Groundhog Day Loop adventure stub

[Braininthejar2]

I have half an adventure in my head, and it is very frustrating. Could someone help me fill in the blanks? :smallsmile:

The idea - the party (high teen levels) is sent to the ruins of a small town destroyed by a random cataclysm during the time of troubles. They are there to retrieve an item that supposedly survived the disaster.

But when they get to the spot, they find the town just as it was 18 years ago, and about to be destroyed again - after a couple dialogues introducing them to the NPCs, everyone starts dying, until a high level NPC living in the town tries a miracle/wish to save the place, but due to the times of troubles problems with magic, miscasts, creating a groundhog day loop. The party now needs to figure out what happened, and on the next run of the loop stop him from casting the spell - which collapses the loop and brings them back to the present, with the town destroyed and all the locals dead.

It turns out to have been the intent of the quest giver all along - collapsing the loop so that the people inside it stayed dead, instead of dying over and over every day.

I already know that the space around the town loops upon itself - they can't leave it to travel to the past. But there are still bits missing, from finding something suitably cataclysmic that the players can't stop it by themselves (a major volcanic eruption?) to fleshing out the NPC responsible to either make an interesting encounter, or an interesting dialogue.

[Braininthejar2]

New ideas formed:

1 The town contains a combat encounter - a raiding party from the main plotline that tried to raid the village the day before and stumbled into the loop - yesterday's rain of fire killed all the small fry, but the fire giants are still there, angry and confused.

2 The town has a wizard's tower, and the guy is haughty (normal at his level) and paranoid (normal in times of troubles) the party can raid his tower, but he's not the real culprit - turns out one of the commoners the party met had a nearly spent ring of three wishes on her - it was a family heirloom and she didn't dare use it before, but will do it now, wishing for far more than the spell could supply.

- is it okay, or too trollish? / too risky?

[Braininthejar2]

88 reads and not one reply? :smallfrown:

also

Am I breaking any kind of etiquette by asking a new question here everyday? I wanted to ask one about fire giant indoor plumbing today, but I will limit myself if its getting obnoxious or anything.

[Zeruel]

Don't worry, I don't think you broke any rule, it's probably just because the subject (time-looping and the like) is a complicated one, so it may be difficult to spawn simple and casual responses. :smallsmile:

Personally, I like the Ring of Three Wishes idea, a thing that should come more often to mind for creating adventure's hooks and plot twists. Just watch out with time-travel plot holes, if you mess with them one of your players who watches too many sci-fi movies could come up with awkward questions you aren't actually able to answer... :smallbiggrin:

[Braininthejar2]

I guess the wish, even a twisted one, can't really retcon the whole event 18 years after it happened - so any wish other then the one that caused the loop will just make it collapse. - Also, the girl is very hard to reason with, as her own wish compels her to keep repeating her mistake to keep the loop going. That leaves us with three possible outcomes:

1 The wish is prevented, or changed - the loop collapses, the party snaps to the present, everyone else has been ashes for decades.

2 Someone physically takes the ring from the girl - as above, but they get to keep the ring.

3 The player takes the ring and makes a different wish - same as 1, unless she comes up with something catastrophic (which might, at worst, trap her in the loop too) or comes up with something that impresses me (collapsing the loop, and exhausting the ring, but potentially saving someone)



And I was asking about being obnoxious, rather than breaking any explicit rules.

[Crake]

What level are your players? Because I can let you know, if they have groundhog day to work with, they will try over and over to save the town rather than let it be destroyed. As such, do not immediately dismiss the idea that the players cannot succeed in that task, especially if they're of a decent enough level.

[DarkSoul]

If you have Netflix, check out Arq. It strikes me as a cross between Groundhog Day and Fallout.

[Braininthejar2]

If the time loop loops an event from the times of trouble, would the priests be able to recover spells while inside the loop, or not?

