Anyone ever run a game for the dead?

[derv]

I guess the threads title leaves a lot to the imagination.

Specifically, I'm wondering if any of you have run a game in the afterlife, maybe even a one shot, where you let your players pull out some of their old dead PC's? Maybe give them a second chance to rejoin the living?

Some people hold on to their favorite character's sheets long after they bit the dust. I thought it might make a fun excursion from the normal game to allow them to revisit one of these characters in an alternate plane or dimension, send them on a quest to reclaim their soul or their humanity or something.

I'd like to hear about it if you tried something along these lines. Did you make any restrictions or alter the character's in any way before play began? Did you allow them to start at the same level they were at when they perished? Allow them the use of magic items they originally possessed?

[scalydemon]

Interesting thought, I've seen plenty resurrected through 'normal means' but not what you describe..

[derv]

Honestly, resurrection doesn't occur that often in the games I play in. The opportunity doesn't present itself that often.

I was thinking more along the lines of your typical after-death tropes accompanied with some vague quantum theory about consciousness in surreal surroundings. So, to set the scene, the character's would all have to be one's that the player remembered where and how they died.

Medric watches as if hovering over the chamber as three lizardmen pull their spears from his body and he collapses to the floor in a pool of blood. His friends scatter as more lizardmen pour into the room.

Brak the Brave looks down into a dark pit where he see's his body pierced by twelve inch spikes. He twitches, then lays still.

Then all goes black and you find yourself traveling, under no volition of your own, down a white ethereal tunnel with a bright light at the end. A bright flash and you are standing on an open green hill side overlooking the ocean. The surroundings are not familiar. Your normal clothing is gone. Your belongings are all gone. You wear a long sky blue cloak with a golden rope around your waste. The urgency of your life has seemed to slipped away. Looking about, a large marble pillar stands where there wasn't one before. It is inscribed in a foreign script, but you read it with no difficulty. It says something about the dead entering their rest to wander the green meadows forever more. For others, they might try to open the door of revisiting, but must not look back (they may turn to salt or be taken somewhere else). Then a door appears. Once the PC's enter they are wooshed away to find themselves back in the dungeon (or wherever), back in their normal garb of armor and sword. Then the adventure would be a revisiting of each encounter where the PC's had perished.

Just some ideas. I'll probably develop this a little more.

[xerxez]

I've always thought an Underworld quest like that of Orpheus would be an awesome adventure. Fight epic mythological beasts, bargain with gods, solve riddles all to rescue a soul from Hades (with the consent of the gods, of course). And of course there is the journey to and from the gate to the Underworld...would be a blast!

[tkdco2]

Nothing involving resurrection, but I've brought back characters for "flashback" or "lost tales" type of adventures.

[simrion]

Well there are rules for playing Ghosts in the Delian Book of the Dead by Dragon Tree Press if you can find a copy. Digest sized item ala OD&D and original Arduin.

[jcstephens]

I remember a Tunnels & Trolls solo for recently deceased characters, which (among other things) allowed them a chance to return from the grave.

[ritt]

I once ran a game where Our Heroes were sent into Hell to assassinate a demon general. Among the treasures that they won was the tortured soul of a dead comrade who then got to leave with them and rejoin the living.

As for the demon? One of the fighters was an unarmed expert and beat him to death with his fists. My players, Crom bless them... they do not disappoint.

[howandwhy99]

I remember the Outer Planes were the unimaginable and inexpressible "places" souls went to after they died. People didn't know about them, but had ideas based upon their own world for what they were. You couldn't adventure there as they weren't actually places you could remember after you came back. None of your experiences would add to your material world abilities either. Not the least because those places would be operating under fundamentally [edit: "different"] rules, so understanding them might even be detrimental to competency advancing in the playable game world. Sort of like growing up in VR where gravity didn't exist and then thinking our world similarly lacks any such dangers.

[Deleted]

At one point I had notes for a campaign world where halflings are the dead, but alas I never did anything with it.

[TheObligatorySQL]

I dunno if it counts, but in the Curse of Strahd 5th Edition game I'm running at my FLGS, my original group was dead.

They were investigating werewolf attacks and entered the nearby woods to find them. While investigating an old ruin in the wood, they were surrounded by four werewolves and 13 wolves. (I diced for the number encountered. The number 13 had been showing up a lot in this game.) They managed to make a break for it and ran through the woods, lupines chasing them. Strahd's mist began to close in around them and smother them (FYI, the fog uses the rules for exhaustion). The entire party reached exhaustion level 6, which is death. I had them awaken in Barovia to continue the adventure.

The plan was to slowly drop hints that something was off about them, such as ravens flocking about them and following them (a superstition in Barovia is that raven do not have souls, and instead are vessels for stray souls. The ravens would follow them and treat them as one of the flock). The Shyamalan Twist at the end is , when they defeated Strahd and go back to their home realm, they would return to where their bodies fell and see their lifeless, possibly decaying corpses at their feet.

The group sadly fell apart around the time they got to 4th level

[religon]

Jun 3, 2016 22:13:49 GMT -6 xerxez said:

I've always thought an Underworld quest like that of Orpheus would be an awesome adventure. Fight epic mythological beasts, bargain with gods, solve riddles all to rescue a soul from Hades (with the consent of the gods, of course). And of course there is the journey to and from the gate to the Underworld...would be a blast!

