Kafana
2017-04-25, 02:14 PM
Hey guys,
I've been playing and leading D&D for a while now, and one of the things I found most interesting about the game is the various ways in which you can play it. From lighthearted reskinned yahtzee with a bit of fooling around, to epic deep adventures full of story and rich detail, to strategy and puzzle solving.
I wanted to try something new this time around. The idea is that each player has to define himself and his faction. This might include a small elite group of mercenaries, special creatures, artefacts, or a village working for the duke. Everybody defines as many NPCs as he wants from the faction. The idea is to have an arbitrary power point system, defined by my assessment rather than a mechanism.
Now, I as the DM have a number of props ready, a number of modular encounters, and a high level plan of where the story should unfold. I have detailed descriptions of regions full of fluff and interesting NPCs to meet along the way. How or when is not strictly defined. So, the players play through the game following my signposts but each of them can at any time boost himself, his party or sabotage his party or himself through "inspiration points". So a player can add to a story for dramatic effect, humor, a desire to tell a specific story, etc.
The mechanism for orchestrating this in a fair manner is to have a group and character meter which goes from -100 to 100. Based on the group result at the end of the campaign they fail or succeede in their mission. In order to raise the group meter you need to sacrifice collective points from the character meters. For example, each collective 5 points contributed from characters is 1 point in the group pot.
Now, you get character points by sacrificng yourself, and you lose them by boosting some aspect of yourself. However, boosting another player's character sacrifices 1/3 of your points and 1/3 of his, so in total you keep more points. On the other hand, sacrificing another gives you a full portion of the points, while he gets 1/3. At the end of the game the epliogue for your character is determined based on the number of points. Basically, if you went through a lot of sacrifice you might become an angel, go crazy or die.
Anyway I wanted to hear what you guys think. Has anybody tried something similar?
The idea is that we are still playing D&D, but the outcomes and stories are influenced a lot by players.
I've been playing and leading D&D for a while now, and one of the things I found most interesting about the game is the various ways in which you can play it. From lighthearted reskinned yahtzee with a bit of fooling around, to epic deep adventures full of story and rich detail, to strategy and puzzle solving.
I wanted to try something new this time around. The idea is that each player has to define himself and his faction. This might include a small elite group of mercenaries, special creatures, artefacts, or a village working for the duke. Everybody defines as many NPCs as he wants from the faction. The idea is to have an arbitrary power point system, defined by my assessment rather than a mechanism.
Now, I as the DM have a number of props ready, a number of modular encounters, and a high level plan of where the story should unfold. I have detailed descriptions of regions full of fluff and interesting NPCs to meet along the way. How or when is not strictly defined. So, the players play through the game following my signposts but each of them can at any time boost himself, his party or sabotage his party or himself through "inspiration points". So a player can add to a story for dramatic effect, humor, a desire to tell a specific story, etc.
The mechanism for orchestrating this in a fair manner is to have a group and character meter which goes from -100 to 100. Based on the group result at the end of the campaign they fail or succeede in their mission. In order to raise the group meter you need to sacrifice collective points from the character meters. For example, each collective 5 points contributed from characters is 1 point in the group pot.
Now, you get character points by sacrificng yourself, and you lose them by boosting some aspect of yourself. However, boosting another player's character sacrifices 1/3 of your points and 1/3 of his, so in total you keep more points. On the other hand, sacrificing another gives you a full portion of the points, while he gets 1/3. At the end of the game the epliogue for your character is determined based on the number of points. Basically, if you went through a lot of sacrifice you might become an angel, go crazy or die.
Anyway I wanted to hear what you guys think. Has anybody tried something similar?
The idea is that we are still playing D&D, but the outcomes and stories are influenced a lot by players.