CYOA Circlejerk Round-Robin - Currently Showing: The Adventures of Baron Von Schwarznatter

[treave]

Bringing over some concepts I've been thinking about for experimenting with CYOAs here:

1. Rewind:
Stars a refined version of the rewind mechanism I've adopted for the game overs in another LP. You get to vote to repick your choice at every update, but every time you do so, the world turns ever so slightly towards a more insane reality, and at times choices don't turn out the way you expect even with your limited foresight of the future. The setting is undecided, but likely to be a mix of modern-day + some Lovecraftian influence.

2.Generations:
Generation dynamics; we can go the easy way, and have subsequent chapters focusing on the child and grandchild, or we can roll with alternating updates, jumping between each of the generations. Which is quite tricky to pull off with a CYOA for the C&C without massive railroading, and I'd be interested in seeing if anyone has any bright ideas on that part. Setting will probably be a hundred years war of some sort; not the Hundred Years' War, unless there's great demand for that particular setting.

3. Tower:
A dungeon crawl up a mysterious, hundred kilometer high monolith that appeared mysteriously one day in 21st century Earth. More traditional, less gimmickry. What I'm going to do, though, is to generate a party of seven with personalities, skills, ambitions and backstories based on choices. Then we vote for a main, and finally we run the CYOA and see how each character plays off the other. Should a character die, we vote for the next one to be the main, and continue moving through it until we reach the top or the party is wiped.

4. Superhero:
What it says on the cover. Corporate-sponsored, reality TV style. Could be combined with Rewind and still work.

5. Multiplayer:
This idea reverses the Tower concept and places pre-created characters in the hands of multiple players. The characters have been kidnapped and wake up amnesiac in a deserted experimental facility, and have to work together to escape. They find that they have been implanted with some form of technology that allows them uncontrolled telepathy, meaning that whatever they think will be broadcasted to each other. This means choices for each of the characters will all be public, as are the discussions leading up to it. As a group sometimes they will be required to make a single choice together, at other times each will be given separate choices on how to react to a situation, depending on the character they have.

6. Dice-Roll

Actually, I was thinking of making like a 4chan WH40k quest I saw once - People suggest something and thrown a single dice, say, 20 or 100. I was thinking largest dice wins, except if somebody rolls a 1 or 100 first, which would override the other dice and end in CRITICAL FAILURE or CRITICAL SUCESS. Perhaps some other numbers would get special results, but I need to think on them (in that quest I saw, the special numbers were the numbers of the Chaos Gods, so 66, 77, 88 and 99 gave bonuses from the gods).

7. Succession

Like in those "continue the story" forum games, each update is written by a different author following the previous one and based on the choices voted in it.

I plan for this thread to spawn relatively short proof-of-concept CYOAs that can be run by anyone as long as they have an idea and the inclination to write about it. There's nothing stopping anyone from taking (and synthesizing) the ideas that will be listed here and going with a full CYOA of their own if they want to, either, so feel free to contribute your own narrative mechanics.

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RPGCodex CYOA Round-Robin Index

1. The Adventures of Baron Von Schwartznatter
2. A Murder, Two Degenerates and a Madman
3. Beyond the Call of Duty
4. Word on the Street of the Strangest Things Ever
5. The Maiden Expedition, Without Maidens

 

[lightbane]

Too bad I rarely have the patience for this kind of lps... Still, I say a Superhero setting. Our main character should be called "One-Punch Man". Combine it with Rewind for extra hilarity

 

[Kz3r0]

Too bad I rarely have the patience for this kind of lps... Still, I say a Superhero setting. Our main character should be called "One-Punch Man". Combine it with Rewind for extra hilarity

This superhero would be better:

 

[Bloodshifter]

Tower seems Fun to try 7 Heroes climbing a Tower in a attempt to reach the top.

The body jumping thing would certainly make the codex attempt suicide more then once though...

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

4. Superhero:
What it says on the cover. Corporate-sponsored, reality TV style. Could be combined with Rewind and still work.

If the dice worked properly, I think I would make something super-hero, based on the setting of a super-hero story I have on my backburner. Instead of pre-determined choices, everyone can suggest one action and roll predetermined dice to get it.

 

[Azira]

Super-duper hero: The Hobo Rider.

 

[Kipeci]

4

 

[Kz3r0]

An idea I had was for an LP of Killraven, practically superheroes in a fallout-like setting.

 

[treave]

If the dice worked properly, I think I would make something super-hero, based on the setting of a super-hero story I have on my backburner. Instead of pre-determined choices, everyone can suggest one action and roll predetermined dice to get it.

