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aadder
2021-03-13, 08:28 AM
Hello everyone,

I recently decided that I wanted to run my group's next campaign, and I deeply want to adapt one of my favorite video games. Because I don't want someone else to do it, I'm not going to say which one it is, but for argument's sake, let's say it's Final Fantasy X. It has a lot of the same notes and a similar structure in many ways. Please don't guess or ask, I really don't want someone else to do this, I feel like it's kind of my baby project right now.



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The problem I have can be summed-up as "how do i make a story built around one main character fit 4 people?"

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The easy answer that leapt to me first is to essentially give one person the "main character" role in the story and then give my other players roughly analogous roles to the side characters. But the immediate -problem- with that is now, all of my other players essentially have to have a huge ton of in-universe knowledge, and I want to avoid that if possible. It also kind of would demand them make the same decisions as the side characters in order to push the main plot that affects the main character, so that's a no-go. But even beyond that, this leads to the general problem of essentially having to God-mod all my players' characters if we want them to fit the script exactly, and I want to avoid doing that for obvious reasons.

Essentially, the main character, as are most main characters in less-than-great stories, is saddled with a whole bunch of traits and plot-points that drive the story. Their parent is dead, and that's relevant. The have a love interest, and the love interest is relevant to the plot, so i can't just write the love interest out of the story. They have a plot-important bond with another character through which a lot of exposition gets dumped. They're placed in specific positions that drive the main plot forward that can really only be performed by a single person. The climax of the story revolves around the intersection of those characteristics and their specific conflict with the BBEG.

So basically, I can't just God-mod all of these things onto one person; i feel bad just God-modding ONE thing onto someone. I like to let my players do as much of their own character creation as possible, and i'm already restricting what classes they can take so it fits the universe better. If I slap all of these onto one person, they're basically not playing their own character; they're playing the video game character, and that's no fun for them.

So, my thought process went, let's split these characteristics up! Someone gets the love interest, someone gets the specific plot-driving action, someone gets the parent death, etc. The problem HERE being that the climax kinda depends on one person having had a hand in at least 2 of those, or it makes no sense. Unfortunately i don't think i have enough main character traits to split up such that someone still gets something that way, and one person is still going to kind of have to be the main-MAIN character; the BBEG doesn't make sense without one singular person to be connected to. Basically, how would Jekt in FFX work if someone was his son, someone was dreamed to the future by him, and someone was in love with Yuna, but NONE of them are required to know more about it? I'm kinda stuck here.

And, the one side, but still irritating quality of basically "being from the area we're playing in." This is a small but irritating problem with adaptations that i'm still not good at solving. Usually i do a kind of "oh, you all traveled here and *inciting incident when they meet*" but when you're basing it on a story that exists, and being related to plot-relevant people is a thing, you can't just have them be form nowhere.

I also don't want to really explain the setting beforehand, because i want them to kind of get to experience it as they go along. And, again, i don't really want to have to God-mod their characters too much, and i feel like insisting they be from the area is a form of God-modding on top of the class restrictions i'm putting onto people.




I know this is a lot to ask, but does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? Or just general tips on adapting materials?

I'll be back later with some thoughts, i have a few ideas shaking around but i need some time to crystalize them.

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-13, 09:18 AM
Video games tend to be VERY railroad, even those with some choices along the way -- the main plot points and the destination rarely change.

So I'd say the first and most important advice is, don't expect a TTRPG campaign to play out the way the video game does, unless your players are entirely OK with a game that's more "going along for the ride".

Don't expect any of the players to play the game's main character, unless one of them volunteers to do so. Put their characters into the same situation. If you want to use the "dead parents" and "love interest" and other plot points from the game, split them up between the PCs as fits, maybe give the players a list of "plot hooks" you'd like them to divide up between their PCs and then work with them on the details in side-sessions before the campaign starts.

Quertus
2021-03-13, 10:14 AM
WWQD?

When I ask myself that question, and then look at the results, and decide that it wouldn't make for a fun game? I realize that this isn't a fun game to run.

If this game wouldn't be fun unless the players stick *very* close to the rails of the storyline, you need to talk to the players, and see if they're OK with that.

If not, then you need to run something else (and save this idea for a group of players that can tolerate and work within such heavy rails).

