My Campaign Metaplot: Comments? [Long]

[GQuail]

It's highly unlikely they';ll read this, but I shall state anyway in the off chance that my players would have zero fun reading this thread, for it will be all about our campaign's future, etc etc.

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Right, they've not got that long an attention span, so that ought to do as spoiler space. :>

A while back on this very forum (And by a while, we're talking almost a year at least) I read a random thread about someone asking if anyone had used elements from the D&D cartoon, specifically Venger, in a serious game. One person put forward the interesting idea that Venger's not as pathetic as he comes off because, notably, he's the only person who notices that the "great heroes" are just kids with artifacts and thusly isn't intimidated by them. Thusly, Venger could be a great villain who fights not the PCs butthe players, because he knows that, really, the Strength 25 Fighter 9 is played by a data analyist with low blood pressure who needs ten minutes to remember how a Cure Light Wounds potion works. :>

I'm a big fan on Animal Man, the early nineties Grant Morrison comic series that took a C-List superhero that eventually had him encounter his own comic book-ness, which lead to the inevitable issue where Animal Man met Grant Morrison and went mental when he refused to just "bring back" his dead family because "the readers won't believe that." It sounded quite an interesting concept for a campaign, especially because I'd already left some hints about the past of the campaign world floating around which were eventually going to reveal this was the same universe as my previous campaign, but many centuries later, after a great disaster was not prevented by the last party. When you're already throwing in references to old games some of your players were part of, where else is there to go but the real world? :>

So, in a relatively plot-light dungeon, the party encountered 'Vhengher', a Tiefling wizard with a horned helmet who was working on some sort of dimensional portal, protected by Wights. The battle went pretty awful: the Wights drained one PC of two levels, two more of one, and Vhengher's Fireball spell almost killed the, Paladin's mount, the goblin sidekick of the half-orc, and the Paladin's unborn child. (My god, dont' ask.) Of course to ensure his spell was mroe powerful Vhengher used a power component, which just so happened to be one of his helmet horns which he snapped off....

But, nevertheless, his portal was distrubed and it started flashing and showing numbers on it. One of the bright characters clocked it was numbers from 1 to 20. When the Half-Orc Barbarian smacked him hard enough, he was sent into the portal, magically sending him off somewhere. As he left, his parting cry was heard by a couple of players: "My god, it's full of dice..."

There was laughter at the time about how they'd killed someone by sending them to a elemental plane of dice or something, but I started leaving lots of things gently building up. My D&D game has a weekly infodump on my LiveJournal, allowing people to catch up on missed sessions or remind themselves of what happened: I started leaving secret messages throughout (either spoiler-coloured to the background, or later hidden in HTML tags) where Vhengher warbles on about how he has seen "the real world" and will have his revenge: including occasionally slipping form using character names to PC names. Lately I've made his messages more surreal, but created a whole seperate LiveJournal where the "real world" Vhengher babbles on about his plans.

But in the game world, there are effects also. When the whole party ended up leaving D&D for two sessions due to absences, holidays etc in August I had the game restart with their PCs lying tied up outside of the dungeon they were in: their NPC companion at the time had been forced to tie them up because some evil force had possessed them and was making them walk about like zombies: and several PCs, whilst unconcsious, had dreams of a red unicorn with a black horn. Then, a few sessions later (and on the first year anniversary of our first session, natch) they were encoutnered by the same villain they met on their first encounter: a villain who had died utterly there (sacrificing himself to use a dying curse) but was brought back by Vhengher, marked by an ominous "WAKE UP" line in the middle of one of his secret messages. This character started quoting the same sort of thigns the secret messages said and the PCs (who had slowly been starting to notice them and talk about their mneaning) were very concerned. They spent some time talking about the creature this villain claimed brought him: a giant, bloody read Minotaur face, but with one horn....

Now, in game, the Half-Orc has victored in a ritual battle in his tribe for a magic weapon, and the final had him fighting and killing his own half-brother. He had no idea he had a half-brother, and despite only being away for six years he was surprised by how old this brother looked. His mother was confused when pushed to explain his birthdate but fianally told him, despite it oviously being six years, she was certain her younger child was fifteen years old. Evil Vhengher has been playing with in-game events to tear the man who struck him from his family....

Anyway, I don't intend on resolving this immediately: the PCs are only jsut level 8 (they play.... slowly ) and I want to make it more and more a part of the game as time goes on. We're ending one plot thread before Christmas (an evil humanoid army, led by a Bard Lich, trying to restore the demon princess whose cult they belong to back to Godhood) so next year I intend to kick into a more plane-hopping scheme and will start to have more overt Vhengher appearances: a cult dedicated to a one-horned god here, an improbable trapping in a dungeon laughed about on his journal there, maybe a few mysterious emails or text messages from someone threatning to Fireball them harder next time....

