Reverse Game?

[K Man]

So, this Memorial day weekend I was on a short camping trip with some of the buddies from here (Japic, Specs and respective wives/GFs) and something came up around the fire that sparked my interest. We were talking D&D and how our tabletop game has the potential to hit 20th level here shortly and what to do after that...go epic, go with something new, go home etc when Japic's Girlfriend blurts out;

"Why don't we go backwards now?"

At first I laughed, but like those TV shows where someone suddenly has an epiphany, I stopped and thought to myself, 'what a great idea'!!

Imagine a game where players begin as living legends, 20th level PCs that are just awesome in their own right. But something is happening to their world where negative levels are acquired on a regular basis (like leveling up, but down instead). They uncover the mystery, continue to dig deeper but are unable to stop the drain of their levels and those around them...a sort of de-evolution if you will (of course immune to death ward and similar effects for the sake of gameplay) until they finally reach the climactic battle at 1st level! Imagine starting as an archmage and getting to your BBEG fight with little more than a single casting of magic missle, or your fighter getting one attack at +4 against a pack of kobolds without the use of cleave.

I don't know, it just struck me as uniquely fun and really made for Play by Post gaming as we can store 'snapshots' of our PC at various levels and just roll back as we progress...er degress rather.

What do you guys think? Does this have potential?

[Rojito]

i dunno it would be interesting, but what about Gear? being a level 20 with level 1 gear would suck, but no so bad for people like Mages vs fighters. on the flip side a fighter at level 1 with level 20 gear is OP, while mage is not so impressive.or level adjusted Races?I'd play, no questions asked, even have a rough idea of What i'd play, but there are some things that would help the people start down the path of creation

[Japic]

I rather liked this idea 'round the campfire, and reading your above summary the biggest question I have is "what heppens to the big items that the character's have acquired?" 20th level PCs are going to have lots of stuff obviously. Most of those items would continue to function down through levels. Seems strange for your 1st level wizard to have a robe of the archmagi for instance. Though that unto itsself would still give the end battle a reason to be beefier than normal 1st level PCs could handle.

Were such a game to be played, I'd like to get in on that action.

[TheUdjat]

Interesting. It would either be awesome or a disaster, I think. Tricky to run, if only because high-level games are a pain to run as-is. Definitely a unique concept, though.

The bigget problem I see is that it breaks one of the core principles of D&D: being rewarded for progressing through the game and accomplishing goals. If you are instead getting progressively worse as the game goes on, I could see it casting 'advancement' in a negative light. Even though I can objectively say that it's cool and interesting and whatnot, I think subconsciously it might be a bummer to lose that 'level up!' moment.

I probably wouldn't commit to it as a game, as I'm not totally crazy about it. But I would observe.

[K Man]

As for the magic item problem, this would be fixed if it were 4th edition. They have level caps on items to prevent misuse by lower levels. Imagine having to sell your Robe of the Archmagi to fund the purchase of a Cloak of Resistance +1 (Among a million other things). However, since this is decidedly NOT 4th Ed. (yet), we'd have to have a mechanic to prevent the misuse of magic items by these PCs as they descrease.

To address Udjat's concern, while it would negate the level up factor, it would be replaced by an urgency to solve the problem. Can you get to the source of the trouble by 5th level? By 10th? The excitement of new and improved would be replaced by the urgency to survive. I dunno, not necessarily a tradeoff but still a driving force for sure.

[BluSpecs]

It sounds like an interesting premise. It would have to be heavily story Dependant to make it work I think. It would have to be a doozy.

Would the level loss effect monsters to? dragons digressing in age? and infant tarresque?

To solve the item problem would you have certain item power only be usable by a user of a certain level or above?

[anoba]

May 27, 2008 11:51:18 GMT -5 BluSpecs said:

Would the level loss effect monsters to? dragons digressing in age? and infant tarresque?

Infant tarrasque?! LMAO, "Help! Help! There's a little turtle destroying our village!"

[TheUdjat]

The final villain should be some commoner who's tired of getting kicked around by high-level PCs. Just happened to get his hands on an artifact or something.

[MaestroXC]

Maybe someone with a level in Warrior. All wielding his masterwork pitchfork.

Seriously, this sounds pretty interesting. I may be up for it, depending if Rojito gets his short going before then.

[TheZebraShakes™]

It would definately give you a chance to go back and use those cool looking monsters from some of the new books that you couldn't use at the time 'cause your current characters were too high of a level by that point.

I'm not sure how well it would work though. It could get really frustrating in the leveling down process. It's hard enough leveling up with all of that math.

If you can find a way to make it work, more power to you, but I'm not sure, like TheUdjat, I'm not all that crazy about the idea.

on a similar note, my game is also approching the 20th level mark. We're going to have a huge scale war and maybe a few other things.

Probably won't go epic, but the idea of what to do next has been settled already if we should continue on with another game starting at low level.

We'd carry on the same campaign, but about sixteen years or so in the future. The characters would be the children of our current characters. They'd get to follow in the footprints of their mom/dad/aunt/uncle and take on all sorts of new quests.

They do that a lot in books, but it's never the same cause you're two attatched to the old characters to care about their kids and the author's struggle to make a little more money off of the series, but in one's own roleplaying game, it shows some promise

[Rojito]

As to my short, i didn't get very many takers so maybe i will hold off for awhile then re-offer it when people are better situated into the summer,

[VemuKhaham]

What I initially thought when I saw the title Reverse Game, was something different. When I read the leveling down and all, it still agreed with my own idea. However, like TZS and Udjat, I'm not sure if just leveling down is a nice thing. My own interpretation of Reverse Game was more like an actual game that is reversed chronologically. You start at the last chapter, then go back to the beginning. Anyone know the movie Memento? Like that.

But hey, Memento was a bitch to watch and understand, so making a gameplot with reversed chronology like that would probably be even more difficult.

Still, in such a game, the reversed leveling would work, naturally.

Just my thoughts.

[Lin]

These types of things tend to work best on a one session basis. I mean, every once in a while, its fun to start with a hilarious ending to a single session arc, then spend the rest of the session figuring out how the party got their. I dread the directorial challenge of trying to work backwards on a protracted basis of a party first hand.

Now, what would be kind of cool is to do it on a third hand basis, where the main characters (the regular party) are uncovering a secondary storyline piece by piece. The "actual" story is still handled in a linear fashion, but the secondary plot, which may well be the focus of the narrative, is uncovered in a non-linear fashion.