Would you, as a player, enjoy this in a campaign?

[overduegalaxy]

First off, I know at least two people who may be in this campaign browse the forums, so shoo.

So. I'm running an Eberron game. The PCs are treasure hunters gradually uncovering clues that will lead them to some ancient artifact that I haven't entirely decided on yet. But that's not what I've come to ask about.

My idea is to periodically shift the point of view to others who have had a part in the artifact's history, following it's movements throughout time. So, for example, the PCs might come to an abandoned House Cannith forge or something. It's empty, but it wasn't empty when a band of renegade Warforged came through during the war, looking for the artifact. As the PCs enter the dungeon, I hand them pre-made sheets for the Warforged soldiers, and run the forge as a dungeon, having the PCs clear it out.

Alternately, the artifact might've gotten unwittingly picked up by some half-elf pirates long ago. The pirate ship is attacked by Breland's Navy and sunk, but the PCs will temporarily take the roles of either the pirates or the Navy. The ship will sink no matter what, but the PC's actions might change things in subtle ways, which will be reflected in the "real" campaign.

PCs will earn XP for their main characters during these flashbacks, and they'd be fairly short (30 minutes to an hour), and probably not every session. I'd have six or seven pregenerated characters for a party of four to choose between, so hopefully there wouldn't be problems with people being stuck with a character class they don't want to play. I feel this could be enjoyable, allowing the players to try out different classes that they might not generally play, while still having their normal characters for most of the session.

If you were playing in this campaign, what would your opinion on these diversions be? Obviously, I'll gauge the reactions of players and adjust accordingly, but am I completely off the mark?

[gabado]

very nice!

i like it allot, but how about letting the PC's make the war-forged or whatever, it mite give them some incentive to play it like their own character not just some throw away tin guy.

[Alleine]

Hoo-boy, that sounds AWESOME. I'm pretty sure I would love that. It'd be really cool especially since party roles could basically be thrown into the air every once in awhile, suddenly the squishy wizard is sword-swinging metallic maniac.

I think you'd be well served by having something special happen to the PC's so that it explains the flashbacks. Something like the artifact calling out to be found or some such thing.

[lordhack]

Depends entirely on your players, how much their invested in their own character, and how much they might enjoy stepping out and playing another for a bit. I'd talk to them, but if even one says no I'd ditch the idea.

[Danin]

I did something like this in a previous campaign before, and I plan on doing it again. Just remember to keep the encounters short, or some people might get frustrated at not getting to play their characters.

I also started a 1 shot by handing them all a character sheet for level 1 npc farmers. Then they were attacked and butchered by some strange animal. PC's had to investigate the deaths. Imagine the shock on the one guy's face when I told him the "Strange, furred, bestial man tears your arm off at the socket. You take 31 points of damage".

[TheOz]

I would adore that idea! I've been working on doing something similar in my game, but don't really have the group to work it in. As someone who loves getting the chance to do something completely different once in a while, the idea definitely appeals to me as a player as well.

[Bugbeartrap]

sounds pretty sweet to me
I was planning to do something similiar in my campaign. I agree that there should be something to explain about the flashbacks, and decide if you want the characters and not just the players to know what happened in the flashback. That way, the flashbacks can just be for mood and backstory, or they can be important clues the characters must use to proceed. In Eberron, anything could cause flashbacks. Artifacts, psionics (quori or kalashtar), ancestry, dragonmarks, the draconic prophecy, read from a tome, read from a dragonshard... the list goes on.

I would check out the book "Forge of War" theres a nice chapter on this kind of campaign.

Let us know how it turns out!

[Wafflecart]

Freaking amazing...if I ever DM, can i borrow this idea?...Anyway, i personally love little side-quests like that, and the idea of this sort of "side-quest" is amazing.

[d13]

In fact... I'm starting to WANT to play that campaign xD

[TaintedLight]

An excellent idea, but one that has the (slight) potential to fall flat on its face if the players end up getting attached to a particular character. I don't know if it conflicts with the nature of your campaign, but you could potentially create some sort of quasi-magical effect that rips the PCs' consciousnesses from their bodies and hurls them through time. As a result, they would have the same personalities, but the maelstrom of the timestream has caused them to periodically settle into a new persona which potentially possesses different skills than their original character might have. In this case, the players get to keep their personalities if they want to and those personalities experience a wild variety of scenarios.

