I was talking to a guy at a party who told me about a campaign that he played in at work during his lunch hour. The premise was a Groundhog Day/Majora's Mask/All You Need Is Kill thing where the party is stuck in a time loop just before a major catastrophe and has to try and prevent it. Every time they fail, they wake up again the day before the catastrophe, but with all the XP and knowledge they gained in the previous attempt. In their campaign this also meant that each session had only an hour of realtime before the catastrophe struck.
I love this idea, so I'm stealing it. First, I'm wondering whether this is something that has been prominently done before in a tabletop RPG format? Is there a published version of a thing like this out there somewhere? I'd also like your thoughts on what kind of unique problems this sort of game would create and how you might go about solving them.
Right now, I'm thinking that spell acquisition and selection should play a big part in the campaign, so I'm considering having all spellcaster classes have to learn and prepare spells like wizards. They'll stick to the regular class spell lists, and I can flavor gaining new spells as discovering new songs or seeds or prayers or whatever fits with the class backstory, but mechanically, everyone will have to prepare spells in the morning from a list of the spells that they know. The only way to learn new spells is to gain a level or discover the spells in play. Gold and mundane items can't be accumulated in this setting, but perhaps magic items could be. Maybe items that require attunement are the only things that can travel back with the party. As DM I can also be much more willing than I might otherwise be to let the party encounter things that are way out of their league, since a TPK is the expected end of every session.
From a more practical standpoint, this concept requires a huge prep commitment upfront, since everything the party interacts with has to be in place from session 1. It also makes it tougher to keep going if a player wants to leave or a new player wants to join.
If you aren't familiar with it, there is a popular D&D live play podcast called 'The Adventure Zone', and in their first season they go through an adventure called the Eleventh Hour which is almost identical to what you are describing. You might try giving it a listen to get ideas. Griffin, their DM, has set the adventure up into different zones that the players can travel to to investigate the mystery. Once the party has gotten past a guard, then on all future loops they can just skip past that part since they know exactly what to do.
It's a great adventure idea, which I too will be stealing for a game I am running, so I'm curious to see what the community comes up with.
I'd start with your BBEG: Who are they, and what do they want? Is the time loop intentional (a stalling mechanic for a villain inside the loop?), a trap for the party to get them out of a villains hair (could be an interesting villain, who is trying to capture the party indefinitely to avoid killing them. That could be a cool set up for a paladins fall from grace), or is it something that went wrong and is completely innocent? (A wizard researching a temporal spell has gone crazy and is looping an area around the laboratory?)
Once you know the answer to that question, you can begin crafting the elements that feed into that plot/create the zones that the players will have to investigate.
I think you are on the right path with the way resetting the loop should work. Maybe hold off on giving the characters experience until the end of the story arc, and just keep a running tally. They get all the investigative knowledge, but none of the experience until they solve the mystery at which time they get all the experience. Any spells acquired during the course of the adventure from scrolls, or barters with other magic users I'd let them have at the end of the adventure as well. Since they already role-played it I'd say they can use that knowledge to repeat the same even one last time after the end of the adventure. You could do the same with treasure.
I suppose it really depends how long the adventure is. If you are taking characters from 3rd to 6th level, then you'll have to figure out leveling. You could run it as an adventure that will take the characters from 6th to 7th, and save the experience until the end as I suggested.
There's a third party adventure called "Curse of the Kingspire" that does this. You can find it for 4e D&D and Dungeon Crawl Classics. It has some good ideas when it comes to foreshadowing, although it can be a bit too much. (The ouroboros symbol.) I'd change the proto human barbarians to demons and I'd add some obscure hints to the foreshadowing bits, but I think it's mostly good.
Edit: Oh right, the major difference with the standard time loop is that everyone knows they reset at the end of the loop. The barbarian horde keeps slaughtering the elves for no apparent reason and by the time the adventure starts they really should know better, so it's better to say that they're demons. This means that the adversaries can change tactics and you can change things around from cycle to cycle.
So, new comer Dnd player (started about a year ago) but looking to DM a one shot Dnd sesh based off of groundhogs day (big bad, easy rest, all start fresh at beginning) for my birthday (coincidentally on groundhogs day, which way too many people dismiss as an official holiday). Any tips/tricks?
