you should be punished just for thinking of this

Now why would you do that to your players?

I guess you should use CoC. It's a dependable system, and it'll hit of Bad Things to come.

if you did that to me I'd never game with you again

Are you hoping it'd be so boring it'd circle around to fun again, or do you just feel like being a dickless faggot?

>>1034454
Yeah, I was tempted by CoC.

Also, main event? There's a storm, and the old wood-and-mortar stairwell leading back to the ground collapses, trapping the players on top of the wall. It's essentially a deus ex to prevent them from going exploring when they get bored (And that could be fun, heaven forbid.)

>>1034477
This actually sounds like it would circle round to fun. I imagine by session 3 or so the players'd start having "See how far you can piss!" contests and whatnot. In the end it'd be a bunch of RP minigames.

The trick would be to have dense vegetation devoid of any landmarks beyond a 100 yard gap on either side of the wall. The treetops must rise higher than the wall itself. Talk of strange noises coming from the forest, and occasionally columns of smoke that could be anything from camp fires to wildfires. Due to lack of landmarks, it's almost impossible to tell how far out these columns of smoke are, and therefore impossible to tell which is which.

After a few months, the supply caravans no longer come around, and the characters' larders begin to run low. Their uniforms have faded enough that nobody remembers what color they used to be.

Not the OP, but the comic referenced is Guardians of the Kingdom, by Tom Gauld.

>>1034444
Ideas: if this is a modern, or at least non medieval setting, put some kind of confusing scanner-esque machine in wherever they live that none of them know how to work. It would just beep occasionally, or flash cryptic technical messages. Or have it set off an alarm just to fuck with them.

>>1034577
Actually, I had an idea for that. There'll be a crude sort of bell system, that runs off ropes pulled tight and suspended off poles. It runs off into the distance, and every now and then they'll see someone come along to fix the ropes when they get frayed or snap entirely. He's always out of earshot.

Thing is, this rope is like an archaic telegram, from some other outpost on the wall. Every now and then the bell starts dinging out the semaphore codes as someone sends them messages, but none of the guards is an operator, so they can't translate it- in actuality it's a beurocratic error that didn't allocate them one, but I'm hoping they'll get all paranoid ("But the officers know we don't have an operator, so why would they send us messages? It must be someone else! Someone else on the damn wall! OH GOD!")

I hope they'll obsess over the ringing of the bell every day or so, and at the end it turns out just to be mundane news and weather reports.

Don't be afraid to get surreal with it. The players will probably never figure out what was going on, so making everything fucked up and dreamlike can really get their imaginations working.

Maybe at night they hear a hooting and gibbering down in the wilderness that doesn't sound like any animal they've ever heard, and sometimes it comes close enough that it must be on the wall somewhere, but nobody ever sees any signs of this thing.

Or after a moonless night, the vegetation on either side of the wall has changed significantly.

Really, just don't be afraid to expand the walls of reality when the players push on them. If someone decides his character is going to try and decode the bell, maybe he'll think it's saying something like "The war is over and everyone is dead."

Consider the idea, but never solidify it, that something happened to the characters on the day that bit of wall collapsed and now they are trapped in a sort of purgatory. If you never explicitly state or even think that, it won't make things cheesy, but it will give you inspiration to drive them insane.

I think that this game shouldn't have a happy ending. It should be one of those games where when it ends, everyone is quiet, and that one guy that always says inappropriate shit tries to crack a joke, but nobody really laughs and then he gets quiet too.

>>1034655
I like the way you think. Honestly, I hadn't really considered the possibility of it getting steadily more surreal as boredom and thirst set in, but now I think about it...

Kind of like Lord of the Flies, except more fucked up. I was toying with the idea of letting one or two live and struggle off into the wilderness, only to be picked up by one of their own cavalry patrols who hang them or him on the spot for deserting the wall.

After a while, put another wall up on the horizon. It's hard to tell, but the style of construction makes it seem as though it's an exact copy of the wall they're on.

Also, run about a month in-game of Basic Training before they get put up on the wall. This is to indoctrinate the characters with the idea that the enemy is an unholy abomination that will just as soon eat a baby as smile. Describe countless, unknowable hordes of them being rumored to exist on the other side of the wall.

It could very well be that The Enemy simply doesn't exist, and that the state put the wall in the middle of its own lands so it could put some people up there, then send some retarded prisoners in rags hopped-up on various hallucinogens at the wall (naturally, they'll get killed), then swap out the troops so that they can return to the population and spread rumors of a horrible enemy beyond the borders that requires the State to keep up Martial Law to protect the people.

