This is a 2 player adventure. Extremely long story short, enemies possess the PC's bodies on the material plane. My PC's are currently in a prison domain hidden in the astral plane. Their goal is to free their god and therefore get their powers/bodies back. While in this domain, they have no form. They can only communicate through emotions and have to stay within 30 feet of each other to do that. Fast forward through some shenanigans and they've found the prisoners they were looking for.
And here's the problem I created: they are without form, but they still need to interact with the environment to free the prisoners.
Or do they? How else would they free them? I originally pictured a series of buttons and pullies, then create some kind of dice game or quiz game so they could focus and interact with objects. I'm rethinking it and perhaps I should have been rewarding them with focus points and use those as leverage in a dice game or something something simple as bonus to a new skill check. I was hoping this would be fun and different so I'm up for any type of minigame I could use to simulate focus or touch.
Maybe I'm going about this all wrong. Perhaps I should make them incorporeal and just throw some guards in there and have them do possessions. Feels kind of lame, but I kinda wrote myself into a corner on this one. Any ideas here would be hot, the farther out of the box the better I suppose.
Maybe allowing "possession" of little things like a mouse fly or moth would still let you pose some interaction puzzle of buttons and pulleys you had in mind earlier?
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“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Sometimes all it takes is a little nudge to see what's right in front of you. Huge help!
I went back to earlier in the adventure. One of the way to the prisoners is the demented kitchen. I added a few groups of insect like creatures they can manipulate. Then I went back a little more and added a bunch more insects. Gives the adventure a whole new layer of creepy dead feeling and I love it. They can definitely use the insects to interact with the mechanisms.
And as a second option, yes, duh, not sure why I never thought of it. I originally envisioned the the emotional communication as something just between them. Being able to emotionally influence other, weaker minded creatures, like the guards. It's not possession, and it gets the job done. At the very least they can cause some chaos with it. It's a small but important change, I don't know why I didn't think of.
I was of the mind that their god could see them, but couldn't interact with them. Kind of a huge tease. I did away with that and leaned into the emotion mechanic. It's already there so why not double down? When freed they can use their emotions near the god to grab attention. Once the god realizes what happened; bing, bang, boom, we can work on regaining their forms and get revenge on their enemies.
Super, am glad it helped would be really interesting to hear how it pans out as I really like the scenario you've thought up... I mean whenever you have the time and inclination.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
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This is a 2 player adventure. Extremely long story short, enemies possess the PC's bodies on the material plane. My PC's are currently in a prison domain hidden in the astral plane. Their goal is to free their god and therefore get their powers/bodies back. While in this domain, they have no form. They can only communicate through emotions and have to stay within 30 feet of each other to do that. Fast forward through some shenanigans and they've found the prisoners they were looking for.
And here's the problem I created: they are without form, but they still need to interact with the environment to free the prisoners.
Or do they? How else would they free them? I originally pictured a series of buttons and pullies, then create some kind of dice game or quiz game so they could focus and interact with objects. I'm rethinking it and perhaps I should have been rewarding them with focus points and use those as leverage in a dice game or something something simple as bonus to a new skill check. I was hoping this would be fun and different so I'm up for any type of minigame I could use to simulate focus or touch.
Maybe I'm going about this all wrong. Perhaps I should make them incorporeal and just throw some guards in there and have them do possessions. Feels kind of lame, but I kinda wrote myself into a corner on this one. Any ideas here would be hot, the farther out of the box the better I suppose.
Maybe there are guards who the PCs can manipulate by broadcasting emotions at them? And they can “push” the guards to free the prisoners that way.
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Maybe allowing "possession" of little things like a mouse fly or moth would still let you pose some interaction puzzle of buttons and pulleys you had in mind earlier?
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Could perhaps one of the prisoners see them?
Sometimes all it takes is a little nudge to see what's right in front of you. Huge help!
I went back to earlier in the adventure. One of the way to the prisoners is the demented kitchen. I added a few groups of insect like creatures they can manipulate. Then I went back a little more and added a bunch more insects. Gives the adventure a whole new layer of creepy dead feeling and I love it. They can definitely use the insects to interact with the mechanisms.
And as a second option, yes, duh, not sure why I never thought of it. I originally envisioned the the emotional communication as something just between them. Being able to emotionally influence other, weaker minded creatures, like the guards. It's not possession, and it gets the job done. At the very least they can cause some chaos with it. It's a small but important change, I don't know why I didn't think of.
I was of the mind that their god could see them, but couldn't interact with them. Kind of a huge tease. I did away with that and leaned into the emotion mechanic. It's already there so why not double down? When freed they can use their emotions near the god to grab attention. Once the god realizes what happened; bing, bang, boom, we can work on regaining their forms and get revenge on their enemies.
Thanks everyone!
Super, am glad it helped would be really interesting to hear how it pans out as I really like the scenario you've thought up... I mean whenever you have the time and inclination.
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again