I really love the stuff I read here , it could help with some ideas in my game. Currently I'm running a Prison break One shot.
it revolves around a group of 6 locked in a prison cell in a dungeon under a mansion. None of the players remember how or why they've been locked up. as they break out, they need to find out through clues what got them there.
first, inside of the cell, their magic is canceled and it takes investigation to figure out how to break out of these cells. The cells are next to one another so through communication and RP they can figure out how to break out. Once they do, they'll have their magic again, however they are all missing their regular clothing and gear (which they also need to find and retrieve.)
The main premise of this one shot is that a certain lesser demon put these characters in a loop in a big mansion. They throughout this game find clues and information, even books with letters on the cover and a riddle on 1 page per book that pieces some story together. In the end the players should have a hand full books all with these letters on the cover, upon re-organizing them these letters should form a sentence which will trigger either their escape OR will reset the loop where they wake up in the cell again.
You really need to be careful here. This concept is very easy to become a repetitive and boring game.
if you think about all the Groundhog Day movies or tv show episodes, you will find all of them skipping the bulk part of repetition starting from the third or the fourth loop, only stops when the progression has a significant divergence, or just skips to the end with a funny ending.
In your game, you can’t really do that because you don’t want the players to know when the opportunity of divergence appears. You want them to figure out.
Think of your players as the characters in those movies: the characters are not enjoying it. Only the audience may enjoy it after probably editing away 99% of the time the characters have experienced.
If you skip too much in the game and only stops at the key moments, the whole game will feel very railroading.
You really need to be careful here. This concept is very easy to become a repetitive and boring game.
if you think about all the Groundhog Day movies or tv show episodes, you will find all of them skipping the bulk part of repetition starting from the third or the fourth loop, only stops when the progression has a significant divergence, or just skips to the end with a funny ending.
In your game, you can’t really do that because you don’t want the players to know when the opportunity of divergence appears. You want them to figure out.
Think of your players as the characters in those movies: the characters are not enjoying it. Only the audience may enjoy it after probably editing away 99% of the time the characters have experienced.
If you skip too much in the game and only stops at the key moments, the whole game will feel very railroading.
I think it is almost impossible to pull it off.
Adding to myself here: however, I think the groundhog day plot is still a cool plot, and there are easier ways to use it.
For example, you can have your major NPCs in your game the ones who are experiencing the time loop, and the party is the key to break it. The party is basically experiencing the last few time loops they are about to help the NPCs break. During their time together, NPCs may tell the party a lot about what they may have done, key decisions, funny endings, etc, even a few secrets they unfolded during the time loop.
Give them checkpoints. They can get back to any part that they previously got to, so that you don't have to go through the repetitive slog.
Example: The party convinces the priest to let them into the catacombs. They walk in, but don't check for traps and immediately die. The party now knows of the trap in there. They start from the start of the catacomb, rather than rolling again to convince the cleric because they know how to convince him in the first place.
So, new comer Dnd player (started about a year ago) but looking to DM a one shot Dnd sesh based off of groundhogs day (big bad, easy rest, all start fresh at beginning) for my birthday (coincidentally on groundhogs day, which way too many people dismiss as an official holiday). Any tips/tricks?
I've been running a time-loop campaign for about six months now. Some advice:
1. Have a player take lots of notes. Lots of notes. Keeping track of what's happened, where it's happened and when it's happened is absolutely crucial to keeping the whole thing on track.
2. Prep as much detail as you can. I did a lot of general high-level setting prep (towns, regions, events, etc) but not a lot of 'in the weeds' prep (shops, minor NPCs) and have had to improv more than I'd like. Improv'd details, in my experience, are just harder to keep track of later as the players repeat the cycle. Remember the players are supposed to see the exact same things over and over so consistent detail is key. This can be mitigated by tip #1.
3. Think about the scope of what you're running. I'm a relatively new DM, and I'm pretty sure I was over-ambitious with my campaign design which is a five-day loop across a five island archipelago. Keep a narrow focus to reduce the number of moving parts and consequences that can arise from player action.
4. Have your ground rules for what happens mechanically to the players during each loop spelled out to the players in session 0. I decided to have milestone leveling that occurs at the start of each loop. A loop would occur when the players got to day 5 and failed the win condition, or if they died prior. I didn't tell the players about this up front, and that caused a lot of friction.
Other thoughts:
Something that's happened that I didn't expect is that even playing near weekly 2 hour sessions, the players have only managed to loop once. So for the most part the game-play mechanic that was supposed to make the campaign "special" has barely impacted it.
Even with death not being permanent and incentivized with level-ups, the players are still extremely death-adverse. The fear of "losing" is stronger than I gave it credit. I think I could have put the players in a better frame of mind about how progression was supposed to work in session 0.
