Here we are, born to be kings, we're the princes of the universe

[Dannyalcatraz]

To take care of the death in the past problem, I'd use an action point system.

1) Don't pull your punches- keep the past adventures at (seemingly) the full lethality of the rest of the campaign.

2) Each time a PC dies in the past, the PC is incapacitated until you as DM it is "essential to the narrative" that the PC recovers to do whatever... Perhaps that .45 slug to the heart hit a memento, but the hydrostatic shock still rendered the PC unconscious.

3) In return, the PC loses a present day action point, representing the heroic "near-death" experience he had. A PC who goes negative on his action points recieves a -1 penalty to all rolls in the present day until he earns enough action points to be at least at zero, representing an injury so serious its taking even his hyperpotent healing ability a long time to deal with it.

(This could even be scaled: -1 for having -1 to -3 action points, -2 for having -4 to -6 action points, -3 for having -7-9 action points, etc.)

 

[Angel Black]

As you can probably tell I'm a fan of the highlander TV series. Anyhow I was thinking of a campaign where the PCs are immortals of some kind. It doesn't have to be from the movies or the TV series. What I'm thinking of doing is having the heroes live in the current time period, but have "flashback adventures" (FAs). What I mean is they remember an event which the group plays out in adventure from in different eras of time. Ideally what I would like is for the Campaign to jump back and forth between different periods of time.

Now there are some problems with this type of thing. First off is how would you deal with xp? Do the heroes gain xp for these "FAs"? Are they higher levels in the modern era? Do they have multiple versions of their characters at differnt levels? It really doesn't seem to fit well.

Problem number 2 is there really isn't any threat to a FAs if they are suppost to surivive it. What I mean is if a hero is living in the current time, what sense of danger is there if adventuring in 1918 WW1 france? They have to survive for they are alive in the current time. A possible solution is that there is another penality to "dying" rather than death. level loss? losing of some sort of power? Again it's murky at best making something like this work.

Anyhow....any ideas? Have you done something like this? How well did it work? What would you do?

I would ditch the XPs and give them minor bonuses, some samples:

After battling in the civil war they get:

+2 insight bonus about that years
+1 morale bonus attack with a weapon of that years(it can grow up to 4 if they come back many times)
and maybe two things more like that related to what they did in the adventure.

 

[Turanil]

What I would do:

1) PCs forgot their past, only they know they are different from other people, but their past is somewhat mysterious. As they forgot everything, they also forgot their skills and abilities.

2) When a flash-back comes, and players have their characters in a past era, it means they are gaining their memory back. This translates into XP gained for that flash-back adventure, which translates in getting back their forgotten skills from a sudden awakening.

3) What if they die?... Mmmmh... Here is the convoluted explanation: If they die in the past, it's a false memory, an hallucination. It has disastrous effects in the present where the character must succeed a saving throw or die from a heart attack, and even if succeeding the save will nonetheless lose some XP. This hallucination come from a nemesis (a demon, an arch vampire, whatever) imprisoned somewhere but working to free itself and slay the PCs. Sometimes, the demon can reach them psionically and enter their mind when it is open, as it must be open to have some flash back.

4) Derived from #3, PCs were immortal heroes, or exceptional humans who stole the secrets of eternal life from a supernatural being of evil. Then, they finally found him and imprisoned using a peculiar magical ritual that had the side effect of wiping their memory. Well, you see the idea to build from anyway...

 

[Gundark]

Some great ideas here. I found Legacy: War of Ages on ebay, so I might pick it up.

Highlander D20 RPG

I took a look at the rules, I'm not that big of a fan of the template idea. I'm thinking along the lines of having immortal racial feats that the PCs gain as they gain levels.

I like the idea that "death in the past" translates to something along the lines of losing x ammount of action points or something.

thoughts?

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

I would ditch the XPs and give them minor bonuses

This is probably the best idea, giving them a small insight bonus relating to the current adventure as they "recall" past exploits that tie into current events, much like Arrgh! Mark! suggested; once the current adventure is over, the bonus fades unless you spend XP (if using a non-level-based system) to increase the relevant skills/abilities (and would be a good justification for increasing that character's skill/ability).

Also, perhaps instead of a full sub-adventure, make it a bit of cooperative storytelling amidst the players, although you'd need a mature/responsible group to avoid it getting too wacky or out of hand. Since there's no real XP gain, there's not much of a need to make a true challenge.

Depending on what type of Immortal you go with, you may or may not have to worry about killing them. Highlander-style immortals (which is what the thread topic makes it sound like you are going with) only snuff it when they lose their heads. As long that doesn't happen, they'll recover quickly enough.

 

[jdrakeh]

Nice to see I'm not the only Highlander fan that liked that game.

I ran a semester-long campaign back in college with the serial numbers reapplied. Didn't fret too much about the flashback sequences, as none of the PCs were that old. Was quite a bit of fun, and surprisingly more social-based than I would have expected from that particular group.

It's a decent system, yes. A shame the publishers couldn't acquire the RPG rights to the actual IP (at the time, I think the rights were tied up with whatever outfit was publishing the short-lived Highlander CCG).

Edits:

Yep. Thunder Castle Games had the rights to publish an official Highlander RPG at the time. Oddly, they went bankrupt long before Black Gate did. And, as of early 2007, it seems that MWP was angling for the Highlander RPG licence based on this statement:

I can't speak for the makers of the card game, so that's a whole separate issue -- but I can tell you that we're planning three high-quality hardcovers RPG books for Highlander, and to make sure there is plenty of support on the RPG side, we're going to be working with secondary publishers to create additional sourcebooks, adventures, and other material that is fully compatible with our core game. I encourage everyone to check out our previews for the Highlander RPG that will probably become available in January of '08 and then evaluate the book on their hobby game store shelf. We've been very good at pleasing the fans of a particular property (Dragonlance, Serenity, and soon Battlestar Galactica), so I think Highlander fans are in for a treat.

This deal is very new, and our products aren't planned for release for another year. So I hope you will give us a chance when the time comes.

Jamie Chambers
Vice President
Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd.

That said, I don't think I've heard anything else about MWP and Highlander since the above was posted on Gaming Report.

 

[Bobitron]

Hi Guns!

I was really excited over the prospect of a Queen: The RPG thread.

As far as advice goes, I would probably toss XP out. The characters in the show don't appreciably improve over time if I recall it correctly. The fighting taking place in ancient times is pretty darn similar to the fighting in the modern scenes.

Plenty of M&M campaigns get away with no XP. You can too!

 

[Gundark]

There was a game called Legacy: War of Ages, which was pretty much Highlander with the serial numbers filed off. The system was actually pretty good,

So it was good? Any online reviews that were written on it?


Any suggestions for a system to run a immortals game with (and why would you choose that system)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Any suggestions for a system to run a immortals game with (and why would you choose that system)

My personal preference would be HERO- IMHO, its unequaled in flexibility, and could handle the "Immortal" powers quite well.

However, those who balk at that system and are more D20 minded would find similar flexibility in Mutants & Masterminds.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I recall seeing an oWoD based Storyteller version on the net back in I think 99 or 2000.

I don't know if this is the one I saw then but here's the site http://vampirerpg.free.fr/Rules/Highlander/
Never was much for WWs systems. Their settings were damned good but the storyteller system always drove me up a wall.