[Swaoeaeieu]

if the loop is only one day long. all spellcasters would wake up each day with new spells to cast right? any loot they gather dissapears when the loop resets/ the only thing to stay with them is knowledge of what they saw and did.

so its a nice puzzle adventure really. explore the town, see what you can find, then you hide different important event around town and eacht day (loop) the players have to decide what to do to prevent the dissaster.

also, as with groundhogday. dying or trying to leave resets the loop. taking away a little tension for the players (death is meaningless) to play around with until the loop ends. could be fun for all involved

[Braininthejar2]

But the players are from outside the loop - they aren't a part of the wish to keep the villagers alive. So they probably can die for good (the village can be entered, so otherwise it would be crawling with people who stumbled into it over the years.)

That also means that they need to survive each loop - the loop resets moments before the pyroclastic flow hits the village, but there are hot boulders falling everywhere before then, and the party has to tank the damage until they learn the safe spots.

[Captain Morgan]

The Adventure Zone podcast has a recent arc that uses this concept. Might be worth checking out for inspiration.

[Segev]

I strongly suggest that you not deliberately set up the cataclysm to be impossible for the PCs to resolve.

Sure, make one that's horrific and terrifying. But if the PCs happen to come up with a solution, let them. Their success will be theirs, since you didn't create a solution they "discovered." And they'll be the Big Darned Heroes who saved the once-doomed town. Maybe even let the girl give them the ring with 1-2 wishes left as their reward.

As for what caused it, how about a classic Unstoppable Horde of humanoids (goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, something like that). Maybe even work in some history about a rampage that mysteriously ended almost 20 years ago, and nobody knows why.

Now, collapsing the loop will unleash that horde unless they thwart it somehow, as that horde, too, is caught within the loop.

[White Blade]

Major Points:
• I'd point out that the easiest solution is to murder the city until the wishing stops. So, day two, players butcher the local wizard and day three the town comes back anyway. Day three, the players destroyed the Wizards tower. Day four, the players probably realize it's somebody in town. Player wizard preps a ton of fireballs or equivalent, walks into the village square and nukes everyone. That's what MY players would do.
• Since fire damage is fairly preventable, I'd probably go some other route, like a negative energy plague that changes them into wights or similar.
• Spicing up the plot is probably a secondary goal at best. The situation is already complicated.
• Depending on how big the town is mass fire resistance is viable at this level. If your wizard has Teleportation Circle, he can just warp the whole town out of the loop. Gate in a Solar, who might solve the problem for free or give you some less confusing quest. Use Planar Ally a couple days running. Use Planar Binding a couple of days running. There are a bunch of options here.

[Braininthejar2]

White Blade - well, that's a bunch of options.

* killing them all is a ham-fisted approach, but not entirely wrong either. In a way these people have been dead for decades, and the wish makes them reenact their deaths over and over, because that's the closest to "saving them all" that it could do when the wish was made with half of them already dead.
** the quest giver is an Earth Weird, who, being an oracle concerned with death, finds their repeatedly unfinished death disturbing, and wants to put them out of their misery.
* A pyroclastic flow is, at the lowest, a village-wide Haze of Smoldering Stone - fire resistance won't be enough to save civillians.

Segev - there are two problems with saving the people in the loop - if the loop is broken, that means the wish that created it was never made - that means those people would land in the past, changing the history of the last 18 years, which is not as much of a headache as it seems, but that would create a precedent for a wish retconning multiple deaths if purposefully misworded.

More importantly, there is an all-destroying horde in the area right now - the main plot rolled through these mountains for the last couple months or so, so the party would emerge from the loop to find the village burnt to the ground for a different reason - which arguably would be a worse kick in the gut.


I wish I got this kind of feedback on day one, when the idea was still fluid in my head, and more susseptible to change :smallbiggrin:

[Malroth]

"I wish for a caster lv 50 scroll of chain:temporal stasis" well within the boundries of wish's effect. which you then use on all the villagers at the beginning of a loop once they learn who is making the wish, villagers become immortal locked in time 18 years ago, the loop breaks the party is back to the present and can then dispel the scroll they cast leaving everybody fine.

