Author Topic: Setting Idea: The Blue Lamp  (Read 1599 times)

stormwell

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Setting Idea: The Blue Lamp
« on: February 15, 2017, 02:30:10 PM »
This week's post is a Setting Idea I've recently had, one that is a sort of British counterpart to A Thin Blue Line. The Blue Lamp is reference to the lamps that sit outside the entrance to British police stations, first used in Victorian times and are still in widespread use today. This is important as the setting is intended to be partially historical and partially modern day, but I'll explain further on.

http://www.utherwaldpress.com/2017/02/setting-idea-blue-lamp.html

Jubal

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Re: Setting Idea: The Blue Lamp
« Reply #1 on: February 15, 2017, 04:12:03 PM »
Hmm. I like the idea, but it might be tricky to get some aspects to work well. Would the players know from the start that their characters were dead (even if the characters themselves didn't)? It seems like quite a hard core feature of a setting to conceal if you were going to, say, publish it as a sourcebook. I guess the other question would be a "If we're all dead anyway, why does this matter" - will the players be rewarded by getting what they want in an afterlife, or?
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stormwell

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Re: Setting Idea: The Blue Lamp
« Reply #2 on: February 16, 2017, 05:12:40 PM »
Yes, that would be an issue....granted theres always the GM Only section of a book but that isn't always foolproof. Part of it will depend on how much the GM wants to reveal and how, though trouble is that the players can always get their own copies of the book and read through it.

That said, know of one RPG called Giest (part of the World of Darkness line IIRC) where the characters are all dead and are actually ghosts.

Jubal

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Re: Setting Idea: The Blue Lamp
« Reply #3 on: February 16, 2017, 07:09:03 PM »
It could definitely work as a one-off that the players didn't know, but in future campaigns one couldn't repeat the trick - I guess one of the keys would be to put enough in that players would be happy to play/feel they had goals to work towards even after knowing they were dead? Either by them being able to affect the living or being able to get afterlife-related rewards of some kind.
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...