The Hangover Pathfinder Style

[Timothy Hanson]

Alright, so I want to plan an adventure where some of or all of the characters have a span of missing time where they can not remember things. Does anyone have any advice on how I might go about this. I am thinking only a few days missing (3 or 4).

I figure the PCs will be off doing something, that they will backtrack and discover, and will lead them to figuring out the reasoning for the memory lose. Does anyone have any advice getting from the Start to the Finish though?

[dunelord3001]

I've done this twice, and the lesson I learned was that you HAVE to make it plan as day to them that they have missed some time from the get go.

[SeaBiscuit01]

Ok so I loved that movie, you can also inspire yourself in other movies with the same theme: Dude, where's my car!!! comes to mind.

Firstly: How much time frame passed

Second: When are they getting roofied? You could put a powerful wizard or cleric mind erasing them for a deed done before.

What would they have done to deserve that

Third: How will you show "The Trail" and by that I mean the small pieces of information they will have in order for them to retrace their steps. That will also translate into skill checks:

General ideas come to mind:
- Mr. Chow can be translated into a naked angry gay vengeful hell bent gnome or a high ranking Red Mantis Assassin (boy that would be so much fun!)
- You gotta have stolen a Large Tiger animal companion from the Archdruid of a nearby forest
- It has to have started in Cheliax or somewhere so very corrupted lol maybe Absalom.
- Ah maybe the characters married each other.
- OMG I just thought about you guys stealing a Hellknight Armor, image the fighter waking up in it lol I might build the module and do a small adventure out of it lol

[Protoman]

I intend to do something similar if I ever GM something again and I pull off a TPK. Instead of dying, party wakes up in a tavern in a different city than where they started out around dawn, covered in booze and blood and surrounded by the dead patrons of the tavern with devastating wounds that matches up with their gore-covered weapons. Oh, and they hear the city watch coming. Maybe a week has passed and they'd gotta find out who set them up (or did they really kill everybody?) and who supposed "witnesses" were.

[Lurk3r]

dunelord3001 wrote:

I've done this twice, and the lesson I learned was that you HAVE to make it plan as day to them that they have missed some time from the get go.

+1

Inserting things that PCs did which the players have no control over is a really way to alienate your players. That's not to say it can't be done well, it's just risky. My advice is that once the players learn the course of the events that transpired while they were asleep, stick to that course. No pulling random bits out of your hat to make things fit.

A great way to work this in is murder mystery/ police procedural style: the players need to learn what happened while they were 'out,' what they themselves were doing is just another clue to pick up. Think of witnesses that the PCs can question and how they will react to what they saw (and seeing the PC again).

[caith]

SeaBiscuit01 wrote:

Ok so I loved that movie, you can also inspire yourself in other movies with the same theme: Dude, where's my car!!! comes to mind.

Firstly: How much time frame passed

Second: When are they getting roofied? You could put a powerful wizard or cleric mind erasing them for a deed done before.

What would they have done to deserve that

Third: How will you show "The Trail" and by that I mean the small pieces of information they will have in order for them to retrace their steps. That will also translate into skill checks:

General ideas come to mind:
- Mr. Chow can be translated into a naked angry gay vengeful hell bent gnome or a high ranking Red Mantis Assassin (boy that would be so much fun!)
- You gotta have stolen a Large Tiger animal companion from the Archdruid of a nearby forest
- It has to have started in Cheliax or somewhere so very corrupted lol maybe Absalom.
- Ah maybe the characters married each other.
- OMG I just thought about you guys stealing a Hellknight Armor, image the fighter waking up in it lol I might build the module and do a small adventure out of it lol

I think this would be HILARIOUS as a one-off/side story, for groups that like to take a break and have a "filler episode" once in a while. They wake up in a strange place, the fighter is wearing some ridiculous(and possibly cursed!) armor, the Wizard has a different familiar, the druid is polymorphed/wild shaped into something bizarre. Need to have the right party, and the right story, but could be hilarious and quite rewarding.

[Castilliano]

I think a major question is being overlooked:
Are they beginning play like this or are these established characters?