Wventually, the PCs are forced up against him in direct combat and most likely get their asses kicked since he's this game-defying meta-thing. (I'm tempted to actually knock their dice over after they role to represent this bit. :>) To properly defeat him there will be some highly trippy sessions, possibly involving taking them into the "real world", be it a session set in our world or a LARP session in my flat. ;-)

Anyway, I'm curious as to what you guys think about this idea: how you'd react to it as a player, and if you have any ideas for encounters, threads etc I could weave within this to keep it going for a bit. There are other things going on in my campaign and my players seem to want to continue paying fo rthe forseebale future, so it doesn't have to be solved in the next session or anything like that: this "demon princess" thread has been going before any of this, and there's some other threads planted for high level play, so it's not jsut a case of "Hah hah hah, look at how post modern and ironic I am": this is one string to my bow, but it's an idea I suspect they've never seen in any previous game they've played in, so I'd like to make it as memorable as possible.

Note: not memorable as in "that game I played in when I was 12", good memorable. ;-)

 

[DamionW]

I admit this is an interesting concept, but it would have to be executed just right, or you end up with that "hah ha ha I'm ironic" effect you're trying to avoid. If you want some more references to draw from, read the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, specifically the last few novels. It's a good series anyway, and it'll help give you ideas. Now as for actually executing the idea, I think the BEST way to get this to work is to collaborate with an external DM. Hand off some of the responsibility so even YOU aren't sure where Vhengher is going with all of his plots. While the DM - player mechanic should ideally not be adversarial, it can be slightly modeled as such. So if you hand off some of your plot developments to "Vhengher" to see where they go, even you won't be in control of how they stack up against the PCs. I'd be interested in playing in something like this, but personally the idea of LARPing out a battle with a guy in a one-horned helmet or watching you knock over my dice and going "OOOOOooooohhh spooky!" would kill the effect you're going for.

 

[GQuail]

I admit this is an interesting concept, but it would have to be executed just right, or you end up with that "hah ha ha I'm ironic" effect you're trying to avoid. If you want some more references to draw from, read the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, specifically the last few novels. It's a good series anyway, and it'll help give you ideas.

I had heard a little about these, specifically the final ones, and how it was a nice idea but considering some of Stephen King's other recent writing it seems a bit silly. (That is, it touches on the same real-life topic again.) But you're right, it's a similiar idea,a nd worth looking into.

if you hand off some of your plot developments to "Vhengher" to see where they go, even you won't be in control of how they stack up against the PCs.

That's a very interesting idea: so, I get a whole seperate person involved as Vhengher, who keeps up to date with the PCs actions and acts accordingly. I don't know off the top of my head who I'd get to do this, but it would certainly be an interesting way to play the game, especially when things get more overt: the players have a direct nemesis I'm not in charge of, because Vhengher is "outside the game" and outwith my control. Very meta.

I'd be interested in playing in something like this, but personally the idea of LARPing out a battle with a guy in a one-horned helmet or watching you knock over my dice and going "OOOOOooooohhh spooky!" would kill the effect you're going for.

Yes, this is my main problem: getting there is fun, but ending it is gonna be tricky. It feels a bit poncy to do a session were I play, well, me and have the players actually end up in the real world, and once I've done anything like that pulling the PCs back into the game world is gonna be tricky: ergo, once the Vhengher bomb is deployed, teh campaigns days are numbered. ;-)

 

[DamionW]

Basically, here's what I think the third person can do for you:

1) Imagine being a player and opening your mailbox to find a simple envelope dressed to them with no return address. On the back flap is a one-horned icon of some kind. When they open it, they find a simple note: "I hope you like Ragnar, Jim {obviously replacing with appropriate 'character name, Player name'} because his days are numbered." They come to you next session and are like, "Haha George, very funny." and hand you the note. You look back at them earnestly and reply, "That's not my handwriting."

2) If you could work with their friends/family, imagine replacing all of their dice in their dice bag with d6s, or assuming you could make them somehow d20s that read all ones.

3) Along the handwriting example, have sections of your gameworld map start appearing redesigned in another script/ cartography style. Pull it out of your DM folder and look at it with genuine surprise. "That wasn't there last time."

These are the kind of feelings you should engender to make this really entertaining. As for wrapping it up, the focus should be on the players isolating and wresting control of the game world as theirs. They should have "Tron" - like experiences with their characters, communicating directly with their PCs somehow as how to magically isolate and buffer the game-world from your real-world forever. It would effectively end the campaign because your players can never dictate the characters actions again, but then it becomes noble, too because Vhengher has no control over the game world either. THAT I think would make a really memorable end to a game.

