The Journey to the Mind

[polymorph]

Hey Everyone! I am trying to come up with a very unusual session for next week and in fact my whole campaign so far has been leading towards this encounter, so I really want to make it work! In this thread I am looking for advice and ideas on how to improve upon my vision. J

The basic premise is, that “Rigulas”, the PC I usually play when I don’t DM, has been attacked by assassins. The rest of the group managed to drive them off, but he was poisoned with a rare brew that can not be cured by normal means. So he has been (conveniently ) disabled for the time I was DM’ing and the rest of the party had their hands full thwarting further assassination attempts and gathering rare ingredients needed to make a “cure”.
Now they will learn that said ingredients are not meant to be used to make some sort of potion, but will instead be taken by all the other party members. The ingredients they were gathering are in fact psychoactive drugs that will, with the help of a shaman, enable them to enter Rigulas’ mind!

The assassin’s poison works in a way that it destroys the victim’s personality, his ego, instead of having negative effects on his body(charisma damage). However, when the mind of the victim has been completely destroyed, she will just stop breathing and die.

To prevent this, the PCs enter Rigulas’ memories and must try to set things straight. I am not exactly sure how I should handle this. Maybe they should try and see to it that events happen exactly like they truly did (but they don’t really know his backstory so maybe that’s not such a good idea). Maybe the poison will take the form of a powerful person in Rigulas’ memory that will have an obviously evil influence on his mind. I am not really sure on how to handle this or how to let the PCs know what they need to accomplish in order to save him. Hope you guys can help me out here!

The really cool thing about being in a world of imagination like this is, that the PCs can alter the “reality” around them with the power of their own personalities! So basically they can boost their combat abilities, skills, change their appearance, or even go as far as to rewind time or slip into the bodies of other people. All they have to do is spend a standard action to roll a CHA check (They all have pretty high charisma so I don’t think someone will be left out). If they make it, the effect they desired becomes a reality, if they fail, their charisma decreases by one (it will be completely restored after they leave Rigulas’ mind). The more drastically they want to change the world around them, the higher the DC for this roll. I am not quite sure how high the DCs should be, but they should not be too high because I really want them to make use of and have fun with this opportunity. Boosting Srenght by 4 for an hour should be pretty easy so the DC should be around 5-10 while stopping time for a few rounds or changing someone’s thought’s (“you don’t want to kill us, you want to help us!”) should be more difficult (DC 12-16).
What do you think of this idea? How would you play it out?

For all those who want to know a bit more, here is the basic backstory:

The story began with Raduwan, who lived in Allastar, a city hidden in the woods near Waterdeep. It used to be a secret enclave where sculptors and artists lived a simple but peaceful live. Some day, a mighty Thrallherd, Rigulas Meneda arrived in town and used his psionic powers to control the minds of the guardsmen who in turn made sure that the townsfolk would accept his regime from that day onward. His dream was to create a world of order and law where crime and injustice would be but a distant memory. Allastar became the incarnation of that dream, where order was preserved at all times and anyone who opposed that order had to face gruesome consequences. The townspeople were suppressed rather than protected, but they were more willing to follow Rigulas’ ideals rather than to stand up against him.

As the enclave grew bigger, Rigulas established a guild of spies, that became known as the “Blade of Order”. He sent them to Waterdeep to infiltrate crime networks and bring merciless justice to lowly thieves and corrupt nobles alike. Consequently, one of the latter decided to hire Okuma, a renowned killer and leader of a guild of assassins to bring Rigulas and his ambitions to an end. Finally, Okuma confronted Rigulas in his mansion and took his head. However, he did not truly die.

When Rigulas first took control of Allastar, Raduwan, who was still a little boy, was the first to protest against the suppression of his family. As the guards seized him, Rigulas was disgusted with the chaotic potential of the child and decided to place a psionic seed in his body. This seed was meant to saveguard the success of Rigulas’ plans by letting him gradually take over the boys body when he himself got killed.
So when Rigulas was murdered, the city of Allastar returned to normal and no one ever heard of the “Blades of Order” again. However, Raduwan’s personality and behaviour, even his voice started to change at this very day. At the same time, he started to forget his former self and why he was in love with the woman he had married. With nothing to hold him back, he left the city forever and a few days later, he couldn’t even remember ever living there. Without knowing where his growing psionic powers came from or why they were given to him, he set out to find his destiny bearing a new name - Rigulas Meneda.

What do you think of the whole idea? What kind of role should the PCs play? How should they interact with his memories? How would YOU DM this adventure to make it the most fun for the players? Thanks!

 

[Rechan]

How I would do this would not deal with Memories, but the person's mind all together. Since the Poison is killing the character's personality and ego, then the character's personality and ego are what the PCs must save.

I would ask "WHO is this character?" Then, with the answers, I'd create a list and break down those facets of the character's personality - motivations, behavior, hopes, fears, beliefs, preferences - and create metaphorical representations of each. The PCs must rescue each metaphor, or remove the corruption eroding these metaphors, in order to save them.

