Posted July 17, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch Well it is tricky but if it happens in the first scenario, I think it is not as much of shock as doing it to an ongoing campaign. That being said, I would try to give the players a hint that something is going to be different about this campaign. Use the hint to build the excitement and so when the surprise is sprung they ca run with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shigeru Posted July 17, 2008 Report Share Posted July 17, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch Funny story about this. I tried to run a strauight Champions game for my old group. While they really seemed to like it, I don't believe they ever got the "feel" for a straigh supers game after all the wacky wierd games I put them through. One night, after a session had ended, I heard the inevitable... "Can you give us some more. Its early and none of us work tomorrow. You can come up with something." THe short version of the story is that I had some supervillains drop a nuke on an island off the coastline, and the characters were all in a port city. They had to try their damndest to save people from the blast and fallout and I shut that game down... until... One of the players, probably realizign I had burned myself out on GMing, continued that game, saying that what was detonated was not a nuke at all..but a logic bomb,. THe world was turned upaside down in RIFTS-like fashion and many fantasy and scifi elements were introduced. It was run like a fantasy game with the other players playing their characters and me playing an NPC I had. It was a short-lived one-shot type of game, but it was a pretty cool sort of genre table turn. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vulcan Posted July 18, 2008 Report Share Posted July 18, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch If your players don't like the classic 'cross-dimension' genre shift (you can probably tell from their disad and perk choices - lots of contacts, DNPC's, and established reputations tell you they want their characters to be an integral part of THIS world), there is the 'Delta Green' option. That is, you run a fairly standard campaign of the type, but slowly start integrating cult sightings, bizarre happenings, odd magical arifacts... and then the cultists summon Cthulu or something and things go straight to Hades... Or if you want shock value, pull the Aliens option. It's just another mission, until the walls come alive with creepy monsters... In short, the horror genre can be added into anything without needing anything so blatant as a dimensional shift. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jhaierr Posted July 18, 2008 Report Share Posted July 18, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch What if you were to tell them that the game will take a sudden shift in the first episode, but not tell them what the shift would be? That might take out the unpleasant part of the surprise and let them enjoy it, and they won't be able to create the characters with any sort of foreknowledge. Just a thought. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jhaierr Posted July 18, 2008 Report Share Posted July 18, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch Well it is tricky but if it happens in the first scenario' date=' I think it is not as much of shock as doing it to an ongoing campaign. That being said, I would try to give the players a hint that something is going to be different about this campaign. Use the hint to build the excitement and so when the surprise is sprung they ca run with it.[/quote'] Oh, and of course I overlook yamamura's response that said pretty much what I did! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghost-angel Posted July 18, 2008 Report Share Posted July 18, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch I agree with Yamamura and Jhaierr. Tell the Players - "we're starting in genre X, but will switch to a completely different genre. That's the surprise. Please build your characters accordingly." And go from there. Definitely disallow Money, Contacts and the like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted July 18, 2008 Report Share Posted July 18, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch I once thought about running a low fantasy campaign that turned out to be set after a global disaster. On that note, you can always have the "wisdom of the ancients" or their "magic" in fact be technology. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadowcat1313 Posted July 18, 2008 Report Share Posted July 18, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch worst I have done to my players was in a one shot game of Traveller for a local con, it was something I was asked to put together at the last minute after the original GM couldnt be there. the players were hired by a Hiver archaeologist to help him investigate an out of the way jungle planet... this was during the year 0 era after the long night. they found a stepped pyramid deep in the jungle, along with a crashed terran scout ship. the players later find out that when the archaeologist was looking over the remains of the terran ship, he found a macarena video, and a bad copy of the Necronomicon. and the Hiver somehow the got the impression that the Macarena was a bizzare summoning ritual. the players also found that the planets inhabitants were a race of creature from the black lagoon style fishmen. things got weirder from there so it started as a simple exploratioin mission, and went into a bit of semi supernatural horror. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris-M Posted July 18, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 18, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch Great point about reading the characters' disads to anticipate what the players envision for their characters. I also agree with everyone who said that the players need to be tipped off in some fashion to the fact that some major twist is going to happen. I think if you have a group that is very major-twist-adverse normally, you'd probably want to not only tip them off, but let them know that it's going to be a genre twist. If I were doing it and I felt reasonably confident my players would be able to roll with it, I'd just want to let them know that there was going to be some sort of major twist in the first session so that they're not blind-sided, but not let them know in advance what sort of twist it will be. If I had one or more players putting a lot of points in things like Money, Contact, and such, or world-specific disads, I'd probably want to wave them off at character creation, saying, "Don't put points in those areas. Just trust me." You guys have given me some confidence that, if properly handled, this sort of thing could be pulled off. I definitely wouldn't do it at a con unless that was the advertised point of the session. "A team of special forces operatives crash land their chopper during a strange storm and find themselves in a world of elves and dwaves -- with a Dark Lord's army of orcs bearing down on them!" or something like that. (Really, who wouldn't want to mow down orcs with automatic weapon fire?