An utterly mad, or entirely brilliant idea...

[robus]

I have this idea for a campaign that's a mash up of Ready Player One and Tales of the Yawning Portal. Basically the idea is that the players are a team competing in a virtual reality tournament celebrating 100 years of D&D by playing through classic adventures from the past (ending with the Tomb of Horrors of course).

My idea is that the players would have 3 "characters": human (for dealing with the future real world), VR avatar (in the RP1 space) and D&D character (for competing in the tournament.)

My new, utterly mad, idea is to use different RPG systems for the 3 modes, to provide a neat context switch between environments. The D&D world would, of course, use 5e rules and characters, but thinking about the RP1 VR environment made me think that something like Genesys would work better for a more general "lived in" world where you trade in XP to get cool accessories for your Avatar and skills to execute. They could design an avatar to be any kind of cool character from pop culture. And for the human world (which may or may not come into play) something like the Tales from the Loop system. I would propose that the players create human characters that are mid-teenagers to make it fit that kind of system.

I quite like how having three distinct systems would keep the worlds neatly separated, but it could also be quite crazy. I envisage that 90% of the game would be in the D&D world with some in between roleplay in the VR world, but knowing players there's a reasonable chance that things in the real world could become a factor, so having a system for that would be awesome.

So... utterly mad, or entirely brilliant? And are there other systems that might work better for interacting with the human and RP1 VR worlds?

 

[Slit518]

Interesting concept. Discuss with your players first. If they seem interested, go!

 

[Celebrim]

It's not a mad idea, but I'm not sure it is yet a genius idea.

The idea of using different systems to simulate different aspects of the imagined universe is something I've seen before, though not in this context.

The weakness I see in your idea is that in both "Ready Player One" and "Tales of the Yawning Portal" the primary action and primary interest of the story is in the real world. I mean, that might even be the theme of RP1.

Yet in your game the primary interest and primary action of the story would seem to be in the imagined imagined universe within the imagined "real" universe. That is, you seem to think that 90% of the action and most of the important action is going to be in the 5e D&D VR setting.

And to me that feels like going to a lot of extra work for no real payoff. You'd be better off just playing D&D. It would be like playing an RPG to simulate being a professional Fortnite team playing in the Fortnite World Cup where everything that matters is basically the simulated Fortnite and there is no actual adventure in the imagined world containing the imagined Fortnite tournament. Or, as another take, it's like playing a MUSH where the characters are MUSHers playing a MUSH. It seems like there are a couple of extra unnecessary steps between you and the fun part.

Now, if you have an original take on how the in game world of D&D and the imagined world that contains it are in some fashion actually interacting in cool ways, so that what happens in either one effects the other one, that might be a brilliant idea.

 

[robus]

The weakness I see in your idea is that in both "Ready Player One" and "Tales of the Yawning Portal" the primary action and primary interest of the story is in the real world. I mean, that might even be the theme of RP1.

So RP1 is really providing the overarching setting, it's not intended to provide an adventure in itself, but I am toying with the idea of a competing team that is cheating their way through the tournament and ends up knocking the PCs out of it (and then the PCs learn of the cheating and have the chance to unveil that - which is where the RP1 part of the campaign would come into play.

Yet in your game the primary interest and primary action of the story would seem to be in the imagined imagined universe within the imagined "real" universe. That is, you seem to think that 90% of the action and most of the important action is going to be in the 5e D&D VR setting.

Right - because the campaign is centered around the D&D tournament.

And to me that feels like going to a lot of extra work for no real payoff. You'd be better off just playing D&D. It would be like playing an RPG to simulate being a professional Fortnite team playing in the Fortnite World Cup where everything that matters is basically the simulated Fortnite and there is no actual adventure in the imagined world containing the imagined Fortnite tournament. Or, as another take, it's like playing a MUSH where the characters are MUSHers playing a MUSH. It seems like there are a couple of extra unnecessary steps between you and the fun part.