If beginning play, I'd enjoy this scenario. Yay. Let me learn my character at the same time I develop/embrace my character. What the hell WAS I up to? Who was I? How zany...
If later on, I'd be wary making choices for PCs. "I wouldn't have done that," comes to mind. If you know the PCs in and out and your players too, it's less of an issue, as you can keep events in line with how they'd act/want their beloved character to act.

A second question is, are they trying to amend what they've done (and only learn piecemeal about the actual deeds ala Hangover) or is determining what they've done the big goal (ala several other movies), a mystery that unlocks a bigger mystery/solves larger problem?
Or is it like that Star Trek:NG episode with the mindwipe of the crew?

Mechanically, the Bard works very well as a perpetrator. Modify Memory/Charm to set up the initial situation, i.e. drugs/poison/whatnot. Or...
He (or a friend) could Dominate them, remove their memory of the initial moments of Domination and remove the memory of any times he had to re-Dominate them (or when they fought it with a Save) and of when they finally were released. You'd be houseruling memory issues a lot here, but at least for story purposes.
(Spellcraft though, to recognize the condition in their memory... Hmm...)

There was a 3.x daemon (Fiend Folio?), tied to the Styx, that could wipe memories with, I think, a gout of Styx water. That could be worked in maybe, or a variant. Heck, the River Styx is enough, maybe stirred into their drinks.

Or maybe somebody Magic Jarred into their bodies, and what they remember are latent (not-by-rules) memories seeping in. In that case, "I wouldn't have done that" is evidence, not DM error.

Anyway, good luck, hope y'all have fun with it.

[Eacaraxe]

I've ran a couple stories very similar to this once. Really, they tend to be more Rashomon than The Hangover, and needless to say not comedy games. An example,

Spoiler:

The one I can refer offhand was in a Vampire game I ran which was the climax of the first series. I was using a serial/series/chronicle structure with the overarching story being a B-plot except in each series' first and last serial, to promote a more "TV drama" opposed to "cinema" tone and theme.

The serial started with the PC's having it out with a Sabbat pack. During major points in the fight, I'd freeze the action and make notations of everything that was going on, and move into a set of disparate, out-of-sequence and out-of-context interactive flashbacks in which the characters went about the business that led to the giant fight. I didn't give the last key flashback until the fight was over. After it was all said and done, the players spent about an hour out of game piecing together the flashbacks and ferreting what info they could out of them. Once they got the entire picture, I wrapped up the series with the wham episode that led into the next series and introduced the overarching story.

So, in the end the climactic fight was just the setpiece and backdrop, and the dramatic question raised was how and why the fight was happening, which was character but not player info. It was one part Rashomon, one part Pulp Fiction, one part murder mystery, one part the third act of Metal Gear Solid 2, and all around one giant metagame mind screw. My players were extremely discomforted and disquieted (in a good way) to have the connection to their characters severed and thrown into a really desperate, climactic fight, and were fighting their damndest to re-establish that connection and keep their characters alive. Thematically it worked perfectly, since that serial was in essence a giant paradigm shift for the characters and turned everything that had happened in the first series completely on its ear; deconstructing the player-character relationship and challenging the players on the basis of that relationship was a beautiful metagame partner.

Logistically, that was probably the single greatest challenge I've ever had as a GM. I had to spend a week planning it to make sure everything was internally consistent and in-character, and I don't think I've ever been as emotionally and intellectually drained by running a game as that one. It was probably the only story I've ever run that had me so nervous over which I felt like I was going to throw up; running a game like that was a huge risk, and if the players rejected the idea or if the execution came up lacking it could have been a chronicle-wrecker right then and there. Fortunately that didn't happen, and my god the payoff was totally freaking worth it...my players were completely mind-blown by it, loved every second and to this day most of them claim that was easily the best thing they've ever experienced in an RPG.

The biggest challenge to this as a GM is that you have to, before the game begins, plan everything: who did and saw what, what they know and believe, their motivations and biases. If you have internal inconsistencies or plotholes, the whole thing falls apart. On top of that, you have to make sure the flashbacks match up with the current events, especially if the flashbacks are interactive. It's a logistic nightmare, but the payoffs are pretty good if you plan properly and succeed in execution.