On random nights, have them wake up and see evidence of life at the bottom of the walls - stripped carcasses, refuse, discarded bits of food. Nothing concrete that would say person or animal. Maybe these eventually become offerings to the guards, if only they could get to them. But they vanish when they look away, even for a split second.

Keep things claustrophobic and jungle feverish. If theres three players, make sure that the station is equipped for two. If four, three, that sort of thing. Just not quite enough for the numbers that are there.

This is a beautiful idea and I approve of it more than words can say.

Where are they getting supplies, like food and water?

Man, it just sounds more and more like you're trying for something that seems like Lost, without the crash, monsters, strange people, fucked up survivors, special powers, or polar bears. I mean come on, polar bears are awesome.

>>1034726

Play the game "Shade," it's a tense, surreal game (and it's very short) set in an apartment room. There's even a guide available if you google it. The story of the game should have a ton of inspiration for you: http://www.eblong.com/zarf/if.html

What exactly prevents them from just jumping off the wall?

>>1034874

Therein lies half the fun. Either they're not getting any (lol who to eat first) or they're getting it through a sort of pully mechanism thing excpet they have no idea whats on the other end. And when it stops coming, or begins sending things that aint food..

>>1034901

Maybe after a while, stuff stops coming, and though they get hungry, they never starve or get dehydrated.

But yeah, dead pigeons or playing cards or little carved demon figurines would be horrible to receive.

Maybe one day, after they've been starving for about a week, the pulley system brings them a very sharp knife.

>>1034897

A bad fall?

>>1034908

That's why you get 120 ranks in Tumble.

Sounds like a p&p version of Desert Bus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Teller%27s_Smoke_and_Mirrors#Desert_Bus

>>1034481
The staircase tells them which side their homeland is on.

>>1034655
No no no, "The war is over, and WE are all dead"

DUN DUN DUN.

>>1034901
>begins sending things that aren't food
Fuck yes.

>>1034564
Any downloads for this?

>>1034976

Not if someone comes by and cleans it all up one night.

Fun idea: one day repeats itself. Like groundhog day, but it only happens once.

>>1034993
But the existance of the staircase tells them which side it was.

>>1035000

But the staircase is gone, and if someone cleans up the rubble, it's like there never was a staircase in the first place.

>>1035009
Congratulations, you've failed at basic memory.

>>1035023
what if rubble appears on the other side? What if after the days and days of waiting, you start to forget? What if, one day, the sun seems to rise on the wrong side?
nothing is as it seems anymore.

>>1035023
Yea but thats the point if you make both sides exactly the same with no landmarks, are they sure it was on that side ?

>>1035023
I refer you to
>>1034564
Featureless expanses on each side, it's easy to get confused.

Anyway, OP here, this now actually has potential. Goddamn.

In answer to the "WHY DON'T THEY JUMP OFF?" question, the fairly obvious answer is that the fall would kill you, or at least break both your legs.

As for water and food, I'm inclined to the pulley system- maybe a quartermaster inclined to random acts of kindness could send them a book to keep them entertained, but one or more characters become paranoid and obsessed with finding the hidden meaning behind a short piece of trivial fiction.

>>1035045

Just be ready to lead them by the hand into some of this, as they're probably not going to know how to take initiative with things at first.

>>1035055
That's why I give them plenty of time to mull. Get bored. They'll be so bored they'll start looking for the horrors themselves, rather than waiting for me to push them up into their faces. And if it works, I reckon it could be extremely effective. Then the trippy shit can start.

>>1034907

Have there be a crow or something that keeps eating to food before it gets to them on the pully system. Or a weasel. Weasel's are bastards.
just make sure the pully couldn't possibly support the weight of a person and you've got one hell of a depressing situation.

Is this some Red vs. Blue RPG?

>>1035086 the pully couldn't possibly support the weight of a person

Perhaps one of the previous guards could've tried it, and his mouldering corpse lies below it, both legs broken, arms outstretched as though he died trying to crawl away.

And later, they could worry that the body isn't there through the gloom. They could link it to the noises on the wall, and after a few days they're genuinely concerned that at night it stalks the wall on it's shattered legs, howling it's grief to the new garrision.

Or something.

I really want to be in OP's game now

So, the huge, featureless wall has a wooden staircase they use to get to the top, and every few miles there is a slightly higher tower with a well and enclosed room.

