Sagiro's Story Hour Returns (new thread started on 5/18/08)

[el-remmen]

Care to provide a quick overview? I'll be honest. Your storyhour's too far along for me to start reading now, but I'm interested in hearing tidbits.

Well, if Sagiro will humor us. . . I don't want to use his thread to talk too much about my own.

So I put it behind an sblock.
[sblock]
But basically, the party traveled to a demi-plane where they met "The Tree that Grows Backwards" and they were given magical items as gifts from their future selves who met the tree and convinced it to help them in order completing the anomaly or else the fabric of the prime might tear - of course, something about the tree's difficulty thinking "frontways" made it impossible for it to tell them what they had said to convince him to help.

The campaign finale featured a running fight that takes place in past scenes (or suggested scenes) of the campaign through the present and then into the future (and back).
[/sblock]

 

[MavrickWeirdo]

Oh, this is awesome. I love time travel stories. I'm so behind now. I've got a lot of catching up to do!

Thats alright so are they

 

[wedgeski]

Great update, Sagiro, thanks! I'm interested in knowing something about the time travel angle: once you had decided that the party was going back in time, did you then sit down and decide on what rules you were going to play by, or make it up as you needed to? Did you for example decide that paradoxes were impossible (the universe finds a way etc.), or even contemplate what would happen with specific items, such as Ernie's belt, if Ernie gave it away, or kept it, or put it on the statue, or whatever..?

 

[Tamlyn]

Wow! That's just amazing. Very impressively laid out and executed.

 

[carpedavid]

Sagiro - you just made my brain explode. Excellent work.

 

[Miln]

Sagiro - you just made my brain explode. Excellent work.

It's not every day that someone thanks you for expoding their brain...

 

[Sagiro]

Great update, Sagiro, thanks! I'm interested in knowing something about the time travel angle: once you had decided that the party was going back in time, did you then sit down and decide on what rules you were going to play by, or make it up as you needed to? Did you for example decide that paradoxes were impossible (the universe finds a way etc.), or even contemplate what would happen with specific items, such as Ernie's belt, if Ernie gave it away, or kept it, or put it on the statue, or whatever..?

I agonized pretty good ahead of time about my time-travel mechanics, vis-a-vis paradoxes and continuity issues. In the end I came up with a simple set of "rules" that were (fairly) easy for me to keep track of. (I won't spell them out here, for fear of spoiling things. But, yeah, I did decide that the universe simply wouldn't let paradoxes happen.) The real fly in my temporal ointment was the Greenhouse, but I solved that via a kind of "Gordian Knot" solution that will later become evident.

As for what Ernie would do with the Belt: I just took it on faith that Ernie would still have it with him in time for the time travel, and bring it to Greenshire. Let's face it -- a lot of my plot is a house of cards that could come toppling down if the PC's take certain specific unexpected actions. I just have to pick my spots in terms of managing risk, and so far, so good. I readily confess to a moment of smug satisfaction combined with immense relief when one of my players said to me: "Wait a minute. Are you telling me you knew this would happen nine years ago?!" Because the answer was, no, I didn't know. But I sure did hope.

-Sagiro

 

[Dawn]

I readily confess to a moment of smug satisfaction combined with immense relief when one of my players said to me: "Wait a minute. Are you telling me you knew this would happen nine years ago?!" Because the answer was, no, I didn't know. But I sure did hope.

-Sagiro

Geez. And I have trouble keeping my plots straight month to month.......

I have to say the prophecy writing you and PKitty do are truly inspirational.

 

[wedgeski]

I readily confess to a moment of smug satisfaction combined with immense relief when one of my players said to me: "Wait a minute. Are you telling me you knew this would happen nine years ago?!" Because the answer was, no, I didn't know. But I sure did hope.

Good answer. Thanks.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

It's also a good example of how a DM sometimes has to say things out-of-game.

I once created a magical "factory" that had been buried under rock and earth for a thousand years. The PCs followed some tunnels down into the complex, and eventually came to the front door (from the inside). They spent a good half-hour trying to figure out a way to open the doors, until I finally had to tell them out-of-game that there was nothing but rock on the other side.