Yeah that is a concern, in that it's potentially a very elaborate decoration on a pretty vanilla campaign.

Now, if you have an original take on how the in game world of D&D and the imagined world that contains it are in some fashion actually interacting in cool ways, so that what happens in either one effects the other one, that might be a brilliant idea.

Well that's the idea with the cheating team, that they would need to step out of the "tournament" to tackle the cheaters in RP1 land. But you're right that it's a lot of build up to a brief time in that world. It would be cool for there to be an ongoing story in RP1 that entangles with the tournament world.

Thanks for the insights.

 

[Fenris-77]

If there is compelling story going on in the other world then yeah, I think it would be cool. There needs to be a reason to go to all that trouble though. It might be a cool way to mix old-school monster bashing (D&D) with some intrigue (system X). Going to three worlds might be too much, but again, my advice is the same - it would work provided there is a real and compelling component of the story going on in each system.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I have this idea for a campaign that's a mash up of Ready Player One and Tales of the Yawning Portal. Basically the idea is that the players are a team competing in a virtual reality tournament celebrating 100 years of D&D by playing through classic adventures from the past (ending with the Tomb of Horrors of course).

In the Paranoia version, the final module is The Forest Oracle...

And are there other systems that might work better for interacting with the human and RP1 VR worlds?

Cyberpunk games like, well, Cyberpunk or Shadowrun spring to mind, as does Dream Park.

Oh yeah...didn’t I mention Paranoia?

 

[drl2]

I did a sort of lightweight version of this in my Mighty Protectors campaign. My players were plucked from a near-death situation into a simulated fantasy world for the amusement of some powerful interstellar entities, where their tech and non-physical-based powers were suppressed and they were forced to choose character classes and play through a series of quests seeking a magical MacGuffin. If they successfully captured this item, it would be sent back to the "real" world with them where it would give them the power to defeat the Big Bad who'd been easily overpowering them. Some of their past foes were also pulled into the same world and turned into D&D monsters as well.

In retrospect it would have been much easier to simply roll up some D&D characters tweaked with the physical characteristics of the MP heroes... but at the time I hadn't played D&D in decades and didn't even have any of the rule books around. So instead I ended up building a bunch of common fantasy tropes within the MP rules (which are fortunately flexible enough to make this possible) but it was a lot of work. (Details of this "crossover" are at https://gaming.drl2.com/mighty-protectors-campaign/ under all the "Chapter 10" entries, if anyone's interested.)

Now that I have a D&D campaign going I'm having vague thoughts about doing the reverse - writing up MP versions of the D&D characters and having some sort of wild magic accident propel them into my MP universe where they'll have to team up with the characters in that campaign to find a way home.

 

[robus]

If there is compelling story going on in the other world then yeah, I think it would be cool. There needs to be a reason to go to all that trouble though. It might be a cool way to mix old-school monster bashing (D&D) with some intrigue (system X). Going to three worlds might be too much, but again, my advice is the same - it would work provided there is a real and compelling component of the story going on in each system.

Yeah - you and celebrim are right to push that. Makes the overall thing harder to conceive - but the payoff would be great. And yeah trying to entwine all three would be hard, but intriguing. Especially if the kids were in some kind of unstable situation, then getting the time/space to actually compete would be part of the challenge.

 

[robus]

Now that I have a D&D campaign going I'm having vague thoughts about doing the reverse - writing up MP versions of the D&D characters and having some sort of wild magic accident propel them into my MP universe where they'll have to team up with the characters in that campaign to find a way home.

That sounds fun

 

[robus]

Cyberpunk games like, well, Cyberpunk or Shadowrun spring to mind, as does Dream Park.

Oh yeah...didn’t I mention Paranoia?

I'll have a look, but I'm more familiar with the Genesys/FFG Star Wars system and they did release an "Android" setting guide for Genesys that seemed like it would fit my vision well...