Have any of you ever tried running a campaign that was in essence a prequel of your current campaign, particularly with the same characters, when they were young and idealistic or something like that?

How has that worked out? I would think (and movies and books have proven this out) that prequels are much harder to do effectively and well than sequels.

RPGPundit

Yes. I had run a campaign (using my own rulesystem) of Star Trek, set in the SFU of Star Fleet Battles. Several of the characters were reprised in a later game of Prime Directive, set some 15 years before.

Both campaigns ran most of a year, and covered more than 2 years of time for the characters.

Both worked well; Mark, playing Komar, a vulcan throwback, was really into the role.

Never tried a prequel as you define it; we've done stuff in the same setting that falls chronologically before the previous game, but not with younger versions of the same characters.

An obvious issue: the PCs can't die.  Or at least, not permanently.

Quote from: VectorSigma;325179Never tried a prequel as you define it; we've done stuff in the same setting that falls chronologically before the previous game, but not with younger versions of the same characters.

An obvious issue: the PCs can't die.  Or at least, not permanently.

Yup...or get horribly injured in a way that doesn't make sense with the original game.

Although something like that makes for a nice cliffhanger..."Wait...I know I had to survive that.  I had a whole set of adventures later."

Well, in a prequel you wouldn't necessarily have to play the same characters, you might play other people and the younger versions of the original PCs might show up incidentally as NPCs.

RPGPundit

Of course there's a counterpoint to the other thread.

My published setting was the ancient world of my homebrew, where I ran all those sequel campaigns. I ran quite a bit there, and I like it more than my original setting. I was able to play out some of the ancient history that had affected my earlier games, which was awesome for me.

Quote from: RPGPundit;325263Well, in a prequel you wouldn't necessarily have to play the same characters, you might play other people and the younger versions of the original PCs might show up incidentally as NPCs.

RPGPundit

Very true.

You could be playing the parents of the PCs...show the rise of some antagonist that the PCs have faced...etc.

If you are not playing the same characters, or characters that are directly related and influential to them, then it is not a prequel but an expanded universe game.

I haven't tried it, but that's certainly the sort of connection I will try sooner or later, yes. I like my campaigns to all be connected somehow, even if it's not obvious to the players of the game (doesn't need to be).

I've run prequel sessions where people play younger versions of themselves, but never an entire campaign.

Quote from: RPGPundit;325141Have any of you ever tried running a campaign that was in essence a prequel of your current campaign, particularly with the same characters, when they were young and idealistic or something like that?

How has that worked out? I would think (and movies and books have proven this out) that prequels are much harder to do effectively and well than sequels.

RPGPundit

Yes, I've done it sometimes.

There is a long and cool official campaign of Aquelarre by the name of Dracs in which the PCs are coming back to Catalunya after some exile due to them being on the losing side of a war. The campaign spans all the Mediterranean and it's really nice to play.

Some time after that, I run the prequel for them with younger versions of the PCs, dealing on how they met and playing the thing detailed on their backgrounds. It was cool, even if we agreed that no PC would die (a death result would mean that the PC would be out for some extended healing, forcing the player to get a new PC).

Quote from: RPGPundit;325263Well, in a prequel you wouldn't necessarily have to play the same characters, you might play other people and the younger versions of the original PCs might show up incidentally as NPCs.

No, I have never done this. Also, I don't think my crew would like to see their PCs as NPCs appearing in play.

Quote from: JongWK;325317If you are not playing the same characters, or characters that are directly related and influential to them, then it is not a prequel but an expanded universe game.

Exactly.

Quote from: RPGPundit;325263Well, in a prequel you wouldn't necessarily have to play the same characters, you might play other people and the younger versions of the original PCs might show up incidentally as NPCs.

RPGPundit

Thought about doing something similiar with my GURPS :TRAVELLER campaign.

 One of the ongoing mysteries of the campaign was why the ship's name already had a reputation in some places, and why some Vilani Imperium seemed to be spooked that the ship had re-surfaced on the shipping lanes - and over a subsector or more away from where it was last reported 40 years earlier.

My players over the course of the campaign kept discovering references to the merchant ship Maggie Thatcher in older TNS entrires and books...they also had to re-construct the old ship's logs.

Because of that more than 50 year back history to the ship - One player and I thought it might be amusing if we did a one-off session or two where the players all ran characters that were an earlier crew of the ship from at least 20 years before the Fifth Frontier War happened.


- Ed C.

Side thought: It'd be interesting to run a short prequel campaign to set the stage for the actual campaign one has in mind, and have players know beforehand that it is a prequel.

Part of my 7th Sea campaign involved a Christmas special called "Before they were Famous."
A retrospective look at how the characters met before the campaign started.
It enabled me to drop in some fore-shadowing elements in a very cheating kind of way too.