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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StalkingBlue" data-source="post: 1646975" data-attributes="member: 645">As you may have read elsewhere, I run a Midnight campaign - a game set in a high-fantasy, rare-magic world where there’s only one god (evil) and the orcs are on top. The players play resistance fighters, currently based just inside the edge of the almost continent-spanning Elven forest. I'm currently planning to make a number of changes that will affect the overall campaign style.  (Amongst other things I'll be introducing Fate Points to avoid death at -10hp to lower the death toll amongst PCs, currently 1 per 3 sessions on average.)  The single biggest change - and the one I'm looking for advice on - will involve the type of scenarios.  Up to now I've run guerrilla-type scenarios pretty much all the way - insertion behind enemy lines to bodyguard an agent or sabotage an evil temple, fighting orc troops in the forest (see my recent orc tactics thread), stuff like that. While fun in principle, the grimness and brokenness of the world is beginning to tell on us, and the fact that PCs are constantly outnumbered and outgunned is limiting their options to be proactive, go out of that stuffy forest and start drumming up some real resistance, at least until they reach much higher levels. I designed and ran a slightly different scenario for them a while ago, which we all enjoyed a lot. (There was one minor glitch, but well... we live and learn.)  After consideration, I've decided I'd like to expand on things in that scenario, more decisively and a lot sooner than I'd originally intended. That scenario involved the PCs finding themselves in the role of entirely different people living in an earlier age.  They 'were' human nobles escorting their prince to his wedding with an elven princess.  Gradually during the session PCs regained their own memories, and pulled together in time not only (as the prince's escort) to avert a massacre of the humans by elves due to a terrible misunderstanding, but (as the PCs) to achieve the mission they'd really been sent on.   Basically I want to expand the game from a linear approach into other times and other places.  Let's call such scenarios the 'Outside' scenarios for now - PCs operating outside their own time and/or place.  There are a number of things that will be important to make this work I think, and probably more that I haven't even seen yet.  Some things I know I need to consider are: - Make scenarios meaningful to the PCs. This means that success in an Outside scenario should affect the PCs' ordinary reality in some way.  It shouldn't be a "let's go change the timeline" approach though, I want it to be both more subtle and more staggering than that - this is still fantasy, not Star Trek. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  It might mean that in some cases I'll allow PCs glimpses of present-day reality (e.g. the ruins of a town razed by orcs) 'beyond' the Outside (e.g. the town in all its historical splendour), and might let them witness a change as it occurs.   It might mean letting them meet a recurring NPC after returning from the Outside, who now has a changed outlook on life.  In some cases it might mean ripples through their place and time that aren't apparent at first - but I won't be able to use that often or it'll be frustrating for players. - Root PCs in the 'Outside'.  I think one of the vital things in the scenario that I ran was that every PC also was a person living at the court of the prince-bridegroom, in that earlier age.  So I'm thinking I'll tend to give PCs alternate personalities to use in such a scenario.  Unlike in the first scenario that I ran, PCs would retain their normal memories though.   I might also give PCs 'contact points', to be spent on having a friendly contact in wherever location/time they happen to find themselves in a given scenario. - Allow for rapport to be built with recurring NPCs.  This is a key point in rewarding roleplaying, and all the more important in a world currently that provides little incentive in the way of riches, magic items, or high office.  Providing a base for the PCs to return to will be important I think.  I might also have certain NPCs have 'echos' that live in a particular other time and/or place, which the PCs would recognise as potential allies even though the Outside NPC might not know who they were.  (A bit of a Moorcock ripoff here, yup. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />) - Give players some degree of control over where and when to go. Player freedom is vital.  Yet, this bit is tricky.  The party currently averages 5th level, not sure how far I want to go in giving them control over their travels (by spells or magic items yet to be designed). I'm thinking it'll have to be a gradual thing, definitely not full control for now:  for one thing the party is still too low level to make that feel quite right, for another I need to stay in control right now and see how my approach works and what I want to offer as possibly scenarios.  I might design a way by which PCs can be 'sent' into Outside scenarios at an NPC's prompting - their only in-game input in these cases being to either agree or decline to go.  OTOH I'm also hoping that with time I'll get input on players on where/to when their PCs would like to go and what to do, which I can then work from to create scenarios to run.  - Keep rapport to the PCs' own world.  I'll still be running scenarios in the current-time environment, fighting orcs and priests of the evil god, the important thing will be to find a good mix and balance that will allow all of us to stay inspired to play in and run this game.  - In time, provide an in-game explanation for what's up with all those 'Outside' things.  Part of my explanation is engrained in the setting:  the game world has been cut off from other planes (including all gods except the fallen evil one) for roughly nine millennia.  In all that time, souls, dreams and memories have been unable to escape from the plane and are accumulating in a thick layer.  This layer might be the way to pass through into other times and places... who knows? ...I'd be glad for any comments, feedback, ideas on this.  Have you run/played in similar scenarios or campaigns? If so, what's your experience? If not, what strikes you/inspires you/puts you off/makes you think or wonder? Maybe most importantly, what am I overlooking? Meanwhile, I'll be talking to my players about it this coming Thursday (and am pointing them here).  See what they say. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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