Anonymouswizard
2021-03-13, 10:30 AM
Ideally put them in the same situation, give them a kick, and just see where it goes from there. So the players are Marines on the Normandy, one or more of them is being considered for Spectre status, they go down to Eden Prime, fight some Geth, come across Nihilus's corpse, and then what? Anything could happen, maybe they get dishonourable discharged and have to chase Saren on their own.


As a side note, Noah Antwiler has a Counter Monkey video on running games in established universes and he has a piece of advice that I think is important: players probably shouldn't play established characters, but can replace them. If run well this can send the story off to weird and wonderful places. Some stories are just perfect for this setup, just imagine where you could go by letting players create their Star Wars characters and then taking them that their characters' are the diplomatic team sent to negotiate an end to the Trade Federation blockade of Naboo...

Yeah, that's a film, but it's a great example.

Lord Raziere
2021-03-13, 12:15 PM
Yeah I do a lot of freeform roleplaying based on existing anime universes so I'm going to tell something about adaptation: things are NOT going to go like the original series. each player will bring their own interpretation and spin into it, and will end up subverting or deconstructing some tropes about the universe just through normal play, simply because they're PCs with the ability to think outside the confines of the narrative that was first presented. but then that might just be me and the people I play with.

Imbalance
2021-03-13, 12:33 PM
I dunno yet, but I might soon find out. Gonna adapt the whole of Hydlide if my players take a certain item in an upcoming encounter, replacing the demon end boss with a hag coven.

Composer99
2021-03-13, 02:16 PM
The best answer, I think is to avoid trying to faithfully adapt the storyline and central protagonist of a single-player video game at all, and instead adapt the setting and circumstances such that the players will make characters who face the same sorts of decisions the protagonist and allies do, and given both player buy-in and the right in-game incentives, will tend to make them in similar ways.

Fortunately, most video games tend to involve situations where even player characters who aren't inclined to heroism have that sort of incentive. To take FF10 as an example, becoming a star blitzball player (or making a fortune on blitzball gambling) might be a PCs' main goals in life, but when your attempts to do so are often ruined by Sin, if it was in your power to do something about it, wouldn't you take the risk of perishing in the attempt to gain the rewards of prevailing? (For a regular character, maybe not, but you'll ideally have buy-in from the players on that score.)

Rynjin
2021-03-13, 09:19 PM
In the case of FFX...there are already like 4 different people you could consider the "main character" so it really doesn't matter. Each character has their own subplot, and only one (Yuna's) is really more important than the others.

So let people just make their characters and play out the vague story beats that happen for the plot. Things will not go as you want, but that's fine.

Of course, nobody can give you any more specific information without you doing the same. Frankly, the idea of someone "stealing" your idea to convert an already existing property into an RPG campaign is absurd; even if they did, you would never know. In fact, if it's a property as popular as Final Fantasy X (lemme guess; Tales of Symphonia?) at least a dozen people have already beaten you to it, I guarantee you.


As a side note, Noah Antwiler has a Counter Monkey video on running games in established universes and he has a piece of advice that I think is important: players probably shouldn't play established characters, but can replace them. If run well this can send the story off to weird and wonderful places. Some stories are just perfect for this setup, just imagine where you could go by letting players create their Star Wars characters and then taking them that their characters' are the diplomatic team sent to negotiate an end to the Trade Federation blockade of Naboo...

Yeah, that's a film, but it's a great example.

I believe "had" would be more accurate now. Unless something has changed recently, his site has been completely defunct for years now, and I don't know if anybody ever backed up his video catalogue.

Anonymouswizard
2021-03-14, 02:41 AM
I believe "had" would be more accurate now. Unless something has changed recently, his site has been completely defunct for years now, and I don't know if anybody ever backed up his video catalogue.

Pretty much everything should be on his YouTube channels, Counter Monkey is on the channel that I believe never updates.

clash
2021-03-14, 07:37 AM
So in the case of ffx as the example, I went through the work of converting it to dnd campaign. My approach was that Yuna was an npc and rather than having guardians she hired the group of players to escort her on the pilgrimage. This gave me one character you could take a back seat and drive the plot. The really important thing is don't try to own the player characters. Don't create their backstory for them. Don't try to force a plot on them, like falling in love. If players are role-playing their characters it can be very jarring when you take away their agency in one way or another. Instead find out their backstory and adapt the plot to fit their story. Use their in game actions to further drive the plot. Anyways that's my 2 cp.

