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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
Ever run a D&D campaign as a D&D game?
- Thread starter Bullgrit
- Start date
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
The surreal, Prisoner-esque game Over The Edge...
SPOILER
[sblock]...has a fascinating metaplot where the PCs gradually find out that they're just characters in a role playing game. For people who feel fully formed and well rounded, this is a fairly traumatic realization. I imagine it's often mistaken for insanity. It's also fairly funny.[/sblock]
SPOILER
[sblock]...has a fascinating metaplot where the PCs gradually find out that they're just characters in a role playing game. For people who feel fully formed and well rounded, this is a fairly traumatic realization. I imagine it's often mistaken for insanity. It's also fairly funny.[/sblock]
A couple of years ago at GenCon, I ran a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game called 'Dungeons and Bunnies"
The game started with the original cast gathered for Anya's birthday party. Anya was an ex-demon, who had spent hundreds of years granting vengeful wishes to wronged women. One of her past victims breaks into the party and casts a spell, trapping Anya in an alternate dimension. This particular spell creates a prison for the victim, based on their fears and whatever else is in the area.
Anya is afraid of bunnies, and the beam hits Xander's shelf of D&D books.
The PCs find themselves on a road in the middle of a forest. Buffy has a magic looking shield and sword. Willow was a sorceress, Tara a druid, Giles a wizard, Xander a thief, and so on. They wander into the village. The blacksmith and fishmonger greet the PCs warmly, but respond to any quesion with 'you should ask at the Inn!'. When they ask for their names the villagers all say 'I guess I don't have one!'
The Colorful Monster Inn is a brightly lit place, except for shadowy corners. Each corner had men with cloaks pulled low. Everyone else is the bar was an old man holding a treasure map, offering them to passing adventurers. Any one of them could tell the PCs that their friend was no doubt being held prisoner at the Fane of the Mad Bunny God, and here is a map they can sell you.
It was then that the realized it. Not only were they in a D&D adventure module, they were in a really crappy one.
On the way they saved a broken down wagon from bandits, though the merchants couldn't say where they were from or where they were going, they had always been broken down on the road. They were so grateful to the PCs for saving their 50 sp worth of grain they gave them healing potions worth several hundred gold.
More jokes inisde - a killer rabbit with big sharp pointy teeth at the cave entrance, a floor puzzle that one must spell Gygax, and the Dread Gazeebo. My favorite scene in the whole game - the group splits, with Xander and Giles trying to get past a runed door, the rest exploring a small courtyard.
Me: You see a small courtyard, overgrown with ferns and mosses. In the center is a gazeebo.
Buffy: Huh. Why's there a gazeebo in the middle of the dungeon?
Xander(hearing from down the hall): Oh god - RUNNNN
The gazeebo, naturally, attacked 4 times a round, had 150 hit points, and was completely immune to arrows.
Everyone had a blast and seemed to enjoy the 4th wall breaking nature of the game - characters realizing that they're in a FRPG adventure module, and not one of the good ones.
The game started with the original cast gathered for Anya's birthday party. Anya was an ex-demon, who had spent hundreds of years granting vengeful wishes to wronged women. One of her past victims breaks into the party and casts a spell, trapping Anya in an alternate dimension. This particular spell creates a prison for the victim, based on their fears and whatever else is in the area.
Anya is afraid of bunnies, and the beam hits Xander's shelf of D&D books.
The PCs find themselves on a road in the middle of a forest. Buffy has a magic looking shield and sword. Willow was a sorceress, Tara a druid, Giles a wizard, Xander a thief, and so on. They wander into the village. The blacksmith and fishmonger greet the PCs warmly, but respond to any quesion with 'you should ask at the Inn!'. When they ask for their names the villagers all say 'I guess I don't have one!'
The Colorful Monster Inn is a brightly lit place, except for shadowy corners. Each corner had men with cloaks pulled low. Everyone else is the bar was an old man holding a treasure map, offering them to passing adventurers. Any one of them could tell the PCs that their friend was no doubt being held prisoner at the Fane of the Mad Bunny God, and here is a map they can sell you.
It was then that the realized it. Not only were they in a D&D adventure module, they were in a really crappy one.
On the way they saved a broken down wagon from bandits, though the merchants couldn't say where they were from or where they were going, they had always been broken down on the road. They were so grateful to the PCs for saving their 50 sp worth of grain they gave them healing potions worth several hundred gold.
More jokes inisde - a killer rabbit with big sharp pointy teeth at the cave entrance, a floor puzzle that one must spell Gygax, and the Dread Gazeebo. My favorite scene in the whole game - the group splits, with Xander and Giles trying to get past a runed door, the rest exploring a small courtyard.
Me: You see a small courtyard, overgrown with ferns and mosses. In the center is a gazeebo.
Buffy: Huh. Why's there a gazeebo in the middle of the dungeon?
Xander(hearing from down the hall): Oh god - RUNNNN
The gazeebo, naturally, attacked 4 times a round, had 150 hit points, and was completely immune to arrows.
Everyone had a blast and seemed to enjoy the 4th wall breaking nature of the game - characters realizing that they're in a FRPG adventure module, and not one of the good ones.
Cerebral Paladin
First Post
I haven't ever, but I hope to soon. Many years ago, some friends and I kicked around some ideas for a game like this, as a comedic con game. I'm hoping to run it around the end of August. Part of the premise of the game is that the PCs are trying to track down a copy of the module that describes the BBEG's powers, so they can plan how to fight him. They are also in a world that has (knowingly) recently converted from 3rd edition to 4th, so there's a grognardy character who keeps complaining about how the old terminology was better, back in his day we didn't have any of these healing surges and clerics could really heal people, etc. I'm also thinking of having a monk character who is all about reaching the philosophical state of enlightenment called Full Immersion, when your player and you achieve oneness. (At least somebody is aware that trying to get really immersive in a silly world that is explicitly a game-world is utterly ridiculous, which should produce some humor.) There are also two characters that really dislike each other, but know that they should be working together because they're both clearly PCs, and the nature of things is that PCs work together because that's what the Players want.
awesomeocalypse
First Post
not quite to that extent, but ive played in campaign where all players have metagamed so thoroughly that any pretext that we were doing anything but playing a game collapsed. you'd have things like a monster taking a character hostage with a knife to his throat and the PCs all saying, "what, you're threatening a 4th level fighter with one hit of a dagger? seriously? please."
I haven't run a campaign that way, but I have played PCs within a campaign that way (different campaigns). Everyone else thought the PCs in question were insane, of course.
fanboy2000
Adventurer
Once, I had a the PCs gain visions of the players playing.
coyote6
Adventurer
I think Bill Stoddard, who writes GURPS supplements for SJGames, once talked (on Pyramid, IIRC) about a campaign where the D&D rules were a simulation of the world -- thus, falling wasn't as dangerous, you gained skill and power by killing things and stealing their stuff (i.e., getting XP), etc. So the characters would know all the rules, but not necessarily know they were characters in a game.
Not sure if he ran that game or not.
Not sure if he ran that game or not.
I started to, even was designing the campaign world in that way from the ground up - the PCs were actually going to be plugged into a VR on the Warden, essentially playing a MMO until they woke up. I changed course before we even got to the first session and played it straight instead. I felt like if the players knew the joke would get stale, and if they didn't it would be an unfair (possibly game-ending) jolt when they hit the "reveal".
