Gaming: 24-style

[Nareau]

I just watched the first few episodes of 24. It's one of the most amazing shows I've ever seen. A single episode is about as exciting as 3 normal, full-length action movies.

The premise for the show is that all events happen in real-time. There are 3 or 4 stories happening simultaneously, and each episode flips between them. With each episode lasting 1 hour, and with 24 episodes in a season, each season is 1 day.

As with anything I watch, I've been thinking, "Hrm...how can I translate this into gaming?"

Our group has had a few sessions in various campaigns that take place in "real-time". By that, I mean there's barely a moment of time that we hand-wave. It can be a lot of fun (more fun for the DM, I think) to press the characters to their limits, not allowing any down-time to identify, heal, rest, level up, prepare spells, etc. Usually, these things last 3 or 4 sessions, and they resolve 12-24 hours of game-time.

I would love to figure out how to set these up intentionally. I wonder if it would even be possible to do. My fear is that such a story would have to be highly scripted to work flawlessly. But I could see doing something like this with higher-level characters (so spellcasters don't run out of juice), and a goal of "the world is ending in 17 hours unless you can find out how to stop it."

What do you all think? Ever done something like this?

Spider

 

[palleomortis]

So, what is 24 about?

 

[GlassJaw]

what is 24 about?

Are you serious?

 

[palleomortis]

Um, yea. We actually don't watch TV. (Or have anything to watch for that matter, just movies and dvds.)

 

[RangerWickett]

I've never done it, and I've never seen 24, but it sounds intriguing. Basically you'd need to set up 3 or 4 threats that need to be dealt with, which the party can go after in any order, before they can go after the big threat. Make the big threat hard to get to, so it looks like the party has almost no chance of getting to him in time, and then if they actually are low on time, have a character from earlier on pull a slight deus ex machina and give them a way to reach the main threat more quickly, but still only with minutes to spare.

You could always pull a Snake Pliskin and have one of them infected with a virus or injected with a bomb or something.

 

[Dagger75]

Um, yea. We actually don't watch TV. (Or have anything to watch for that matter, just movies and dvds.)

24 is a TV show passed a government group called CTU, Counter Terrorism Unit. Each season deals with 1 day. Each episode of the 24 show season is what happens durning that hour of the day. For example the last episode dealth with what happened between 2am and 3am in the morning.

All I know is that they must know some short cuts through LA to get around so fast.

Also never did a real time type game.

 

[hexgrid]

Um, yea. We actually don't watch TV. (Or have anything to watch for that matter, just movies and dvds.)

These days, DVDs are the best way to watch TV shows- my wife and use our Netflix account almost exclusivley for this purpose.

The first three seasons of 24 are available.

 

[palleomortis]

Yea, I am just now watching the friens, We have all the seasons up to nine, and I have seem most all of them. Good stuff, shame they stopped it tho.

 

[Ghostwind]

This is a very intriguing concept and one that I migh tbe able to pull off with my advanced group. Hmmm got the wheels spinning now.

 

[Nareau]

One of the things that makes the show's stories possible is heavy reliance on technology. Each story is connected throughout by telephones. This reduces the amount of time spent on travel and planning by a huge amount. Also, the relatively small locale of each story (ie, Los Angeles) further reduces the amount of time spent on the road.

I don't think such a game would appeal to everyone. But I think it would be a great model for a fast-paced, harrowing, high-tension game.

I've also been thinking about how to run a CSI: Greyhawk game. But that might be another thread entirely.

I guess what I'm looking for is a way to reverse-engineer the "24 model" down to its basic components:
Contiguous events
No downtime
Little travel
Little deliberation/planning
Support group to accomplish boring tasks
Multiple stories
Sense of urgency
Sparse combat

All of those can be done easily in game, except for the "multiple stories" part. I wonder if that could either be sacrificed, or possibly even replaced by alternating PC's/parties throughout a session.

Another part of the challenge I see is the daily resource-drain (rest/adventure cycle) that D&D is largely modeled on. Such a game would either need to be focused on high-level characters, or possibly an entirely non-spellcasting group. Maybe even change the healing rules so PC's gain back their level in HP every hour. Or something like that.

Spider