Lemme explain this concept that I'm toying around with. I had this idea about how to spice up our group gaming. See, the campaigns were great, and the combat was fun, and the character interaction was fine, but one thing that I saw that was pretty consistently lacking was the backstory. It would usually be pretty generic, and not really matter to the main story much. We'd just develop the characters as we played.
Well, I had an idea to change that. I figured it'd be cool if we each wrote each other's backstories. Not sure why, but I figured it might help. Then I decided to spice it up even further: What if we took the usual Amnesiac Hero trope, and applied it to the original idea? We had each player write the backstory of another player, but have them keep it a secret. The heroes have to discover for themselves exactly where they came from, and who they are, as they played.
Then I decided that players are untrustworthy little munchkins, and that it might be best if the DM writes the backstories for the characters instead, and they discover it as they play.
So that's the general backstory of WHY I need help. Let's get to WHAT help I need.
First of all, I'm going to be doing this over email/forum posting. We're all really experienced with Pathfinder as a system, almost all of us have DMed and played before, but only a couple of us have gamed online. So some help/suggestions I'd like:
What's a good adventure path/campaign that can be run online pretty well? What's one where the Amnesia idea listed above can be worked in well? What about adventure paths/campaigns that really make the players think? One of my players has read most/all of the adventure paths from Paizo, and I'd like to surprise him. So maybe a lesser known one, or something third party, would be better to do.
Which brings me to my next point, and the other half of the subject. I'm thinking Way of the Wicked would be really good for this. It's third party, and I know that that one particular player doesn't know the story. You wake up in a prison being told that you committed some evil deeds, and are going to die because of it? But you have no memory of having done any of it? Sounds like perfect story-fodder to me!
Here's the other thing, though: One of my players isn't really comfortable playing an evil character. And I really think that this campaign can be adapted to be good. Just switch the gods around and you're fine... But I wanna do something a little different. These characters with Amnesia? I don't even want them to know if they're good or evil. So I'm thinking that if I go with Way of the Wicked, what I might do is switch the names of the gods, make up my own, and not tell them what alignment they are. And then replace all references of demons to angels. Make it so that either side could seem to be good; or evil. Maybe make the group think a bit about what it really means to be good or evil.
Anyways, sorry about the novel. Any help you guys could offer would be great. Thanks!
Nope. No qualms with fighting evil. And honestly they'd be willing to do it, but they'd prefer not to. And I think it's a good opportunity to do something cool/different with a good Adventure Path.
Sidenote just to make it more clear what I'm going for:
I want it to seem like the characters are in a holy war that they don't fully care about/understand. Like they're working for good guys that are fighting other good guys. Or maybe working for evil guys that are fighting other evil guys. I want them to not just look at a couple of letters and go "Oh, that's obviously the good guy" or vice versa. I want them to have to really examine actions, read motives, and see for themselves what they think about it.
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Well a couple of suggestions/advice.
1) Remove alignment from the game completely (no detect evil/good, no protection from evil/good, no paladins/antipaladins), this way the PCs actions are actually their actions, not something as you indicated constrained by the alignment axis. (note this will take some effort to rework some major NPCs)
a) You might only remove alignment until the PCs recover their memories (thus you can keep paladins/antipaladins in along with alignment magic).
2) You will need to decide off the get go, did the PCs actually commit the crimes they commited, or were they framed. You will also need a plausible reason why they have all lost their memories (possibly given a 'memory poison' so that when they pay for their crimes their souls are 'clear' of their previous evil acts).
3) For the player who is uncomfortable with evil, you may need to approach it more along a balance issue, ie the kingdom was in balance, but when the religion of XXX was banned, the kingdom has slowly been getting out of balance, so the PC must try and bring balance, but at this late point extreme actions are required.
4) Also, you may need to consider what the PCs will do when they recover their memories... do they continue being the 'evil' folks they were before... or could they decide to repent and take the game in a whole new direction.
Anyway, good luck, I'm running Way of the Wicked for my group and we are having an absolute blast with it! :)