Anonymouswizard
2021-03-14, 08:23 AM
Eh, Yuna in concept works great as aPC, in fact she'd slot into many campaigns if the GM was willing to go with the entire 'civilisation limiting monster' thing as existing. FFX, in broad strokes, works well as a game plot because there's various points where you can add or subtract scenes without having the narrative, the pilgrimage is perfect for being more open ended, and most of the characters have pretty decent reasons for why they're going along on the adventure (and those who don't are established as close enough friends with Yuna that it serves as their reason). I could lift 90% of FFX's plot and worldbuilding, and with just opening it up a little have a great game.

On the other hand most people I play with will try to get an airship and drop as many bombs on Sin as they can get their hands on.

Spriteless
2021-03-14, 09:00 AM
I think some general GM advice applies: you can give your players situations and problems and NPCs with motivations, and it will work better than scripts. So use the outline of the game, use the villains, have some NPCs with the same motivations and attitudes, but be ready to improvise.

If, for example, someone decides they don't want romance in their tabletop, does the story fall apart? Well, Yuna has this whole save the world quest of martyrdom, so nope. But what if the players decide that martyrdom is for chumps? Do they join Rikku's people to catch all the summoners? What would happen if they won? You don't have to figure this out now, but it's an exercise to think of the world as factions, not a script.

Also keep in mind, if your players are from a different culture than the RPG's creators, then they won't even be able to figure out to follow the path the video game characters do. Say you've got a game like Tales of Symphonia in mind, where every NPC is on board with sacrificing many people just to survive. Consider if the players aren't on rails, they may decide the main quest is not important and start liberating all the farms instead. Wait they did that in game. Well, the players may not take defeat as meekly as the game characters, and instead just go all out: if we're supposed to let people be sacrificed for the greater good, than we will sacrifice some people for the weapons to save others. They could also take a lesson I can't predict from the story. Just roll with it!

If you have access to Icewind Dale Ice of the Ice Maiden, then consider looking at the secrets and making some of your own inspired by the game you are using. Lots of stories where you are around the same ensemble of characters for a long time have something like this. Auron is a secret unsent, Rikku is planning to kidnap her cousin, Yuna is of mixed race, Tidus is from the lost city. It is a helpful way to give the characters some backstory without telling them all the whole plot.

quinron
2021-03-14, 12:04 PM
FFX actually would work really well as a framework for a campaign - Tidus, Yuna, and Auron all have individual motivations that compel them through the whole game, with Wakka as the 4th PC who wraps up his personal plot halfway through and sticks with the party out of loyalty (and because the player wants to keep playing with the group).

aadder
2021-03-14, 05:21 PM
FFX actually would work really well as a framework for a campaign - Tidus, Yuna, and Auron all have individual motivations that compel them through the whole game, with Wakka as the 4th PC who wraps up his personal plot halfway through and sticks with the party out of loyalty (and because the player wants to keep playing with the group).

So basically part of the problem, though, is that Tidus is unequivocally the main character, that you need to have a whole bunch of traits.

Yuna has a whole bunch of in-universe knowledge and experience that a player can't be expected to have, and you'd basically have to spoon-feed it to them.

Auron has knowledge of plot that the party except him isn't supposed to have, so that's more god-modding and spoon-feeding.

Wakka has SOME in-inverse knowledge, but he's actually kind of useable.

Kimahri and Lulu can actually be replaced pretty well, I think. Riku i'm on the fence about.


So yeah, basically i'm trying to figure out how to dole out Tidus' traits so that 4 people feel included. We can axe Lulu and Kimahri, and make Wakka a PC, but how to make them all the main character is kind of the problem.

aadder
2021-03-14, 05:24 PM
If, for example, someone decides they don't want romance in their tabletop, does the story fall apart? Well, Yuna has this whole save the world quest of martyrdom, so nope. But what if the players decide that martyrdom is for chumps? Do they join Rikku's people to catch all the summoners? What would happen if they won? You don't have to figure this out now, but it's an exercise to think of the world as factions, not a script.



