How to run a Higurashi/Groundhog Day style game?

[CubeKnight]

WARNING: Spoilers for both Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni and Groundhog Day (movie) on this topic

Relevant links:
Higurashi@wiki
Groundhog Day@wiki

So, I was thinking it'd be interesting to have a game where the PCs find themselves in a time loop, with certain pre-defined events happening in all the loops, and the PCs stuck until they could find a way to "fix" whatever is wrong.

A particular problem would be that in both of the examples provided, only a single character remembers all the repeated events, and I don't think that'd work out with a group. So, any idea how to fix that for a group game? I'm thinking of having a random character remember the previous iteration every time, with an increasing chance of more characters remembering each iteration. How does it sound? Also, to make the other characters relevant, even if they don't remember completely, give them "Flashback Points", where they can act OOC/metagame for a single scene/action, with no other reason than "It feels wrong". Perhaps 1 Flashback Point/Iteration (as in, 1 FP the first rerun, 2 the second, 3 the third, and so on) would work out, any ideas?

Another "problem" is the game system. I'm thinking something like CoC, but having never played (only read about it), I'm not sure. If anything, it'd fit with the supernatural elements of Higurashi, and with the PCs being "normal" humans, not superhumans as most other systems assume.

After all of that, comes the plot: It'd be a huge burden on the DM, and he'd have to be extremely careful to keep things running consistently. Is it worth the effort? Or it's just too much for the DM?

All in all... I think I just wanted to write about the idea, and see if it's workable. What do you guys think?

Crossposted at GameFAQs: Pencil+Paper RPGs

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

I've played in a Groundhog Day style game (years ago, at some con in the Northeast), and discussed similar ideas with other GMs. I would suggest either having all of the PCs aware of the loop, or none of them explicitly aware but with some feedback, like what the Enterprise crew experiences in the Next Gen episode "Cause and Effect." (In a nutshell, they are unaware of the loop but experience deja vu and can gradually introduce information from previous iterations of the loop.) The players will inevitably metagame to some extent, as there are limits to the distinctions between player and character knowledge, so it's best to incorporate that directly into the game design rather than fighting it. I don't see why having the whole party aware of the loop would be a problem-- yes, in some examples from fiction only one person is aware, but RPGs tend towards a more ensemble feel anyway.

The classic design for this sort of story in an RPG has some explicit problem causing the loop-- maybe the monster in the corner is doing it, or maybe it's an effect of the evil ritual, or maybe it's triggered by the interaction between something good that the PCs are doing and some wacky magic. The PCs then need to figure out what's causing the problem, and then resolve it. Nicely, that allows them to take on challenges that might be beyond their capabilities, because they just reset when they fail (so if they need to kill the monster before it activates the effect, a TPK the first time they fight it isn't a disaster-- they get a bunch of information about its capabilities, reset at the beginning of the loop, and can now plan what they need to do to beat it next time.)

So yeah. It's a fun, interesting design. i would suggest aiming for about three or four times through the loop-- not so many that it gets stale, but enough that it's not just repeating the experience once. Also, feel free to telescope later cycles-- to the extent that they do the same thing as a previous time, you can simply cut to the divergence point instead of playing through everything again.

 

[CubeKnight]

Well, the main reason I wanted to avoid the "everyone is aware" part was to have interesting RPing opportunities for the PCs. But you're right, it'd probably be for the best if the whole party was aware of the conditions.

The telescoping is also a good idea- to avoid things getting stale, and having to repeat the boring parts, maybe only "rewind" time to before they screw up, keeping all of their "successes" without having to go through them again.

 

[malraux]

CoC looping adventure. You might want to check that adventure out. It has some interesting ideas about how to keep the looping interesting (especially if you can get enough players for the multiple simultaneous sessions).

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

So yeah. It's a fun, interesting design. i would suggest aiming for about three or four times through the loop-- not so many that it gets stale, but enough that it's not just repeating the experience once. Also, feel free to telescope later cycles-- to the extent that they do the same thing as a previous time, you can simply cut to the divergence point instead of playing through everything again.