Some great ideas already, but a couple other suggestions.
Use checkpoints. It's the only way to handle the montage aspect of this campaign. Only highlight the deviations from the loop.
Run this as a mini campaign/one shot. It's a great idea, but the novelty is likely to wear thin after a while. If your players are expecting a one-time thing and are "up for anything," it allows you to reserve some of the time loop aspects rather than revealing everything in Session 0.
I would reward experience points for encounters (combat or otherwise) and reserve milestone XP only for "breakthroughs" the PCs make. This way the learning portion feels more impactful.
Consider diversions from the story. The PCs will eventually realize they're likely to die, so give them some opportunities to let off some steam. Maybe an NPC offers them a chance to get away from the apocalypse for a while by traveling to some more remote corner of the world.
Also, related to the above, these diversions might actually lead the PCs to an answer that they couldn't see before.
Consider whether anyone else knows about the time loop. These could be NPC allies or enemies. The PCs might be surprised to discover deviations in the timeline they didn't expect as a result of their actions.
I think the main thing I would have is a get-out clause.
If your party have been through the loop a few times and are getting no closer to the "solution", they are likely to start getting bored. You need to consider alternative ways you could let them break out of the loop without hitting your "solution", and without making it feel like you are just ending it (and they have therefore failed). If it's an intentional time loop created by a wizard or such, maybe he's got what he needed from it, ends it and comes to face the party where they happen to be.
Other than that, the checkpoint idea is good. Allowing them to skip the bits they've already done will help keep them interested. Also, just in case they manage to solve things too easily, add a second "thread" which you can expose.
I am currently running a game that deals with time related issues. For some reason the time continuum is being effected and the players will at times be thrown into a situation where they are pushed into the future or into the past. Each time I use this to give them clues at to what is happening or give them a peak into a very grim future. It has been a challenge but a fun one. I have been able to tie them altogether in relation to their backstories. The reason why they have not been directly effected by the time loops has yet to be discovered. Though I think that that time will be soon. I did bring in the Modron into this game. They are doing audits on just about everything checking to see what belongs and what dose not. This has caused some issues within the world that have sparked the interest of the players. The players are about to find out that the Modron have complacently erased a city. This is because it simply should not be. Its been fun so far. I have been also throwing in da sa vue moments that are very detailed giving them some hints. I do have a couple ways that will allow them to willfully travel through time but they have yet to discover this yet. This will be limited however. The idea is for them to have a strategy and make their move count. The fact that they need to be mindful as to what they do while in a time not of their own has been entertaining as well. They can also effect the future if not careful in a negative way.
Something that might give you ideas about how to handle some of the mechanics is this video from Game Maker's Toolkit (about video games with a time loop mechanic): Clockwork Games and Time Loops
To jump to a part talking about checkpoints on the timeline, click here.
Another source of inspiration for a campaign like this is the videogame Outer Wilds, mentioned in the above video, and explored in more detail in this video: Outer Wilds: Death, Inevitability, and Ray Bradbury
I was talking to a guy at a party who told me about a campaign that he played in at work during his lunch hour. The premise was a Groundhog Day/Majora's Mask/All You Need Is Kill thing where the party is stuck in a time loop just before a major catastrophe and has to try and prevent it. Every time they fail, they wake up again the day before the catastrophe, but with all the XP and knowledge they gained in the previous attempt. In their campaign this also meant that each session had only an hour of realtime before the catastrophe struck.
I love this idea, so I'm stealing it. First, I'm wondering whether this is something that has been prominently done before in a tabletop RPG format? Is there a published version of a thing like this out there somewhere? I'd also like your thoughts on what kind of unique problems this sort of game would create and how you might go about solving them.
Right now, I'm thinking that spell acquisition and selection should play a big part in the campaign, so I'm considering having all spellcaster classes have to learn and prepare spells like wizards. They'll stick to the regular class spell lists, and I can flavor gaining new spells as discovering new songs or seeds or prayers or whatever fits with the class backstory, but mechanically, everyone will have to prepare spells in the morning from a list of the spells that they know. The only way to learn new spells is to gain a level or discover the spells in play. Gold and mundane items can't be accumulated in this setting, but perhaps magic items could be. Maybe items that require attunement are the only things that can travel back with the party. As DM I can also be much more willing than I might otherwise be to let the party encounter things that are way out of their league, since a TPK is the expected end of every session.
