I need some help with ideas on how to resolve a story thread
The premise is, there is a village stuck in a 1hr time loop that was caused by a wizard in town who messed with some ancient Ruins under the village. Only the Party (4 level 1 adventurers) and the wizard are out of the timeloop. Ive got everything else figured out except an interesting way for it to be resolved. Has anyone got an interesting idea?
So what did he mess with exactly in the ruins? An artifact he didn’t understand? Did he remove something from the ruins? Is there an ancient spirit that swore to guard something in the ruins that got removed and so he/she/they have put this curse on the village until the artifact is returned? If you start asking the why and how of the curse/time loop, you’ll be surprised at what solutions you come up with. Every time you get an answer to why ask why of that answer and follow the trail.
That is a really tricky scenario. Cool idea, but tricky.
Worst comes to worst, you just put a bunch of crazy stuff in the ruins, let the players play with all the random stuff and do weird things for awhile until one of them does something cool or whatever then just say that was the solution, lol.
This sounds like a case where you let the creativity of the players take over. You don't have to plan the resolution, let your players come up with and explore ideas and you can just go with one or some variant of something they propose that sounds interesting. The players almost always have more creativity than the DM, so use it :)
Worst case, if they don't come up with something you could say something powered the time loop and it ran out of power eventually.
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"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
Worst case... write off the time loop and all that entirely, as they all had been victimized by a dream spell or modify memory for that, as a “team building” thing, before their real adventure begins. Then you just got to make someone who did that to them for later on. A bridge to cross later.
I need some help with ideas on how to resolve a story thread
The premise is, there is a village stuck in a 1hr time loop that was caused by a wizard in town who messed with some ancient Ruins under the village. Only the Party (4 level 1 adventurers) and the wizard are out of the timeloop. Ive got everything else figured out except an interesting way for it to be resolved. Has anyone got an interesting idea?
Thank you in advance!
Groundhog Day and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children both broach a similar concept for 24 hr period. Edge of Tomorrow also delves into the topic a bit, while Loopers has some possible applications to the origins of the device. They can both give you some ideas about how it affects the citizens of the town, give you some ideas about the dynamic of how the different things affect the non-looped people, and give you some ideas about what kinds of things can happen because of the loop. Notably, the characters could use Friends without the backlash on a looped NPC since the loop would probably reset the NPC's memory. The backlash would still occur until the reset, but then the NPC would have no memory of it.
To your question directly, did the wizard actually cause the loop or did someone or something else cause it and the wizard just things that they did it since it coincided with their time in the ruins? If so, did one of the townspeople notice the other person or thing prior to getting looped or does one have knowledge of the curse? If the party doesn't talk to the townspeople, what other ways could they find out the information? Is there a small library with a section detailing the ruins? Where is the other creature so that the party can encounter them?
If the wizard did do it, what was s/he hoping to accomplish messing with the stuff? How did the wizard discover the ruins? What is the origins of the ruins (mainly to find out how malicious the creators intent was in creating something that could loop time) and what was it's purpose (was it intended to be an ultimate defense against attackers, a quasi mind wipe tool, a con artists ultimate information gathering device, or something else?
Hopefully these questions will give you ideas about what the resolution could be or help you answer the question sufficiently to either ask the right question to discover it or get you close enough to an answer that your party will suggest something that you decide is the answer.
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Hi!
I need some help with ideas on how to resolve a story thread
The premise is, there is a village stuck in a 1hr time loop that was caused by a wizard in town who messed with some ancient Ruins under the village. Only the Party (4 level 1 adventurers) and the wizard are out of the timeloop. Ive got everything else figured out except an interesting way for it to be resolved. Has anyone got an interesting idea?
Thank you in advance!
So what did he mess with exactly in the ruins? An artifact he didn’t understand? Did he remove something from the ruins? Is there an ancient spirit that swore to guard something in the ruins that got removed and so he/she/they have put this curse on the village until the artifact is returned? If you start asking the why and how of the curse/time loop, you’ll be surprised at what solutions you come up with. Every time you get an answer to why ask why of that answer and follow the trail.
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That is a really tricky scenario. Cool idea, but tricky.
Worst comes to worst, you just put a bunch of crazy stuff in the ruins, let the players play with all the random stuff and do weird things for awhile until one of them does something cool or whatever then just say that was the solution, lol.
This sounds like a case where you let the creativity of the players take over. You don't have to plan the resolution, let your players come up with and explore ideas and you can just go with one or some variant of something they propose that sounds interesting. The players almost always have more creativity than the DM, so use it :)
Worst case, if they don't come up with something you could say something powered the time loop and it ran out of power eventually.
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
Worst case... write off the time loop and all that entirely, as they all had been victimized by a dream spell or modify memory for that, as a “team building” thing, before their real adventure begins. Then you just got to make someone who did that to them for later on. A bridge to cross later.
Blank
Thanks everyone :) I really appreciate the input
Groundhog Day and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children both broach a similar concept for 24 hr period. Edge of Tomorrow also delves into the topic a bit, while Loopers has some possible applications to the origins of the device. They can both give you some ideas about how it affects the citizens of the town, give you some ideas about the dynamic of how the different things affect the non-looped people, and give you some ideas about what kinds of things can happen because of the loop. Notably, the characters could use Friends without the backlash on a looped NPC since the loop would probably reset the NPC's memory. The backlash would still occur until the reset, but then the NPC would have no memory of it.
To your question directly, did the wizard actually cause the loop or did someone or something else cause it and the wizard just things that they did it since it coincided with their time in the ruins? If so, did one of the townspeople notice the other person or thing prior to getting looped or does one have knowledge of the curse? If the party doesn't talk to the townspeople, what other ways could they find out the information? Is there a small library with a section detailing the ruins? Where is the other creature so that the party can encounter them?
If the wizard did do it, what was s/he hoping to accomplish messing with the stuff? How did the wizard discover the ruins? What is the origins of the ruins (mainly to find out how malicious the creators intent was in creating something that could loop time) and what was it's purpose (was it intended to be an ultimate defense against attackers, a quasi mind wipe tool, a con artists ultimate information gathering device, or something else?
Hopefully these questions will give you ideas about what the resolution could be or help you answer the question sufficiently to either ask the right question to discover it or get you close enough to an answer that your party will suggest something that you decide is the answer.