Went to bed, but nothing happened.

[swestrup]

I tell myself I'm on the mend from this darn cold, but it may just be wishful thinking. I should be asleep now, but my first attempt has failed miserably. Partly its my sinuses. Partly its because I've been sleeping so much the last few days, and partly because I've had an inspiration for a great role-playing setting.

It would be perfect for a massively cross-genre group of players. We could have ninjas, wizards, superheroes, spies, space opera characters, cyberpunks, aliens, pirates, pulp detectives and African explorers, and they all would have a definite part to play. The thing that's been keeping me up though is trying to figure out the physics of the setting (which is actually quite important -- it has a huge impact on what characters can do, and how the setting will affect them), which is quite typical for me.

Its not even clear how much of the underlying physics of the setting would ever be worked out the by characters, but it would be necessary for me to adjudicate many common role-playing situations I could see arise.

So, I have one heck of a nifty setting. If only I had a plot...

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_grey_knight/]

Search for the Holy Grail? It might be a religous artifact to one genre, a technological solution to another and a means to an end to all of them?

[swestrup]

That kind of quest would be difficult as the setting will be both so unfamiliar to the players, and so chaotic, that finding any one particular object would be practically impossible.

On the other hand, finding some particular TYPE of object (a neutron inversion chamber or a 57 Cadillac hubcap) might be doable.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_grey_knight/]

But would that not be the goal? The "impossible" quest? Because if you found and acquired it, the game would be over, no?

Would this not be like the GURPs "Timescape" setting?

[swestrup]

Well, I don't mind having an 'impossible' quest as a major goal, but its usually not good enough to motivate players.

Usually you need to give them smaller goals that they can actually accomplish.

As for the timescape setting, its possibly similar. I don't actually know that particular GURPS setting. (there's a million of them.)