"Groundhog day"-like adventure?

[Eraslin]

Hello all,
I've been flirting with the idea of running, for the group I DM, a mini-adventure after the theme set in the movie "Groundhog Day" starting Bill Murray. For those who don't know, in this movie Bill Murray relived Groundhog Day over and over again, until the happy ending was reached. I was just wondering if anyone out there has actually tried this, and how well/poorly did it work?

In my game the PCs are the guardians of a very important magical dohicky, and so I was thinking of arranging a theft of the item. Then, the PCs would relive the next day, over and over again, until they pieced together enough of the clues from the theft to recover the item. I figure I have to record status and equipment of each character for the start of the recurring day (easy enough); can anyone think of anything else? Also, I was thinking that any experience gained during the recurring day would be kept; in the movie, Bill Murray learns to play the piano during the recurring day so there is precident for this.

Thanks,
Eraslin

EDIT: Paragraph breaks were lost in the post

 

[Napftor]

Of all the time travel-ish modules I've written, this is one concept I haven't tried (and I loved Grounhog Day!). I'm going to have to steal this idea as well.

As the DM, how are you going to let the clues slip to tell the party:

1) what the hell is going on?

and

2) how the hell to escape the loop?

You must also, IMO, explain how/why the loop is occuring. Perhaps the magical doohicky was destroyed at the end of the looped day and the party must prevent that from happening as it is the cause of the time looping effect. Or reverse this, and make the time looping caused by the item's survival. There's something odd...the party must let the item they're guarding be destroyed or they will never escape the loop!

Just some random thoughts. I would watch the movie again to study how clues were laid out that told Murray what to do. Good luck!

 

[Quickbeam]

How amazingly peculiar...

I just watched Groundhog Day (for the umpteenth time) two nights ago during a late night feeding of my infant son. It's a fantastic story concept for D&D, and like Napftor I'm going to have to pirate the idea !!

Here are my suggestions for things to keep track of beyond the party's starting gear, accumulating XP and treasure:

-- Monsters, NPCs, and other various creatures/people must always be in the same places at the same times, performing the same tasks, for each instance they're encountered. Clearly their actions and locations will be different depending on WHEN during the recurring day they're stumbled upon. But they should ALWAYS be engaged in the same activities at the duplicate times each day.
-- Occasionally have an integral NPC (maybe one of the primary clueholders) mention a very strong sense of deja vu upon meeting the PCs .
-- Indicate with each passing day just how frustrated and weary the characters are of being forced to re-live the same 24 hours over and over...until they begin making progress in their quest anyhow. At that point, offer them some glimmer of hope that there is an attainable end to the madness.
-- Initiate one incident of a traumatic event that they cannot stop from occuring regardless of their efforts (like the old homeless person Bill Murray can't save). This will help the party understand that not every action will appreciably alter the course of future events.
-- Let each PC learn to play an instrument or pick up a craft like ice sculpting .
-- Whatever you decide to set as their ultimate goal for breaking the cycle, it should be something the group already wants. Bill Murray's character had a crush on Andie MacDowell from the onset of the movie, the same should be true for their quest.

That's it for now, I'll check back in later . Good luck!!

 

[SonOfLilith]

Might I say, that sounds like a fun quest. It would be cool if someone important dies at the end of the day. They have to re-live the day over and over until they change the future and have him/her live.

 

[Moon_Goddess]

We planned to do something like this as an experiment in DM style. 1 adventure, repeated 3 times, each time thru the loop a different DM. All three played back to back in one night, It was a glorious plan. Save for the fact that we couldn't fit 3 full length adventures into one night, we started close to 9 PM and somewhere about 5AM halfway through the 2nd, most everyone but the current DM and one player had fallen asleep. All the sleeping players' characters were killed by orcs and the party necro (the only waking member) animated them as zombies.

 

[Eraslin]

Thanks for the replies. Arguably, I haven't given it a tonne of thought as to exactly how to implement this in the game.

Steve, Ryan, JR. If you by chance stumbled upon this thread, cease reading immediately. There are things in here that you may ruin some of the surprises you're in for.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Some sketchy background (note, that the PCs don't actually know most of this -- they just came into possession of the magical dohicky): The PCs are in possession of a magical gate which allows access to any plane of existence. More importantly, this gate can create an arbitrarily large portal to any plane of existance. There is a semi-powerful demon-lord on one of the planes, who has had his every attempt to access the prime thwarted by a secretive organization; the organization monitors his actions, and any time he attempts to access the prime (via a gate/portal) they are able to teleport in and thrust him back through the portal just before closing it off. The organization is able to prevent his access because he is only able to create temporary portals which are not terribly large. This demon-lord has many followers on the prime plane, who he is able to contact. The demon-lord wishes to possess this gate, so that he can create a very large portal and move forth his entire force of demonic followers in an effort to overwhelm the organizations defenses.

The idea for the recurring day, which really needs to be fleshed out bigtime is thus: The evening before, the magical dohicky is stolen. During the day there are various events which act as clues, to the PCs, as to who has the thingy and where it is located. Then, in the middle of the night on the recurring day a huge portal opens a few miles from the town the PCs are currently in -- chaos ensues.

The obvious goal for the recurring day is to prevent the portal from being opened. However this is done is entirely up to the creativity of the PCs.

I was also flirting with the idea of making the recurring day the result of a horrible curse (something like "Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it"), but I'm not sure how to go about doing that without making an easy out for the recurring day (just kill off the curse giver). Any suggestions?

-Eraslin

 

[Agamon]

My players would groan at an attempt at such an adventure. Aside from Groundhog Day, there's been similar plots on
Star Trek: TNG, Xena, and Buffy. I'm afraid it's a bit cliche already.

 

[Cor Azer]

My players would groan at an attempt at such an adventure. Aside from Groundhog Day, there's been similar plots on Star Trek: TNG, Xena, and Buffy. I'm afraid it's a bit cliche already.

I wouldn't say five occurances makes it a cliche (X-Files had a similar epsiode too). Of course, it's entirely possible that there've been a lot more occurances that I don't know about.

 

[omedon]

Originally posted by Black Moria

I did a recursive time loop thing with the party. Regardless of what happened during the time loop, they awoke in a strange chamber (where the loop first happened) and everything started to repeat itself again....and agiain...and again...

Funny you should bring this up as you can see Black Moria has done a similar adventure. You can find this post in the The Oddest Thing You've Done As A DM When Running A Game thread.

If you are interested about the intricacies of running such an adventure you may want to give him a shout.

 

[mmadsen]

This is how we played every adventure as kids. You just kept replaying it until you didn't die. More like a video game than Groundhog Day though...