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8 months ago ::
Oct 05, 2012 - 10:46AM
#11
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What other details could I add? As a player, what are your first objectives if you wander into a freshly emptied city? Thoughts on how to keep them from just leaving ("Clearly something bad happened here, let's not stick around to find out what")? Same question once it's clearly there's something/someone in the city watching them - how do you keep them from just leaving?
These are great questions to ask your players directly.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 05, 2012 - 10:55AM
#12
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Date Joined:
May 17, 2011
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Again, a lot of the details will simply depend on what you know to have happened.
The players won't know (not right off anyway). So you first need to decide, ok... a magical experiment gone wrong by the mages guild/eccentric wizard or whoever has...(A) vaporized every living creature within so many miles (B) transported them to another (parallel?) plane (C) transported the heroes to a parallel plane (D) any crazy thing that you can think of.
Once you decide what happened, (yes I know, DM fiat... but for the purposes of starting the mystery off, he has to know what caused all of this and keep it from the players for a while because of the mystery genre) then the world will start to fill itself out organically.
If you have an idea about what caused the "event", then it will make it very easy for folks on here to chime in with ideas about how to flesh it out.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 05, 2012 - 11:08AM
#13
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2011
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Once you decide what happened, (yes I know, DM fiat... but for the purposes of starting the mystery off, he has to know what caused all of this and keep it from the players for a while because of the mystery genre) then the world will start to fill itself out organically.
It might not be absolutely necessary for the DM to decide in advance. Maybe the group could uncover clues that were being made up as you went along, but then periodically brainstorm something big, with the express requirement of tying together, say, 80% of known data. I don't know how difficult this would be to pull off, but it seems at least plausible. On the other hand, if you aren't absolutely committed to not having the DM invent plot details, this seems like the type of story where it would really help maintain coherence.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 05, 2012 - 11:27AM
#14
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I like the idea of players turning to information gathering rituals to try and glean information. What happens when you Gather Rumors in a city where everyone is gone? Can you Talk With the Dead if you can't find a corpse? If you try to contact a god and get a dial tone, what does that mean???
Simply saying "It doesn't work" means you let go of a lot of cool opportunities to deepen the mystery and keep the players moving forward. I would use that as an opportunity to drop some really interesting clues.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 05, 2012 - 12:52PM
#15
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Date Joined:
May 17, 2011
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Once you decide what happened, (yes I know, DM fiat... but for the purposes of starting the mystery off, he has to know what caused all of this and keep it from the players for a while because of the mystery genre) then the world will start to fill itself out organically.
It might not be absolutely necessary for the DM to decide in advance. Maybe the group could uncover clues that were being made up as you went along, but then periodically brainstorm something big, with the express requirement of tying together, say, 80% of known data. I don't know how difficult this would be to pull off, but it seems at least plausible. On the other hand, if you aren't absolutely committed to not having the DM invent plot details, this seems like the type of story where it would really help maintain coherence.
I can agree with that. It will depend for sure on what kind of game the DM and players decide they want together. If they want to create a world together, then the mystery aspect will be rendered moot as everybody will know what's going on at all times because they are making it up as they go along. If they agree to a mystery "who-dunnit", then the DM will neccessarily have to keep some things hidden from the players until the right time.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 05, 2012 - 3:39PM
#16
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I'm much more interested in whether the players were the only ones to wind up in this realm, or if they are the only survivors. They might not progress much level-wise if there's literally nothing to fight.
I'm warming up to the premise here. I started my most recent game with a survival situation, too, and had the players get shipwrecked and wash up on a jungle island. The entire premise of the story for Level One was 'Get Off The Island'. Your premise, for as many levels as you want, even, might be 'Where the Heck are we, and how do we get home?'
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8 months ago ::
Oct 05, 2012 - 4:21PM
#17
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2011
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If they want to create a world together, then the mystery aspect will be rendered moot as everybody will know what's going on at all times because they are making it up as they go along.
Not sure this is 100% true. If you haven't made up a detail yet, then it's still a mystery. If you can make them up at-will, it does seem to remove some suspense, but if being able to do so was contingent on die rolls or other factors, it might still be workable. My main concern with doing this genre in this way would be the possibility of getting a plot so convoluted that you couldn't resolve things at the end.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 07, 2012 - 3:07PM
#18
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Date Joined:
May 31, 2010
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I've been rolling around some possible causes, and I'm leaning towards one.
Essentially, one wizard in a position of power (affiliated with the Mage Tower, king's advisor, etc) caused the catastrophe. He cast a spell that worked its way out from the center of the city and absorbed everyone whole into himself. I don't know if he was a power hungry, vile man trying to gain information in relation to the hand and/or eye of Vecna, or for his own evil ends, or if he was a senior mage trying using a last ditch effort as the city was falling to vicious brute to preserve them all (the process is reversible in this scenario) while previously sent-for help tries to get there. Maybe he was only trying to absorb the bad guys, or one powerful bad guy, but it went wrong.
The result, however, is that a city's worth of consciousnesses are currently active in his mind. His will and personality are on the surface, but he has to deal with the sheer volume of the voices in his head, all the time, plus the powerful instinct of the animals he abosrbed. Some of the more powerful wills he absorbed are fighting him - if he was a good guy stopping an invading army that were burning the city, he is being influenced by their malice. If he was a power hungry villian, the goodness of the people he consumed make him unstable.
Regardless, there are clues throughout the city - diaries may mention turmoil surrounding the up-and-comer at the Mage Tower or the dread of the advancing army. If there was an invasion, signs of battle are evident in some sections of the city, and fires are smoldering.
Meanwhile, there's a psychopath loose in the city. I'm presuming human for now. I expect he is dangerous, but unable to concentrate enough to cast some of the powerful spells he knows.
I lean towards the "he's really a good guy who saved everyone" explanation because the evidence (and the man's psychotic behavior) can make him look like an achvillian, setting up a later reveal.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 08, 2012 - 2:55PM
#19
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If they want to create a world together, then the mystery aspect will be rendered moot as everybody will know what's going on at all times because they are making it up as they go along.
Not sure this is 100% true. If you haven't made up a detail yet, then it's still a mystery. If you can make them up at-will, it does seem to remove some suspense, but if being able to do so was contingent on die rolls or other factors, it might still be workable. My main concern with doing this genre in this way would be the possibility of getting a plot so convoluted that you couldn't resolve things at the end.
Just confirming that allowing the players to help create the solution in no way diminishes the mystery. You can, of course, not tell them that they're crafting the answer if the illusion of knowing the answer is important to you.
Just a single round of Microscope will completely abolish the notion that players cannot be surprised (nay, blindsided) by collaborative storytelling.
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