Highlander RPG

A friend of mine mentioned using flashbacks in a role playing game and it got me thinking about a Highlander RPG again. I never got around to playing or running one, and I think it was always because I couldn’t figure out why a group of immortals would work together. This shows how I was assuming the structure of the game would follow the standard D&D party style. Now I’ve experienced a few more games and ideas, maybe I can actually wrap my head around it and get it to work.

Rather than try to fit the concept to a gaming group, I tried to imagine myself playing a game where my character was an immortal. Ars Magica has the Troupe System, where a player’s role changes depending on the session. In the Dresden Files RPG, one player might play a wizard, but the others could be vampires, werewolves, faery folk, or regular humans. It’s not necessary for each player to play a wizard, so why an immortal?

Down Through the Centuries

So if I’m playing an immortal that lives a long time, I can know many different people as the centuries go past. I could have loved, fought, drank, and danced with all sorts of companions. I could live through a city siege, a voyage of exploration, the creation of art, or anything that ever happened. As the player, I could choose where my character travels to, so that I get to experience certain events in history. Presumably I’ll experience them with other people, but it should be a rare event to meet another immortal. For the most part, the people I know should be regular humans, who grow old and die eventually. This suggests to me that the structure of the game should allow me to pick a time and place in history and say “I was there when that happened.” The other players in the group could then create characters who lived at that time and might have known me. Together we can play through a session where we all experience that event. Only one of us is playing an immortal, but depending on the challenges of the event, that may not make any difference to how the story plays out. After the session, the event becomes part of my memory, an event that I could flashback to at a later point. None of the other immortals know what happened, unless I choose to tell them, but the players all develop, after many sessions, an idea of what each of the immortal characters is like. I suppose if I meet a guy once every forty years, but I’ve known him for four hundred years, then I actually know him pretty well.

Perhaps at the end of one session we all decide who will be the focus of the next session. That player can then suggest a period in history that they would like to visit. The other players then design mortal characters who could be part of the next session. There might not need to be a referee or game master either. If I’m the immortal character for next week’s session, then the other three players can together create the villains and allies that are needed to create an interesting experience for me.

There Can Be Only One

That’s all fine for a game where characters live forever, but the whole point of Highlander is the struggle for the Prize… which only one can possess. There needs to a way to create and resolve conflicts between immortal characters. Above I suggested that at the end of each session, the players decide who will be the immortal character in the next session. That player would then decide where and when the next session is set. Instead of that, each player could decide, in secret, where their character will be next, and when. They then reveal their choices to all the others. If it is revealed that two or more immortals will be in the same general time and place, then the next session will be a Clash. This isn’t necessarily a battle and a beheading, but a meeting where two immortals are in conflict. It could be romantic, sporting, social, political, philosophical, or martial. Even if it is martial, and the two duel, it doesn’t imply that one is dead, but one could be wounded, maimed, driven off, or somehow defeated.

The frequency of these Clashes is determined both by how often the players want to have them, and how often everyone feels it makes sense for immortals to meet one another. It makes you wonder how many there are in the world. Are one percent of humans immortal? Or potentially immortal, if the conditions are right?

None of Us Will Violate that Law

Assuming any system of rules is necessary, I think Microscope would work well here. A given session would be a game of Microscope, set during a certain time period. Many sessions would form a campaign or overall story that eventually leads to a climax. Maybe that climax is the final battle, with the final session dealing with the time of the Gathering. Or maybe the story is concluded in another way, depending on what the players want.

If each player has an immortal character, then the first session can focus on the oldest of them. It can deal with their birth, childhood, early life, and first death. Then each subsequent session can introduce each of the other immortals. After they have all had a session, the players begin planning what their own character will do next, to be dealt with in the next session. When meetings occur, a Clash session happens. Otherwise, a regular session is played.