From a more practical standpoint, this concept requires a huge prep commitment upfront, since everything the party interacts with has to be in place from session 1. It also makes it tougher to keep going if a player wants to leave or a new player wants to join.
If you aren't familiar with it, there is a popular D&D live play podcast called 'The Adventure Zone', and in their first season they go through an adventure called the Eleventh Hour which is almost identical to what you are describing. You might try giving it a listen to get ideas. Griffin, their DM, has set the adventure up into different zones that the players can travel to to investigate the mystery. Once the party has gotten past a guard, then on all future loops they can just skip past that part since they know exactly what to do.
It's a great adventure idea, which I too will be stealing for a game I am running, so I'm curious to see what the community comes up with.
I'd start with your BBEG: Who are they, and what do they want? Is the time loop intentional (a stalling mechanic for a villain inside the loop?), a trap for the party to get them out of a villains hair (could be an interesting villain, who is trying to capture the party indefinitely to avoid killing them. That could be a cool set up for a paladins fall from grace), or is it something that went wrong and is completely innocent? (A wizard researching a temporal spell has gone crazy and is looping an area around the laboratory?)
Once you know the answer to that question, you can begin crafting the elements that feed into that plot/create the zones that the players will have to investigate.
I think you are on the right path with the way resetting the loop should work. Maybe hold off on giving the characters experience until the end of the story arc, and just keep a running tally. They get all the investigative knowledge, but none of the experience until they solve the mystery at which time they get all the experience. Any spells acquired during the course of the adventure from scrolls, or barters with other magic users I'd let them have at the end of the adventure as well. Since they already role-played it I'd say they can use that knowledge to repeat the same even one last time after the end of the adventure. You could do the same with treasure.
I suppose it really depends how long the adventure is. If you are taking characters from 3rd to 6th level, then you'll have to figure out leveling. You could run it as an adventure that will take the characters from 6th to 7th, and save the experience until the end as I suggested.
Good luck, and let us know how it goes!
There's a third party adventure called "Curse of the Kingspire" that does this. You can find it for 4e D&D and Dungeon Crawl Classics. It has some good ideas when it comes to foreshadowing, although it can be a bit too much. (The ouroboros symbol.) I'd change the proto human barbarians to demons and I'd add some obscure hints to the foreshadowing bits, but I think it's mostly good.
Edit: Oh right, the major difference with the standard time loop is that everyone knows they reset at the end of the loop. The barbarian horde keeps slaughtering the elves for no apparent reason and by the time the adventure starts they really should know better, so it's better to say that they're demons. This means that the adversaries can change tactics and you can change things around from cycle to cycle.
Also, you have to TPK your party at least once.
So, new comer Dnd player (started about a year ago) but looking to DM a one shot Dnd sesh based off of groundhogs day (big bad, easy rest, all start fresh at beginning) for my birthday (coincidentally on groundhogs day, which way too many people dismiss as an official holiday). Any tips/tricks?
I really love the stuff I read here , it could help with some ideas in my game.
Currently I'm running a Prison break One shot.
it revolves around a group of 6 locked in a prison cell in a dungeon under a mansion.
None of the players remember how or why they've been locked up.
as they break out, they need to find out through clues what got them there.
first, inside of the cell, their magic is canceled and it takes investigation to figure out how to break out of these cells.
The cells are next to one another so through communication and RP they can figure out how to break out.
Once they do, they'll have their magic again, however they are all missing their regular clothing and gear (which they also need to find and retrieve.)
The main premise of this one shot is that a certain lesser demon put these characters in a loop in a big mansion.
They throughout this game find clues and information, even books with letters on the cover and a riddle on 1 page per book that pieces some story together.
In the end the players should have a hand full books all with these letters on the cover, upon re-organizing them these letters should form a sentence which will trigger either their escape OR will reset the loop where they wake up in the cell again.
You really need to be careful here. This concept is very easy to become a repetitive and boring game.
if you think about all the Groundhog Day movies or tv show episodes, you will find all of them skipping the bulk part of repetition starting from the third or the fourth loop, only stops when the progression has a significant divergence, or just skips to the end with a funny ending.
In your game, you can’t really do that because you don’t want the players to know when the opportunity of divergence appears. You want them to figure out.
Think of your players as the characters in those movies: the characters are not enjoying it. Only the audience may enjoy it after probably editing away 99% of the time the characters have experienced.
If you skip too much in the game and only stops at the key moments, the whole game will feel very railroading.
I think it is almost impossible to pull it off.
