Here we are, born to be kings, we're the princes of the universe

[Gundark]

As you can probably tell I'm a fan of the highlander TV series. Anyhow I was thinking of a campaign where the PCs are immortals of some kind. It doesn't have to be from the movies or the TV series. What I'm thinking of doing is having the heroes live in the current time period, but have "flashback adventures" (FAs). What I mean is they remember an event which the group plays out in adventure from in different eras of time. Ideally what I would like is for the Campaign to jump back and forth between different periods of time.

Now there are some problems with this type of thing. First off is how would you deal with xp? Do the heroes gain xp for these "FAs"? Are they higher levels in the modern era? Do they have multiple versions of their characters at differnt levels? It really doesn't seem to fit well.

Problem number 2 is there really isn't any threat to a FAs if they are suppost to surivive it. What I mean is if a hero is living in the current time, what sense of danger is there if adventuring in 1918 WW1 france? They have to survive for they are alive in the current time. A possible solution is that there is another penality to "dying" rather than death. level loss? losing of some sort of power? Again it's murky at best making something like this work.

Anyhow....any ideas? Have you done something like this? How well did it work? What would you do?

 

[Derro]

From what I remember of the TV show the flashbacks were either a similar situation to the modern story or involved another immortal with a shared history. There was often a lesson to be learned from the events of the past to aid with the present challenges. If the GM were to set specific goals in the flashback scenes they could be used to gauge a modifier to experience earned in the modern story.

If somebody died there overall XP would be halved or whatever.

I know it flies in the face of EL and CR style experience awards but those tools are for a more linear style of game play. Flashback experience could also be awarded as a better fortune in modern scenes. It could be anything from a limited use of the effects Inspired Greatness or Inspired Heroics (PHB Bard) to action dice from whatever source you prefer. Not the hard reward of XP but a reward with immediate benefit which might serve to represent the lessons of the past.

I've often wanted to run a game in the vein of the movie Memento or Angel Heart where the PCs must piece themselves back together through flashbacks and clues alluding to past events.

 

[kingpaul]

There was a d10 RPG, I believe called Immortal, where you had numerous past lives. You could gain experience (say in Kung Fu) if you forced a flash back. There were problems with past lives trying to gain control of the physical body though. And in these flashbacks, you could relive the past life dying.

I know my GM had us playing us, and we went from there.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

If the characters shouldn't die in the past, your first step is to constrain the situation so that it's unlikely that it happens. Their enemies aren't out to kill them, or have little chance to succeed.
(If a PC wants to behead themselves, well, then you probably have a problem in your group and should talk about, before anything else goes wrong. )
Alternatively, instead of the characters own flash backs, you could use NPCs flashbacks. The players take control over new PCs during the flash back, and you don't know the outcome (except maybe that the NPC survives. For that reason, the NPC could actually be a single PC)

The second step is to find other reasons why the flash back is important. Possible examples
1) Threaten NPCs that are important to the character in that time. That's difficult if they appeared the first time in the flash back, but if you run a longer running campaign, you could establish certain flash back "eras", and make a point
2) Maybe it gives an important clue to the current situation. (Who killed Beggar Vallance and would now try his come-back?)
3) The PCs might want to stop a certain villain that could be a powerful ally to their current enemy. Though they might "accidently" - or conciously - set off the reason why the current villain is after them in the first pace!
4) The PCs might encounter someone in the flash back that reminds them of someone that is still alive, but possibly hidden/disguised or just far away.


Two problems come to mind:
- How do you deal with the implied different experience levels of the PCs? Should the players pregenerate their characters for several levels (maybe flash back eras 1 to 5 + present)
- How do the players cope with playing different characters, and not advancing linearly? I have no idea! If you adopt the idea of the players taking on different persons in the flash backs, this could be problematic for immersion into the characters. But even if not, your flash back personality is not the same as your current personality.
nd what's with the "fun" derived from gaining XP and levels? What are the mechanical rewards from flash backs?

