The Campaign Builder's Guild

As I'm sure any rpg geek can testify to, I adore Adventure Time. And if I remember correctly, someone on this forum described it as "Dnd on Acid" (I'm pretty sure it was Ninja D, but i'm not sure, if you said it just let me know), and honestly that's just the most perfect summation of that show.

It's always surprised me how there isn't an official AT rpg tie in to the show. There's a Munchkin spinoff of the show, but no in depth rpg splatbooks, or even a tabletop dungeon crawl game like Descent or Talismen? For shame, although there's that Card Wars CCG game so we have something.

Which lead me to a thought experiment. How would you run a game session set in the land of Ooo? I thought of a way, but I'm curious how you guys would handle it. Would you homebrew your own game? I imagine many of us would use FATE to handle it. Me i would use Pathfinder, and I'll explain it.

My way.

House rules:

#1 Hyper (adventure) time

Basically, the game would be set in it's own timeline, with it's own baggage and events. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Spoony, or his show Counter Monkey, but he had a really good series of episodes where he discussed how to handle games set in established franchises. It's basically impossible to run a game set in the LotR story for several reasons, the players would be too tempted to use the ring, you have to follow this linear plot line, etc, etc. He discussed how he would handle games set in the Babylon 5 universe, and his solution was to say that the game was following it's own plot with it's one characters, and things and event's would not happen in the same exact way.

Considering how full of random baggage the show already has, I think playing the Hypertime card, and declaring this universe it's own seperate continuity would leave you free to making your own weirdness.

Why not set in the future or past? Well because you'll always have that one player that knows more about Adventure Time than you do. This way you can keep the snarling continuity wolves at bay.

#2 Character Creation

To make a long explanation short, I feel like there's more than enough in the official Pathfinder system alone to cover most of the aspects of AT characters. Lot's of types of magic, various fighting types, weapons, tons of advanced technology, robots (androids), psychic stuff, and tons of races that could easily be reflavored tweaked to fit any cooky race idea that you come up with.

So i"m just gonna make this short and say that any official material is fine, third party stuff and home brew ideas check by me.

But you have to make an OC. No officially established characters may be player characters. Finn and Jake don't exist in this universe, you guys are the protagonists. You may not play as any of the official princesses, wizards, vampires, etc, etc. Hypertime means that the entire setting could be filled with it's own princesses, or maybe some of the Official princesses are their, but it's not going to be the same. Make up your own character.


So yeah, those are my house rules. Then i would just play adlib style with a bunch of random tables not necessarily dictating events, but giving a good baseline for where to take the adventures in. Problem is I can't find any random tables that are just right. Either you have this, or you have to hunt down a bunch of different random tables.

I'm not trying to run this game any time soon. If i ever wound up in a group that would want to try though this is how I would try to handle it.

This was just a thought experiment. Do any of you guys have better ideas? I imagined you would that's why i'm posting this.

I think Pathfinder would work reasonably well, but personally I think it's almost a little crunchy for OOO. If I were running it I'd probably use either 5th or even a retroclone, or perhaps Dungeon World.

As far as continuity goes, I don't see why Finn and Jake can't exist. Presumably while they're having adventures, other people are also having adventures. OOO seems to be a pretty big place.

One thing I think would be important for a game in OOO would be to do what the show does constantly and invent new places and strange stuff all the time rather than just retreading the same ground. For every episode that's just set in the Candy Kingdom or Ice Kingdom there's an episode where they visit bizarre new places - places like the City of Thieves or Wildberry Kingdom or some entirely new plane of existence. It seems clear, for example, that each of the Princesses have their own Kingdoms, as we see places like Lumpy Space and the Slime Kingdom (even if some of these, like the Hot Dog Kingdom, are very small).

Primetime Adventures!

I don't see why Fate couldn't be a good (if not ideal) system to run adventures with in the land of Ooo. When I think about Adventure Time's characters, they seem to be to be defined by a few specific traits in much the same way that you do with characters in the Fate rules. Not only that, Ooo seems to be inconsistent enough that trying to play with a system that is very rigid and complicated might bog you down, more than anything.

I've seen Adventure Time Pathfindet hacks and honestly, they suck out loud. The shown is too varied and too inconsistent that trying to narrowing it down to a limited list of races and classes ends up feeling, well, limited. I second using FATE - specifically, I'd go with FATE Accelerated.

I could see a FATE game set in OOO functioning very well. That said, because the show is so very clearly in conversation with Dungeons and Dragons specifically (I think), and riffing off all sorts of classic D&D tropes and elements like character classes and alignment, I'd really want to use some form of D&D to run it if it were me. You would definitely need a fast and loose approach to the rules.

While they definitely riff on AD&D a whole bunch, they do so in a very slapdash way that would be hard to emulate with actual D20 rules, I think. What I would do is maybe split the difference and - like a lot of FATE hacks - and mandate a class or alignment aspect of some sort?

I think the key question is to whether you want to play a game that mimics the narrative structure and logic of the show - in which case, FATE would be best (as it probably is for emulating most non-game narratives) - or whether you want to simply run a more traditional game that uses Ooo as a setting, in which case I would go with something like 5E with various hacks.

Quote from: Rhamnousia
I've seen Adventure Time Pathfindet hacks and honestly, they suck out loud. The shown is too varied and too inconsistent that trying to narrowing it down to a limited list of races and classes ends up feeling, well, limited. I second using FATE - specifically, I'd go with FATE Accelerated.

Quote from: Steerpike
I think the key question is to whether you want to play a game that mimics the narrative structure and logic of the show - in which case, FATE would be best (as it probably is for emulating most non-game narratives) - or whether you want to simply run a more traditional game that uses Ooo as a setting, in which case I would go with something like 5E with various hacks.

Those Pathfinder hacks kind of miss the point i'm making. Pathfinder already has a ton of variety and is totally hackable. I don't think that PF is all that rigid, and certainly more flexible than 3.5 Dnd.

Still I see the need to be a lot more loose with the roleplaying aspects. If I were running, I would certainly be a lot more sparing on the dice rolling checks, and be less murderous. Not necessarily less cruel, but less murderous.

Quote from: LoAI would certainly be a lot more sparing on the dice rolling checks, and be less murderous. Not necessarily less cruel, but less murderous.

It seems like you're looking for ways to resolve situations within the rules while not relying (solely) on the dice, and ways that the players can "lose" or otherwise suffer a setback that don't involve being dead. I think Fate has been recommended several times, and it would get my recommendation over Pathfinder as well, because these are things that Fate does well right out of the box, while Pathfinder does not do them well, at least not without extensive hacking.