Monday, December 17, 2012

Campaign Ideas: And Time Stood Still

So I was watching this mini-series on Netflix called Neverland. Kind of a prequel to Peter Pan. Peter and Hook live in the 1900s in England and get transported to Neverland. Come to find out that the reason no one ages in Neverland is that it is a planet that occupies both the center of the universe and the corners of it (wtf?) so time never moves there. The series isn't great, seems pretty low budget, but still kind of neat as it gets into the why and how of Peter and (Jimmy) Hook and how they end up in their normally depicted forms (Hook with one hand, Peter flying about, etc). Plus, giant ass eight legged crocodiles are always pretty swell. Anyway, the whole no one ever aging in Neverland got me thinking about a campaign idea. 

Imagine a world where time stood still. Like seriously still. Just completely paused. No one aged, no one grew, etc. Everyone and everything is stuck in a moment of time. If there was a flood or a storm, that flood or storm continues forever. A fire burns eternally, all magic spells are essentially permanent, etc. Living things can still move, trees still shake or are uprooted in the wind, fire and such can be extinguished or started, but they don't consume fuel because time is frozen. It's kind of a weird situation, but it can work. 

So you never age and you never die, wounds don't heal, once you're affected by disease or poison, it is always affecting you, but never getting worse. Obviously clerical magic can circumvent some of the issues that crop up from those, but raise the dead spells become completely unnecessary because if you take damage you'll never die, just be stuck forever at way negative hit points just shy of complete death. 

I don't think this would ever be any sort of viable campaign, too many complications from spells that never end and that sort of thing, but it leads to some interesting thoughts on the effects of paused time on a campaign world. One side of a planet stuck in perpetual daylight, the other darkness, but neither suffering the effects of temperature extremes because time is paused. How would ocean navigation be changed? Whichever way the wind blows is the way it stuck blowing for eternity, whatever parts of the ocean are windless doldrums are stuck that way for eternity, a very good defense for an island nation. What about crops that never grow and trees the never grow back after you chop them for lumber? You don't need food or water because time never moves to the point where you get thirsty or hungry. But, you still used up energy moving around and such so I guess you would still need to eat, maybe? I dunno. Magic. 

I dunno, just an interesting concept idea that popped into my head that has no real application. 

3 comments:

  1. How about an encounter or scenario almost like groundhogs day ... the movie?

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    1. When playing d20 Modern, I made a scenario like that. No one really picked up on the fact that it was a Groundhogs Day thing going on. One guy did think it was a neat way to structure the scenario, despite not realizing that they did the same thing every "day" of the scenario. Sigh.

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    2. I would suggest killing them, and then having them awaken in their beds the next morning as if nothing happened, but the horrors of dieing.

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