I am that tool that loves time loop stories. Groundhog day, edge of tomorrow, boss level, etc.. all great movies to me. The videogame "The sexy Brutale" I loved since it's a hotel with murders happening in a time loop over a day and you have to find a way to stop them all in one day.
I always thought it would be cool to let players have a week that loops on it'self. However DND doesn't lend itself to the undo button very well and I need to figure out a few hurdles to get past. Consider this high level scenario:
The players start by waking up and play out a week in their game. Armies move, world events unfold, evil summons happen, etc... and at the end they are in a CLEARLY overmatched encounter and deleted in a round or two. They then wake up at the beginning but with the same knowledge, levels, and starting items they had when they died. They continue this way until they can stop the big bad and break the loop for whatever reason
Already we have several problems from a dnd standpoint:
Movies and games like this have the ability to eventually fast forward and montage interactions up to a point to avoid making the player / viewer relive the same thing over and over as the hero figures out how to achieve specific goals, or acquire specific items.
How can this be easily tracked for dnd players and in a way they can buy into it as a mechanic they can wield and not some rule they have to follow? Maybe they are mid to late game and they say "ok we go back and do it again up until day three just after I acquired the staff of mcGuffin and pick up from there." For that particular play through I have to remember and have tracked all their specific interactions and achievements up to that point.
To further complicate things, I need to map out where each NPC / villan is and what they are doing at each hour in the day if the loop plays out unaltered.
When this DOES get altered by player interaction how can I easily track or note that iteration's alterations. I don't want to pause the game and go write out everything that lead to this moment.
You get the idea.
I'd almost like some way for players to bookmark or snapshot a place in time so instead of resetting all the way, they only appear in the story when it gets to the marker they created.
I dunno but as you can see there is the potential for catastrophe in story management and I would not want the players to get bogged down in repeating the same thing over and over.
Ideas? any other pitfalls? Anyone done this before? how did it go and how did you overcome your obsticles?
Yeah I love those time loop stories to, and have often thought about making an adventure incorporating it...
I have no qualms about Montages sequences or fades to black as a DM as I know my players enjoy the story/adventure I'm weaving and are ok with it... I realize this may well not be to everyone's taste... you just need to know your players
I think for a time loop adventure/story to work it has to be relatively short, even if it covers millenia. the basic reason is the more scenes you have the more iterations you have to keep track of and the novelty of being trapped within a loop wears off quickly...
I would approach the design of it much like a flowchart or classic choose your own adventure style book with definite outcomes/choices leading onto other scenes, that would be the core or key to breaking the loop.
super topic will be keenly following wishing you all the best
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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
Yeah I'm using https://twinery.org/ right now to order events, I can export / import the story to duplicate it and each time simply edit the changes I think. Will see how this goes.
Yeah I love those time loop stories to, and have often thought about making an adventure incorporating it...
I have no qualms about Montages sequences or fades to black as a DM as I know my players enjoy the story/adventure I'm weaving and are ok with it... I realize this may well not be to everyone's taste... you just need to know your players
I think for a time loop adventure/story to work it has to be relatively short, even if it covers millenia. the basic reason is the more scenes you have the more iterations you have to keep track of and the novelty of being trapped within a loop wears off quickly...
I would approach the design of it much like a flowchart or classic choose your own adventure style book with definite outcomes/choices leading onto other scenes, that would be the core or key to breaking the loop.
super topic will be keenly following wishing you all the best
I agree very heavily here. You as a DM probably have to solidly plan(or make it easily possible for the characters to discover) options that would improve the overall chance of the the PC's being triumphant or at least, improving at every reiteration of the scenario. Maybe they even have a catastrophic failure week(maniacally planned by the DM).
If you sandbox this type of campaign and make it completely dependent on character actions, I feel that would provide the most variance and put a lot of work on your shoulders. I wouldn't recommend it but, some DMs and players might like this extreme challenge.
wanted to add some thoughts to the pulling off a time loop conundrum...
The Time loop trigger - A lot of thought has to go into the time loop trigger for it to work well in a adventure game, specifically I think it needs to be quite independent of the players like a time bomb that will go off and reset the loop if the players do nothing...