The staircase seems like there point of reference, but one day they come back to the point it's at from the watchtower they use some nights and they could swear it's on the other side.

One day they find another staircase on the other side, dangerously rotted and old, but it's clearly been there a long time.

Flowers bloom suddenly on one side of the wall, turning the killing field before the wall into a gorgeous meadow.

Don't make every whammies something creepy. Maybe one day they see a deer in the killing field, or a family of rabbits.

Heck, have a gorgeous girl be picking flowers in the killing field near the edge of the trees, but run away when they call to her.

Make the weather a matter of your impulse, rather then a logical progression. Tell them the date when the game starts, and be clear when time passes, but never have the season change.

Hopefully at some point one of the players will go "fuck.. shouldn't it be December? We started at the end of summer, we trained for a month, and we have been on this fucking wall for two months. Why isn't it winter?

>>1035094
>Perhaps one of the previous guards could've tried it, and his mouldering corpse lies below it, both legs broken, arms outstretched as though he died trying to crawl away.


Too much. Nothing is meant to happen.

I wish I could find the book of the cartoon that gave me the idea so I could scan the strip that really got me thinking, but I'll have to make do with this one.

Imagine them just sat in there, wind howling over the parapet... It'd be easy to imagine something.

As to the nice surprises, I'd prefer to have them fall apart in front of the guards. I mean, maybe a few days of happiness and fun times, no fear, no noises, then suddenly on day five it all goes to shit and there's a blood trail leading from the base of the wall to the top and they realise how many handholds the wall offers to the determined climber oh fuck oh fuck and the bell wont stop ringing etc.

>>1035119
See though, that isn't necessarily that weird, considering that he'd have gone through the same nothing they did. It's an isolated place, after all, and he could've been dismissed as a deserter and never found.

See, nothing happens, but there's evidence of nothing happening to people before them, if you get my drift.

I'm leaning slowly towards the idea of mentally unstable unwanted soldiers being posted to out of the way frontiers where no-one needs to worry about them.

This is one of the most creative, interesting campaign concepts I've ever read. Thanks /tg/

Now if only there were any players out there who could pull it off

This looks familiar.

please tell me there's a rapidshit of this.

>>1035139

Shit, I'd totally play this. Except after reading all this, we know what's going to happen.

I suggest trying to find the smartest of your group and running it for 2 or 3 of them. Since they're used to thinking logically, they're going to analyze everything, and probably take it further then they should. A book sent up the pulley suddenly becomes their bible.

the smart kids are the ones most likely to go nuts over it when nothing works the way it's supposed to, especially if the DM makes things mostly illogical, like them never starving.

FUCK i wana be in this game! Personally i think i would become obsessed with the bell. SOMETHING has to be ringing it. Maybe i can convince the other guys to take off their pants and make a pants laddar, allowing someone to climb down and investigate shit?

Maybe they lose their pants? Lawl.

>>1035263
...Of the setting? That we're making up? Just now?

>>1035266
Since its just a regular every day book, go down to Goodwill or some second hand book store, and get an old fiction book and a highlighter. Highlight random sentences every few pages. Its not important, its just where the last reader stopped off, and he didn't have a bookmark.

>>1035289
Of the comic.

>>1035289
Better suggestion. Find a couple books the same size, mix and match the book pages from different books to make one.

>>1035307
Gone With The Blastwave. Its a webcomic. Its basically GRIM AND DARK RED VS BLUE though.

>>1035310
Why would the kindly quartermaster send THAT to them?

>>1035310

Three words.

House. Of. Leaves.

>>1035340

Not that comic, the OP one!

>>1035289

I don't follow. Are you talking about having a literal book they can read?

because if we're talking about things you can physically do to scare them...well.

Isolate them. You don't need a map or anything for this kind of game, it's purely a social experiment. As such, I recommend:

Find a house with a dumbwaiter. This can work as the pulley, and you can actually send them things, like food, or a old book with random highlights and notes in it.

Following that, leave them in a different room. Use a radio/walkie talkie, whatever, to communicate with them. Don't actually meet them face to face.

More as I think of them.

>>1035349
Because it would be ammusing. Because its the only book the QM doesent want to keep himself to read. Because he was ordered to. Because let the players try to figure it out, and never give them a adaquite reason.

>>1035365
Kinda, but not so much obviously creapy shit. Maybe mix bambi with war and peace, throw in some select steven king, and some handwritten notes in the margins, in different styles of writing/ink/etc. etc.

