I know it has already been discussed about how to link games together, but I had an idea.
1) Someone (more talented than me) can write a narrative setting up the game. Which villian, which specific heroes, and where it takes place.
2) A bunch of people play the exact same game and send in the results: who won, who was incapacitated, memorable moments, etc.
3) Based on the info, another narrative is written describing the battle and setting up scene for the next one, which would further the villian's master plans.
This is an awesome idea. I'm trying to write a narrative AAR of one of my earlier games, but currently I'm in a pre-finals period and don't quite have the time I thought I'd have had for it.
Having multiple perspectives and input from the other players to the writer would be an awesome thing! If you want help on this, I'm willing to pitch in.
I'd be willing to give this try. If you want, you can randomize up a hero team, villain, and environment, and I'll do my best to come up with a scenario for you.
I like writing stuff, that'd be interesting. We never shape our games with any kind of RP or anything - we just play them pretty mechanically, really. But I don't mind writing for someone else ;).
Are we talking like a traveling story (like that game where one person writes a sentence and and the next persons draws that sentence and hides the written sentence and the next person tries to write a sentence describing that drawing and so on) where one person writes the set up, people play, the next person takes the result and sees where it's going for the next set-up? (Instead of having one person do all the writing)
Wow. Ok didn't expect so many people to say they are willing to write the narrative. How do we decide who writes the first one? Also, if different people write inbetween each game, is there still a way to maintain an overall evil master plan?
Doesn't anybody have any strong feeling aboput the narrative changing gameplpay? For exmaple, if the narrative ends with the heroes being chased by a t-rex, can the t-rex start the game in play?
Well for one thing, having one person commit to always writing the narrative is something of a burden. And, (this is just my opinion though) having a twisting ever-changing evil plan would be really entertaining and allow for more variety (PLUS the randomness of the card draw will probably torpedo evil plans anyway- no plan survives encounter with the environment deck)
I think having the story affect the game play would be at least in part the point. But we'd have to somehow heal the poor heroes from one game to the next or this will be a very short story.
One thing I do think we could institute- any hero who is incapacitated is out of the story for either the whole thing or for a set period of time.
Define strict rules: Like "These people have to be there" or like what I just suggested with the incap heroes are out of the game? The first is a restriction on their cleverness, the second is a rules to the game.
The second for sure (I want the creativeness). Personally, I don;t care if one author switches out a incap hero, while another just bring him back (we don;t know how long between games anyways).
I also wanted to add, that I agree that the story should change the gameplay, but I hope it doesn't restrict the author in trying to make a balanced game. For example, it could be great for the story for BB to have 3 MDP out, but not great for the heroes.
its not necessarily a restriction to cleverness. it in fact requires you to be more clever to work in situations you normally wouldn’t.
Also I wouldn’t consider HP health. consider it how lucky the heroes are to avoid incapacitating blows. bigger more devastating hits take more luck, skill, and stamina to avoid, and doing so makes it harder to avoid the next. When you finally run out of hp you just can’t get out of the way fast enough. This fits perfectly with inspiring presence.
and gets rid of that pesky ‘how did they heal’ between battles leaving it as just needing a rest
Well, I mean you could also say "There will always be four heroes" and if someone is incap'd, then a FV helicopter drops in a new person (or Fanatic gets a message from God to come help or Omnitron-X or Chrono-Ranger open up a time portal or Visionary gets a premonition that she needs to get over to the site)
Or perhaps the "rule" is that the author just has to make sure that it makes sense. you can bring back an incap but you have to explain it.
Maybe you could institute another rule that there can only be one target beyond the set-up rules in play (enivornment, hero, or villain) so the T-rex could carry over, or BB could end up with 2 MDPs or something, but not both. Just to prevent unfairness.
I guess the question is: do you want this to be primarily just someone describing what happens or someone manipulating and interacting with the players and the game? To me, it would be more dynamic if there are some serious consequences versus just having a person retroactively describe what happened.
I would want the author to be much more like a GM than a simple text box describing a scenario (like in a wargame). However, I don't think it would would be too fun if you have to try to maximize your HP every game knowing it will carry over.
There are also some major balancing issues to be worried about. For example, what if the Scholar didn't have the highest HP?
One thing that would be awesome though, is that if between games the heroes change to a promo card and there is a good reason for it.
I’m confused on how scholar having the highest hp would matter at all? Then idea is that a scenario is presented. legacy, wraith and tachyon have to assault the bb as he invades Megalopolis. we all go play a game, submit our results to the Storyteller. He finds out the stats. In the majority of the games the heroes won, and wraith was incapacitated in the majority of them too. He then writes a story with these results, and ties it into the next scenario.
it be taking the results from all of our games, finding the most common factors and denominators and making that the result of the story.
The St would need to determine what factors are important to report. win/loss and heroes incapacitated of course, but also ‘did the t Rex show up?’ or did the villain flip ect.
It wouldn't. Forgot what example I wanted to give.
EDIT: Basically everything else you said is what I was trying to do.
EDIT2: I guess I was thinking of a middle-weight suuddenly being the highest HP with out any real way to counter being the constant target. I think I am thinking about this too much. I will stop (thinking) now.
I remember being in a game on Google where there were too many people playing, and I opted to play the villan and environment. I thought it was rather fun, as I tried to make a story out of what was happening. Since we chose random, I had some difficulty, and my improvisational story skills were not quite to the task, but I thought it was fun. Just a thought. Also there's a thread on BGG where there's an actual campaign. Might be worth a check.