I work it much like Hades of mythology. I play Classic D&D with a "Nightmare Dimension." Over the years, player's have entered the ND a few times. Only once was it to save a PC from death like Orpheus and it would have worked had the PC's been successful. They fled a howling horde of zombies after they learned that they were about the same power as ogres (4 HD, damage: 2d8).

PC's assume nightmarish forms in the ND. I allow the PC's to pick. Some pick devilish forms of their character. Some rotting/undead forms of themselves. I always encourage Lovecraftian horrors. One centaur earned the nickname Pus for such a form.

There are alternate rules in the ND. The recently living are fatigued as they pass through (half-level) on their way to their eternal reward/punishment. Spells work much like the old Gygax modules Queen of the Demonweb Pits or the two Alice in Wonderland ones. Lesser undead double in HD and damage in the ND. The living that willingly enter the ND lose vitality each day. 1% each week to become 'stuck.' Players understand and try to be quick to get out. They have often chose not to pursue a creature or recently deceased out of concern about the ND.

I changed one aspect many years ago. I now prefer that the residents of the ND are unable to immediately discern that those in the ND… like PC's... are living and not yet trapped. One adventure had two high-level PC's leading a demon army in a hellish siege while the mage and thief were recovering the McGuffin from the demon's palace in the ND.

[simrion]

Also one of the 2E Ravenloft box sets (can't recall the name) contained rules for playing pretty much any kind of undead you might care to.

[derv]

Jun 28, 2016 22:37:20 GMT -6 TheObligatorySQL said:

The plan was to slowly drop hints that something was off about them, such as ravens flocking about them and following them (a superstition in Barovia is that raven do not have souls, and instead are vessels for stray souls. The ravens would follow them and treat them as one of the flock).

I like the ravens idea. It's a nice touch of macabre.

[Deleted]

I did run one session where the party had to go to the spirit world to convince a dead PC to return to the living (as part of a Raise Dead spell). I don't remember much of what I did but I had some fairly detailed rules for dead characters back then. You'd make a roll when you die to see if the player can control the character's soul after death. If the character had the proper skills (learned via lucid dreaming) he'd be able to briefly become visible and affect the real world.

It was a long time ago but it was based on a book for 3e called Ghostwalk which, unfortunately, was about creating already dead PCs.

[Zenopus]

In the game I've played in for the last six years, our party recently finished a multi-session quest to retrieve the soul of a cleric who had lost it to a Deck of Many Things. We entered the Abyss from the Temple of Elemental Evil and traveled to the Plane of Concordant Opposition and then to Sigil. The DM used the Planescape setting. In Sigil we had to track down who had bought his soul. It turned out to have been his former deity, Wee Jas - his cleric had changed deities early on in the campaign. We were able to retrieve him in exchange for his henchman who volunteered to stay, and the cleric is back to being a servant of Wee Jas. A very creative adventure by our DM.

[simrion]

Jul 3, 2016 18:35:22 GMT -6 simrion said:

Also one of the 2E Ravenloft box sets (can't recall the name) contained rules for playing pretty much any kind of undead you might care to.

www.fraternityofshadows.com/DrawingRoom/Ravenloft_Products/1st_2nd_Edition/RequiemTheGrimHarvest.html

[Deleted]

I've run RL games since forever, but never had characters come back from the dead in unconventional forms: I've run a Ghostwalk campaign (after the 3e book) set in Blackmoor... Which was pretty lame, to tell the truth, mainly due to the usual 3e-isms. I think we switched to another system (C&C?) afterwards. FWIW, I am currently thinking about revisiting GW with my Gravesend game, because the idea about the Dwarven Deathwardens kind of works well with the overall setting. But in terms of reanimating the dead, nah, Ghostwalk was a snoozer.

[Starbeard]

I've never run anything like that, but I like the idea of having the dead party's adventures affect the world of the living party in some way. It would really accentuate the feeling of them being dead if they had an effect on the game but couldn't interact with the living PCs.

In one game (not D&D, so far lower death toll), the party's resident dwarf died surprisingly early on from a combination of heroic self-sacrifice and terrible rolls. His cousin came into the picture, and as things moved along I began retooling the campaign to incorporate the dwarf's death into the prophetic legend that they were piecing together. At one point there was a climactic battle in his tomb, with the ghostly avatar of his spirit forming to help the party against the big bad. I let the dwarf player run his old character's ghost during that part.

Another time I was running two concurrent games (same players, different parties in different game worlds), where on a whim I introduced a dungeon puzzle that needed to be solved in both game worlds simultaneously. Each had a series of devices that could only be affected by actions in the other world: sending a brief message, open a door, release a force field, damage an otherwise invulnerable opponent, etc. Nothing really complicated, and plenty of straight-forward clues to help the players catch on. The idea was that the players have to hop back and forth between games to help their parties mutually go through their own adventures, without actually ever being able to interact with each other directly. Unfortunately, one of the parties skipped out of that dungeon early and never went back.

I can see this working as a 'Beetlejuice' scenario, where the dead need to help the living through a dungeon but without having any way to interact directly.