 

[GQuail]

1) Imagine being a player and opening your mailbox to find a simple envelope dressed to them with no return address. On the back flap is a one-horned icon of some kind. When they open it, they find a simple note: "I hope you like Ragnar, Jim {obviously replacing with appropriate 'character name, Player name'} because his days are numbered." They come to you next session and are like, "Haha George, very funny." and hand you the note. You look back at them earnestly and reply, "That's not my handwriting."

I had been thinking of something like this already, but someone else doing it under their own steam would, as you say, come across far more interesting.

2) If you could work with their friends/family, imagine replacing all of their dice in their dice bag with d6s, or assuming you could make them somehow d20s that read all ones.

Unfortunately, most of my players play from my bag of dice, but there could be some potential in this.

3) Along the handwriting example, have sections of your gameworld map start appearing redesigned in another script/ cartography style. Pull it out of your DM folder and look at it with genuine surprise. "That wasn't there last time."

A whole village just vanishes off the map and a new trading post drops into place somewhere else. Guaranteed to get funny looks I wonder if the same idea could be applied to modifying character sheets, adding an extra used charge here or there to a magic item...

These are the kind of feelings you should engender to make this really entertaining. As for wrapping it up, the focus should be on the players isolating and wresting control of the game world as theirs. They should have "Tron" - like experiences with their characters, communicating directly with their PCs somehow as how to magically isolate and buffer the game-world from your real-world forever. It would effectively end the campaign because your players can never dictate the characters actions again, but then it becomes noble, too because Vhengher has no control over the game world either. THAT I think would make a really memorable end to a game.

That's a pretty neat idea. The players "cut free" the world from Vhenghers control but in doing so also force it away from everywhere else, thusly leaving the game world to finally run on it's own. As you say, that's quite a dramatic ending, though how to work it in game is another thing entirely: whether I do it in a more freeform "I create a wall around Vhenger by drawing it on the map" way, or something mroe within the D20 rules.

 

[GQuail]

Just wanted to add that, this session, this session, the PCs found out the father of the six/fifteen year old Orc was wearing a necklace showing a red bestial head with a single balck horn. First of all one said "Venger", but after one remembered the look of fthe face seen before by the ressurected villain they seemed to ignore that idea and ofcused on another, especially when "The King Outside" (a phrase regularly used by Vhengher in his rambles as a title for himself) was said to be the name of the god on the symbol.

They briefly got one Orc explaining it was something like "two dimensional b eings would be ruled over by us, like gods rule over us, so logically there's ever increasing circles of beings above us who exist outside our space. What does the final form look like?" Deep for Orcs, I know, but it had been pasted into their belief system by Vhengher for his own gain, plus it lets the word "outside"'s connotations slowly dawn on the players: when I said "The King Outside" there were several curse words around the table. :>

Anyway, just wanted to qualfy that the PC's know SOMETHING is up but not what for those who would help me plot their downf... erm, future sessions. ;-)

Also, I wanted to add that one of the symptoms of Vhenghers power I had in mind was dropping things obviously from other campaign worlds/game systems/stories/etc into play, as he goes "outside the game". For example, I used template sto make a Transforming Mithril Construct, (hello, Blurr from Transformers!) a ten-headed Rakshasa (hello, Ravana from Hinduism!) and a Eye King Mind Flayer (hello, Metroid from the Metroid games!) which, though too high level from them now, could be viable encounters in the future. I was going to maybe drop one or two in sort of randomly, and then I could maybe have almost a "plague" of these things appear, as Vhengher further cracks the fiction's boundary.

Looking on WotC's website, they had a "Time Wight" undead which I thought might be good to propogate this idea: advance it a few HD, give it Evolved from Libris Mortis or similar to make a more potent, "Universe Lost Undead" to represent the fallout of universe collapse.

I know this is (1) poncy, (2) complex and (3) wbeing written from somone with a single digit post figure, but advice is appreciated. :>

 

[BraveSirRobin]

I agree with Damion's idea that you shouldn't have any real LARP-like encounters and that the more subtle tactics would be more fun. Another idea would be to have this 'other DM' start effecting your play sessions. Near the end of a play session with the party about to destroy one of Vhenger's henchmen, have the power suddenly go out. Some dice can be heard rolling and you proclaim that the delay has allowed the henchman to escape. You can then institute some other in game consequences for out game actions. Phone calls on cell phones that distract players result in a negative modifier to their spot checks of that assasin sent to kill them. Missing character sheets or books result in items from those pages being rendered useless. Showing up late to a play session because of trafic results in the character being mysteriously absent when the party awakes, only to have him reappear as suddenly when the player arrives.