[Segev]

White Blade - well, that's a bunch of options.

* killing them all is a ham-fisted approach, but not entirely wrong either. In a way these people have been dead for decades, and the wish makes them reenact their deaths over and over, because that's the closest to "saving them all" that it could do when the wish was made with half of them already dead.
** the quest giver is an Earth Weird, who, being an oracle concerned with death, finds their repeatedly unfinished death disturbing, and wants to put them out of their misery.
* A pyroclastic flow is, at the lowest, a village-wide Haze of Smoldering Stone - fire resistance won't be enough to save civillians.

Segev - there are two problems with saving the people in the loop - if the loop is broken, that means the wish that created it was never made - that means those people would land in the past, changing the history of the last 18 years, which is not as much of a headache as it seems, but that would create a precedent for a wish retconning multiple deaths if purposefully misworded.

More importantly, there is an all-destroying horde in the area right now - the main plot rolled through these mountains for the last couple months or so, so the party would emerge from the loop to find the village burnt to the ground for a different reason - which arguably would be a worse kick in the gut.


I wish I got this kind of feedback on day one, when the idea was still fluid in my head, and more susseptible to change :smallbiggrin:

So don't have it collapse the loop. Have it simply...not have to be made this time. And the loop rejoins the time-stream. If you don't want a second all-destroying horde, that makes sense. If you do go with it... have them be a precursor to the current one, perhaps. Whether they ally to make things worse, fight to make things easier, or the defeat the PCs levy upon the one that's attacking the village gives them an idea how to combat the current one...

For alternative cataclysms... perhaps an ancient vampire was awakened, and started feeding on the town. This loop is all that's locked it away for the last 20 years. Release the loop and "reset" things, and now a retconned-in ancient vampire bloated on power stolen from feeding on this village and whatever it's been up to for the last 20 years is loosed. And (s)he'll remember the PCs. Possibly have been watching them all this time to figure out how they were so much more powerful 20 years ago than they had been as (s)he'd followed their exploits lately.

[Braininthejar2]

For alternative cataclysms... perhaps an ancient vampire was awakened, and started feeding on the town. This loop is all that's locked it away for the last 20 years. Release the loop and "reset" things, and now a retconned-in ancient vampire bloated on power stolen from feeding on this village and whatever it's been up to for the last 20 years is loosed. And (s)he'll remember the PCs. Possibly have been watching them all this time to figure out how they were so much more powerful 20 years ago than they had been as (s)he'd followed their exploits lately.

Baldur's Gate campaign - so they had a powerful vampire last chapter :smallbiggrin: And the current horde is Yaga Shura's army - he's been gathering people from the surrounding area and dunking them into lava as sacrifices to get Imix to join him for a while. (I wanted there to be some content beyond the dungeon crawls the computer game had, and the plot kind of grown organically from there)

It seems a lot here depends on how the player will resolve the problem - but thanks to you I should be ready for some more oddball solutions :smallcool:

[danielxcutter]

If you're going to make it so that collapsing the loop causes major changes, then prepare for massive homework, since you'll have to take account for all changes made to past and future adventures. Personally, I'd cut off the loop from the main timeline, and say that the wish stranded the village in time.

This might be slightly off-topic, but I have another different idea for a "Groundhog Loop" style adventure. The PCs go into a village, and the village is slaughtered or destroyed or something. All the PCs die, or the day ends... and suddenly, everything's back to what it was a few days ago or that morning or whatever time period you decide to use. The PCs have to relive the same time period day after day, until they can break the loop. Maybe they'll have to change something or prevent someone from doing something... or maybe they'll have to do something for a specific reason or learn a lesson. Some of the greatest fantasies make people think about reality, after all, so if you're confident that you could do something like that, then I see no reason not to.