Instead of character progression...

[JesterPoet]

Would it work to have a game with character regression? It seems to me that it might actually be interesting. Imagine starting out with powerful characters who for one reason or another start to get weaker.

Obviously it wouldn't make for a great new system... my guess is that it would get old pretty quick. But for one storyline or campaign it might be fun to see how the players react. Anyone ever done this, or want to brainstorm on how to make it fun?

 

[milotha]

I've always joked that there should have been a trilogy of Ravenloft modules like this. The first module would be for level 9-12. The second for levels 5-9 and the last for levels 1-5.

Oh, the number of levels lost due to level draining.

 

[Sherlock]

You could have the party infected by some sort of magical disease that weakens and strips then of skills. They could be hunting for some cure. Nice motivation to work together! They would lose levels and abilities as the game progressed. You would have a problem with magic items though, unless they could only have the kind that ran out of charges and such like potions and wands.

 

[Piratecat]

Hmm. I played a game like this once; it was a Ghostbusters-esque game named Inspectres, by (I believe) the indie-RPG designed Jared Sorensen (sp.) Great fun, and the characters tend to get worse over time.

One could argue that with sanity loss, Call of Cthulhu characters also degenerate.

 

[Oni]

The way I see to do this, perhaps is to give the players power. Limited Power. Lets say that have a limited number of these powerpoints that they use to power spells or unusual abilities or whatever, but after using so many points, or usages of the power or whatever you get weaker. Break the number again, and you get weaker still. With the right players I could see it making for some hard choices and cool heroics.

 

[Agback]

Would it work to have a game with character regression? It seems to me that it might actually be interesting. Imagine starting out with powerful characters who for one reason or another start to get weaker.

Obviously it wouldn't make for a great new system...

Maybe it would. You could call it Call of Cthulhu.

I don't know about CoCd20, but in the Chaosium version characters lost SAN faster than they gained skills (though one of mine got his 'Cthulhu Mythos knowledge' up over 50% before I lost him). So they tended to become gradually less effectual until they died, got transported to other dimensions, went mad, went over to the Dark Side, or until they were so fragile that the players decided to replace them.

Regards,


Agback

 

[JesterPoet]

Maybe it would. You could call it Call of Cthulhu.

Well, that all depends on the Cthulhu game, really. Actually I run it right now (the Chaosium version. Never could get used to Cthulhu characters gaining levels). Sanity is a factor, yes, but depending on what characters are up against they still progress. I guess I would argue that going insane isn't really the point of Cthulhu, but rather a somewhat unavoidable nasty side effect.

 

[tarchon]

A couple of WoD games, Vampire and Wraith have (in their original intention) pretty inevitable degeneration effects, though they don't tend to whittle away overall character power so much. Mark Rein*Hagen is said to have stated that his intent with Wraith was to create a game so creepy no one would every want to play it twice, which may be why most people have never heard of it.

High death rate D&D is a regressive system - you blow a level everytime you die. It might make for an interesting short term campaign where you play high level heroes fighting a near-hopeless struggle with a wand full of Raise Deads.