Adding to myself here: however, I think the groundhog day plot is still a cool plot, and there are easier ways to use it.
For example, you can have your major NPCs in your game the ones who are experiencing the time loop, and the party is the key to break it. The party is basically experiencing the last few time loops they are about to help the NPCs break. During their time together, NPCs may tell the party a lot about what they may have done, key decisions, funny endings, etc, even a few secrets they unfolded during the time loop.
Give them checkpoints. They can get back to any part that they previously got to, so that you don't have to go through the repetitive slog.
Example: The party convinces the priest to let them into the catacombs. They walk in, but don't check for traps and immediately die. The party now knows of the trap in there. They start from the start of the catacomb, rather than rolling again to convince the cleric because they know how to convince him in the first place.
I've been running a time-loop campaign for about six months now. Some advice:
1. Have a player take lots of notes. Lots of notes. Keeping track of what's happened, where it's happened and when it's happened is absolutely crucial to keeping the whole thing on track.
2. Prep as much detail as you can. I did a lot of general high-level setting prep (towns, regions, events, etc) but not a lot of 'in the weeds' prep (shops, minor NPCs) and have had to improv more than I'd like. Improv'd details, in my experience, are just harder to keep track of later as the players repeat the cycle. Remember the players are supposed to see the exact same things over and over so consistent detail is key. This can be mitigated by tip #1.
3. Think about the scope of what you're running. I'm a relatively new DM, and I'm pretty sure I was over-ambitious with my campaign design which is a five-day loop across a five island archipelago. Keep a narrow focus to reduce the number of moving parts and consequences that can arise from player action.
4. Have your ground rules for what happens mechanically to the players during each loop spelled out to the players in session 0. I decided to have milestone leveling that occurs at the start of each loop. A loop would occur when the players got to day 5 and failed the win condition, or if they died prior. I didn't tell the players about this up front, and that caused a lot of friction.
Other thoughts:
Something that's happened that I didn't expect is that even playing near weekly 2 hour sessions, the players have only managed to loop once. So for the most part the game-play mechanic that was supposed to make the campaign "special" has barely impacted it.
Even with death not being permanent and incentivized with level-ups, the players are still extremely death-adverse. The fear of "losing" is stronger than I gave it credit. I think I could have put the players in a better frame of mind about how progression was supposed to work in session 0.
Some great ideas already, but a couple other suggestions.
Watch this... it might give you an idea or two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLe_qO4AE-M
(not to mention a cool visual of what leveling up in a time loop looks like)
I think the main thing I would have is a get-out clause.
If your party have been through the loop a few times and are getting no closer to the "solution", they are likely to start getting bored. You need to consider alternative ways you could let them break out of the loop without hitting your "solution", and without making it feel like you are just ending it (and they have therefore failed). If it's an intentional time loop created by a wizard or such, maybe he's got what he needed from it, ends it and comes to face the party where they happen to be.
Other than that, the checkpoint idea is good. Allowing them to skip the bits they've already done will help keep them interested. Also, just in case they manage to solve things too easily, add a second "thread" which you can expose.
I am currently running a game that deals with time related issues. For some reason the time continuum is being effected and the players will at times be thrown into a situation where they are pushed into the future or into the past. Each time I use this to give them clues at to what is happening or give them a peak into a very grim future. It has been a challenge but a fun one. I have been able to tie them altogether in relation to their backstories. The reason why they have not been directly effected by the time loops has yet to be discovered. Though I think that that time will be soon. I did bring in the Modron into this game. They are doing audits on just about everything checking to see what belongs and what dose not. This has caused some issues within the world that have sparked the interest of the players. The players are about to find out that the Modron have complacently erased a city. This is because it simply should not be. Its been fun so far. I have been also throwing in da sa vue moments that are very detailed giving them some hints. I do have a couple ways that will allow them to willfully travel through time but they have yet to discover this yet. This will be limited however. The idea is for them to have a strategy and make their move count. The fact that they need to be mindful as to what they do while in a time not of their own has been entertaining as well. They can also effect the future if not careful in a negative way.
Something that might give you ideas about how to handle some of the mechanics is this video from Game Maker's Toolkit (about video games with a time loop mechanic):
Clockwork Games and Time Loops
To jump to a part talking about checkpoints on the timeline, click here.
Another source of inspiration for a campaign like this is the videogame Outer Wilds, mentioned in the above video, and explored in more detail in this video:
Outer Wilds: Death, Inevitability, and Ray Bradbury