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In October I am planning a three day con at my home. It is the fifth of its kind.
My wife goes away, my friends take time off work and some come for a day or two, and others stay over for all three. Gradually I have managed to convince one or two of them that they should help GM. All in all its a cheap, fun time that we all look forward to.
So we have three GM's, one for each day (or seven hour slot), with a request from the most inexperienced for the adventure they run to be no higher than fifth or sixth.
The problem is that because the roster of players may change, I'd like the parties to start out fresh each morning rather than follow a single linear plot over the three days.
Anyone got a clever idea of of a theme or series of adventures that we can do?
I hope that the community can help, because I don't want to get into a rut with these Homecons. Whatever suggestions I get I'll take to the other two GMs and see what gets the creative juices flowing.
Cheers
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You could always run a generational game and have pre-gens. The first group plays the one's farthest in the past. The next adventure features the children or maybe the next generation of heroes from wherever the adventure is set. The last adventure is farther in the future and the "big bad" is still roaming the land.
You could spread out the timespan even farther so while the players who were part of the previous adventure get a chuckle out of NPC's regailing what the "heroes of old" did...even though some of the facts may now be embelished or outright wrong.
Later,
Greg Volz
Natural Twenty Games
The problem is that because the roster of players may change, I'd like the parties to start out fresh each morning rather than follow a single linear plot over the three days.
Cheers
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There are 3 pieces to an artificat that must be recovered in a timely fashion. Someone (a goverment, the Pathfinder society, whatever) gets 3 parties to go to different locales to recover a single piece (perhaps a sunken ship of the Varisian coast, a ruin somewhere in Osirion, in the lair of a dragon)
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I don't have any particularly great ideas to share other than to say we do this too.
I unload my wife and kids .. errr... innocently suggest they take a nice out of town vacation for a long weekend... for a Thursday evening through Sunday afternoon during the summer sometime and have the group over for the weekend. We've done this 3-4 years now and when we first started I ran one continuous game all weekend... that was a massive marathon that I won't attempt again. Since then we've taken to having different people volunteer to run various different things.
This year I am going to run a couple of higher levels of Rappan Athuk level (converted to Pathfinder). Another guy is going to run a Star Wars game. Another guy is going to run a Savage Worlds game, and another guy is going to run a Torg game. We stock up the house on coolers filled with ice and pop/soda, stack the kitchen table with bags of chips and various other snacks, fire up the fans (no A/C in my home) and then commence to rolling dice for a long weekend of fun.
We started doing that because the costs of GenCon looked so intimidating. As it happens, we're all also doing GenCon this year AS WELL as our regular yearly informal con in my home lol
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32
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The first, lowest level group have a classic adventure against various bad guy incursions, eventually stopping the bad guys. The second game has the players as a disguised, evil hit squad, out to kidnap the first group's commander. The final game is either a rescue or a counterstrike. One way or another the true threat is revealed and must be dealt with.
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Am I glad I did this. Yes.
Greg, that idea of yours, I've been mulling over all night and it has great potential.
And carborundum, some of the guys have been itching to play evil PCs.
The artefact idea is actually one we have already done as part of the Temple of Elemental Evil in our monthly campaign but I did wonder about including an intelligent weapon that could be part of the party over time. Maybe we can use all these ideas?
Thanks gentlemen. Thank you very much.
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Depending on the game system, you could even try a game that's radically different settings.
Using GURPS or M&M or True20 or HERO or whatever, you could have a party of fantasy characters uncovering a McGuffin or sealing away an Elder Evil in the sword & sorcery era, and then have the second game be the 1920's era lovecraftian investigators unleashing it in a pseudo-horror / pulp action kind of game, and then the third game could be set in the future, with intrepid space explorers / colonists discovering a similar relic / portal / critter on an alien world (or chasing them around their ship, or whatever).
With those systems, you could even go so far as to make different versions of the same characters. The 'wizard' becomes a mad scientist type in the '20s and a transhuman telepath / psionicist in the far flung future. The 'fighter' becomes a rough-and-tumble cowboy sort or member of the foreign legion, and then a space marine.
Using just D&D, you can still do something like that, but having different incarnations of the same party using different settings or character types or even variant classes. Sort of an 'Eternal Champion' type game, where the same people end up gathering together over the ages to defeat this elder evil, reincarnating into new bodies, but retaining some aspects of their personalities and basic 'role' (even if not the exact same race or class).
Other ways, other than the passing of ages, that such things could happen are;
The PCs must enter a dreaming person (or god?)'s mind, and in that place, they are 're-interpreted' to suit the nature of the dreamer, so that their basic forms and natures change to fit the dream-reality.
The PCs jack into a strange computer, and their virtual avatars must 'go on a quest' inside the machine and jump through various hoops, defeat various security measures and figure out various puzzles to get the data they need. But they appear as swordsmen and sorcerers, and the 'security measures' appear as dragons and demons!
The PCs travel to another plane, in which 'things work differently.'
