Who Started The Doom Clock?
I Dropped This Ancient Tome Into A Sea of Blood And Revived An Ancient Evil Empire!
There needs to be a caution about adding anything to a campaign that is, for all intents and purposes, a Doom Clock.1
Definition: A Doom Clock is any mechanic or procedure in a game whereby a catastrophic event inevitably occurs when the Clock strikes a pre-determined point.
This is one of those things where the integrity of the game takes priority. Once a Doom Clock is added to a campaign, all players therein need to be notified that it exists. This does not mean that any man they control knows about it.
A typical Fantastic Adventure campaign, this is some item or process (such as a ritual) that enacts such an unwanted consequence. Often this takes the form of someone’s Win Condition or a universal Loss Condition. Using the article linked to above, you have this:
A cursed tome with an infinite number of pages.
The curse compels the afflicted to add pages via dousing it with liquid suitable for scribing, be it ink or blood or whatever. In return the power of the Empire grows in the revision of its history, power recorded in the book that the afflicted can (try) to acquire for themselves.
The added pages advance the timeline of the Totally Not Melnibonean Empire from that vast distant age before recorded history forward into the present, rewriting history (and reality) as it does so- changing memories as required.
Upon hitting the Clock’s end, the Empire reappears in the present at peak power and instantly establish itself retro-actively as the Imperial Sovereign Of All.2
This is a Doom Clock item.
The Doom Clock is the retro-active revision of history from the past forward to the present, in the service of the Evil Empire so described and recorded. The original article, being a work of creative fiction, didn’t systematize the process by which this happens; if you’re going to adapt this item you’ll have to figure that out.
So far, this is nothing that people in the hobby haven’t seen as Le Plot Device for decades and slept on.
In the Clubhouse, Doom Clocks are things players can unilaterally impose upon the campaign. They don’t even have to do this deliberately. Their failures can do this too.
In short, you can be this guy when you play in a Clubhouse environment.3
Or you can screw up and be them.4
Which means that, indeed, savvy play will inevitably involve slapping others with Doom Clocks that benefit your man and screw over his opposition. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition has this baked into the game in a few forms.
Self-replicating monsters (level-draining undead, Green Slime, etc.)
Lycanthropy
Polymorph Other (under certain circumstances)
Various Curse and Geas options
Players are free to add to this. That’s what Research & Development is for.
The other benefit of Doom Clocks appearing in a campaign is that it forces play into a point of Convergence, likely on a schedule undesired by everyone concerned, because letting that clock run out is going to wreck things for (almost) everyone.
However that Doom Clock sets off, once it is that needs to go into the Campaign Report so that everyone following the campaign knows that it’s there.
“But why?”
Because its very presence forces players to engage. “If (X) is not dealt with by (Y), (Z) occurs and your man(s) lose” is a great way to focus player attention, and if that Clock also comes about due to the spawning of a new faction (which permits more players to play in the campaign, as the aforementioned article’s Doom Clock effects do).
How their mans know is not your problem. It’s their problem; not all mans will know right away, and if it’s sorted soon enough they never need to know, but passing that awareness on to others is something to be sorted through play and not presumed on the part of the players. As players will be slapping Doom Clocks around, there will be a vested interest in concealing this from mans on the map not already aware for as long as possible.
Or do you really think the player playing the man who willingly became a vampire isn’t going to do what he can to keep his slow-rolling zombie apocalypse undetected until it’s too late?
The more that you reconsider Conventional Play priors in the environment of the Clubhouse and its regeneration of the wargame roots of the hobby, the greater the prevalence that what formerly were considered Narrative Media tropes are actually valid wargame maneuvers and need to be adjudicated accordingly.
So go ahead, go for the Zombie Apocalypse. Cause that world-ending flood. Don’t wait for the dice to drop a Doom Clock on you; make your own, and (like the makers of the item in the article) weaponize against your opposition. Doom Over Time5 is not just for the Referee in a proper Fantastic Adventure campaign.
Pic related. Very much related. Read that article; perfect Doom Clock example.
Yes, I am working on adapting this to AD&D1e’s rules. Not as hard as you might think.
Yes, that was a Doom Clock getting set into motion.
“DOT” for short, appropriating the videogame term for Damage Over Time, because it’s the same idea on a bigger scale of operation.