It's more like i want each PC to feel like they're connected to the plot. I want one of the PC's to be in love with Yuna because it makes them crucial to the plot in the same way as being Jeckt's son does; they have an explicit motivation and aren't just a hanger-on. I absolutely HATE feeling like some other player is the main character in a campaign i'm in and i'm just a side character; it makes me feel like the DM is favoring them.

Duff
2021-03-14, 06:14 PM
The easy answer that leapt to me first is to essentially give one person the "main character" role in the story and then give my other players roughly analogous roles to the side characters.
That's a very specific type of game and won't fly at a lot of tables. If session 0 gives the OK for this, that's fine, but be ready to accept that a game with this premis may not go ahead

It's possible to give the side characters the appearance of deep knowledge by making sure you give the player the relevent info when they need it.
But thats work for you and the player. Again, not everybody's idea of fun.


i feel bad just God-modding ONE thing onto someone. I like to let my players do as much of their own character creation as possible, and i'm already restricting what classes they can take so it fits the universe better.

And that suggests this is not the game for you. To tell the specific story from the game, you'd really need to be pre-generating the characters, complete with backstory, relationships and how they got to where they are.



Don't expect any of the players to play the game's main character, unless one of them volunteers to do so. Put their characters into the same situation. If you want to use the "dead parents" and "love interest" and other plot points from the game, split them up between the PCs as fits, maybe give the players a list of "plot hooks" you'd like them to divide up between their PCs and then work with them on the details in side-sessions before the campaign starts.

Better. Use scenes from the game. Use the setting.
Have the overarching plot going on for *someone else* and have the players doing things which sometimes interact closely with the game plot, sometimes are behind the scenes and sometimes completly unrelated

Slipjig
2021-03-14, 06:20 PM
Tidus is the VIEWPOINT character for the player, but I'd disagree that automatically makes the story about him (even if he does yell, "This is MY story!").

If he and Yuna were merely friends, that would change the tone of some story beats, but wouldn't impact the overall plot. If Tidus didn't have the familial connection to Sin, that would require re-writes of a few scenes, but the overall plot could still hit almost all of the same beats.

I haven't played the game in nearly two decades, but the way I remember it you could replace the Tidus character with somebody completely unconnected to anybody else (or remove him entirely) and still have 95% of the story proceed.

The question is whether the story WILL proceed. Even if you create the players' backstories for them and railroad them like crazy, there is always a chance that a player will say, "You know what, Dad? I'd LOVE to join the Dark Side! Let's go massacre some wookies!" All you can do is set the players up with the same start conditions as the story you love, and let it unfold from there. If you won't be able to handle deviation from the plot, then this whole project is probably setting both you and the players up to be unhappy.

quinron
2021-03-14, 06:21 PM
The easy answer that leapt to me first is to essentially give one person the "main character" role in the story and then give my other players roughly analogous roles to the side characters. But the immediate -problem- with that is now, all of my other players essentially have to have a huge ton of in-universe knowledge, and I want to avoid that if possible. It also kind of would demand them make the same decisions as the side characters in order to push the main plot that affects the main character, so that's a no-go. But even beyond that, this leads to the general problem of essentially having to God-mod all my players' characters if we want them to fit the script exactly, and I want to avoid doing that for obvious reasons.


It's more like i want each PC to feel like they're connected to the plot. I want one of the PC's to be in love with Yuna because it makes them crucial to the plot in the same way as being Jeckt's son does; they have an explicit motivation and aren't just a hanger-on. I absolutely HATE feeling like some other player is the main character in a campaign i'm in and i'm just a side character; it makes me feel like the DM is favoring them.

(Emphasis mine)

I'm questioning whether adapting this game one-for-one is actually going to be fun for you. The thing is, if you try to avoid spotlighting one character by decompositing them across the party, you don't end up with a cast of main characters, you end up with a cast of incomplete, likely flat characters.

clash
2021-03-14, 06:41 PM
It's more like i want each PC to feel like they're connected to the plot. I want one of the PC's to be in love with Yuna because it makes them crucial to the plot in the same way as being Jeckt's son does; they have an explicit motivation and aren't just a hanger-on. I absolutely HATE feeling like some other player is the main character in a campaign i'm in and i'm just a side character; it makes me feel like the DM is favoring them.