To give you an example, if the character was a capricious trickster, then I would represent his playful tricksterness as a rambunctious child. This child is being ruthlessly stalked by a monster in a maze (that might resemble a dungeon the PCs plundered, or a distorted version of the NPC's childhood home, or perhaps a place the NPC would consider scary). The monster is going to gobble up the little child. The PCs must navigate the maze, fend of the monster, get the child, and keep it safe. The monster can't be "killed", but it can be repelled multiple times. Or if the character is a Valiant Knight, then his Honor is standing in front of a king's court, as the King tarnishes his image by reading a long list of things that the character did not do. The PCs must rush in and defend the character's Good Name.

Some of the metaphorical characteristics can be objects, or places. If the character is calm and cool, then perhaps one place is a serene mountaintop or a desert oasis, and the threat is a corruption seeping into it.

Then, I would think more about the NPC in question, and create several "landscapes". the latest iteration These landscapes are the environments the PCs move through. These "landscapes" would be plucked from the character's memories or places of significance, or reflect the character's mood (like the above paragraph), or be something the character would Think about in their spare time (a fighter might think about a training ground or an arena). Picture what Rigu

Perhaps PCs must use their knowledge and familiarity with Rigulas to get through some areas (treat it as puzzles). These puzzles might even be metaphorical, the players needing to do things that would be significant to Rigulas.

Once the PCs have rescued a subsequent number of Rigulas's metaphors, and keep them safe, then I would either have the PCs commence with a "purging" (some sort of ritual, likely metaphorical), or they must confront the sinister poison that has taken a "final form".

 

[Varianor Abroad]

I am getting strange flashbacks to a Doctor Who episode where he injected a clone of himself into his brain to save himself. There were weird ganglions, neurons and the like with flashing lights and bizarre sounds! What's not to like?

How about this? Every significant interval of time, pick a player. Ask them "What does your character think is happening?" Then start morphing reality to correspond. Sure, it makes it obvious what's going to happen. However, you can introduce the idea that the original mind rejects many notions. (Since that is in fact you, it's easy.) The poison might take a "concrete" form that the players have to chase.

Or perhaps it mutes its forms, yet there is always a clue (a noise, a smell, a texture) that remains the same?

 

[polymorph]

Those ideas are great!!


Just so you know, I beleive my players would enjoy a rather straightforward scenario the most. Also, they hardly know Rigulas yet, so constructing challanges around knowledge of his character might not work so well.
And, of course, they should be the ones "in charge" of the adventure. The last thing I want is to make it look like all I want to do with this session is to glorify my own PCs backstory and degrade them to a mere audience!

Please keep the ideas coming and be as elaborate as possible so even my feeble mind can understand them.

 

[Rechan]

Just so you know, I beleive my players would enjoy a rather straightforward scenario the most.

In that case, I don't know how well they'd know his memories, either. Even the PCs don't know HIM, this is an opportunity for you to share some parts of your PC that the others don't know, or show his backstory that they haven't learned. It's just an opportunity for the PCs to get to know your character in a very indepth matter. You can do that without making it offensive.

But the most straightforward explanation of what I said is this: Rigulas's mind is a house (or a dungeon). The Poison is going room to room, putting a bullet in the head of each facet of Rigulas's personality. The PCs have to intercept that bullet.

One thing you might do to give them "choice" and control of the adventure is to see all the areas they can go in, and give them a limit in terms of time. Like, there are 6 areas, but the PCs can only save 3-4. Choose wisely.

If you were a Rat Bastard, or you wanted to create some interesting drama (and wanted to change your character), what you could do is that the pieces of personality that the PCs do not choose to save are damaged/scarred. So if the PCs do not save Rigulas's hopes, then when you play him next, he's pessimistic and easy to succumb to despair.

 

[polymorph]

Wow Rechan, very nice idea!

Giving the players choice is one of my top priorities every session. If i can manage to have every episode from his past reflect a part of his personality, it may be more interesting for the players to try and figure out the whole story, but at the same time, it could get confusing and seem nonsensical to them. =/

If anyone can help flesh out this idea, or if you have a diffrent way of running this adventure all together, please speak up!

This forum is much more helpful than I expected! This is my first time here btw.

 

[polymorph]

Shameless Bump!

 

[polymorph]

Once more.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I did something similar to this a few months ago with an NPC of mine.

One thing that I stressed was the dream-like logic that pervaded the "area". As they'd walk down a road, sometimes it would take them much more or much less time to reach their destination than seemed correct.

The PCs also enjoyed meeting doubles of themselves. They acted as guides but also behaved somewhat strangely, acting based upon the NPC's perception of that character rather than the character's true personality (they found it quite interesting to see how he perceived them; the NPC was an old knight who looked upon the younger PC gunslinger as something like a son, so his mental doppelganger was a young teenager who referred to the NPC as "dad"). At one point they met a mental aspect of the NPC, who recognized their doubles but not them. In fact, everything about the place was colored by the old knight's personality, perceptions, and memories as filtered by his subconscious.

Finally, a trick that they loved was when they finally hunted down the poison, only to discover that it was personified as a gargantuan black dragon (they were level 5, I think)! They had a bit of banter and the "dragon" tried to warn them off. Declaring that they couldn't leave their friend to die without trying, the PCs bravely strode forward- only to find that the dragon seemed to diminish. By the time we rolled for initiative, the dragon was merely large size, and they really enjoyed that they were able to control their fear (and when they first saw that dragon I could see the uncertainty on the players' faces) by facing it head on.

 

[polymorph]

Did anyone else try running a similar adventure yet? I just love the things Fanaelialae came up with!