Memory loss - one of the key features time loop stories incorporate is memory loss of the populace and in some cases even the protagonists, In an time loop adventure I think you want your players to be the exception they retain their memories this should preferably come with a compelling explanation why...
Oh and thanks for that twinery link @DasAmigo looks super useful will definitely be checking it out
“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
One way to simplify this is to minimize the points where events affect each other. In terms of a flowchart, you'd have several branches emerge right away and move parallel with each other. It is only the points where those branches feed back into each other that you need to figure out what happened elsewhere.
Take a few key figures and plan out their week assuming no intervention. Connect the rest of the world to their actions and if the party messes up their plans, just try to react in a realistic way. Keep in mind that having too much detail about how things are "supposed" to go will box you in and leave no room for you to improvise off the players' actions.
I think it can be less complicated than you expect. When we did this, it actually worked out pretty well. The points that we wanted to "montage" to were fairly obvious and easy to remember, and with the quest pieces generally being parallel tracks we didn't need to resolve many decision points before getting to where we wanted to pick up the story again.
One warning I'd give is to go easy on the overmatched encounters as a way to end the loop with a TPK. It's definitely a key part of the trope, but as a player it is still disheartening to lose over and over. Give them small wins in every loop and don't spend too long playing out encounters in which the party has no hope of success.
Don't do short term for time loop, give the players the capability to go way back in time to get some magic item that is powerful but not necessary to time. Then tempt the players with things about the world they could change, but don't tell them. As an example, put in powerful artifacts that was used for certain fights, and if they get greedy, the Mountain Dwarves was killed off by the Duergar, all Mountain Dwarfs are now Duergar with memory of what they've done, can they bring Moradin back? Or maybe there is precious gems that were used to bribe barbarians from sacking a major city - well the players take it and that city is now the Ghoul Lords home and the players remember what they did. If there's something you or your players don't like about the world, now's the chance to reset/change it. Or maybe it was an evil artifact they stole, so now their favorite bawdy town, is now run by a Lawful Good Paladin cult that is full on authoritarian, oopsie no bars, no illicit goods trading and no more magic item sales to non town Army members, and they better not spit on the ground.
Very late addition to this, but I managed to pull off a groundhog day style single-day time loop adventure in a city. I had an organized spreadsheet for where each important NPC/group within the city was for each hour of the day. I had several events going on that the party could get involved with, most of which would reveal information about the loop and how to stop it. Many others were combat encounters with the factions that were causing the loop. Each day the party tackled one or two of the events - fumbling many of them until they knew what was happening -- before managing to complete them all within the single day.
Accomplishing a loop like this took a lot of planning, and even more improvisation. It was very rewarding for both my players, and myself.
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I am that tool that loves time loop stories. Groundhog day, edge of tomorrow, boss level, etc.. all great movies to me. The videogame "The sexy Brutale" I loved since it's a hotel with murders happening in a time loop over a day and you have to find a way to stop them all in one day.
I always thought it would be cool to let players have a week that loops on it'self. However DND doesn't lend itself to the undo button very well and I need to figure out a few hurdles to get past. Consider this high level scenario:
The players start by waking up and play out a week in their game. Armies move, world events unfold, evil summons happen, etc... and at the end they are in a CLEARLY overmatched encounter and deleted in a round or two. They then wake up at the beginning but with the same knowledge, levels, and starting items they had when they died. They continue this way until they can stop the big bad and break the loop for whatever reason
Already we have several problems from a dnd standpoint:
You get the idea.
I'd almost like some way for players to bookmark or snapshot a place in time so instead of resetting all the way, they only appear in the story when it gets to the marker they created.
I dunno but as you can see there is the potential for catastrophe in story management and I would not want the players to get bogged down in repeating the same thing over and over.
Ideas? any other pitfalls? Anyone done this before? how did it go and how did you overcome your obsticles?
Yeah I love those time loop stories to, and have often thought about making an adventure incorporating it...
