Groundhog Day

[Baron Opal]

Death would probably range from 0-20, I would think. Truly horrific deaths would be the 20, burning, slowly eaten alive, &c. 2d6+8 would be pretty major Sanity loss, particularly if you have to keep going. Death from standard combat, while awful and painful, would probably be fairly quick and be a d6 or a d10.

I concur with the awesomness of the Hellboy intro.

Is the reset a potential or current situation for these characters? Is this a talent that the team has as a result of the tachyon bomb or does the detonation of the bomb allow these kinds of things to be initiated? Another way to say it is, does the team have the option of choosing a particular reset point or is that someone elses decision?

What happens if the character runs out of sanity? I lost one CoC character to a string of really bad SAN checks. He went looney and tried to set the house everyone was in on fire becuase he became "afraid of the dark." I suppose you have to have some kind of fail condition since you are effectively pulling death out of the equation. I imagine the general assembling the task squad has only chosen members thouroughly conditioned against disturbing things.

 

[Nifft]

If I go with the Hellboy intro, then the tachyon bomb thingy isn't necessary. Instead, I'll have the "reset" be due to the interaction of human protection magic ("fate link") and otherworldly conjuration magic ("chaos transduction" or whatnot). Law + Chaos = awesome.

The reset point will NOT be something the PCs can decide. I think it'll be hard enough to cover every scenario from every angle even without that complication.

I think there should be like six terribly hard encounters... and the PCs should have to overcome at least two of them in order to reach the last encounter.

Let's assume they're already in a secure location behind enemy lines. What do they need to do?

1/ Break into the ritual location.

2/ Kill someone or something.

3/ Maybe... complete the ritual?

Thanks, -- N

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

If I go with the Hellboy intro, then the tachyon bomb thingy isn't necessary. Instead, I'll have the "reset" be due to the interaction of human protection magic ("fate link") and otherworldly conjuration magic ("chaos transduction" or whatnot). Law + Chaos = awesome.

The reset point will NOT be something the PCs can decide. I think it'll be hard enough to cover every scenario from every angle even without that complication.

I think there should be like six terribly hard encounters... and the PCs should have to overcome at least two of them in order to reach the last encounter.

Let's assume they're already in a secure location behind enemy lines. What do they need to do?

1/ Break into the ritual location.

2/ Kill someone or something.

3/ Maybe... complete the ritual?

Thanks, -- N

Find out who sabotaged the ritual (probably killing him) ? Avoid the error in the ritual?

 

[Driddle]

- Who should the PCs be? Soldiers, scientists, medics & military occultists seem to be four obvious roles -- who else?

Trombonists and (legal) mushroom farmers.

- Where should the PCs be when play starts? This should be near a ton of non-obvious resources, since they'll be repeating their "setup" work several times.

The bathroom, on the toilet, smack-dab in the middle of a ... "moment."

- What's the best system for this kind of thing? Obviously we need a Sanity score, but everything else is open.

Hero System. ALWAYS Hero System.

- Encounters... should have a TON of tactical options, since I expect the PCs to play some of them many times.

Hyper-elongated dachsunds. Weiner dogs that stretch for about two or three yards (or more), with extra legs to support the mass -- think centipede dogs. Hungry, with a lot of many numerous sharp teeth. And they might psionic, but I'm not sure. Some of them carry guns. They're all brown.

- How many encounters? A few encounters, but each one terribly hard, sounds good to me -- the fun part will be figuring out how to solve each one.

Seven is a special number. Use it often.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Stargate SG1 did a fairly good time loop episode, and STNG had one as well, though I don't remember being too impressed with it.

I would try a "Someone else is looping" twist at some point, probably an agent of the enemy. They could notice the very occasional minor change in a prior encounter and then maybe reloop even though none of them was killed.

There should be at least one obstacle that the optimum way of overcoming it is to capture rather than kill a guy from two fights back and get him to it alive to give the handprint and voice recognition.

 

[SuStel]

@ SuStel: If you could be specific in what parts / details / aspects you hated, that might be helpful. Thanks in advance.

The scenario was such that we had to discover the way out of the loop — and we couldn't. Our characters woke up on a spaceship (this was a GURPS game) in the brig. The ship was controlled by powerful aliens and was being invaded by even more powerful robots. My character, a fantasy-style barbarian, was the only character who could take out any one of the robots — and then he'd be overwhelmed. We tried to sneak around, we tried to negotiate, we tried to escape... nothing worked. The invaders would always end up blowing up the ship, killing us all, then we'd wake up again in the brig. I was just a guest in the game so I didn't play more than two games, but this situation lasted both games.

Time loops make for great fiction, where the plotline is controlled by the author, but for games they stink.

 

[Corbert]

What happens if the character runs out of sanity? I lost one CoC character to a string of really bad SAN checks. He went looney and tried to set the house everyone was in on fire becuase he became "afraid of the dark." I suppose you have to have some kind of fail condition since you are effectively pulling death out of the equation. I imagine the general assembling the task squad has only chosen members thouroughly conditioned against disturbing things.

You may want to consider waiving the sanity loss if a PC dies the same way several times, i.e. they get so "used to" dying that way that particular death no longer affects their sanity.

"Gee, thats the 5th time they've burned me to death. Maybe I can get them to stab me next time for a little variety."

 

[Baron Opal]

In CoC there is an optional rule, I believe, that when you successfuly save against something as many times as the max SAN loss you become immune to it. For some things, however, the min SAN loss is such that the best case is still awful.