[Colmarr]

I would love it (and have in fact considered - but not implemented - it in past campaigns)*.

I do agree with other posters above that you need to keep the interludes short (maybe 3 to 5 encounters). If they get too long, then your players lose a sense of who the real PCs are.

Depending on your players, I'd also recommend not pulling this trick often and not telling them about what is going on until its over. With the wrong players, you'll get them trying to do stupid stuff like hiding all their best equipment under the floor so that their later PCs can "find" it.

*Another idea I considered was to have PCs take the part of the historical bad guys. Simply don't tell them that they're the bad guys, and wait for it to dawn on them that "Wait a minute, we've seen this shrine to Selune before, only it was a shrine to Shar... OMG..."

[krossbow]

Very much depends on your players. If you have players who want to focus on the story of the XXXX group of adventurers as the plot, then not; if the player characters however want to hear the story of the XXXX artifact and how a group of adventurers discovered it, then its a great idea.



Just a difference of world driven or character driven story.

[Colmarr]

Just a difference of world driven or character driven story.

Even in a character-driven campaign, players sometimes want the opportunity to try out that minotaur cleric or hobgoblin warlock they dreamed up on the weekend.

It's one of the reasons why I like this idea so much. It lets players satisfy those urges without them giving up on their main PC altogether.

[Jarawara]

My idea is to periodically shift the point of view to others who have had a part in the artifact's history, following it's movements throughout time. So, for example, the PCs might come to an abandoned House Cannith forge or something. It's empty, but it wasn't empty when a band of renegade Warforged came through during the war, looking for the artifact. As the PCs enter the dungeon, I hand them pre-made sheets for the Warforged soldiers, and run the forge as a dungeon, having the PCs clear it out.

I would absolutely, overwhelmingly *HATE* it if you did that, and I'd hate you too!!!

Primarily, because I was going to do the exact same thing in my next campaign. So now, instead of coming up with a truly original idea, I'm just copying you. You baistaige!!!


Good luck, and tell us all how it goes.

[Fawkes]

An excellent idea, but one that has the (slight) potential to fall flat on its face if the players end up getting attached to a particular character. I don't know if it conflicts with the nature of your campaign, but you could potentially create some sort of quasi-magical effect that rips the PCs' consciousnesses from their bodies and hurls them through time. As a result, they would have the same personalities, but the maelstrom of the timestream has caused them to periodically settle into a new persona which potentially possesses different skills than their original character might have. In this case, the players get to keep their personalities if they want to and those personalities experience a wild variety of scenarios.

And every time they find themselves in a new body they have to say "Oh boy!"

[Farlion]

It is indeed a nice idea, which I have actually used once or twice to give the PCs a better feeling for an event that happend in the past. What I figured out though is, that there is something PCs really hate:

The ship will sink no matter what, but the PC's actions might change things in subtle ways, which will be reflected in the "real" campaign.

And it's the incapability of actually changing something. It really kills any actions your PCs try to make. I started to allow even big changes, even if this meant having to rethink large parts of the outcome, because I saw, that my players get more involved if they notice, they can change something.

Even if the ship doesn't sink (in your case) I'm sure you can think of a way the artifact is lost in battle/falls off the ship/is robbed by some greedy bastard etc.

I'd be very careful in not allowing the PCs to influence the storyline, when using your kinds of flashbacks, it can really hurt your gameplay.

Cheers,
Falrion

[Tempest Fennac]

That sounds like an excellent idea for a campaign. Being as it would only be a flashback, I wouldn't consider not being able to fully change the past as a huge problem.

[Coidzor]

I'm suddenly reminded of elements of Final Fantasy 8. I actually rather enjoyed some of those flashback scenes.

Sounds fun to me.

[BlueWizard]

Most players {and I mean all I know} would have no interest playing something I made as a DM, and I've run many games for a long time. The fun in being a player is using something you created. I'd be annoyed if a DM handed me a PC to play, even for a short period. I know players that would outright walk out of the room if I tried that... and would likely lose them for good.

[Winterwind]

I do things like that quite frequently as gamemaster, and have played as player in campaigns where the gamemasters did it as well. It always worked quite excellently for building suspense and adding new perspectives to the story, and was quite clearly enjoyed by everyone involved. I can only recommend using it.

