play as yourself campaign

[retaliation08]

Has anyone ever done a campaign in which the players plaid themselves as characters? I the only time I have, we essentially chose what class we wanted to play from core that kinda fit our personality. Has anyone tried making players as actual classes? also what system have you used for determining player attribute points with fairness and maturity?

Its alot of questions, but without questions what do answers exist?

[Death Monkee]

Yeah I was both in a Rifts game where I played as myself and I've DM'ed a game like that before.

What we did for the stats was discussed it among ourselves and voted on it. DM got final say obviously.

As for classes I started the people in my game as level 1 NPC experts with skills that made sense. For the rifts game we just got random abilities and skills that made sense.....I love my borg body with built in homing plasma missile launchers.

To sum it all up, do whatever makes the most logical sense to both you as a player and you as a DM.

[Kaje]

One of my friends created a game called Super Awesome Action Heroes based on action movies, and once we played a short three-session game in a zombie movie expansion. He threw out the class-based approach and had us play as ourselves, with our own knowledge and skills, trying to escape the area we were actually playing in. Our inventory was whatever we actually had on our persons.

The first session I wasn't around for, but I understand their task was to escape the building they were in.

Second session: Now outside, the goal was to escape from the UW-Eau Claire's campus, facing zombies and avoiding the massive fires from the military's air-strikes to contain the situation. We managed to get onto the roof of a building to assess the situation. I used Give Me Five Minutes to fashion a rudimentary flail from my belt, watch and keys. We saw that there was only one obvious way off-campus, but then I remembered the canoes that are stored halfway up the big hill that divides campus in half. This threw the GM for a loop; he'd forgotten about those, and now had to modify the rest of the campaign. We got those, then another guy and I slung the canoe over the railing that goes all the way down the hill, used our Sweet Moves to hop onto either end of the canoe and ride it down the hill, smacking into zombies as we went. We got to the river and escaped.

Third session: We used Google Earth to track our progress through the city. The GM forgot which way the river flowed while he was planning this one, so once we pointed that out to him he again had to improvise. He had us wash up on shore and one of the players noticed that (completely by accident) we just happened to be right next to the pawnshop. We loaded up on weapons and infinite ammo and left. After stealing a car (the GM's ex's), run-ins at a supermarket, a house's backyard (including a zombie dog climbing out of a grave) and more, we finally managed to escape the city and win.

Super Awesome Action Heroes. It's available online (work in progress). Go find it.

[Darkameoba]

I played in a shadow run 3rd edition game were we played ourselves. it was pretty awesome. what we did is have people make eachother's stat line, and then someone else had to double check and agree with it.

[Corporate M]

I've seen games of it before. Sometimes abstract examples of "you translated into D&D" or "your mind in a D&D character". Roleplaying physically as yourself, not so much.

So yeah, they exist. It'd be nice if there was more of them.

[DaTedinator]

One of my friends created a game called Super Awesome Action Heroes based on action movies, and once we played a one-off game in a zombie movie expansion. He threw out the class-based approach and had us play as ourselves, with our own knowledge and skills, trying to escape the area we were actually playing in. Our inventory was whatever we actually had on our persons.

That's, awesome. I'm going to have to do that sometime!

[tribble]

My friends and I have established that I would probably be a healer of some sort. probably a fragile one.

[Silverscale]

When my friends and I were trying to start a game of Shadowrun 4.0 (which never got beyond "you meet in a bar") I was having fun playing around with character creation and decided to do one of myself. I tried to envision what I would be like if I had grown up in 2074 with all the cybertech/magic around me. Nothing perticularly fancy but I did give myself a very nice computer (forgetting what they're called in Shadowrun right now) and decent skill points in driving since at the time I was working as a delivery driver. I tried to be reasonable with the stats but Im sure some of them were exagerated, but then who doesn't exagerate theselves a little bit.

[Kaje]

Once, we were playing a Final Fantasy game set in a world loosely based on Stephen King's Dark Tower, and at one point we traveled to the real world, explored our college campus, met a couple of our players, and then fought a fierce battle with the demon-possessed GM.

So we didn't play as ourselves in this one, but the GM did, and played us as well.

[DrizztFan24]

Look up "You the character" in the PbP area. tehre was a zombie apocolypse esque game where everyone involved played in a scenario as them selves in a modern game. pretty fun.

[Kaje]

I was just reading a book about rpg history and was interested to discover that some really old games did this. In Dave Arneson's proto-DnD, the PCs were initially supposed to be the players themselves, magically whisked away into the past. And in the 1979 superhero game Villains & Vigilantes, the players were the characters' secret identities.

[Ouranos]

My friends and I have talked before about what classes we would be if suddenly they existed, ya know? All my friends agree, I'm either paladin or monk, probably monk because I already do tae kwon do. Have a good friend who's a natural barbarian, football player guy. Most of the folks I know though, at best warriors, generally commoners and nothing else.

[radmelon]

This would be really easy to do in D20 modern.

[PersonMan]

This would be really easy to do in D20 modern.

I'm actually planning a d20 Modern play-as-yourself campaign with my friends, based partially off of the show Gantz.

[Scorpina]

My group and I discussed the idea of this once, but then we realised that statting ourselves would be hugely difficult - how do you figure out what your ability scores are, especially mental ones (even more especially Charisma)? How do your actual abilities translate into skill points? It was a thorny issue we chicked out of confronting.

[Knaight]

My group and I discussed the idea of this once, but then we realised that statting ourselves would be hugely difficult - how do you figure out what your ability scores are, especially mental ones (even more especially Charisma)? How do your actual abilities translate into skill points? It was a thorny issue we chicked out of confronting.

The obvious solution is for everyone to play someone else in the group, and decide on stats for that person.* Its still the group in play, people roleplaying as each other, and people are going to be marginally more objective, though they lack some information. What could possibly go wrong?


*I have no responsibility for any affect this has on a friendship. None.

[Jallorn]

I saw one once that was done with either D20 or GURPS, I'm not sure which, but it involved the players being somehow sucked into a portal and having to adapt to this new world of high fantasy.

[mrcarter11]

I have wanted to do this before, but no one I know wants to try it...

[dr.cello]

It works nice in Call of Cthulhu.

[Ihouji]

Works well in vampire the masquerade. We just started the campaign with us getting jumped by a group or vampires fleeing a mob of vampire hunters. They were looking to recruit (by force) to recoup there losses.

[Jeebers]

Works well in vampire the masquerade. We just started the campaign with us getting jumped by a group or vampires fleeing a mob of vampire hunters. They were looking to recruit (by force) to recoup there losses.

I found that the Dark Ages Vampire (the 2nd edition) seems to work fairly well in this, if only because there are differing ethical system and better defined Disciplines.

You guys are right, the closest versions I'd think of were VTM and d20 Modern. However, the latter is definitely a action movie sort of genre. It'd kinda unrealistic at times. Ever get the feeling d20 Modern was written with the modern action movie in mind, like Die Hard etc?