Rate my campaign idea

[weenie]

Every X years a game is played on earth. 18 individuals are chosen, and an outsider appears to each of one them offering the opportunity to participate in it. Whoever wins the game may ask anything he wishes for, and it will be granted, but to win they need to collect 7 atrifacts.

If they choose to participate they are given a magical scroll containing the names of all the other participants and if they're still alive or if they died. The scroll also has a list of the artifacts, and if anyone claims an artifact their name appears next to it and stays there for as long as the artifact is in their posession.

If the participant is killed and someone else takes posession of his scroll they can replace the old participant or destroy the scroll. The scroll can't be destroyed while the participant is alive, but it can be stolen.


Soooo, what do you think? Could this be fun?

[Umbranar]

Sounds awesome, but whats the role of the players?
Are they chosen and do they fight eachother, the others or do they help one/some of the chosen people?

[Novawurmson]

Could be interesting. What's the draw for the part to work together instead of bumping each other off?

[The Glyphstone]

Isn't this the general plot of the Dragonball anime with some details muddled?

[Rallicus]

Isn't this the general plot of the Dragonball anime with some details muddled?

That was what I thought, too.

Basically Dragonball with a long range dragon radar (er... magical scroll) and everyone actually holding on to the dragon balls, rather than having a lot of them just scattered around.

Not a terribly original idea. Not entirely sure what system you'd use or how you'd roleplay it, either.

4/10, I suppose?

[PersonMan]

Isn't this the general plot of the Dragonball anime with some details muddled?

Wat

Isn't the plot of Dragonball 'young alien boy with super powers travels with a strange band of people to collect a few magic orbs to make a wish'?

It sounds more like the plot of Future Diary AKA Mirai Nikki.

Not especially original, but it's a fun idea and you could fairly easily put a new twist to it.

[The Glyphstone]

Wat

Isn't the plot of Dragonball 'young alienhuman/demihuman boy/girl with super powersPC Class levels travels with a strange band of people an adventuring party to collect a few magic orbsartifacts to make a wish'?

[Grail]

Make it tangible.
If the heroes fail to obtain the artifacts for the powerful entity, then they are will be slain and some other bad thing happens too. Say, their home city will be destroyed.
The wish is just... meh.

Have less "contestants" and force them to work together.

Thing is, the outsider is just playing them to get the artifacts that he himself cannot obtain for reason XY or Z.

But what does he want them for? Doesn't have to be anything nefarious, but it could be.

The Outsider could also be scrying everything that they do and using their attempts to get the artifacts as a reality tv show for his other outsider chums.

Previously on That's My Artifact.......

[weenie]

Isn't this the general plot of the Dragonball anime with some details muddled?

... Now that I think about it yes, it totally is

I was actually drawing some inspiration from Fate/Zero, it never ocurred to me for a second that I was ripping DB off. I guess it really loses a lot of it's appeal now.. Oh well, I guess it could still be fun for people who aren't familiar with DB or who, like me, already forgot about it

@Umbranar:

The way I immagined it, one of the players would be chosen to play, and the others would help him. In PRGs working together is usually important.

@Novawurmson:

See above. Only one of the players is participating at the beginning. The others may try to kill him and take his place, or they could decide to work together and somehow split the reward.

EDIT:
@Grail:

I was thinking about doing a "balance of the multiverse" thing by having outsiders be representatives of their alignment. Devl = NE, Demon = CE, Angel = LG etc.

Maybe the outsiders could each offer a different reward to the players or threathen them with something? The wish thing is a bit overused..

@The Glyphstone:

[PersonMan]

And this plot seems to be 'battle of several chosen people, with people who kill others gaining power via artifacts at a rapid pace with a potential built-in morality issue subplot', potentially 'adventuring party forms in a free-for-all battle for magical equipment with a built-in trust subplot as the opposition is killed off'. Which is completely different from Dragonball.

[prufock]

I give it a 1.

Spoiler

Show

I use a binary rating system (0=would not play, 1=would play).

[W3bDragon]

I feel the impact of the base idea isn't as important as how you plan to run it.

Would this be run as a Pbp? Will you be running it in person? If so, will this be a one shot game? or a multiple session campaign? Will all 18 people be PCs? Or will you run many of the 18 as NPCs?

All of the above has a much bigger impact on how good the game is rather than the premise on its own.

My thoughts are that if you reduce the number to exactly the number of players you have, say 6 for example, and run it as an in person one shot adventure, then it could be very awesome. Playing it as a campaign will be too slow because the PCs will rarely be teamed up, so there will be plenty of solo DMing while the others have nothing to do. As a Pbp, it could be incredibly slow as well, because of the nature of the plot, so you'll have people go out of sync and you'll have to catch people up often.

[sol_kanar]

What if the outsider contacted N teams of people, instead of just N?

Maybe one team per kingdom, or nation of your world, or Plane, or...whatever. So, not only the players would be motivated to work together, but they would also have the pride/burden of representing their nation.

As an added value, encounters featuring squad of PCs vs squad of NPCs are extremely fun and tactical to play, at least in my opinion :-)

[Ranting Fool]

As an added value, encounters featuring squad of PCs vs squad of NPCs are extremely fun and tactical to play, at least in my opinion :-)

And one of the most dangerous depending on how Opt the NPC party is.

