Bulldrek v3.0

In my series of Campaigns I'll never get to run I'd like to detail some of my ideas I'll never get to run. I'll try to expand and add to them as I go, adding more here and there.

In this game the PC's would be members of the Resistance, fighting Skynet. The game would start in the future, with the PC's struggling to survive and avoiding capture by Skynet. Eventually however the game would involve the PC's being a part of discovering that Skynet has discovered how to send people back through the time stream, and has sent terminators into the past to change the future.

Groups have been sent back to protect John and Sarah Connor, while others have been sent back to try and alter various events, or to stock pile materials for the resistance. This will be the groups objective, with their secondary objectives being to help protect John and Sarah Connor.

The players will be remnants of various military units fighting in World War III Eastern Europe when the war goes Nuclear. Now all they want is to get home alive. The game would chronicle their adventures surviving the trip home.

In this game the PC's would be a small band of Mutants struggling to survive in Detroit, the mad mad motor city! This game would involve fast cars, rock concerts and pizza.

The facts are this game will never get off the ground because I can never get a group that will be interested in high fantasy, and actual heroic characters are hard for them to offer up.

Serious Paul wrote:The facts are this game will never get off the ground because I can never get a group that will be interested in high fantasy, and actual heroic characters are hard for them to offer up.

Really? High fantasy heroism is awesome! I can't believe you can't find people to be part of something like that! As for actual heroic characters, they don't have to START heroic (although having at least one there that does would help). Even when I play a bastard in a high fantasy setting I can't help but have them evolve into a good person by the end of the campaign.

It's so strange to me that you can't find people interested in that.

Crazy Elf wrote:It's so strange to me that you can't find people interested in that.

I think I'd be very hard pressed to find someone who would want to do that, too, actually.

Crazy Elf wrote:Really? High fantasy heroism is awesome! I can't believe you can't find people to be part of something like that!

Being nice and helping people doesn't strike most of Paul's players as being particularly rewarding.

3278 wrote:

Crazy Elf wrote:Really? High fantasy heroism is awesome! I can't believe you can't find people to be part of something like that!

Being nice and helping people doesn't strike most of Paul's players as being particularly rewarding.

Which is true, but isn't a complaint on my part-or rather it's not the gist of my complaint, which is really that you guys are too advanced for me to run some really basic one dimensional stuff on you all.

Heroism isn't one dimensional. Doing what is ethically right is rarely a simple choice.

I agree. Often, however, it is portrayed in just that way, which is a shame. My players often deal with these difficult choices, and doing the "right" thing is every bit, as often as not, as doing the "wrong" thing. (Something I'm sure you'll agree with me on.)

Sometimes however I'm not looking for a complex game. (Hell sometimes my players aren't.) Sometimes we just laugh and act like we're in the movies, and everything is fun and games. Other times the games evolves into something serious. I think right now it's just a case of their tastes and mine not hitting at the the same time. Normally we're all very much on the same page, but lately it seems like we've drifted apart. Not all of the time, just every once in a while.

I think much of this will resolve itself when I get to day shift, and have more time to devote to a regular schedule. Instead of spurts of gaming in which we get an unpredictable turnout.

Yeah going to day shift didn't make much difference. My gaming days pretty much came to an end.

Growing old sucks. I'm going to run my kids through a Pathfinder module tomorrow, but that's the extent of my gaming right now. But, I'm in one of the geekier fields in the geekiest Branch of the military, so I still have hope.

The game I will never run? Don't have a name for it, but it's sci-fi colonial. Faster than light Jump Ships enable humans to colonize, but they're typically expensive and one-way, and there's still considerable times involved(40-50 years for some ships), so it's not really possible to go back to Earth, and the communication time is still at light speed.

The planet is slightly smaller than earth, with slightly lower gravity. When the first humans arrived, the planet was returning from a massive extinction event, presumably caused by a large impact comet or asteroid. Bacteria turn out to be bacteria, and the simple ecology of the planet, named Elysium for the fact that nothing bigger than grass and shrubs was found growing, was amazingly easy to colonize and terraform.

A few hundred years later, the colonial government has fractured, with one independent republic, and a hegemony of states under the theoretical UN mandated central government. Ever since the United Ismaili Republic declared and successfully fought for it's independence, more states, in particular the aero-nautical manufacturing corporate centers, have attempted to break away from the Hegemony.

The Fundamental cause for the UIR's formation came from technology bans imposed by the central government. Genetic Engineers and Intelligence Programmers at several leading universities rioted and protested in the streets, the resposne by the Central Government was heavy handed, and the war began.

The Hegemony fielded a massive force of infantry and armored vehicles, against rioting students and professors turned fugitives. One in particular, Omar Cheema, rallied a now legendary last stand at Begger's Wadi, utilizing several electromagnetic drills for mining as improvised anti-tank weapons, a task they were immensely suited for. Another, Dr. Rasheed Al Maani pioneered the use of targeted disease warfare, focusing on the employment of genetically modified mosquitos and flies as vectors to spread disease. The Saphi warbots, developed by the Ismaili engineers, proved to be a formidable and agile threat for the Hegemony.

Fast forward after a successful revolution, and the Hegemony has heavily restricted the use of remote operated vehicles as a result of compromised computer networks. Fusion energy is a success, and there are off planet resources for hydrogen and helium-3 that are available. The UIR has a clear ascendency in technology, but is a small and rather isolated power, largely content with it's own fusion of religious and technological fantaticsm.

It's example, on the the other hand, is eagerly followed by several entities, including two leading Aero-nautical manufacturing firms that lost a great deal of money during the war and at it's conclusion. This has broken the air superiority the Hegemony had long assumed(even the UIR has largely ignored air warfare beyond small remotes, though they employee excellent anti-air lasers and missiles), and made it increasingly difficult for the Hegemony to force the corporations to pay taxes and fines.

The core of the Hegemony states is blissfully unaware of just who or what they're fighting. Media spin is omnipresent, and benefits a well developed psychological background with extensive indoctrination. They live in controlled, psuedo-rural communities, massive cities modeled to resemble wooded hills and gorges, but with substantial and extensive subterranean components. The UIR are depicted as religious extremists, and the Seperatist corporations are mentioned, but there are talks of "seizures" and "forfieture of domain", rather than outright war.

And, well, I kinda wanted to run a game set in that.

Okay time to try and make game again?

Here's where we lie: it takes days for me to come up with settings we could play in for years. It takes you days to come up with adventures we finish off in hours. So let's average it out: I build a setting, an arc, and you guide it to its end. I build the bow, you hold the arrow until it finds the heart. Tomorrow?