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnTaber Posted July 18, 2008 Report Share Posted July 18, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch I did exactly this at a con. I told the players to make PC before the con. the PC would be frozen then awake in a post holocaust world...think Morrow Project. In the first session they meet a mad scientist and start getting attacked by a paramilitary force. They activate a device that shoots them through time and space. One PC has a device that can shoot them again once some condition is met. Think Sliders, Time Bandits, or Dr Who. The PC were surprised but rolled with it. One key thing I did was to give the PC a chance to do a rewrite. I also gave them an allocation of free disads points to replace existing slot. With the time period constantly changing hunted and such don't really work. Since the time period was constantly changing it was less of a hardship. In fact if the PC died or new players started they had to play PC from the target location. Thus now the group consists of a football star, a western scout, a victorian actress, and a 6th century monk...tons of fun! Since I ONLY run it at cons it works fine. My players nicknamed it Time Traveler DI and it stuck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DusterBoy Posted July 18, 2008 Report Share Posted July 18, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch Cowboys on Barsoom would totally rock - I'd play that in a heartbeat. In fact, it sounds like something Burroughs might have written - the "lost" Mars books, if you will. SAS or Royal Marines in Middle Earth, bring it on (I'm reading Tony Gerraghty's "Who Dares Wins" right now - and any of the men in that book would make John Carter look like a pansy.) Or here's another suggestion: "Gunships in Pellucidar". But if I was playing in a campaign like that, I would appreciate some warning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kid Jurassic Posted July 18, 2008 Report Share Posted July 18, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch I tried it once sort of. I had the players roll up their D&D greyhawk characters then had them get sucked through a portal to Dragonlance's Krynn. It worked. And I got some good roleplay out of their magic not working without the help of the gods... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NestorDRod Posted July 18, 2008 Report Share Posted July 18, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch Many many moons ago, our college gaming group decided to acid-test the (then) new Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes RPG by writing up characters using it then running them through a Tunnels & Trolls adventure. Not really an unexpected twist, but we tried to make a point of writing up the characters without using any foreknowledge. Then again, we did choose to play a small LRRP unit during the Vietnam Era... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roth Posted July 19, 2008 Report Share Posted July 19, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch I'd personally love to be in a campaign like that. Even if it came out of the blue. I love cross overs lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted July 19, 2008 Report Share Posted July 19, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch How about using a one-shot adventure to see if they like the idea? Here's an example adding horror to a science fiction campaign. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bubba smith Posted July 19, 2008 Report Share Posted July 19, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch try putting their contatcs in an altered state for examplethe police contact would be the county sherriff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Goodwin Posted July 21, 2008 Report Share Posted July 21, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch That's a hard one to pull off. I advise spilling it straight up. Don't pull the bait and switch. At the same time, letting the players build their characters optimized for the switch situation is less than ideal IMO; part of the fun of the story is in seeing the characters adjust to their new situation, and in rebuilding the world so that their old abilities are relevant. (Example: Lou Riccetti in the Guardians of the Flame series.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maelstrom Posted July 24, 2008 Report Share Posted July 24, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch I frankly love the idea of gunslingers zapped into a planetary romance. Has a very Northwest Smith feel to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Mackinder Posted July 24, 2008 Report Share Posted July 24, 2008 Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch the players were hired by a Hiver archaeologist to help him investigate an out of the way jungle planet... this was during the year 0 era after the long night. they found a stepped pyramid deep in the jungle, along with a crashed terran scout ship. the players later find out that when the archaeologist was looking over the remains of the terran ship, he found a macarena video, and a bad copy of the Necronomicon. and the Hiver somehow the got the impression that the Macarena was a bizzare summoning ritual. the players also found that the planets inhabitants were a race of creature from the black lagoon style fishmen. things got weirder from there so it started as a simple exploratioin mission, and went into a bit of semi supernatural horror. Yes, the Macarena definitely qualifies as horror. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.