As for getting PC's to go do X, it's fine. Though others are right when saying there needs to be some sort of downside/danger and time limit to help keep things moving along. "One of those chosen is an Evil X who will use his/her/its wish to do X!!!! Which is bad news for everyone"

I tend to find a lot of RPG's is about the journey (as long as they have a good solid reason to go on the journey to begin with)

[NikitaDarkstar]

@Umbranar:

The way I immagined it, one of the players would be chosen to play, and the others would help him. In PRGs working together is usually important.

@Novawurmson:

See above. Only one of the players is participating at the beginning. The others may try to kill him and take his place, or they could decide to work together and somehow split the reward.

No, don't! You'll end up with a "chosen one" situation within the group where the plot centers around one player. This will lead to him being more important, and your game falling apart if something happens to that player.

It'd be better to have them artifact hunters split into teams from the beginning. Four people working together towards the same goal (they each get a wish) and other, similar teams competing against them.

That said I'm not quite sure if I'd play or not, it depends on how it looked when it was fleshed out. (And what system you decided to run it in.)

[Tahlspar Ka'nes]

Isn't this the general plot of the Dragonball anime with some details muddled?

Seems more like "Mortal Kombat"... especially with one player being the "chosen one".

NikitaDarkstar has it correct though... whilst players will work together, too much tension/jealousy will result if one player is the focus.

[Yora]

Well, I am not saying that it could not be fun.
But I would not want to play it.

[Oracle_Hunter]

No, don't! You'll end up with a "chosen one" situation within the group where the plot centers around one player. This will lead to him being more important, and your game falling apart if something happens to that player.

QFT

Better to institutionalize it more: the Outsider selects a group of N people in each region to form teams, and all surviving members of the last team standing each get a wish. Since this is a known quantity the whole world will be interested in influencing the result, which is basically the foundation of your campaign.

I'd remove the "artifact collect" portion and just focus on the killing. Make it interesting and permit any Chosen to (willingly, without magical compulsion) forsake his status to any other individual (including other Chosen) if they want out of the game. Now you can win by causing other Chosen to surrender in addition to killing them -- and you can have new "Chosen" who have coerced weaker Chosen to give them their status. Have each revocation permanent (once you revoke, you can't receive someone's Chosen status) to give it some weight.

Oh yeah, and if you're resurrected while Chosen, you lose your status but you can still regain your status by making another Chosen "cry uncle."

EDIT: Also, get rid of the scrolls. Have each Chosen have a "mental compass" to every other Chosen in the world including their name and face. Teams can only ever have N member, but unanimous consent by the current surviving team can add new members up to the limit. Once in a team, you cannot leave it unless you die or revoke your Chosen status.

...if this sounds good, I can write up a cleaner description of the rules

[Rorrik]

Better yet, the players have gotten their hands on someone else's scroll, they can pass it around(stealing it from each other) to keep the other players from considering them a threat. Members not possessing the scroll bear the artifacts, giving them a huge edge on the other seekers.

[Lord.Sorasen]

Make it tangible.
If the heroes fail to obtain the artifacts for the powerful entity, then they are will be slain and some other bad thing happens too. Say, their home city will be destroyed.
The wish is just... meh.

A wish is a huge deal though! A real unlimited wish is unlimited power. People have done significantly worse for far less.

I've played a campaign where threat of death or worse doesn't allow me to make my own choices, and I have to say these story types always feel like a heavy railroad. If I wanted to have a threat of death, I could make it that my family is horribly disease stricken and only the artifacts can save them. I can be someone who wants power, or wealth, or someone who is seeking to bring someone back from the dead, or someone wishing for true love. The possibilities with something this general are endless and I feel that's more a strength than a weakness.

Now, onto the next part:

I like the campaign idea, but I have a feeling it will mean mostly that the players will end up killing each other, failing to work together, etc. It also feels like a game where having more than one perspective would be a pretty cool thing. I think without a real system of PVP this is something that might fall a bit on its face.

[v072]

It seems like a fun idea, but I have a few questions. Are these ordinary people with no powers or anything like that? What do you do to keep people involved after their character dies? How is the wish going to work? It is a good reward, but having the wish at the end makes it seem like it doesn't affect gameplay at all (For clarification I mean to say the wish doesn't really matter because it happens in the cinematic epilogue).

[The Dark Fiddler]

I think the idea isn't really that bad. It could use some fine-tuning, to add some extra twists in (as others said, is the outsider really planning on delivering? why does he want the artifacts), but there's one major flaw (which has also been covered already).

I would strongly suggest against having one player be chosen to play, and the rest supporting them. I don't know the group you may be planning to play this with, but it takes a very mature group to have one character be the "main character", and they'd all have to come up with a motivation for helping him in the first place. Having each player be a contestant makes them working together even less likely, however. It's a bit of a sticky situation.

As such, I'd suggest playing this as a solo game, modifying the game so entire teams are recruited (which will be a lot of work for you, designing 17+ teams), or not inviting anybody who can't handle playing a minor character in terms of the main plot (which isn't a personal flaw; it's very unfun for some people, which is a reasonable thing).