>>1035374
Too much effort. I'm just saying if its only one book, the players WILL demand to read it. Just add a little bit, man, don't make it a fucking LARP.

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This sounds awesome i really like the idea of anything being possible as the campaign moves on with small hints towards lots of things, Is it the end of the world, has time moved so fast that they've actually been there for years not days, are they an experiment and somebody is watching them progress, is there world at all or are they really just ghosts.

You could have at one point animals maybe birds or something that dont react to their presence at all and when they try to grab them it just stay slightly out of reach, maybe some scattered peices of paper left in the guard tower with scrawlings on it or burnt pages missing most of the words, the possiblities are endless

Maybe they should find evidence that they weren't the first people on the wall, or that they somehow keep forgetting and re-experiencing their first few days. A scrawled journal stuffed in the bottom of a chest, some frantic scratchings on the wall.. Nothing coherent that might hint towards any monsters or plot, just "oh shit"s over and over, that kind of thing.

>>1034444
You're quite a dick. If I was part of your group, I'd kick you in the nuts once I figured out what was happening.

O and repeat the same day over and over again with the same things happen, nothing obvious just the same weather, animals, thing coming in the pully system. Untill they start to catch on then change it

>>1034444
Honestly, if by the third session nothing happened, I'd have my character commit suicide or just jump off the wall and explore. If the rope connecting the bell could be pulled, I'd just lower myself down and go exploring in the jungle/forest/whatever. Hell, dying from stepping on a multicolored frog would be more interesting than what you're planning.

>>1035481

Hmm. I can see this being a common reaction. Maybe you should have a "plant" - a player who knows ahead of time the premise, and that you're dicking with them. That way he can dissuade the others, point out things that they might be interested in..

>>1035463
I give it two sessions. And I'd volunteer to hold OP down, too.

If this is surrealist gaming, you don't need a very good "Reveal" at the end of everything. Hopefully your players kill themselves off and nothing comes of it.

Just don't do what Lost did. Don't keep trying to top yourself. Don't keep trying to make it weirder. Take it only as far as it needs to go and leave it there.

>>1035340
I know what GwtBW is.

as cliche and played out as it sounds, seriously go look at some of david firth's flash cartoons, he has some stuff other than salad fingers that sort of captures a similar level of isolatation and insanity, even if some of it is a little pretencious.

Also there is just something menacing and imposing about giant deserted windowless cement/stone buildings devoid of decoration or features, especially if there's stuff undoubtedly going on inside without anyone there to do it.

>>1035512
How the fuck is that what Lost did?

/b/ is original and fresh. But you guys...you guys are twisted and sick.

Hmm. I think the "Nothing happening" is going to be next to impossible to execute interestingly, but certainly the whole situation on the wall, the uncertainty and unchanging surroundings would make for excellent creepy rp.

>>1035814
"Nothing happens" has kept 40k going for a long time. The thing is that while "nothing happens" something happens.

>>1035603
Making us... not /b/ at all, really.

Eeeevil /b/.

>>1034896
Eh, would stuff like a potted plant changing from a spider plant to a miniature palm tree or a closet which never had a door suddenly having a door really fit with what OP wants?

This idea is awesome.

Also, ITT: Stupid gamers who can't handle not having something to hit.

I'm tempted to turn this idea into a webcomic. That way I wouldn't worry about my players kicking me in the balls.

>>1035876
Ah, I get it. The GM is intentionally fucking over the players by giving them a deliberately shitty game in which nothing ever can happen, but it's the PLAYERS that are stupid. It's all so clear to me now.

>>1035853

>>1035924
From L to R: CG, CN, CE.

>>1035914
The point is that nothing ever happens. Not all roleplaying is about saving the day. I'd be interested in playing this just to see what everyone does, how they end up acting.

>horror game
>paranoia
what

The thing is that the best ideas in this thread are the ones that involve things happening. Giving the players a book through the pulley system gives them something to do and analyze, and that's not very boring at all. The whole point, the OP said, was to be boring.

I think that this could be good. But it needs to be much more subtle for OP's idea to come across.

The setup is important. Have them spend a large amount of time building their characters. Require them to have a very detailed background. Someone mentioned an intensive training program, I like that idea. Have a large amount of ultimately useless background information on the world they're in. Just, you know. Lore, history, things like that. You don't have to make it, just find fiction that fits with your setting that the players have probably never seen, print it out and tell them to familiarize themselves with the world.