The PCs discover that their world hasn't always followed the same rules (a common occurence for someone living in the Forgotten Realms, but possible in other settings as well), and travel through time to an era where 'things worked differently.'
The PCs can't travel to where they need to be, but acquire the means to possess natives of that place, somehow locating individuals of that people who possess roughly similar abilities, but are aquatic, preternatural, able to survive in the radioactive wasteland, etc. While their normal PCs sleep, they possess these beings in the other realm / other time / forbidden kingdom, and use their own wits, and the roughly analoguous talents of their 'hosts' to fulfill the mission. (Kind of like The Shadow Out of Time, only the PCs are the possessing entities, and the hosts are the hapless puppets, who will awaken with fragmented memories, and possibly have to deal with all sorts of unfortunate legal implications for what was done with their bodies...)
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Actually, I once wrote up a two-part, site-based adventure with both evil and good characters in conflict with each other. It went like this:
ROUND 1
1. Both Good and Evil players have pre-generated, low-power elite (aka Low Fantasy) characters.
2. Evil characters begin as monstrous humanoids (bugbear, hobgoblin, goblin) Level 6, but NPC classes only (Warrior, Expert, Adept). Each has the Leadership feat, a Level 5 NPC lieutenant, a Level 4 NPC bodyguard, and a respectable warband of 40-60 hit dice of monsters of the same race. Their goal is to plunder the town and slay the inhabitants.
3. Good characters begin Level 2-4, but NPC classes only (Aristocrat, Adept, Expert, or Warrior). Good characters outnumber Evil characters and have a fortified village: shallow ditch, low rampart, brick wall, brick gatehouse, and a central stone temple with a high bell tower. The temple has been hallowed with an associated aid spell and thus is the logical place for a last stand. There are 10 non-combatant commoners for each Good PC, representing that PC's spouse, children, parents, grandparents, etc. Their goal is to survive.
4. Each character (Good and Evil) earns Victory Points for killing members of the opposing side. Good characters earn points for surviving the first day and for keeping his/her 10 relatives alive the first day. Evil characters earn points for the gp value of plunder, plus bonus points for entering the village first, scoring the most kills, and gathering the most loot.
5. Character death: Each character loses Victory Points for dying. A player whose character is dead can continue play with his/her back-up character. An Evil character's back-up character is his/her Level 5 lieutenant. A Good character's back-up character is a Level 2 Commoner (one of his/her 10 relatives) with a spear and padded armor.
6. At the end of Round 1, each player's Victory Point total is computed. Players will use the Victory Points to create their Round 2 characters.
ROUND 2
1. Players begin as Low Fantasy Level 4 PC-class characters, using Round 1 Vistory Points to improve character attributes, levels, and starting wealth.
2. Good characters get a free heavy warhorse, with leather barding, military saddle, bit and bridle, and sunrod.
3. Evil characters get 9 hit dice of free non-elite followers of the same race, each of whom is equipped with 3 javelins, a morning star, studded leather armor, a light wooden shield, flint and steel, three torches, and a flask of oil.
4. The battle for the village continues, with the additional characters arriving from opposite ends of the board as reinforcements for each side. Players whose Round 1 characters survived can play them in addition to their Round 2 characters.
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Depending on the game system, you could even try a game that's radically different settings.
....then have the second game be the 1920's era lovecraftian investigators unleashing it in a pseudo-horror / pulp action kind of game.......
....in the '20s and a transhuman telepath / psionicist in the far flung future. The 'fighter' becomes a rough-and-tumble cowboy sort or member of the foreign legion, and then a space marine.
......Sort of an 'Eternal Champion' type game, where the same people end up gathering together over the ages to defeat this elder evil, reincarnating into new bodies, but retaining some aspects of their personalities and basic 'role' (even if not the exact same race or class).
......
The PCs jack into a strange computer, and their virtual avatars must 'go on a quest' inside the machine and jump through various hoops, defeat various security measures and figure out various puzzles to get the data they need. But they appear as swordsmen and sorcerers, and the 'security measures' appear as dragons and demons!
The PCs travel to...
I could run a Lovecraft scenario, and they have never played in such a game so it may prove a shock in more ways than one. I like that sort of thing.
The Eternal Champion idea is great. So is the strange computer idea, definitely one I would never have thought of, I'll have to think about how to phrase these because I am dealing with a fairly inexperienced pair of GMs, who only really know Pathfinder/3.5Ed.
Thanks Set.
Cheers
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Actually, I once wrote up a two-part, site-based adventure with both evil and good characters in conflict with each other. It went like this:
ROUND 1
1. ................. There are 10 non-combatant commoners for each Good PC, representing that PC's spouse, children, parents, grandparents, etc. Their goal is to survive.
............te their Round 2 characters.
ROUND 2
1. Players begin...
I hope your players appreciate how much effort you must have put in. The closest thing I have done is write a scenario where a party are effectively the Magnificent Seven and they have to protect a village from an evil force.
Thank you for the suggestion and who won?
Cheers