Your Gimmicks: Hard at Work (w/Pics!)

[NCSUCodeMonkey]

About two months ago, I put out a general call for gimmick ideas in this thread. I used a ton of those ideas to produce and run an adventure. I always see folks asking for help with plots and whatnot, but rarely do I get the pleasure of seeing the result of everyone's brainstorming. So, here's a recap of the Gimmicks I used and how they were pulled off. I'll reference back to the original thread to give credit where credit is due.

The basic plot and setting were a fusion of my own ideas and those of Runesong24: the City's mall has been overtaken by an evil mastermind who can create and control video game characters. The mastermind's backstory was a variant of Runesong24's lost kid idea. Here's the prelim I gave the players:

The City has been safe since the Underoo Avengers defeated the Brain
Sucking Carnies from Outer Space, but evil is ever lurking in the
shadows, like a devious piece of corn wedged between the molars of
goodness. Once again the Avengers have been called forth to floss the
dark crevices of society. In this episode, an 8-bit weirdness has
descended on the City Mall, and pixilated monsters run amok in its
marble halls. Can the Avengers overcome the low resolution dangers and
discover the truth behind this digital disaster? Tune in and find
out!

Here's the Gimmicks (in order of apperence):

• The majority of the enemies were drawn from old (8-bit) video games. To represent the 2-dimensional nature of the opponents, I trolled art fan sites for characters from video games, blew them up to mini-size, and printed them on transparency sheets. Then I glued the characters into mini stands. The result can be seen in this goomba battle. The Goombas were based on Orcs with the addition of a Trample ability (all of the heroes are small size since they are children, therefore the medium sized Goombas could trample easily).
• Next came a toppler puzzle similar to this one, but I glued together decorative ice cubes to make the puzzle. Due to a mistake on my part, the puzzle proved trivial. However, the ensuing battle with the Ice Climbers proved more difficult. The Ice Climbers were 3rd level fighters with wooden hammers (warhammers) and climbing ropes (whips).
• The next encounter was with the dreaded Space Invaders, which acted as a five headed laser-hydra that moved faster as each head was killed. In this picture you can also see a power up (the fire flower). Each enemy the group took down had a percentage chance of dropping an item such as a mushroom (Enlarge Person), fire flower (Produce Flame), etc.
• Next I fused my idea of a mario kart style race, AdamantineAngel's idea of using the coin machine cars for the racing vehicles, and some race/chase rules co-authored by myself and Rel. The race mechanic is based on a gambling scheme, where the player sets a DC that represents his/her "speed" for that round and failing the check means that the vehicle could go "out of control." I can post the full mechanic if anyone's interested. It can be fully described on half a sheet of paper.
• The players had to act their way out of an encoutner with the super-villans who lounge in the the Crooked Cookie. They had to create a villanous monologue using elements that I selected from a deck of Nanofictionary.
• I used Delemental's idea of a clothing rack maze of DOOM to create a Thesus and Minotaur computer game where the borders of the maze where racks of clothes and the minotaur was the ghost Clyde from Pac-Man. The players used a joystick to navigate the maze.
• I had another of Delemental's ideas prepared, an encounter with three teenagers from NES's Earthbound. We were short on time, however, and I skipped it.
• A fusion of Delemental and AdamantineAngel's ideas of a lost store/floor formed the scene for the End Game, in which the PC's entered the Video Game Realm to battle the Game Master and Donkey Kong. Here's the setup, complete with a replica of D.K.'s ramp system.

Thanks to Rel for all of the photos, and to everyone who contributed to the original thread. Although not all of the ideas got used, they got me thinking in directions that lead to the final product. There were other gimmicks, puzzles, etc. that I've omitted. If anyone's interested, let me know and I'll post the rest.

NCSUCodeMonkey

 

[diaglo]

glad to see it worked.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

That looks pretty darn cool!