This still feels like the wrong approach. If you want each character to be connected to the plot don't take backstories that connect them to the plot and being your players along for the ride. Your players will feel much more invested in the plot if you take the backstories they give you and connect those to the plot. Don't make ffx about tidus and auron and waka and lulu. Make it about John and Natalie and whoever else your players come up with. Anyone in the story could have done what they did. They were just the ones who did it.

Anonymouswizard
2021-03-14, 06:55 PM
So basically part of the problem, though, is that Tidus is unequivocally the main character, that you need to have a whole bunch of traits.

Yuna has a whole bunch of in-universe knowledge and experience that a player can't be expected to have, and you'd basically have to spoon-feed it to them.

Auron has knowledge of plot that the party except him isn't supposed to have, so that's more god-modding and spoon-feeding.

Wakka has SOME in-inverse knowledge, but he's actually kind of useable.

Kimahri and Lulu can actually be replaced pretty well, I think. Riku i'm on the fence about.


So yeah, basically i'm trying to figure out how to dole out Tidus' traits so that 4 people feel included. We can axe Lulu and Kimahri, and make Wakka a PC, but how to make them all the main character is kind of the problem.

Tidus is mostly superfluous, his main reason for inclusion is to be somebody utterly unused to Sin and thus a driver for searching to a permanent solution, and you could foist that role off to Rikku with some minor rewrites. He's certainly not the protagonist until maybe the very end, and again it's not hard to replace him there.

Yuna's major unique pieces of in-world knowledge are related to being a summoner and thus should be in any setting document given to the player. Other than that the main things you need to take note are that her Pilgrimage drives the story, arguably making her the protagonist (she's almost certainly the main character), and that she needs a reason to turn away from the whole Final Aeon business. If you cut Tidus out you probably begin with Yuna's first encounter with a Faytj.

Auron's knowledge is a problem, but it doesn't have to be. Telling the others, in or out of character, simply gives you a new ability to play around with some plot elements earlier.,

Wakka's main pieces of in-universe knowledge are things everybody should know, the same for Lulu and Kimahri. Riku just has the problem of coming from a culture with different views and thus a different accumulation of knowledge, same as anybody else.

So yeah, your main issues are Auron,which is barely an issue, and Yuna, which is a kind of 'one of you needs to be linked to X for plot reasons' thing, which isn't the worst.


Also, I've been trying to find this all day. Behold the most accurate Dark Souls game ever run using D&D (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?423874-Dealing-with-an-unfair-DM). [coloir=white]The script, the script.[/color]

Spriteless
2021-03-14, 07:40 PM
It's more like i want each PC to feel like they're connected to the plot. I want one of the PC's to be in love with Yuna because it makes them crucial to the plot in the same way as being Jeckt's son does; they have an explicit motivation and aren't just a hanger-on. I absolutely HATE feeling like some other player is the main character in a campaign i'm in and i'm just a side character; it makes me feel like the DM is favoring them.

Ahh, better have a good 'session zero' in which you make sure everyone is crucial to the plot. Video games are just tangental to it.

aadder
2021-03-15, 11:40 PM
Tidus is the VIEWPOINT character for the player, but I'd disagree that automatically makes the story about him (even if he does yell, "This is MY story!").

If he and Yuna were merely friends, that would change the tone of some story beats, but wouldn't impact the overall plot. If Tidus didn't have the familial connection to Sin, that would require re-writes of a few scenes, but the overall plot could still hit almost all of the same beats.




Tidus is mostly superfluous, his main reason for inclusion is to be somebody utterly unused to Sin and thus a driver for searching to a permanent solution, and you could foist that role off to Rikku with some minor rewrites. He's certainly not the protagonist until maybe the very end, and again it's not hard to replace him there.

So basically, what if Tidus WASN'T Jeckt's son, he was just some fish-out-of-water dude?

And then that way, his role as plot-driver is more accidental; he's still relevant to the story as the optimist and the person willing to take a chance, but he's not selected by fate like in the game.

And this would mean that his character could be more determined by the player.