And of course, ask after the session whether the players thought it was a good idea or not. While I haven't met anyone who didn't enjoy it yet, mileages may vary.


@Blue Wizard: You are forced to play with people who would rather walk out on you if you tried something like this instead of simply telling you it was not to their liking and that they'd rather not have you do it? My condolences.

[Ladorak]

Rather reminds me of FF8, I like the idea immensly, may stwal it in fact

[Izmir Stinger]

That is a very cool campaign idea.

Small suggestion: make sure one of the PC's has an ability that grants them Psychometry, and the flashbacks can be the history of an object that player touches as their power reveals it to them. When they encounter the ruins of the forge the player may touch a shattered steel bar, and then during the flashback encounter, you can have one of the NPCs knock a superheated piece of steel out of the forge into the wrong cooling barrel, shattering it.

[KillianHawkeye]

I'm suddenly reminded of elements of Final Fantasy 8. I actually rather enjoyed some of those flashback scenes.

Sounds fun to me.

Rather reminds me of FF8, I like the idea immensly, may stwal it in fact

And here I was about to say that this sounded like an awesome idea as long as you didn't do it like FF8.

[Satyr]

It would probably a good idea to interconnect the different time levels on the character level, including the ability that changes in the past through the players actually may change the present. Perhaps making the present day characters reincarnations of the characters of the past and grant them the ability to "switch" their consciousness between different incarnations and come up with a good reason why the same people met again and again in every cycle of reincarnation and why they are reincarnating in the first place, but hey, that is what ancient artifact McGuffins are for, right?

If you do it right, you create a multidimensional adventure on several plot lines and time levels, facing dozens of characters from really different backgrounds and times, to create one of the most overwhelming campaign your player have ever heard about, a campaign that leaves them in shock and awe.

[Kaiyanwang]

If you do it right, you create a multidimensional adventure on several plot lines and time levels, facing dozens of characters from really different backgrounds and times, to create one of the most overwhelming campaign your player have ever heard about, a campaign that leaves them in shock and awe.

This. Great idea, OP. I would play very, very interested a campaign like this.

[Rhiannon87]

That actually sounds pretty cool, so long as it was done sparingly and not for a huge period of time. And the idea that there should be some connection to the main PCs so that they get the knowledge of what happened there is a good one, otherwise there's going to be lots of metagaming. "Okay, so the ogre mage hid the staff here--" "No, we don't know that, remember?" "GAH." If it's a flashback that they all experience somehow, it's a freaking awesome idea.

[Egiam]

I think that there is a whole game system based on this idea. I think it was called something like Fireborn or Dragonborn.

[overduegalaxy]

And it's the incapability of actually changing something. It really kills any actions your PCs try to make. I started to allow even big changes, even if this meant having to rethink large parts of the outcome, because I saw, that my players get more involved if they notice, they can change something.

Some circumstances will change if the past-PCs take actions above and beyond what's expected (managing to sink the attacking ship, or pretty much anything involving a natural 20 and a Profession: Sailor check), but for the most part, things will be destined to happen the way they happened because they've already happened, and the present-PCs have seen the result. So, if the encounter involves them exploring the sunken ship, they can't not have it sink in the past. Certain events will be fixed simply because they're required to happen the way they happen for the plot to move forward, but other times it'll be much more flexible. I expect I'll have a flowchart of sorts to adjust for any surprise successes or failures by the past-PCs to see how it changes the story.

Besides, since the PCs aren't on my side of the screen, they don't know whether or not they did actually make a difference. Was the ship supposed to sink, or were they supposed to save it? Were the soldiers supposed to survive the goblin ambush or not? Was it the PC's natural 1 that caused their assassins to fail, or would they have been overwhelmed anyway?

[chiasaur11]

I think Ben Robbins at Ars Ludi mentioned something like this.

Past O Vision, I think. Sounds like a good idea.

[valadil]

I would enjoy this in a campaign. I thought of using similar techniques in my own games (though it would be more like a prelude to the game rather than something that happens regularly). I would definitely tell people ahead of time that you were doing this though, because some players would object to playing the game with a character they didn't build.

As a side note, the game I'm running now features some pet NPCs. Each player controls one of the city guards in certain combats. I did this as a way to encourage players to have non combat characters. The players got really attached to their pet NCPs after a couple sessions. Similar things may happen in your game if you let these NPCs recur.