Would it be possible to make a campaign set in a time loop?

>>54442496
Depends on how death is handled. If you have it where if one person dies, then they are out till the reset/party wipe it might work.

If you have it where if they die before the reset and they forget everything, then that's complete shit and wouldn't work. If you have it like a level penalty then maybe but that's that.

All in all though, you'd need to run it like a puzzle to keep it interesting. You can only go through the same group of mobs each go around before you get bored and start fucking around. And believe me, the last thing you want in a time loop is everyone fucking around, shit will get out of hand and drive you nuts. So my advice?

Keep it simple, keep it fun and end it as soon as possible.

>>54442496
Now on the other hand... if you want to say... make a loop that sends you to the beginning of your adventure and being the unseen forces making sure you somehow get to the situation with the time loop to get out of it, then that's be cool. Take detailed notes of everything and advise your players to do the same. Also make sure that if you do this kind of game, take causality into account, someone somewhen is going to fuck up and change something either intentionally or by accident and you may end up having to redo an entire battle from a certain point to account for the change that might or might not end up erasing/killing your characters at the point in time and having to bring a new character in to replace the one that time fucked themselves or got time fucked.

I mean... look, if you'd like to pull something like that off and you have the diligence and patients and the right kind of players it'd be fun as hell. However, chances are that you're not going to be able to pull that kind of thing off unless the group you have is dedicated to it from the start.

>>54442496
I could see it being done in a massive dungeon with multiple areas to explore. They keep their experience but their gear remains the same. Put in certain items they can learn are there and repeatedly go back to. Allow them to say they just do over what they did, and perhaps lesser fights can be rolled more as checks.

File: olly olly oxenfree is leave possible.gif (5MB, 1370x1748px) Image search: [Google]

5MB, 1370x1748px

>>54442496
OXENFREE is the best way I've seen this done.

>>54442496
Run a Tomb of Horrors game in a time loop.

>Players attempt to explore the tomb.
>Die horribly on the first day due to fake entrences.
>Player awake at the day they were to set off to the tomb, with the knowledge of what went wrong but everything else exactly the same.
>Every day, the players find new ways to die, and eventually settle into complacency as they breeze past the previous rooms without incident.
>This lasts until they manage to finish the dungeon.
>Bonus points if the boss humors them because he's in on the joke, but can't do anything about it.

Start by determining the play area and time frame. Sort out everything that will happen in that area over the course of the loop, the entire sequence of events that will occur without player interaction.

Then drop the players in.

It's more suited to a puzzle game than it is to a campaign.

The one thing I think that would be hard is that you need to have a whole setting built to the nth detail, and you need to keep those details consistent loop by loop. If something happens in the first loop, it needs to happen in every single one, and your players can use that against you. If you come up with something on the spot, you better be ready for how that thing can affect your entire plot.

>>54442496
I think it's best done as a one-shot. The game needs to happen in an isolated space where there's a limited number of places where the players can go so that they won't be overwhelmed by choices. Spaceship, barricaded building, what have you.

Then you'll have to make up a reason of the time loop beforehand, so that you won't need to come up with some ambiguous bullshit at the end of the session. Perhaps a ghost is doing it so that someone would find out why it was killed, or there's an alien artifact astronauts found in the expedition. Basically, something needs to stop the time loop from happening.

Then there should be a time limit, because nobody likes doing the same shit over and over without any effect. Perhaps the building becomes a little spookier after each new reroll, or there are new items in places there weren't any before, or the rooms of the spaceship swap places. You gotta show that players that they need to solve the problem, or something ambiguously bad will happen. Besides being stuck in a time loop for eternity, I mean.

Then just wing it.

I did something like this in a Black Crusade game, where the PCs went onto an ancient ship that the warp had spat out in system. There were a series of events that happened on board back in the first days of the Horus Heresy which revealed a lot about the chaos lord they were following and his plans.

They started off about halfway through the events of the ships demise, when the chaos lord (then a captain in the Iron Warriors) first boarded the ship to get vital tactical information from the core. Both sides on the ship didnt exactly recognize them, so if the pcs took a freindly action they'd assume they were freindly, and vice versa due to being warp ghosts essentially. As they explored the ship, more and more of each side of the conflict died until eventually they were left alone as the chaos lord left the ship with his prize. Then the warp drive began to activate as the chaos lord set it to do so to get rid of the ship, and the entire ship was plunged into the warp with no geller feild. The pcs freaked out, began preparing to die, and then found themselves right at the start as the ship was about to be invaded.

Eventually they got split up, and out of phase with each other. In hindsight i shouldn't have done this beacuse i had no right to pull it off as well as I did. Over the next few loops they each did a bunch of stuff, that interfered and flowed into the other pcs timelines. Just for example, one PC (a heretek) was in the torpedo bay, and was keeping a nova torpedo armed to have a self destruct failsafe. Another PC who went to the bridge later kept trying to disarm it, only for it to arm again due to the heretek. Both pcs were not in contact with each other, so they spent an entire loop fighting one another to arm/disarm it without even knowing what the other was doing.

It was amazing, but near the end i had to do a bit of railroading to get everyone together again near the end to facillitate their escape, but it was one if the best sessions ive ever done

>>54442496
I would just give my players the same exposition, initials interactions, and encounter over and over and over again on different days, and the first time they questioned it I would tell them it was a time loop.

Because that's how played out and lazy of an idea a time loop is.

>>54442542
>Depends on how death is handled

Have a rough idea for this kind of scenario. Would maybe work best as a oneshot.

The initial day of the time loop is intened to be ultimately lethal to the whole party.For example, the group might be a starship with the main drive slowly going critical. They may be a group of WW1 soldiers in a trench about to be obliterated by a massive artillery strike or gas attack. They may be passengers on an airplane which will soon be hijacked / blown up by terrorists.

After the inital TPK, the players start repeating the day that will ultimately lead to their demise. The characters are aware of this Groundhog Day situation. The goal of the group would be to somehow survive although they will most likely not know how to break the time loop they are stuck in.

>>54447526

An important part of this scenaria would be that the players are somewhat restricted in the course of action they may take to avoid disaster. Simply running away won't do the trick. The loop they are stuck in has boundaries, either physical (stuck on a plane/starship) or practical (running away from the frontline will quickly get them shot for desertion).

Now, this scenario should be run as highly lethal. Characters may die prematurely... before being killed by whatever cataclysmic scenario at the end of each repeating day. This provides a crucial mechanism for the scenario I imagine.

The repeating day should be divided into distinct scenes... points in the story where the players face a challenge and have to make a choice how they react. Each player should make a quick note stating how they react to each particular challenge and hand it to the GM, creating a flowchart of decisions up to the point where the loop resets.

The trick is, each player has his own "timeline" up to the point where everybody dies. This timeline may be changed over each iteration of the loop. However, if a character dies prematurely, his timeline becomes more rigid. This means that when they die the GM chooses one of their previous reactions (written down in their flow chart) leading to their death to become permanent in each subsequent iteration of the loop. From this point on they may not change their reaction during this particular situation in the upcoming repeats. If they die again the GM may either decide to make another of their decisions permanent or he may choose to make one of their already fixed decisions affect other party members, meaning that their rigid timeline starts affecting other players. The affected players may make a saving throw against this effect or else they too have to react to this particular situation as they have done in the previous iteration of the loop.

>>54447548

So in the end, the players may either manage to escape their doom and break the loop... or their timelines become so rigid and stuck that they are unable to change the outcome of the scenario.

I know this idea is still full of holes but maybe someone can turn this rough idea into a working concept.

>>54442496
Have you ever played Majora's mask?