"72 hours earlier" (flash forward scenes)

[GSHamster]

One interesting variant which might not be so railroady and more conducive to gaming is a "seeing the future".

The characters find themselves forward in time for the fight, and when you move back the characters remember what is coming, as if they dreamed it.

So then you can have the characters trying to avoid the future, or trying to embrace it. Sort of like prophecy, but more vivid and immediate.

 

[Stalker0]

One neat idea would be this.

You give your party a scene in the future. You then tell them that when that scene arrives the closer in detail they are to that scene the more experience they get. Basically the party's goal is to find in character ways to make that scene happen.

ITs railroading but in a different way. I think it would be fun to try once as a change of pace.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Anyone try something like this?

Twice, once for a Star Wars game, once for a Deadlands game. And thats out of over a decade of GM'ing.

While it can be a great device for TV shows if done well, it has the unfortunate whiff of "railroading" to players, since they know that they are going to end up in a certain situation no matter what they do, it's often just a matter of when.

The instance I used in Deadlands, I ended the opening combat scene just when things looked at their worse for the posse. I then made notes of key actions characters made, which when they got to the beginning scene, I used to alter the events. Turns out saving that little Indian boy from the raiders lead to an Indian war party (lead by the boy's father) attacking the raiders from behind, giving the posse a much needed leg-up, as did the bible one PC picked up from a dying missionary after promising to return his cross and bible to his family, when previously the PC had just taken a "killing shot" during the initial combat.

That was the second time, and worked a lot better than the first time I tried it in Star Wars.