A lot of these ideas are about the surreal, but I think that's too interesting for OP's idea. This setting, I think, needs to focus heavily on the mundane. There needs to be almost no stimulation from the GM, it all needs be invented by the characters.

Even though there may be a complex system and background and training program, never even hint that there's anything going on. Give them all this information, tell them that they're stationed on the wall as a routine patrol, and never give them any clues that there's anything bigger happening.

The interesting part will be the interesting things that the players invent.

>>1034577
Lost is a terrible tv show

Put the staircase inside the wall.

>>1036134
Sorry, require their characters to have a detailed background. That part was ambiguous. But if you pull something like this off, the players will probably begin to suspect something bigger that they can't see. The harder they look for it, the more they'll imagine is true. But don't give them /anything/.

Make sure everything you do give them is mundane. Whenever a situation arises where they find or come across something or anything, make sure it's nothing that would be out of place at all and that it's completely boring.

You may find that they turn the ordinary into the extraordinary and epic in their search for the real meaning of the game.

For example, they may take to thoroughly searching the surface of the wall for markings. Rather than giving them scribblings or prints or anything, tell them things like "you find a patch where the bricks don't quite match up," or "You see a weed growing out of the cracks in the masonry."

These things are completely normal and boring, but I'm sure they'll apply every bit of necessary energy to those uneven bricks or that weed.

Clouds in odd shapes. Nothing interesting, but if they examine the sky and demand detailed description, "One of the clouds is lopsided, it's bigger on the left than the right." They'll go crazy analyzing stuff like that.

"The wind is stronger today."
"You see a scorpion."
"A spider has caught a butterfly."
"Your left foot itches."

Don't be so focused on nothing happening that this is in itself extraordinary. Things can happen and change and whatnot. The more normal and simple, the more they'll read into it which is what I think OP is going for.

>>1036172
this is how i came to be known as the deepest DM in my circle of groups.

by pulling shit completely out of my ass that wasnt special at all. but people LOOKED for meaning, and found it.

I just run with whatever they find. A mouse eating a stash of cheese during a campout lead to a bbeg trying to rule the world with a floating death fortress.

>>1036197
I kinda want to know how you went from mice to death fortress.

>>1036197

Exactly. And you know, this doesn't have to be the whole campaign. Start them off like that, but maybe you decide after a few sessions that you don't want to be a jackass and have to tell them LOL IT WAS ALL NOTHING IT WAS JUST NORMAL, so you can use their ideas.

If you present them with the truly mundane and they start coming up with ideas and things, then when things start getting so boring that the players talk about quitting...

Make their ideas come true. Bang, they're interested again. And one player might feel great that he figured it all out and his idea was right, but speed it up. Make everyone's ideas come true.

Maybe your setting is the inside of the players' imaginations. At the beginning it's boring and nothing special, but as they come up with colorful and interesting ideas they begin to populate the world. See how long it takes them to find out they're in their own heads.

>>1036172
That's beautiful. Gamers have been so conditioned that EVERYTHING mentioned is important that the idea of everything mentioned being unimportant just doesn't enter their thought processes.

Once the players start getting paranoid, I think it'd be fun to pass them notes telling them to make sense motive checks (or whatever). If they *fail*, then you pass them another note telling them something like "You notice your companions behaving strangely" or "Out of the corner of your eye, you notice the others staring at you when they think you're not paying attention."

With any luck, you'll have all of the players on edge and suspicious of each other. And if they actually slaughter each other, once there's only one left, people show up for 'routine maintenance' explaining away all of the stuff that's been weirding the players out- "Yeah, those stairs haven't been maintained in years, surprised they took so long to collapse." "The guy who's been sending you supplies was talking about how he's been sending you random stuff across the pulley as a prank. That dick."

>>1036225
players follow said mouse. said mouse brings them to its home under a large oak tree.

they remember from another campaign in the same world that a kingdom's symbol is an oak, it MUST be a sign.

go to kingdom, they begin searching for information about mice. man was seen in a pub earlier that had big ears (mouselike, i suppose)
they follow rumors, i eventually get off my ass and half-ass a tale of a man hoarding large quantities of stone and other items (as the players said, "JUST LIEK DA MOUSE STOLE OUR CHEESE") and i just pull a giant fortress in the making out of my ass. players find and kill said guy, players shout OMG IT WAZ JUS LIEK FORSHADOWING I SEE IT NOW.

there was more to it, but that whole thing made me question whether my stories where that good and "deep" or if my players were the types who loev getting their fortunes told by middle aged ladies at carnivals.