And if HIS character is more determined by the player, i wouldnt' feel as much pressure to make the OTHER players' characters have so much main character status.

aadder
2021-03-16, 03:47 AM
I think i can roll with that. I think i can strip them down a little bit.

Like, instead of assigning someone the role of "you are Yuna's love interest" i can just make her interested in them, and it's up to them whether or not to requite it. They're still involved, and they still have a reason to be there, but where it goes is up to them.

I still want to get a reason for a fourth character to feel needed, but this does make me feel less like i'm railroading them.

aadder
2021-03-16, 03:50 AM
Ahh, better have a good 'session zero' in which you make sure everyone is crucial to the plot. Video games are just tangental to it.

Yeah I'm a BIG fan of session 0. I feel like everyone needs to do them. Last campaign i was in sucked because we were doing Avernus, and nobody had time for a session 0. Avernus is a campaign where essentially you go to hell, so EVERYONE wrote their character to have a deep, dark, dank, disaster backstory of like "my mom is dead and she ate my brother and i have to go to hell to rescue is soul from a demon and i was born in hell and all my friends are dead" and we were all fighting for drama room. Gross.

I ended up changing my character part-way through just because I really liked my character's motivation but i felt like i couldn't keep playing unless someone brought some levity to the game, and that person was gonna have to be me I guess.

Glorthindel
2021-03-16, 04:33 AM
I have done this a couple of times (ironically, once with the plot of FFX-2), and the main trick to make it work (and to avoid players familiar with the original source to not realise) is to know what to keep and what to throw in the bin. Strip the story down into it main threads, and jettison anything that isn't absolutely essential to carry the main plot thread. And you have to be merciless. You have to remember, you will be coming from a place of loving the story (or you wouldn't even be considering this), and that means you are a likely more than a little bit biased as to what is 'essential' to making the story work. Look at it with a critical eye (or recruit a friend who wont be playing to be that critical eye), and assess what you really need to keep.

For one, is the love story even actually relevant and needed? I am sure it feels like it to the single-character experience, but what does it do to the story? Is it there to create a sense of urgency (love interest needs to be saved from villain or unpleasant plot curse), to bring the villains villainy to the fore (love interest callously murdered), or is it just to provide personal growth to a character that starts a little cold and distant (love interest acts as the characters early voice of morality). Once you place character control into the players hands, does the love interest serve its purpose, or is it now baggage, or can its role be passed off to another plot element or NPC type that is more group-focussed (a beloved foster parent to them all, collective childhood friend, etc).

Catullus64
2021-03-16, 09:34 AM
One thing which hasn't been said (assuming you still intend to go ahead with this plot), is to make sure to have contingencies for if and when player characters die. Don't know if companion characters in FF can perma-die, but your game shouldn't revolve crucially around specific characters surviving to the end; or else tell players to have backup characters with a specific connection to the plot waiting in the wings.

This proved a bit of a tricky spot for me when I borrowed the main plot beats from

The original Baldur's gate. Having your PCs be the demigod sons and daughters of an ancient evil deity sounds great in theory, but if they start dying, it becomes increasingly implausible to keep pulling more children of the same god out of your behind to serve as replacement player characters. Eventually, the player characters figured out their lineage, and from then on it was easier, but there were definitely some awkward spots.

Mr.Sandman
2021-03-16, 12:19 PM
As previously stated, the information known by your 'local' characters ex. Yuna, Rikku, etc, could be easily put in a pre campaign packet for those interested in being from certain places or playing certain classes. Things people from that Class/race would know anyway. A way to handle a PC Auron is potentially amnisia, drip feeding the info to the player as needed. He did die after all, I'm surprised his memory wasn't a bit off. If no one wants to play the Auron he also makes a great NPC mentor, and can round out the party if someone can't make it to a session.

Scots Dragon
2021-03-16, 03:10 PM
The thing I would personally do is to adjust the plot a bit so that each of the player characters has at least one thing tying them to it that would make them the potential main character of the story should it be told from their perspective. Possibly also give the players a common origin so that they have the same or similar stakes in what's going on.

