Before, I’ve told how many of my ideas come up when I’m cycling or walking. Well, another good idea-giver is that state when you lie half-sleeping in your bed, awake enough to register and somewhat control your thoughts, but asleep enough that those thoughts are not hindered by your active ones. This morning, something I thought was worth writing down here popped up.
I don’t know how I ended up thinking about it, but I guess it somewhat circled around cop shows. You know, both those soap opera -style ones and the more real ones. I thought of an RPG campaign in that style, focusing at first on the cases that come up, then watch the heroes go higher in rank, and at last watching them manoeuvre in the social network of the precinct and other high-ranking officials.
Then, my mind pulled up Exalted. Again.
Well, it seems to me that Exalted does make nearly any adventure or campaign idea ripped from somewhere else more interesting, and that seems to hold true here too. The power level is the obvious change. The social part finds more challenge if the characters are still Celestials in the Time of Tumult, with the need to keep their powers under check, and otherwise trying to hide their natures. Maybe that’d also encourage the players to find, in spite of all their characters’ magical prowess, at least some mundane ways to get ahead.
And, my mind told me, Essence score would give a nice way to tell when it’s time for a promotion. When one of the characters would raise his Essence (at least after the third dot) I’d finish the ongoing or next major adventure, then promote the characters, and skip ahead some time. Of course, the time scale would expand when moving forward, from solving a regular theft or murder case and then skipping a year or two, to working on management and PR issues on a monthly or even yearly scale skipping even a decade, to centuries-spanning planning and arranging. That is, if all goes well and the game keeps going.
Probably I will never even try to run this campaign, but time will tell. Meanwhile, feel free to rip it, but out of courtesy, tell at least someone (preferably myself) where you ripped it.
