Survivor RPG

[prufock]

Hey all, I'm looking for a little help with a concept. I'm trying to figure out how I would structure a "reality show"-like campaign similar to Survivor, Big Brother, Amazing Race, etc. In this case, of course, the challenges would be things like completing a dungeon, fighting a monster, etc. All of this is no problem. The sticky point occurs when we look at one staple of these types of competitions: elimination. Whether it's by vote, coming in last place in a challenge, or what have you, these shows all have that in common.

This creates a challenge in designing this type of campaign, because you want to keep your players around! Having a character eliminated means the player has nothing to do. I've considered having each player make a set of multiple characters (let's say for sake of argument there are 4 players, each with 4 characters), but I'm still struggling with how such a campaign would be laid out.

If you have any ideas or suggestions, let's hear it!

[Grod_The_Giant]

Don't treat the players as individual competitors; not only will you run into the elimination problem, but you'll quite likely foster an unhealthy play environment. Instead, treat the PARTY as the competitor, one of several in the competition. That way everyone has to work together to win.

[JBPuffin]

Are you planning on playing it straight? If the competition whittled down to just the PCs, then something changed...that'd be fun.

[prufock]

Don't treat the players as individual competitors; not only will you run into the elimination problem, but you'll quite likely foster an unhealthy play environment. Instead, treat the PARTY as the competitor, one of several in the competition. That way everyone has to work together to win.

You're probably right about that. I'm concerned that it might lead to protecting the PCs from elimination, making it feel forced.

Are you planning on playing it straight? If the competition whittled down to just the PCs, then something changed...that'd be fun.

Yeah, it's possible they discover something about the competition -- like an ulterior motive on the part of the organizers -- that turns the competition on its head.

[Grod_The_Giant]

You're probably right about that. I'm concerned that it might lead to protecting the PCs from elimination, making it feel forced.


Yeah, it's possible they discover something about the competition -- like an ulterior motive on the part of the organizers -- that turns the competition on its head.

I mean, the general assumption in any game is that the PCs are able to clear the challenges ahead of them, but... I guess you could maybe combine them? When and if the PCs get eliminated, then the secret plot takes over?

[lightningcat]

You might take a look at X-Crawl, it covers a lot of those bases already.

[RedMage125]

You might take a look at X-Crawl, it covers a lot of those bases already.

Beat me to it.

However, Xcrawl is 3.0 and was never updated to 3.5e. While that's not too much work in conversion, may I suggest Maximum Xcrawl? It was a Kickstarter Project by Goodman Games to update Xcrawl to Pathfinder ruleset.