The sequel/prequel talk made me think of several "go-to" gimmicks (storywise) I've used several times as a GM, and I figured I'd throw 'em out there and see if other folks have done the same thing (likely) or have other, similar gimmicks to share.
* Have the players play NPCs for a whole session. Sounds weird, yes, and some groups wouldn't put up with it (and rightfully so, depending on how it's done, I guess). The first time I did it was in a D&D game, rather sandbox-y, when the PCs were captured. Rather than have the next session involve them trying to escape (which we'd seen before in previous campaigns of course), or just hand-wave some interim time and have the PCs be rescued (seen that too), instead for the next game session the players were given sheets for the PCs girlfriends, retainers, what-have-you, and they played this ragtag bunch actually doing the rescuing. The players were on board for it, it wasn't a surprise in that sense; and I think if they'd been reticent, I wouldn't have pushed it. But there was a bit of a kick in playing the NPCs and the players hammed it up (esp the girlfriends) and put a bit of perspective on things.
In a later campaign with a different group, we did this several times when the party split; the 'new' group for the session might be half PCs and half NPCs (and then switch for the following session until all the PCs are back together). Again, the players knew beforehand and were okay with it; they saw it as an opportunity to "do different stuff" for a short while rather than a wasted session, since they weren't playing their PCs. Later in that same campaign, we even had requests for those NPCs to return (embodied or not).
* The classic "mirror universe" schtick. In my case, the PCs faced-off against alternate timeline (ie, evil) versions of themselves. It was a huge hit and ended up being a good chunk of a story arc. The downside is that I think you can probably only do this once per gaming group (not campaign). I know if I pulled this gimmick again it would instantly seem stale rather than a 'classic' or an homage.
* The 'Very Special' episode. No, I'm not talking about "Speedy's on heroin!" or that one episode of Blossom. I mean something tongue-in-cheek for the holidays! In my last long campaign (modern supers/fantasy), our session the week before Christmas was a light-hearted romp involving Santa Claus, Frosty, and such, all tweaked to fit the setting. Some of the NPCs became really popular as well. We cheesed it up - I drew up some title cards in the old Rankin-Bass style (you've likely seen the shows) and we started the session with that. It was difficult for the players not to imagine stop-motion versions of their PCs the entire time, and it was a hoot. If I do this again, it'll have to be a different holiday.
Anybody else have success (or failure) stories with the above or other gimmickry?
The closest I think I got to that was a game session that was within two days of Halloween. It was my usual GURPS: TRAVELLER group and friends of theirs at the nearby starport asked them to investigate a ship that was just 'sitting there' in the distance.
It was a BROADSWORD-class Mercenary cruiser that they found. No response on the radio, so they had to dock or go over in spacesuits.
I ran that whole session like haunted house/spaceship movie or TV episode. All of the Mercenary cruiser's crewmembers were dead onboard there and several of the deaths were done in odd or surrreal ways. There was an even a link to a group of strange aliens that my PCs had encountered in past adventures.
At the end of the night I admitted to my group that it was a stab at a "Halloween" session. They hadn't even thought that angle - they all thought it was regular feature of the campaign.
- Ed C.
Quote from: VectorSigma;325205* The classic "mirror universe" schtick. In my case, the PCs faced-off against alternate timeline (ie, evil) versions of themselves. It was a huge hit and ended up being a good chunk of a story arc. The downside is that I think you can probably only do this once per gaming group (not campaign). I know if I pulled this gimmick again it would instantly seem stale rather than a 'classic' or an homage.
I have actually done this twice...once in Marvel SAGA and once in Necessary Evil. What is even more awesome about this, is that one of the PCs is my NE game is the villainous version of that player's SAGA hero...so he's fought his evil self and his (more) evil self.
It went over well twice, because the first time it was so out of the blue and campaign changing, and the second time because I made the existence of an alternate reality an early campaign plot point that led to huge changes to the team.
It CAN be done...I doubt I could ever do it a third time, but it can be done twice.
Quote from: VectorSigma;325205* Have the players play NPCs for a whole session. Sounds weird, yes, and some groups wouldn't put up with it (and rightfully so, depending on how it's done, I guess). The first time I did it was in a D&D game, rather sandbox-y, when the PCs were captured. Rather than have the next session involve them trying to escape (which we'd seen before in previous campaigns of course), or just hand-wave some interim time and have the PCs be rescued (seen that too), instead for the next game session the players were given sheets for the PCs girlfriends, retainers, what-have-you, and they played this ragtag bunch actually doing the rescuing. The players were on board for it, it wasn't a surprise in that sense; and I think if they'd been reticent, I wouldn't have pushed it. But there was a bit of a kick in playing the NPCs and the players hammed it up (esp the girlfriends) and put a bit of perspective on things.
In a later campaign with a different group, we did this several times when the party split; the 'new' group for the session might be half PCs and half NPCs (and then switch for the following session until all the PCs are back together). Again, the players knew beforehand and were okay with it; they saw it as an opportunity to "do different stuff" for a short while rather than a wasted session, since they weren't playing their PCs. Later in that same campaign, we even had requests for those NPCs to return (embodied or not).