KillianHawkeye
2021-03-16, 04:44 PM
I have done this a couple of times (ironically, once with the plot of FFX-2), and the main trick to make it work (and to avoid players familiar with the original source to not realise) is to know what to keep and what to throw in the bin. Strip the story down into it main threads, and jettison anything that isn't absolutely essential to carry the main plot thread. And you have to be merciless. You have to remember, you will be coming from a place of loving the story (or you wouldn't even be considering this), and that means you are a likely more than a little bit biased as to what is 'essential' to making the story work. Look at it with a critical eye (or recruit a friend who wont be playing to be that critical eye), and assess what you really need to keep.

I agree with this advice. In my own experience of converting video game stories into D&D adventures, I've found it's best to make the quest an adaptation or "inspired by" the game. Definitely don't try to match the game's story and characters exactly.

It works better if you can meet the players half-way by converting at least some parts of the game world and story to match the standards of the game you're playing. Converting something like Final Fantasy into a more D&D-friendly setting should be easy since they're already so similar.

Slipjig
2021-03-17, 03:25 PM
So basically, what if Tidus WASN'T Jeckt's son, he was just some fish-out-of-water dude?

And this would mean that his character could be more determined by the player.

Pretty much exactly this. Having an outsider (or an amnesiac) as the protagonist is a useful narrative device, because it gives the author an excuse to have other characters perform exposition dumps at convenient moments, or explain cultural phenomena that somebody native to the setting would already be familiar with. It also allows the author to withhold key pieces of information as something an outlander wouldn't know.

It's also relevant to remember that everybody is the protagonist of their own story. You could just as easily tell FFX as Yuna's story, in which case they would probably frame of Tidus as the "Mysterious Outlander".

I also don't think it's too heavy-handed to say, "This is the story I want to tell, for this to work I'd like all of you to build your characters within these constraints." For example, if you were doing The Shield, it would be 100% okay to tell your players, "Your characters are all cops assigned to the same task force, and you are okay with at least a low level of corruption when the campaign starts." That still gives players a huge amount of latitude to develop a unique character, but gives you a jumping off point for the campaign where you aren't spending half your time coming up with motivations for each individual character to stay on the train until the next plot point.

Quertus
2021-03-17, 07:34 PM
Pretty much exactly this. Having an outsider (or an amnesiac) as the protagonist is a useful narrative device, because it gives the author an excuse to have other characters perform exposition dumps at convenient moments, or explain cultural phenomena that somebody native to the setting would already be familiar with. It also allows the author to withhold key pieces of information as something an outlander wouldn't know.

These sound like excellent side benefits for my "not from around here" policy for characters.


I also don't think it's too heavy-handed to say, "This is the story I want to tell, for this to work I'd like all of you to build your characters within these constraints." For example, if you were doing The Shield, it would be 100% okay to tell your players, "Your characters are all cops assigned to the same task force, and you are okay with at least a low level of corruption when the campaign starts." That still gives players a huge amount of latitude to develop a unique character, but gives you a jumping off point for the campaign where you aren't spending half your time coming up with motivations for each individual character to stay on the train until the next plot point.

Would Danny Roman fit that campaign?

Psyren
2021-03-18, 10:40 AM
The simple solution here - I'd make it about the side characters in that video game.

Say if your game was based on Mass Effect - Shepard is the protagonist, so you'd run into problems (group friction, designing challenges for such a customizable character) if Shepard was playable in a tabletop version. But make the game instead about Garrus/Liara/Tali/Wrex etc teaming up on their own and suddenly you have something that translates to tabletop much more easily. You can have premade builds for each character, as well as offering the players opportunities to customize them. Maybe the goal for the group is even to rescue Shepard/the main character, who would end up being an NPC once found. And once folks are comfortable with your system, you can do a new campaign where they all get to make original characters from scratch - a skilled mercenary group, a special ops squad in a military, elite corporate security etc.

Same thing for Dragon Age - the player character in the video game (The Warden/Hawke/The Inquisitor) is central and highly customizable, so you wouldn't want the players bickering over who gets to be that person, just take them off the table. But with the POV protagonist from the video game out of the picture, the players get to play as the side characters from whichever of the games you're adapting, and suddenly you can more easily make a story where they have to work together and nobody exclusively hogs the spotlight. This also makes it easy for you to generate scenarios where each of them gets a chance to shine - e.g. Tali gets a hacking challenge, Wrex gets to tank an army of mooks, Liara solves a prothean puzzle etc.