I have no qualms about Montages sequences or fades to black as a DM as I know my players enjoy the story/adventure I'm weaving and are ok with it... I realize this may well not be to everyone's taste... you just need to know your players
I think for a time loop adventure/story to work it has to be relatively short, even if it covers millenia. the basic reason is the more scenes you have the more iterations you have to keep track of and the novelty of being trapped within a loop wears off quickly...
I would approach the design of it much like a flowchart or classic choose your own adventure style book with definite outcomes/choices leading onto other scenes, that would be the core or key to breaking the loop.
super topic will be keenly following wishing you all the best
“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
Yeah I'm using https://twinery.org/ right now to order events, I can export / import the story to duplicate it and each time simply edit the changes I think. Will see how this goes.
I agree very heavily here. You as a DM probably have to solidly plan(or make it easily possible for the characters to discover) options that would improve the overall chance of the the PC's being triumphant or at least, improving at every reiteration of the scenario. Maybe they even have a catastrophic failure week(maniacally planned by the DM).
If you sandbox this type of campaign and make it completely dependent on character actions, I feel that would provide the most variance and put a lot of work on your shoulders. I wouldn't recommend it but, some DMs and players might like this extreme challenge.
Thanks @Wtfdndad
wanted to add some thoughts to the pulling off a time loop conundrum...
The Time loop trigger - A lot of thought has to go into the time loop trigger for it to work well in a adventure game, specifically I think it needs to be quite independent of the players like a time bomb that will go off and reset the loop if the players do nothing...
Memory loss - one of the key features time loop stories incorporate is memory loss of the populace and in some cases even the protagonists, In an time loop adventure I think you want your players to be the exception they retain their memories this should preferably come with a compelling explanation why...
Oh and thanks for that twinery link @DasAmigo looks super useful will definitely be checking it out
“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
One way to simplify this is to minimize the points where events affect each other. In terms of a flowchart, you'd have several branches emerge right away and move parallel with each other. It is only the points where those branches feed back into each other that you need to figure out what happened elsewhere.
Take a few key figures and plan out their week assuming no intervention. Connect the rest of the world to their actions and if the party messes up their plans, just try to react in a realistic way. Keep in mind that having too much detail about how things are "supposed" to go will box you in and leave no room for you to improvise off the players' actions.
I think it can be less complicated than you expect. When we did this, it actually worked out pretty well. The points that we wanted to "montage" to were fairly obvious and easy to remember, and with the quest pieces generally being parallel tracks we didn't need to resolve many decision points before getting to where we wanted to pick up the story again.
One warning I'd give is to go easy on the overmatched encounters as a way to end the loop with a TPK. It's definitely a key part of the trope, but as a player it is still disheartening to lose over and over. Give them small wins in every loop and don't spend too long playing out encounters in which the party has no hope of success.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Super helpful all, I appreciate it!
Don't do short term for time loop, give the players the capability to go way back in time to get some magic item that is powerful but not necessary to time. Then tempt the players with things about the world they could change, but don't tell them. As an example, put in powerful artifacts that was used for certain fights, and if they get greedy, the Mountain Dwarves was killed off by the Duergar, all Mountain Dwarfs are now Duergar with memory of what they've done, can they bring Moradin back? Or maybe there is precious gems that were used to bribe barbarians from sacking a major city - well the players take it and that city is now the Ghoul Lords home and the players remember what they did. If there's something you or your players don't like about the world, now's the chance to reset/change it. Or maybe it was an evil artifact they stole, so now their favorite bawdy town, is now run by a Lawful Good Paladin cult that is full on authoritarian, oopsie no bars, no illicit goods trading and no more magic item sales to non town Army members, and they better not spit on the ground.
Very late addition to this, but I managed to pull off a groundhog day style single-day time loop adventure in a city. I had an organized spreadsheet for where each important NPC/group within the city was for each hour of the day. I had several events going on that the party could get involved with, most of which would reveal information about the loop and how to stop it. Many others were combat encounters with the factions that were causing the loop. Each day the party tackled one or two of the events - fumbling many of them until they knew what was happening -- before managing to complete them all within the single day.
Accomplishing a loop like this took a lot of planning, and even more improvisation. It was very rewarding for both my players, and myself.