You mean, whichever action gets the higher roll gets to be played out? Interesting. Perhaps stat checks could figure into it as a modifier?

An idea I had was for an LP of Killraven, practically superheroes in a fallout-like setting.

War of the Worlds + Superheroes? It sounds like it would lend itself more to a John Carter, pulp-science fiction style adventure. Still, you could have a twist on it and have the character be a normal human, perhaps out to gain power/rebuild civilization/just survive in the backdrop of the established story of Killraven defeating the Martians. A deconstruction of some sort, perhaps?

 

[tuluse]

If the dice worked properly, I think I would make something super-hero, based on the setting of a super-hero story I have on my backburner. Instead of pre-determined choices, everyone can suggest one action and roll predetermined dice to get it.

You mean, whichever action gets the higher roll gets to be played out? Interesting. Perhaps stat checks could figure into it as a modifier?

I think he means 4 ideas get suggested - roll a d4 to see what happens.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

3. Tower:
A dungeon crawl up a mysterious, hundred kilometer high monolith that appeared mysteriously one day in 21st century Earth. More traditional, less gimmickry. What I'm going to do, though, is to generate a party of seven with personalities, skills, ambitions and backstories based on choices. Then we vote for a main, and finally we run the CYOA and see how each character plays off the other. Should a character die, we vote for the next one to be the main, and continue moving through it until we reach the top or the party is wiped.

this.

 

[Smashing Axe]

3. Tower:
A dungeon crawl up a mysterious, hundred kilometer high monolith that appeared mysteriously one day in 21st century Earth. More traditional, less gimmickry. What I'm going to do, though, is to generate a party of seven with personalities, skills, ambitions and backstories based on choices. Then we vote for a main, and finally we run the CYOA and see how each character plays off the other. Should a character die, we vote for the next one to be the main, and continue moving through it until we reach the top or the party is wiped.

this.

 

[CaptainAwesome]

Awww, I was hoping for Generational.

Mainly because watching characters grow, and seeing their legacy grow in turn, is something I'm a huge sucker for.

 

[Tzaero]

I say [Rewind + Generational] Dune-esque feudalism in space with cutthroat politics.

 

[oscar]

Generational. I really liked that Curufinwe guy's one where we controlled that tribe though a family is a smaller scale. Any setting could work though for some reason an Italian family stretching from Roman patricians to Borgia antics in one of the medieval Italian republics to a Mafia family who have immigrated to America came to mind.

 

[CaptainAwesome]

I read something like that in an LP of Crusader Kings.

It was a noble family in the Byzantine Empire, and they guy wrote out a giant novel based on what happened in game.

I remember it best because you saw someone transition from boy, to reckless teen, to eventual battle hardened emperor.

And then he died, and his deeds passed into history. And then history became legend, legend became myth, and by the time the empire split, he was remembered as an almost deific figure.

 

[treave]

Generational. I really liked that Curufinwe guy's one where we controlled that tribe though a family is a smaller scale. Any setting could work though for some reason an Italian family stretching from Roman patricians to Borgia antics in one of the medieval Italian republics to a Mafia family who have immigrated to America came to mind.

That would be a very lengthy project, if we don't employ large time skips. I'm actually considering something where you don't play a character till death, but until his/her offspring grows to adulthood, where the point-of-view then shifts to the new character, perhaps with a vote if there are multiple children. The friends and enemies you make in the first generation will have lasting repercussions in the second and the third, as rivals and allies grow in power themselves, founding great houses in their own right. Thematically it would perhaps be somewhat similar to the Godfather?

 

[CaptainAwesome]

Sounds interesting, Treave.

 

[Smashing Axe]

Yeah, I flip to Generational.

 

[treave]

CYOA: The House of the Black Adder?

I could actually combine this with the setting for Tower, now that I think about it. Something that massive means that it might take generations to explore, with base camps the size of villages at various levels of the tower, while a thriving town has sprung up around the floating monolith. The tower itself could serve as a source of some greatly prized element to encourage exploration. Instead of setting it in modern Earth I place it further back in time. Houses and clans form around the place, competing in their exploration.

 

[CaptainAwesome]

A Game of Towers?

 

[treave]

Possibly.

Though it should have more of a Race for the New World vibe.

 

[CaptainAwesome]

I don't know what that is but okay!

 

[Tigranes]

CYOA: The House of the Black Adder?

I would pay in blood for this.

 

[oscar]

The tower itself could serve as a source of some greatly prized element to encourage exploration ... Houses and clans form around the place, competing in their exploration.

Sounds quite Dune-y