I'm doing something like this now. I just started a pbp game over on rpgnet where the players are hirelings of the "real" adventuring party (a bunch of arrogant SOBs who treat the players the way many players treat their hirelings). They get thrown in the front line and have to do all the shit work, and being mere hirelings, it is doubtful they will get the recognition they deserve.
I'm having fun using and abusing the players (through the NPC "adventurers") and hope they are having fun being on the receiving end.
Awesome stuff here.
For the game I'm working on under the "dungeon fantasy" rules section I've been planning to include a scenario where the PCs are the children of the "real adventurers". Each has some traits in common with their heroic parents, but not quite everything.
When their parents go missing in a nearby dungeon (they're not really even high level adventurers), they have cause to go rescue them- some indication that they're still alive. So they ransack their homes to get whatever tools they can (crap weapons, armor, old magic items, etc.), and go save their parents. They'd be the equivalent of negative level characters in D&D. Their parents cleaned out most of the dungeon, but the ecology will be slowly recovering- rats moving back in, etc. Their parents are probably trapped by a cave-in or something- not a big monster.
I have some other stories that I've actually played, but they seem pretty dependent on having been there.
The closest to that for me was an adventure of Two-fisted tales, cribbed from an episode of Venture Bros., where the PCs' group met a group of female adventurers which were all clearly copies of themselves.
RPGpundit
In my WFRP campaign, I pulled out a surprise session. When my players showed up, I handed them Unknown Armies character sheets -- the characters were rough analogs of the "real" PCs. I did a quick 70s blaxploitation one-shot, then next session we were back to the main game.
The mad mage who'd been rambling on at them about alternate worlds and universe-shattering threats sounded a lot more plausible all of a sudden. I'd been planning on doing some other one-shot jaunts into alternate timelines but never got around to it before the game ended.
Quote from: RPGPundit;325265The closest to that for me was an adventure of Two-fisted tales, cribbed from an episode of Venture Bros., where the PCs' group met a group of female adventurers which were all clearly copies of themselves.
RPGpundit
Also reminiscent of that scene in Shaun Of The Dead where the Shaun's group meets the other group and they are all alternate versions of each other.
Dunno if this is a 'trick' but we used to regularly have players play notable recurring NPCs... especially if their character was off in some other place.
One player came close to killing her PC with the NPC she was playing.
VectorSigma, congratulations for this great thread! I'm eager to use these little tricks against my players. :D
I have done a couple special episodes, some of which have been mentioned above (appropriate holiday episodes). It didn't always times well, but when it did it was fun.
We always assign various NPCs in a characters circles (significant others, family, co workers, neighbors, lab staff, who was in the OR) to various Players. They were reoccuring roles, usually played by the specific players - but could be farmed out. The player would be given a purpose for the scene and any tidebits they should try to drop. Any XP they earned for good roleplay or good storyline (or complicating the crap out of a players life) could be assigned to any character run by that player. Sometimes favorite NPCs got the EPs.
There are two other types that have not been mentioned.
Video Game Sessions: On nights where people were going to be late or if we going to have an interesting tactical session soon, we set these up. Everyone gets three tokens. I would set up an obsticle course, in varying environments, when people would race across. They would practice the appropriate balance, jumping, climbing, swiming, etc under the various conditions... such as blinding snow, cliffsides, wet rocks and ocean waves, running through an urban area (or getting use to a Nipponse city with its unique alleys, etc. Occasionally during the course, several mooks/ extra would jump out.. usually in ninja gear, and need to be cut down. If anyone died, they spend a token and respawn. This was totally out of continuity, so no real roleplaying was inolved.
Sometimes it was just Tekken X when we would fight it out with our characters. Sometimes with various characters from various campaigns. Arena fighting was a fun diversion.
These were just fun, but really they were player practice/ training. Players then knew the rules that apply to their characters and how to deal with various situations in the rules. They also tried out new tactics and got a better feel for the mechanics. After a session of player practice, tactical sessions went so much faster.
The Time Travel/ World Travel trope. Someone (sometimes two or three) were in the wrong place at the wrong time (gates open, blue mist, etc), a spell would misfire, or someone would play with something they shouldn't. or they would be hit upside the head. They would find themselves in another world/ time. They would find people who were "like" their friends/ teammates/ crew. They would have an adventure in "this other place", usually picking up a clue, a mcguffin, or just one interesing adventures.
These games are a lot of fun to play and are very rewarding to the players. (EPs earned by the alternate character can be applied to their main character). The Supers games thrived on the alternate worlds. In fact, players would sometimes pull their alternates over to the mainline campaign.
This can take some time to set up in most game systems. The players have to create a character that is similar to their character, but in the new setting. This can take a while to coordinate, get characters approved, and any plotlines in the alternate. One GM set up two of these for their Changeling campaign in the first week, just on the chance they could impliment a change, Convergence Point's Actor system (or the Hong Kong Action Theatre! system) allowed for quicker conversions, so we could do this on the fly - "You go get some pizza.. drive to the good place.. I need to talk with everyone else." By the time he got back, we had six new characters for a romp in the Steam Punk Victorian Age and one confused shadow runner.
