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View Full Version : I was wanting to create a Dragon Ball Z "Failure Timeline" style campaign but I...



Reksew Trebla
2014-07-10, 04:26 AM
Don't know how the players would react.

I'm just going to say it. I have Asperger's Syndrome. It's not as bad as it used to be, but considering it's High Functioning Autism, which Autism on its own is already a bad social disorder, that's not saying a lot. I don't know how the players would react to this.

I'd have a general time frame of right before the "fall" of the Failure Timeline, in which everyone's characters are going to be recorded as they are, without the players knowing. Oh, speaking of them not knowing, they aren't going to know about any of this, which is a large part of why I don't know how they'll react to this.

I'll then set up a not too long, but not too quick either, series of events which will ultimately lead to most if not all but a specific two or three main characters dying off, from rogue robots (who went rogue in a Mega Man X style), and have a new character (most likely the child of one of the players) go back in time, with the same ruleset as Dragon Ball Z's time travel had.

The part that really has me worried is the fact that everyone's characters will revert back to the way they were. Sure, they wouldn't have accomplished too much from then to the fall of the Failure Timeline, but still.

What are your thoughts? If this was pulled on you, how would you feel?

Cowardly Griffo
2014-07-10, 05:26 AM
Hmm... Well, it's hard to say how your specific group would react without knowing them. Different people have different tolerances for that sort of thing. That said, a few points:

1. It's good that you're actually asking for advice about this before pulling it on your players. Social situations are difficult to read, but you're aware that it's a potential problem, and you're working on being a good GM for your table. That's a very good practice that everyone should follow, regardless of their specific situation.

2. My best advice would be that if you decide you want to do this, don't have the failure timeline last for longer than a session or two, tops. Most folks can probably accept that the "opening act" of a campaign will have some railroading involved to get them pointed at the main plot. Some of the best, most memorable games that I've been in have opened up with a tragedy that we had no way to stop. But, and this is a big but, those tragedies came early. They helped galvanize us. If you have your players spend too long trying and failing to accomplish things, and then reveal that succeeding was never possible or even on the table to begin with, that's going to be upsetting. Instead of galvanizing them against the in-character threat, they're probably going to be mad at you for what they might perceive as a big waste of out-of-character time.

3. Be wary of how much you dictate about their characters, given that this all takes place in the future. You're already talking about having an NPC be one of the PC's children. That's a very big thing to declare about their character, and many people feel like it's a violation when GMs declare things about their character without their consent. Generally, the GM gets to control the entire world already; when they start controlling the PCs on top of that, it makes most people feel as though the GM is treating them like an audience member rather than a fellow contributor to the story. And just to be clear: yes, this gut feeling will still apply regardless of how the time travel rules work. If anything, the player and character might feel pressured into siring this future child of theirs because it will feel like murder otherwise, which creates a very uncomfortable undertone.

Quick word of advice on this front? Asking the PCs leading questions is a very good practice here (and elsewhere). Something like "This person is someone's child. Whose is it?" The PCs might very well come up with a random NPC for you–but if one of them is actually interested in having a descendant, they'll probably leap on it. That creates a meaningful connection that the player actually cares about, because they helped write it.

4. PC descendants aside, make it very clear that the new timeline is substantially different from the failure timeline, and as best as you can make sure that those differences are the result of PC action. It will give them the feeling that they're accomplishing something, when otherwise the whole question of predestined failure would be hanging over their foreheads. Always, always, always remember that the PCs are here to be the heroes of the story, and if they spend too much time being swept along by events outside their control they won't feel that way.

5. Ask yourself a couple of questions: why can't the PCs succeed in the failure timeline, and how will the foreknowledge they receive help them succeed the second time around? I suspect you already have answers in mind, which... may actually be a problem in and of itself, though this is more of a game-style thing than specific advice. This is a hard thing to wrap your head around, but sometimes–actually, most of the time–it makes for a more satisfying game for both you and the players if you don't know exactly what's going to happen ahead of time. Maybe the players think of something you didn't have in mind in the future and succeed, or maybe they take the information they get and do something completely different from what you had in mind, you know? And that's usually a good thing.

So... if you do decide to go forward with this–and it can work, just keep it short and tread lightly when it comes to facts about the characters–keep in mind that the players might re-write the whole campaign for you in the first couple of sessions. That can happen. A lot. Especially when time travel gets involved. So, maybe save yourself a lot of stress and time and fill your campaign journal with open-ended questions instead of answers, yeah? Stuff like:

"What happens to the party in the horrible future?" instead of "PC 1 dies here, PCs 2 and 3 die here..."

"How do they prevent the horrible future, if they don't survive it?" instead of "This is where the MacGuffin is, and here are the seven steps it will take them to get to it."

"If they survive the horrible future, against all odds, how are they going to rebuild?" instead of... well, instead of having to fudge a lot of dice rolls or throw out half of your campaign notes.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Hope it helps, and good luck with your game in any event!