Alternatively, allow significant things to persist through the loop -- you clear the forest temple, and in the next cycle everything is fine in the forest area (which will in turn have some logical effect on the other areas) and so on and so forth.

 

[Nifft]

(Time loop, CoC system ...) A loooooong time back, inspired by the movie Hellboy and a Stargate SG1 re-run, I thought up an interesting twist on a time loop...


Briefing: "Welcome to Arrowhead Secondary OpCom and do NOT touch any of the runes, yes Lieutenant I just said 'runes', that means all the the glowing s--- on the doors and windows, now all of you SIT DOWN and SHUT UP! As of this moment you are cleared to know the truth about Operation Arrowhead.

"Your radios and uplinks will NOT work in this room, and neither will any VOMaT*, this is the most secure location on the whole godrotting Earth, don't ask me maggot, look it up in the briefing book I just handed you.

"This mission is what we refer to as a milk run. You are here as security for those scientists through that one-way mirror, in the control room. If anything tries to interfere with their work, or if any of them start to look 'unscientific', your orders are to liquidate with extreme prejudice.

"This will be a trial run for Operation Arrowhead. You will also be acting as security for the real thing. Today, you will all sit tight and read that briefing manual as though your godrotting soul depends on it, because if the stars go to s--- on us, it damn well might.

"The milk run starts in two hours. Dismissed." The general salutes and walks out.

(Of course, the stars do indeed go to s--- on them.)

The party sits and reads their briefing manuals for two hours, after which a sickly green light fills the control room. They see the scientists' bodies twist into terrible, unnatural shapes; a wave of hideous purple darkness roils across the sky, followed by tentacles dripping like lice from the bloated clouds; when suddenly in the control room a slavering, bespectacled horror in a lab coat scuttles over a bulbous, oversized red button. Everything goes all wavy lines...

"The milk run starts in two hours. Dismissed." The general salutes and walks out.

- - -

The party is a group of modern-day soldiers, combat scientists, and tactical occultists. Their goal is to head off some kind of planar breach in the space of two hours. However, they have some hard limits:

1/ They keep their sanity score across iterations, which will be hit every time a PC dies (because death is traumatic).

2/ Every iteration, the corruption of the Elder Things reaches further into the "past", because each iteration is a violation of causality**. So they're not operating in a static time loop: things get worse each iteration.

That's about as far as I got. There were no specifics. Perhaps the whole thing took place during the activation of the Large Hastur Collider.

Cheers, -- N

- - -

*) VOMaT - Voodoo, Occult, Magic and Theology; catch-all MilSpec for the supernatural.

**) ... because the PCs bring knowledge of the future back to affect the past. They are the causality violation.

 

[Slife]

Well, if you *really* want to have a single character get groundhog dayed, and don't want metagaming on the other player's parts...

Get a group of, say, five people. Make your S.O. the looper, and completely screw over the non-looping people. They won't come back, so invite four other people for the next session (which begins the loop again). Repeat until you run out of people in the area code willing to play as the non looping characters.

 

[WalterKovacs]

Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask has a similar looping structure, where you slowly find out how to succeed in saving things, and where some stuff that happened in previous incarnations remains the same.

If you don't want to go the route of "somehow the previous iteration caused a change in all 'future' iterations", then perhaps the PCs do get to bring something back with them. It depends in part on the make up of the party, but presumably accumulating memories would mean that while the PCs are always reset to their starting gear, and their starting health, etc ... they would retain any new knowledge which would mean they could perhaps gain experience, skills, knowledge, etc. In this case the rewards for completing certain tasks would be experience, but also information about what other task should be accomplished, and likely something that let's them know they don't need to do this again. Or perhaps once they know how to break the cycle, they run through one final iteration where they have to accomplish every 'good deed' in the course of a single iteration. The party would know every fight they'd be involved in, and could plan accordingly how to allocate their resources over the length of the iteration.