That said, I really enjoy what it does to storylines. Here's some examples...
1) I once ran an Amber campaign once where the Amberite PCs were incarnations of Chaosites from the days before the Pattern was drawn. Certain NPCs were holding grudges from things that had happened in a whole different lifetime. It really got the plots moving quickly, though was perhaps a little heavy-handed, to tell players "You hate him from the moment you meet him, as though he'd already done something unforgivably horrible."
2) In 7th Sea, Sarah's character was the reincarnation of the wife of a Senator of the Old Republic. Her character was an archaeologist exploring the ruins of that Senator's villa. Her past self had engaged in a sorcery-creating bargain with things beyond the veil, would her latest incarnation make the same mistakes?
3) In my current Scion campaign, I just dropped a bombshell. One PC was captured by a Villain who didn't kill her because she looked so much like his wife who'd died two thousand years ago. I dropped just the right hints, and the player jumped at them. The villain had turned to evil to get revenge at things that had been done to that wife. He felt remorse at his own gradual corruption and dishonor over the centuries. He fell upon his sword, leaving the PC with a lot of issues to ponder.
4) In another Amber campaign way back in the day, we had one PC and one NPC who were both suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder and Shape-Shifting. When the NPC got hit with a pretty nasty metaphysical attack, she split into parts. Each healed as an incarnation of a different one of her personalities.
I'm really looking forward to one day running a game where the PCs are reincarnations of PCs or NPCs from another campaign. It'd be especially cool if they were reincarnations from multiple campaigns or a whole other setting/system. Very Moorcockian.
1 comment:
In retrospect, I maybe should have done something similar for my Everway campaign - it would have been really cool to make each PC a reincarnation of a character from the previous Amber game that had ended with the universe imploding.
That would have given the Everway game more coherency, but it also would have made it hard for late arrival players to join up. And if I had never met Jeremy as a result, that would have really sucked.
That said, a campaign where the PCs are reincarnations of cannonical Elder-Amberites in a totally different system would be kinda fun. Setting it after Brand won would be even more fun, and rather dark.
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