I have an idea for an adventure

[Nimloth]

I had an idea for a groundhog day-like adventure with a time-loop and the pc's can sort-of communicate to themselves, but otherwise don't actually remember the previous loop. The details are, 1 of the PC's has a book that is ,for some reason, immune to the loop. So what you write in it carries over to the next. I suppose I could do the adventure over and over, but I really only want to go through it once, with the book acting as their "past/future" selves communicating. Sort of like the Dr Who episode where he is trapped in the past (Blink) and communicates through Easter Eggs on Video Tapes.

I see the introduction going as follows, "You got an empty journal somehow. Bought at an auction/given a journal by a strange creature/had a journal left to you in your strange Uncles will. The next morning you wake up and find it has writing in it. Curiously, it looks like your own hand writing and it details the events of the day...." The story goes that a bbeg-creature-disaster-whatever occurs that causes the timeloop-destroys the world-whatever and that the heroes are the only ones who can stop it.

So the thought is, the group has been through the adventure time and time again, and failing time and time again, but leaving clues in the book.
- It is to be an introductory scenerio, so the book will bring them together because they each have a specific role to play in defeating the whatever.
- once a page has been written on and turned it can't be turned back during the looping.

I really need advice on the book mechanic. Do you think could it work? Ideas? How would your character react.

 

[Tovec]

You say you only want to do this adventure once correct?

If you are I don't know how its really going to work outside giving them very specific details to do or avoid doing that one day.
Otherwise they're going to know every trick or have no idea what to expect at all.

If anything, I recommend using a different Scifi to help you in this scenario. Use the same set up for the adventure and similar consequences but instead model it off of a Stargate SG1 episode called Avatar.

Basically in the episode, Teal'c is trapped in a loop of a video game but every time he tries to win the game gets harder and ends up killing him in a slightly different way. This way, if you wanted to reset the day and have them do it again then they can and you can also make them be doomed to lose without help of the book. The book can act as an artifact and (extrapolating Daniel Jackson's roll from the show) tell them what is going to happen a few (2-3 rounds) before it happens. Basically it helps them avoid an ambush and stay alive but only if they keep an eye glued to the updates the book is giving them.

There will be a few flaws to figure out if you do it with my suggestion. If you go with your original idea, I suggest going back and rewatching Blink and see what each of the truly defining moments are. Also remember Blink wasn't a time-loop. It was a one time deal.

 

[Nimloth]

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Madeiner]

Read the script of the PC game "Singularity".
I'm making an adventure based on that game.

Basically, they enter the past and save someone from a fire. Someone else shouts at them,telling not to do it. It's later discovered that the shouting person was actually one of them from the future. Saving (or not saving) the person had strange consequence because <insert paradox>

The PC's have already done this adventure a thousand times in the future. Some of them are gone mad. Writing on the walls try to tell them what works and what doesn't, but they are still writings of madmen.

 

[Queranil]

I was thinking it would actually be fun to play a certain scenario over and over again, each time with increasingly less subtle differences in order to be able to complete the scenario/save whatever. This would also be a great metagame challenge for the players, who obviously have more knowledge than their characters. Sort of like a Groundhog Day adventure.

 

[enrious]

Cause and Effect (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[paradox42]

I ran a nine-year game using 3.0/3.5/Other that ended in January 2010, right around the time of Pathfinder's original release, and we went to very, very high Epic levels during the course of it. The setting featured genuine time travel spells starting with the 8th-level Time Shift, and we did several time travel plots as a result. Time loops occurred several times over the course of the entire campaign.

My advice would be, be sure your players are into it, and know in advance that a time loop is possible. The best time loop plots in my game only worked because the players were into it, and thought a time loop was a cool thing to do, so they went along with it when one came up. One of the best examples of this that I can think of was the PCs hearing their own voices over a communications link, presumably their own future selves completing the plan they had only suggested mere seconds before (and not even finished fully discussing, let alone implementing); when the PCs who made the plan and heard themselves talking came around to go back in time and complete the loop, they did actually complete it- rather than trying to to something different and cause something crazy to happen.

For your book plot, it would be really easy for players who aren't into the idea to screw it up by throwing monkey wrenches into the works. So make sure they're not really interested in doing that, before you start the plot. If they are into it, then hey, good luck! You'll have quite a cool story to (re)tell once you're done.

 

[Nimloth]

I was thinking it would actually be fun to play a certain scenario over and over again, each time with increasingly less subtle differences in order to be able to complete the scenario/save whatever. This would also be a great metagame challenge for the players, who obviously have more knowledge than their characters. Sort of like a Groundhog Day adventure.

I ran a groundhog day scenario once, it taught me to always include a "count down clock" in such scenarios. Give the characters a personal concrete reason to end the loop. Otherwise they will just abuse the time loop for personal gain.

My players started stealing stuff, using magic on npcs, etc... to learn secrets. Secrets they would know in the next loop, but the consequences for their actions would be erased.

 

[Allegro]

Another possibility is to use a mechanic as demonstrated in Eureka were some of the damage experienced in one loop was carried into the next loop. If it is a high level campaign each loop iteration could add a negative level to each character thus ensuring the need to end the loops relatively quickly.

I also love the idea of using this kind of idea in a con setting. Where each character is literally played by a different person in each loop.