Story Games

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.

This sounds interesting. Just give me a buzz and tell me what to do. I'm in.

I'd be up for this as well! 

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)

Because that would be cool.

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.

Is it worth trying to setup strict rules, or should we just leave it up to the author?

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.

But it would be fun in any event

Oooh, yeah I love this idea. I've been an rpg player for years and years and that never made sense to me, but this is great.

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.

Actually, now that I am thining about that, forcing heroes into different roles might actually be very interesting. So who is writing the first part?

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.

Zalrus, would you mind linking it over?

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/951188/sotm-campaign-ii-the-cataclysm

So who wants to setup the first game?

*whistle*.....*bump*.....*whistle*

Seriously, I liked this idea and was wondering if anyone else was still interested. We need to start by getting a volunteer for the first part of the story

 j1hopki1 just put up some narative games like this, but I don't think that there is a 'Living Campaign' side to it - he's just writting story challenges.

But that got me thinking about this one again, so Im here to bump this thread, and probably tomorrow or monday im going to post a Living campaign idea - A challenge with a specific set of heroes and villains and story, and a set of requirements to make note of in the game - like who got incapd and did the kraken show up? that will influence the next game.

and of course like this thread suggested, we can pass off the 'Storytellers'

Yeah, I've been working on it for a while and have actually already written the full storyline and planned out all the battles. You guys should check it out. Feel free to use any of my ideas, but if you want to do a community story I'd prefer if they were kept separate threads. I do love this idea, though. I'll be sure to contribute here if that's okay.

Can't wait. My only suggestions is to start a new thread that has all of the stories in it, as well as posting it in here. All responses, results, discussion, etc. will happen here, while the other thread will only have the actual narrative and game setups (no discussion allowed). This will make it easier to find the newest part and for new-comers to find everything without digging through this thread.

https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/living-sentinels-campaign-campaign-thread-3768

there ya go. First one is up.

WOW! Great job! I like how you said what effect each condition will have, but I am debating if I would have preferred to be surprised. Maybe do it this way the first few time, then take it away.

Also, I think this would be a good thread to post non-official results, then only post one of your games in the other thread.

EDIT: Quick question, does it matter how the villain wins? Incapping all heroes of pulling the moon into the Earth, which I am assuming will only destroy the city. What about incapping the heroes before or after he flips, thus possibly destroying the device.

It's Mad Bomber Blade, so the only way hereos can lose is being Incapped.

Thanks. I was double checking that right now, and I realized the same thing. Oh well, the flip question still counts right?

Here is a link to the card in case somebody doesn't have it:

Front:

http://boardgamegeek.com/image/1444328/sentinels-of-the-multiverse-vengeful-baron-blade-v

Back:

http://boardgamegeek.com/image/1444327/sentinels-of-the-multiverse-vengeful-baron-blade-v

Also, are the heroes listed in turn order?

Any chance of doing the scenario in an online game?

This looks great, I will definitely do my best to participate.

Victory!

Blade battalion - 2 pre-flip, 3 after = 5 total

Tachy - 2 hp. 2 Hypersonic Assaults really helped, and Synaptic Interruption helped flip him after he got a bunch of cards under him. She used Lightspeed Barrage to finish him off.

Wraith - incapped. Helped out early with RO and MTC, but got incapped by Backlash Field. Finally got rid of Backlash Field with her incap ability.

Bunker - 1 hp did nothing except a few hits with his Grenade launcher. His starting hand was Ammo Drop (yay no targets, and no Ongoing destruction available) and 3xUpgrade Mode...ugh. He did play Adhesive Foam Grenade a couple of times, which helped me not get another Impending Casualty.

Legacy - 13 hp  Had next evolution out. Really saved the game. Train stayed in for a while (since we were hitting BB), and since he was immune to melee, only BB was taking the damage. It was a pleasant surprise when Cramped Quarter Combat came out and Legacy was immune to everything. Switched late to energy to stop BB's attack, but this was essential to winning. Only did damage once.

Inpending Casualty - 0!!!!! I am counting it as 0 since Tachy went first and used Blinding Speed to get rid of it, instead of taking out Backlash Field. Wraith got out MTC and RO early, but was incapped because Backlash Field was still in play. So 0!!!!!

Since I decided to leave it to one game submission per person, I decided to let the people know what they will be getting into - that way if they want to submit a game for a specific response, they at least have some of it - Ie if they really want Young Legacy this time, theyll keep playing till they get a game with Next evolution out. 

But you notice I didnt say what the Blade Batallions getting played (and destroyed of course right away) would mean ... <grins>