![Skull_Kid_(Twilight_Princess)[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/05MsBnn.jpg "Skull_Kid_(Twilight_Princess)[1].png")
Hey, /tg/, I could use a little advice for a solo campaign with my good friend I'm trying to write up.
The short version is this friend of mine was interested in playing a skeleton character in the setting I've been writing for about a month now. This is incorporated into the lore and current events in such a way as not to be completely shoehorned, but the issue I'm having is with what direction to go with the plot.
Majora's Mask is quite possibly this friend of mine's favorite game of all time, and he reacted positively to me asking him about taking inspiration from it for the story and world of the campaign. I've played a good amount of the game, enough to appreciate the majority of its themes, characters, and so on, and I've supplemented what I haven't played of it with reading.
This all sounds well and good, but the problem comes in when trying to actually come up with a story that hits all the same notes that Majora's Mask does. To that end, the best idea I've been able to come up with insofar as the somewhat limbo-esque and futile atmosphere the game presents with the constant time rewinding mechanic is this: a curse, wrought from the character's place between the veil of life and death (for reference, this skeleton race will be treated as living just as often as undead for various technical and magical purposes during the story, e.g. healing), which will dictate that this character will be plagued with a purgatorial solitude. Any NPC the character should speak to would forget him within a fairly short period of time (a few hours at least, a day at most). What's more, he'd be unable to stay in one place for more than a short period of time before it would start to exhibit very negative effects on his unhealth.
As much as I think this is a somewhat elegant solution to the problem, it also plays against the format in some pretty hard to ignore ways. (cont.)
Being that this is a solo campaign, a huge amount of the plot, character development, and general time would be spent on NPCs. This curse would immediately interfere with that, disincentivizing helping NPCs, taking the time to get to know them, and so many other things that would almost necessarily make this kind of game work.
I also feel like the sort of mood this would bring about would be extremely incompatible with tabletop in general, to say nothing of a game featuring only two people (which can be a little awkward by itself, in my experience) A story like this would be perfectly fine to explore in a book or a movie, in which the viewer/reader would be sympathetic but ultimately disconnected to the struggles of the protagonist, but I fear that it might be unrealistic to expect anyone to actually play through them without getting completely and utterly burned out and bored.
So this is my plight. I wish I were either creative enough to come up with a different plot point entirely or experienced enough to make it work well. I hope someone can offer up either one of these things
bumpan
![a6qomdmw4zj6ag9cafxg[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/HLTNpoN.png "a6qomdmw4zj6ag9cafxg[1].png")
guess I'll post unrelated /tg/ screencaps
>Wants MM Campagin
>Posts image of TP Skullkid
>>46048423
yea i know. because he looks like a skellenton and my player is a skellenton
>your ideas are so shit /tg/ is above even telling you how shit your ideas are
death, here I come
I like this posting screencaps idea though.
>>46048504
This one makes me cry every time.
Doop doop poop poop.
Some day, someone other than me will post this.
Anon. I am here to help.
Ok. So as I think of your skeleton player and how to make the game feel like MM, I think:
>Make it personal. Fucking Personal
Link in MM is saving the world, true. But he's almost the only who gives a shit the moon's about to fuck the earth's shit up. The story, the real story, is basically Link and Skullkid having a tussle while the world goes about its business, ignoring the fact they are dancing madly on the lip of a volcano. What's more, Link's only involved because Skullkid is a horse stealing motherfucker who screwed with the wrong effeminate kid in green tights. Whatever story you wanna tell, make it a personal quest for the player, at least at first.
>Make it lonely
You don't need to have people magically forget the walking skeleton man. Just have them naturally forget. He isn't important, at least not at the moment. Who has time to think about the skeleton man when the world's ending? Or when I gotta get these fish to market before they stink? Or when my mother-in-law is coming over? If Skeleton Player were to drop dead(er) tomorrow, no one should care, least of all the people he's trying to help. NPCs should only care about him insofar as he is helping them, and vice versa. He wants to help the nerd win at the big triathlon because the nerd can direct him towards a big, juicy item or dungeon. Fuck everyone else, since they don't give a fuck about me.
>Make it alien
Have him in a strange land where Knowledge (Local) would be meaningless since he's never heard of the place nor knows how he got here. Nothing works the same. Why are there so many allusions to death, despair, and psychology? What the fuck is that? No, really, WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?
And so on. So don't remove NPC interaction, just make it utterly mercenary. Don't wreck the PC with the environment, make it different enough from his usual stomping grounds to make him uneasy and alone. And always have the plot/villain revolve around the PC's motivations.
>>46047766
Point 1:
I get the reference, but Skull Kid wasn't a skellington. He (or his equivalent) just wore a skull mask in Ocarina of Time.
Point 2:
If your player is going to play a skeleton and expecting themes from Majora's Mask, why are you writing a campaign from Link's perspective? Maybe your player doesn't want to play the hero, but the trickster.
Check this before you spend time on the project.
