GM's Notes.

[swestrup]

Since I've been thinking about this new setting idea I've had, I've contemplated writing a set of GM's notes so I'll have my reasoning written down if I end up revisiting the idea some time in the future. Since they are GM's notes, they're fairly secret, but I liked the first few sentences enough that I thought I would share them:

It could have been worse; a poor epitaph for the uncounted trillions of lives that were lost in the Cataclysm, but its the best they would get. The survivors were far too busy surviving to take time to mourn the dead and missing.

In the end, it had been a very close thing; the results balanced on a knife's edge. Had conditions been just slightly more favorable, the Cataclysm might not have happened at all. On the other hand, had they been just the slightest bit worse, no one would have survived at all, anywhere. As it was, those who weren't destroyed immediately had to contend with a universe in which the laws of physics had been reduced to mere guidelines and time and space were subject to change on a moment's notice.

Very few races had been advanced enough and looking in the right places to see the oncoming disaster, and most of those had been in no position to do anything about it. So, they had done what any rational species would do when faced with unavoidable devastation: they had panicked.

Comments

[skjalm.livejournal.com]

Your players caused the Cataclysm?

I say, impressive. But hardly surprising. They're players. Whatever you come up with plot-wise they're sure to find some way of horribly messing everything up and cause as much havoc as possible :-)

[swestrup]

Nope, although it will be just barely conceivable that they might undo the Cataclysm. They wouldn't be able to put the universe back exactly as it had been, but they could make it comprehensible and livable again. And, since time has become malleable, they could do it retroactively.

Still, far more likely the player characters would spend most of their time just trying to survive, and righting far smaller wrongs.

I've never yet had a group of players play long enough to finish one of my major story arcs.

[skjalm.livejournal.com]

I've never yet had a group of players play long enough to finish one of my major story arcs.

That's just because you create such long, twisted and comprehensive story arcs :-)

The best group I've been in played roughly once per month for over two years. A lot of character replacement, but one character survived through all of it and one other was (at least loosely) in the group for the same period. The funny thing was that we never really came to a point where we'd finished everything. Our GM was very good at overlapping the plots so the next plot would be started before the previous one was finished. It made everything run a lot smoother than if we'd had these "Errrr... now what?" breaks.

[swestrup]

> That's just because you create such long, twisted and comprehensive story arcs :-)

True. That's the hook that gets me wanting to GM the game. I do put lots of immediate plots into the game that the characters end up dealing with (usually several at once) but I always have 'the big picture' in the back of my mind.

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

I've played in 2 or 3 campaigns you've run. The most interesting cyberpunk one ended when Pat moved to San Francisco to work for Pixar. (Pat = walking tank with subdermal armour, Norm = old man detective, Peter = streetwise punk, me = power-armoured bubblegum chewer.) The best session was when you stripped us of the 'toys' and had us run neked - literally. Had to use some wits to get over obstacles, and not just super weapons. THAT was role playing...

[swestrup]

Well, this would sort of be like that. Much of the game play would involve the characters continually finding themselves in novel situations and having to survive off the land with what they could scrounge.