In a Call of Cthulhu game, we started playing the PCs going to this town in New Mexico to investigate stuff. We play a normal session, creepy things happen, the usual.
Next session they played some of the villagers in a flashback (the villagers that had disappeared prior to the investigators arrival), so they went through the arrival of the horrors and the toll it took on the community. Really scary, as their PCs were regular farmers, not so competent investigators.
The third session we played a bit back in time, and they played the corrupt cultists, how they got under the influence of the Mythos, how they had to make their fellow villagers disappear, and how their God sacrificed them to foil the PCs. At the end of this sessions, the players (not the PCs) knew that EVERYONE in town was a cultist.
Pretty freaky stuff. I'll post more as I remember it.
That's awesome, Imperator.
Oh, the Unknown Armies game I played in! We did that allll the time. We played, let's see: the 1968 version of our group, during which session we discovered a key bit of truth about the world. We played a pulp alternate version of our group, which I'm pretty sure turned out to be set in the history of our world before it was changed. We also did two side-shots playing basically NPCs in the present timeline. A lot of fun.
We ran a set of "multiverse games" one year. The PCs got to pick any character from any system they had ever played then each player GM'ed a scenario from a different game system at the end of that section the PCs were bounced to the next GM playing the next system. The GM's character became an NPC or a no show and the old GMs character was the hook int eh next world for the next plot.
Kept the scenarios short 1 session deals (4 hours play time). I ran the first one where I had a South African Big Game hunter (from Daredevils), a Vampire (from WoW), an Elven Dart thrower from 2e D&D, a 1e D&D Cleric and a cyberpunk rockstar/drug dealer wanna be. They were based in a Cyberpunk world (homebrewed system). I actually populated the world with versions of the players other famous characters as NPCs including major villain. I worked really well then we bounced to a Cthulu session based in a medieval monestry on a rocky island and I got to play "Legion" my disenchanted Super Hero ... then on to a Thingesque game based in a modern day artic station then finally onto Ravenloft... took some tweaks but it was pretty good overall with the highpoints for me being n my session where I used one of the PCs sociopathic terrorists as the main villain (the joy when they recognised him just from my role play and then remembered his perchant for white phosphorous ...) and in the thing game when I decided that Legion would summon the beast out and so changed into his full super hero outfit to battle it.
I started a Buffy game one time by handing out pre-gen characters to everyone. They were regular white-hat types, with full sheets, personalities, and relationships between them defined. As they looked over the sheets, I described how they'd all decided to stay the night in a supposedly haunted house on a dare.
They started looking around a bit, and out of the first room came a black-clad figure with a knife. He stabbed two of the PCs right off. The third tried to fight, and was quickly stabbed to death as well. The last PC tried to run for it, and he caught her right as her hand was on the doorknob...
Cut scene to the next day, with the real PCs walking through the old house past the police tape, viewing the chalk outlines of the murder they just played out as victims. They investigated their own murder. :D
Just a suggestion, check with your players before you try any of this stuff. In a recent campaign, my GM decided to have us reboot our characters (for some strange metaphysical reason) with new versions who had some key feature of their past change. Now, I'm a "Leave me alone I want to play my character," sort of guy, and I found this a major imposition.
The new character I came up with kinda sucked compared to the original.
Quote from: Jeffrey Straszheim;325537Just a suggestion, check with your players before you try any of this stuff. In a recent campaign, my GM decided to have us reboot our characters (for some strange metaphysical reason) with new versions who had some key feature of their past change. Now, I'm a "Leave me alone I want to play my character," sort of guy, and I found this a major imposition.
The new character I came up with kinda sucked compared to the original.
That's always the risk with trying any of the more stupid of these "tricks". If you pull any kind of "bait & switch", you better be DAMN sure that your players are going to appreciate it.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;325945That's always the risk with trying any of the more stupid of these "tricks". If you pull any kind of "bait & switch", you better be DAMN sure that your players are going to appreciate it.
Mmm. The ones that work don't change characters permanently -- that seems to me like a really risky thing to do arbitrarily.
Quote from: Jeffrey Straszheim;325537Just a suggestion, check with your players before you try any of this stuff.
Nah. Experience is a wonderful teacher.
Seanchai
Quote from: Jeffrey Straszheim;325537Just a suggestion, check with your players before you try any of this stuff. In a recent campaign, my GM decided to have us reboot our characters
Checking with your players - or, alternately, working within some kind of established parameters (even implicit ones) - is a given. There's a lot of ground between "ooh, he's doing something kinda neat" and "what the heavenly fuck is he doing to the game?". But that's terrain a GM navigates all the time.
The 'reboot' you mention doesn't sound like a 'stupid gm trick', but rather a 'dirty trick', or GM dickery. There's a substantial difference there.
Quote from: VectorSigma;326173The 'reboot' you mention doesn't sound like a 'stupid gm trick', but rather a 'dirty trick', or GM dickery. There's a substantial difference there.
Well, I wouldn't be prepared to call it "dickery". I mean, this guy is my friend, and he meant well. It just didn't work for me, that is all.
But yeah, I agree with the other stuff you say.