#27: Remember When ...

[RPGnet Columns]

http://www.rpg.net/columns/kosher/kosher27.phtml

Summary:

The use of flashbacks in RPG campaigns.

Go to the column (http://www.rpg.net/columns/kosher/kosher27.phtml) for more information.

[fmitchell]

One alternative to the "mixed flashback" is to do the flashback *before* the encounter that triggers the flashback. For example, before they meet the Old Enemy, flash back to the 18th century "for no reason", and play out the duel. If the original Old Enemy dies, then the players meet his brother, the real Old Enemy, who was the deceased enemy's second during the duel.

One campaign idea, which I've never had the guts to put into practice, is to run a campaign in three time periods, where players have one character in each time period. Past events influence future events, so we'd play out the past event "just in time" to determine what the future looks like: is the mysterious stranger in the 1920s dead or alive in the 1950s, and did the original team find the Dingus or not? Of course, the plotting alone could kill a lesser GM.

[cfarrell]

One of the more intruiging RPGs I never played was Fantasy Flight's Fireborn. In that game, the flashback sequence was a core part of the system. Players were playing a modern human character with something like a Draconic "soul", as well as the same Dragon in a very distant, forgotten, mythic past.

The basic advice they gave was that the flashback sequences should set up contextual information, to explain why things were happing the way they were now, rather than being character-development for the PCs or NPCs. The mythic world was forgotten, but its influences were starting to leak back into the present, so this was a nice setup for this sort of thing. Whatever happened in the flashback, up to and including the PC getting killed off, was easier to work into the main adventure. Obviously, it's a little more textured than what I can explain in one paragraph, but they did a pretty good job of handling it I thought.

The funny thing was, the published "intro" adventure (The Fire Within) starts with a badly flawed flashback scene: the PCs are in the middle of a negotiation between warring factions, and they must succeed in forging a peace or the entire adventure is a bust. If they had been able to do a better intro adventure I would have played the game by now.

Chris