Oh, I nearly forgot my other idea. It's a sort-of Memento-RTD. You'll see why.
That's Not How It Happened: A Randomized Story Of Your Life!The premise can really be anything, but the game has to start in a certain way - at your death. The player characters all start out completely stone dead in a certain godforsaken ditch in the woods, for instance.
How is that conducive to a fun game? Well, you see, this game is not about how you end up. That's just the beginning. For you see, this is an RTD that, like the film Memento, goes backwards. You start out by creating the player character: specifying a name, gender, age, former occupation, most significant hobby and appearance.
Now, as I've mentioned, this RTD goes backwards. This means that the players start out dead in the same ditch in the woods, for instance. And, unlike what you would do in a normal RTD, which is to describe what you'll do next, you describe how you got there, but only the immediate action that got you there, with the GM rolling for how truthful that statement is. Here are some samples:
You are all dead in a ditch in the middle of the woods next to a small American Midwest town. How did this happen?
Player A (90-year-old male retiree): I was carried there by an unhinged party clown.
[6] It is a dark November evening in Hegelburg, Wyoming as a muscular man with clown makeup carries a dead 90-year-old man on his mighty shoulders, muttering about how this shouldn't have happened. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Repressing the urge to scream out his frustration, the clown breaks into a jog to even out the stress. Jogging always made him feel better in such a situation. Kept the demons at bay. If only he had jogged that morning, but no. And now look where he is.
The clown, lifting the frail old man's corpse up above him, jogs over to the ditch he scoped out five months ago, wisely foreseeing that the incidents of today might happen someday. As he nears the ditch, he gets the feeling that everything will be alright. Nobody will find the old man there. Hell, he isn't sure anybody will look for this guy in the first place. The man calms himself with these words, but he stops dead silent at the sight of the ditch before him.
There are four other dead people in here. Goddammit, how did this happen? Shit, better think of something fast! Wait, is that someone coming? Shit! He immediately recalls the words of his Clown College professor, only now comprehending their true meaning.
"Drop the nonagenarian and run, man."
"What does that mean?"
"When you're older, you'll understand."
And indeed he does understand now. A bit more literal than he expected, but what can you do. So he drops the nonagenarian and runs, leaving this whole sordid business behind him.
Why was the clown carrying your corpse?
Player B (23-year-old female police officer): I was in the middle of a criminal investigation at the ditch when suddenly a shot from the dark caught me in the heart from behind, making me tumble into the ditch.
[1] It is a dark November evening on the highway outside of Hegelburg, Wyoming, and a particular police officer is enjoying it most immensely. She is very drunk, as are her police buddies. Right now they are busy speeding down a highway, taking shots at road signs. Man, sometimes it feels really good to be the law of the land. As the merry group of lawmen drives rapidly on the straight road, the driver occasionally pausing to take a great gulp of tequila from the large bottle in her non-steering hand, one of the officers in the car, a man of about 30 years, starts to fidget.
"Hey, guys, I really need to take a piss!"
"Do it out the window! Props if you hit a road sign. Mad props if you hit an animal!"
"No! I'll freeze my... uh... huh-huh..."
"Oh, alright, you baby. Let's stop here. Go and do your business."
The officer of the law steps out of the car and disappears into the forest. Ten minutes later, he's still not back. The woman, having finished her bottle, looks a tad impatient.
"Where did he go? Goddammit, must have gotten lost again."
"Ah, fuck it, I'll go look for him."
"Nah, you stay here. I'll find him."
The woman goes into the woods, looking for some sign of her drinking buddy.
"Bob, you here?"
No answer.
"Goddammit, Bob, where are you?"
The woman goes deeper into the woods, calling for her friend. Man, it's dark in here. Where is that guy?
After walking through the dense undergrowth for about ten minutes, she comes to the conclusion that Bob is nowhere around. She also comes up to a ditch.
Holy mother of god, what is this? There's, like, five corpses in here! What the hell happened? The officer instinctively draws her gun, still with five rounds in it. Shit, one of those guys looks kinda like Bob. Or at least she's reasonably sure of that.
Was that a rustle in the bushes? Fuck, guy who did this might still be here.
There it goes again! That's it! The woman points her gun in the direction she thinks the noise came from and fires once! The rustling turns to a panicked scramble followed by the sound of a gun being cocked. The woman fires a second time, once again mostly blindly. The scrambling continues. She fires a third time, and a pained gasp comes from the woods, followed immediately by a shot.
For a moment, the woman's mind is afire with pain as she stumbles backward, blood streaming out of her chest, where a bullet has made quite a messy entry wound. That's one lucky shot for a wounded man. At least she won't have to deal with the hangover, the woman thinks as she falls onto the pile of corpses, passing out and soon bleeding to death.
Ten feet away, Bob lies on the ground, writhing in agony. No matter how he grimaces or prays, the pain refuses to subside. It's all quiet now, Bob thinks. Maybe he got whoever was shooting at him? God, he hopes so. Fucking bastard shot him in the fucking knee, least he can hope is to have returned the favor. Probably the same maniac that killed all those people in the pit. Goddamn it, this hurts. Now he's lost and grievously injured. Not to mention hideously drunk.
Why were you driving down the road drunk with your buddies?
So, yeah. Memento-style RTD. More like an interactive story than an actual game, but still a potentially interesting idea, I think. Once again, it doesn't have to be "you're all dead in a ditch". It can also be "you just defeated Kahn-Zahss, the Devourer of Worlds - how did you do it" or any number of other things. Just throwing the idea out there.
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Topic: Roller's Block (RTD Brainstorming Thread) (HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY) (Derm is 5k) (Read 746154 times)