A mental exercise: a Far Cry-type campaign.

Hello guys,

Maybe it's because I've been playing way too much FarCry4 lately (like way too much), but I've been wondering, what would it take to bring a Far Cry-type experience to the table top?

The first thing which comes to mind would be the scope. In the video game series, the maps are huge with so many areas to explore, outposts to liberate, missions to make, things to find and gather, etc... Surely, reducing the scope to anywhere between 1/3 to 1/5 what your typical Far Cry game is would probably go a long way to keep things manageable.

So what would be the elements to have to make a game have a Far Cry feel?

• Large map to explore with many secret locations: Hexcrawl might work well here. Again, it is important to get the scale right, or otherwise things might get a bit complicated to manage...

• Hunting animals to craft better gear: This might be a bit hard to include unless the system is built around that. Could be one of the few elements which could be dropped in favor of some friendly merchant helping the players and possible gifting them better gear from completing such and such mission (in a way, this is already how you get better guns in the video game)...

• Liberating areas and outposts: The whole "liberating a radio tower removes the fog of war" element might be a bit difficult to implement. Perhaps they are magical towers which produce a supernatural fog which need to be disabled so that people can see in the conquered areas? The whole outposts thing can pretty much kept as-is, with the players having the choice to liberate it stealthily or not.

• Many random events: Could be fun, but again, the scale might have to be scaled down to avoid having things too complicated. If your players are always running after some random event instead of clearing the fog or liberating outposts, the campaign risks getting side-tracked... Perhaps a limit of 1 possible such event per day at most?

• Missions to accomplish, either side quests or to complete the main objective: This can also easily be done, but once again, the scope must be brought down as to avoid having a campaign which is too complex. I guess something along the line of Red Hand of Doom could work...

• Defeating the BBEG: In the video games, so far, we've seen drug lords and despot tyrants (at least, the games that I know of). So who could be this BBEG and what would be his/her goal? Well, if we go with the fog towers idea, he should probably be some sort of powerful wizard of some type. Maybe he's looking to terraform the land for his own dying race? If so, would the fog of the fog towers be toxic to anyone not of the race of the BBEG?

As you can see, there is plenty of material to work with, and I think a Far Cry-type campaign in pen and paper format might work. So what do you guys think?

I think that this would be a really cool idea.

I definitely think that the crafting stuff would be really cool if a subsystem could be designed for it. That would really bring home a survivalist feel to the game.

As for the towers, (if you want to skip the magic), you could have them be something as simple as a tower on a hill, which allows a posted guard or scout to get a better view of the surrounding area. Fits with the Fog of War feel without forcing it.

BBEG could be anything from an awoken (intelligent) monster to a wizard to a covetous warlord.

Interesting concept there Naat. The party have no map, so the tower on a hill allows the party to make fill in their own map. Would still fit in well with a Hexcrawl. Perhaps the tower reveals all hexes at a certain radius around the tower depending on the scale of the map.
Yeah, the crafting aspect could be kept in, the problem is most RPGs will have crafting systems which will take days, week or even moths depending on how forgiving or unforgiving the system is... But hey, if the party is exploring an unknown region, I guess they'll have plenty of time for crafting anyways.

Speaking of crafting, another aspect of the game I forgot are the plants which allows to craft syringes. Again, this can be more or less easy to adapt as many games have rules for alchemy and medicine and the plants could simply be considered as the ingredients for those...

The many vehicles of Far Cry could also be used, depending on which setting is used. A med-fan setting might replace those vehicles with carts, chariots, and magical constructs?

Finally, I forgot about the camera gimmick, allowing you to observe a position from afar, tagging enemies, friends, and animals with it. Perhaps a magic item lent by the friendly merchant I mentioned earlier in order to help in their war effort?

I've been thinking, since your own private table top game is pretty much free of copyrights infringements, why just limit oneself to just a Far Cry-inspired campaign, but also throw in a bit of Just Cause as well? I mean both games are very similar in theme. Of course, Rico has the very versatile grappling hook in JC. A high-tech piece of gadjetry, or a magic item depending on your setting? Perhaps one player could be given the FC "camera" to help with the mission, another being given the JC "grappling hook", while yet another player being given the "flight suit" from both games, etc.?

I have to be honest. I havent played far cry 4 and I didnt car for 3, but A game that took place during far cry instincts with the Predator gene would be awesome.

Sadly, I haven,t played those games. A quick Google search revealed a few youtube videos... aren't they like basically the same game? Also, they look stage-based? Far Cry 2-5 are more open world and sandboxy...

they are open world-ish depending on the stage. you still have lots of area to go around.

but i understand what you mean

Basically I just meant the original Far Cry series that took place on the Jacutan islands

Ah, ok.

I haven't played Far Cry before, but the idea of liberating towers does remind me of a pet project I have. Sort of a west marches style game where instead of venturing into the wilderness, the party ventures into a shared dreamworld. At the end of every session, the party wakes up and leaves the world, and at the beginning of every session, the party falls asleep and enters the world at a location of a "tower." Some appropriate fictional name like Dream Gates or what have you would be preferred, but essentially they are like the towers you describe in Far Cry. Every tower you liberate allows you to enter the world deeper and further, and gives you access to return to fabulous places. At the same time, losing towers can be catastrophic. If you lose all of your towers, you will be forever exiled from the dream world.

@ kalajel kind of reminds me of the Broken Earth setting, since you can fidget with various quality of life things if everyday isnt a crisis.

@ lenpelletier have you heard about Glorantha and dreamquests?

Hmm, an interesting premise.

I've been thinking about this project again recently, and I've remembered i did downloaded and printed the D6Pool Modern Roleplaying System a while back. Been reading up on it again, and I think it's something which could be easily done. I've been thinking of some fictional small island nation ditactorship I could whip up and I might actually be able to start a game of that... Assuming I can gather enough interest... And of course, once my computer problems are fixed...

If you put something like this together, please drop me a line. I've always been looking for a good, quality game in a modern/current-day (or in the very near future) with a simple-to-grasp ruleset. The only system that made sense to me was D20: Modern, but it felt too restrictive and tended to pigeon-hole the characters.

Anyway, the setting and concept are both appealing to me- so if this materializes, I want in.

My suggestion on the boss would be to avoid a 'wizard'; if you want to keep this grounded, modern and relateable, make it an electronic, or EMP fog, if you will. Through some wonder of technology, each tower radiates a (weaker, but persistent) EMP field, shutting down communication (at least) or all electrical function (at best). I guess how you proceed may depend on how "real" you want to keep it. Then again, after watching Bright on Netflix (no critic comments on the movie, please), I'm inspired by the potential to integrate magic and modern day, without completely twisting the modern day feel.

PS- There's no such thing as too much Far Cry. Just the other day I reinstalled Far Cry 2 and cackled as I lit the dried grass fields on fire and watched the enemies burn. My doctor says I'm okay. Honest.


-Demagor

I'm still slowly working on this in the background. I don't think I'll start it soon because I'm in plenty of games for now, but this is certainly an interesting project for the future.