 

[takyris]

To address the dying-in-past issue, one easy way to handle it is:

- PC gets into a fight in the past.
- If PC loses:
-- PC's ally and friend dies for PC
- If PC wins:
-- PC's ally shows up in the present to help.

The PC is never in danger of dying, but doing well in the past will cause plot events to help the player more in the present.

 

[1upus]

There was a game....Fireborn...where the PCs played dragons, which utilized flashbacks to the past as a tool to developing the story in the present.

It's been a while since I've read the rules, but when I last looked at it, the mechanic seemed pretty cool, as what the characters learn't in the past life, allowed them/gave them a clue as to new abilities they could develop in their current life.

I'll have to dig up my copy of the rules. Never did play the game due to a heavy rpg commitment at the time, hence the poor recall of the rules. Unfortunately the game didn't survive all that long to try to encourage my group to go back to it. That plus the one supporter of the game in my group is no longer with us.

 

[jdrakeh]

There was a game called Legacy: War of Ages, which was pretty much Highlander with the serial numbers filed off. The system was actually pretty good, though many Highlander fans hated it simply because they viewed it as plaguerizing their favorite IP. I was both a Highlander fan and a player of Legacy, which I thoroughly enjoyed. You might want to check it out, if you're looking for mechanical inspiration.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

If I remember Kung Fu -

This may seem a little wacky, but the flashbacks in Kung Fu very rarely involved 'present day' characters. They did highlight a lesson or a learning experience for Grasshopper; what about a flashback as a simple encounter or 2 encounter segment with little chance of obvious failure, but failure not meaning death - basically, both failure and success showing 'skill learned or gained.'

Instead of starting off a character at a high level, as he reflects on his past give him experience.

A much more wholesome experience storywise, and gives the character a lot more depth.

Story plot for flashbacks go like this -

1. Character interacts with problem, and deals with immediate issue.

(Sean McCloud comes across a girl being abused by some Mafia thugs. He kicks them about.)

2. Character has a flashback to a previous (similar) experience, where he learned something.

(Sean McCloud remembers back to the 16th century where an organised group of pimps are deliberately using women and using drugs/deliberate use of gossip and more brutal tactics to force women to work for them. Sean McCloud now finds the seed of how to undo the crime gang; expose them, assassinate the leader, or whatever. The key here is he finds THE WAY TO DO IT.)

3. In the modern world, Character attempts to apply his old experiences. They work in the most part, but not quite, forcing a bit of improvisation and a bit more learning.

(Sean McCloud hacks all the mafia guys down. Corrupt cops find him and imprison him under false charges.)

4. Due to the mix up of the previous scene, the character sorts out the problems that arose from the previous scene.

(Sean McCloud gets the dirty on the cops and reveals the whole thing; he has learned that some experiences are not the same.)

5. Flashback to the old sequence, where he has a happy ending or not due to his previous experiences; he leaves town or is a hero or whatever. Regardless, SOME HINT OF THE MIX UP IN THE PRESENT SHOULD REVEAL ITSELF.

(Sean McCloud gets the dirty on the pimps and hacks them to pieces; a corrupt cop tries to interfere but Sean has too many witnesses/whatever/ that the corrupt cops ploy won't work, or it only takes a little bit to work.)

6. The "what have we learned" scene. PCs talk to one another and resolve the issues - due to their present and past experiences they have grown to become even better than before.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Highlander D20 RPG

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

There was a game called Legacy: War of Ages, which was pretty much Highlander with the serial numbers filed off. The system was actually pretty good, though many Highlander fans hated it simply because they viewed it as plaguerizing their favorite IP. I was both a Highlander fan and a player of Legacy, which I thoroughly enjoyed. You might want to check it out, if you're looking for mechanical inspiration.

Nice to see I'm not the only Highlander fan that liked that game.

I ran a semester-long campaign back in college with the serial numbers reapplied. Didn't fret too much about the flashback sequences, as none of the PCs were that old. Was quite a bit of fun, and surprisingly more social-based than I would have expected from that particular group.