Chaldfont
First Post
Someone else had a thread with plot tips from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I thought I would chime in with Farscape--the best Sci Fi show ever.
In no particular order:
In no particular order:
- Turn an arch-villain NPC into a PC, but only after the PCs have been battling the arch-villain for a long time (several sessions at least)
- Give PCs conflicting goals and encourage dissension. One of my favorite things about Farscape is that the characters always have their own goals and sometimes screw each other over.
- Only loosely describe the campaign world. That way, you can introduce really whacked out settings without having to explain how they fit in. The Uncharted Territories setting so undefined that it is easy for Farscape’s writers to plug in anything they want (secret Peacekeeper base, forgotten alien colony, etc.).
- Let the players gain a big reputation and let it work for and against them. “John Crighton? The one who destroyed a gamak base and a shadow depository?”
- Play to a PC’s weakness, not to make them fail, but to succeed. One of my favorite episodes has a side plot where Aeryn Sun has to do some scientific research to save Rygel’s life. She’s no good at science and she doesn’t like Rygel, so it was fun to watch her succeed at the task.
- The body-switching plot (a cliché, I know) is always fun. Imagine playing your friend’s character with your character’s mind. This is even more fun if the PCs are at odds.
- Robbing banks is fun, especially when they are super-secret illegal banks.
- Made-up swear words (phrell, meevoks, dren, etc.) can be fun.
- Use dreams or some form of alternate reality to put PCs in really extreme situations without damaging your overall campaign plot.
- Feel free to put as much time between adventures as you want. There is at least one Farscape episode that jumps over three months. I would even go so far to give characters a couple of levels and say that years have passed if I wanted to jump ahead far enough in the campaign.
