Succession LP ideas

LP General Chat
#1

Here is the thread where we try to come up with good ideas for Succession LPs.

For completion’s sake, a Succession LP is a style of Let’s Play, usually screenshot-based, in which one player plays the game for some number of turns, or in-game weeks, or such, composes a Let’s Play episode/post about that time, and then passes the save file to another player, who repeats the process from that point in the game.

I feel like the most prolific game in this LP genre is Dwarf Fortress, but I’ve also seen it done with Civilization. I suck at both of those games, though, so let’s think of some other games that could be interesting for succession!

Turn-based games seem particularly well-suited for this, as well as strategy games. However, city-builders strike me as a largely untapped well of potential Succession Play.

Actual ideas:
Invisible Inc./XCOM/XCOM 2: I put these all together because I consider them to be the same tightly clustered genre. You have time passing on an overworld map as you do strategic menu stuff like research or moving around on an intercontinental scale, and then you zoom in to a turn-based tactical mission when something happens/you reach your destination.
I think an Invisible Inc. Succession would go by individual missions, or possibly single 24-hour periods, but XCOM/2 could probably go by in-game months.

Cities Skylines: This could be interesting just to see what different players do with their tenure. Everybody has their own preferences in games like these about like public transit, city planning, and so on. Like a real-life city, we could see the result of people with different agendas stacking projects on top of each other over time. The time scaling makes it a little difficult to decide how long each player’s “turn” should be, but some test experimenting would eventually yield an agreeable number of months or years for a mayoral term.

Prison Architect: Kind of a “city builder”, kind of a Dwarf Fortress with more intuitive UI, Prison Architect’s modular rooms and visual scheduling/scripting features make it easy for the next player in Succession to get a grip on what’s happening in the save state they receive. The time scale is pretty stretched out, so players could probably do terms of 1 year or so.

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#2

Has anyone done a succession game of any of the Mount & Blade games? They seem like they’d be well suited.

Another possible angle would be roguelikes or ironman runs of non-roguelike RPGs, but you’d have to have some pretty skilled players to make it past a couple updates.

#3

I’m thinking that really any of Paradox’s games would work well, Crusader Kings could change anytime a ruler dies, and the others could work off of some arbitrary amount of time passed.

#4

I think the idea would work with lengthy games that are slogs for one person to complete (Phoenix Wright would be my go-to if someone wasn’t about to finish it).

I know a few years back Starmen.net would ship around a copy of Earthbound to their various forum members with each person contributing a chunk of gameplay and writing up their experiences. Something like that would be pretty cool (though obviously with save files instead of physically mailing a cartridge around).

#5

Okay, I’m gonna come out with a rather bold and possibly very silly suggestion here…

Do y’all think creating a game in RPG Maker would work as a succession LP?

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#6

People would need to comment code and design quite well, but it’s possible. Especially because RPG Maker isn’t too complex.

You’d have to lay some ground rules as well, in terms of how many mechanics/features per person can be introduced, because if it’s gonna be a mess, it might as well be a manageable mess.

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#7

I’m trying to remember if any of the Roller Coaster Tycoon games had a mode where you just build and maintain a park, because that might be interesting if it switches between people after each in-game year.

Game Dev Tycoon might also work with this idea.

#8

I know there’s a sandbox mode, but that gives you infinite money, and that might take away some of the challenge.

#9

Oh. Yeah if that’s the case it wouldn’t be as fun without the “oh man our park might get shut down” aspect.

#10

Planet Coaster’s challenge mode is basically this.

#11

Does Tropico 5 have an infinite mode? That could get interesting if you have regular elections switched on.

#12

It’s not quite succession, but I can imagine an LP of The Sims Medieval wherein the save is passed around after each adventure, with selected posters being in charge of one hero each.

#13

For classic JRPG fans we can all suffer together and play Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom with each LPer taking an generation to play.

Edit:
FFT can also be a neat idea too, each person takes a chapter of the story.

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#14

Yo that’s the best idea I’ve ever heard.

Dang, then someone can do a regular lp of that game, if it’s at all popular. Fuckin’ art.

I’m on board, if this happens

#15

Also @TrenWolfman
It’s funny you should say that. At the Global Game Jam 2017, just a couple weeks ago, one of the Diversifier Challenges we saw was essentially, “Swap game projects with another team half-way thru the Jam and finish each-others’ games.”

I still cannot think of a good way to make something like this possible, unless you had a VERY simple game to build.
It’s also hard to just hand over your project to someone, unless both of you are confident the other has a similar skill levels.

For a game project to go through a succession of different people…
It’d be really tough, but maybe if there was a lot pre-established work and guidelines, maybe it could work.

I’ll keep thinking about it.

#16

What if you had a public Minecraft server that everyone could join, and one person would spend an in-game week (or some amount of time) recording their adventures, exploring and building their projects, then switching to the next person? You might then see those players in the periphery of future videos.

#17

This could be sort of interesting, especially with some rules, like you have to always be adding onto the structure that the rest of the LP has been living in.

One of these days I’d like to run a semi-restricted server like that, where everybody has to be living in one big mega-building that we cobble together over time, or everybody has to live underground in a big colony with a starter supply of seeds, saplings, and torches. I think you’d get some pretty interesting build decisions in that scenario.