[Campaign seed] A Question of Reality

[rulandor]

This campaign rips off and lumps together inspiration from several tv shows of recent years.

The basic question: what if several sci-fi threats could be grouped to present a combined threat for our world? In the PRIMEVAL RPG, for example, there is a system of tracking damage to the world we know by trans-temporal activity. In the TV show Fringe, a similar threat to the texture of reality is presented by a collision with an alternate reality.

Thus this campaign idea was born.

This could be realised as a variant of a UNIT campaign or by using something like Torchwood or the ARC or my own Riedlow Institute, created for this campaign seed. You would then need to adapt the Temporal Damage rules from the Primeval Rpg and expand them to cover any form of "reality damage", for example by crossing over not only into another time, but also into a parallel reality.

For characters, I would largely use the Primeval Rpg character creation, with the characters not having any fantastic abilities. Gadgets would then have to be constructed/researched under the Primeval system, taking much more time and using only Technology skill and Technically Adept trait.

Which system of intiative to use? That's down to personal taste. As I rather like the Torchwood template of adventures, I would use the Primeval Rpg conflict rules, but the A Question of Reality campaign framework would work with the DWAITAS conflict system as well.

[Catsmate]

Oct 22, 2014 14:07:33 GMT rulandor said:

This campaign rips off and lumps together inspiration from several tv shows of recent years.

The basic question: what if several sci-fi threats could be grouped to present a combined threat for our world? In the PRIMEVAL RPG, for example, there is a system of tracking damage to the world we know by trans-temporal activity. In the TV show Fringe, a similar threat to the texture of reality is presented by a collision with an alternate reality.

Thus this campaign idea was born.

This could be realised as a variant of a UNIT campaign or by using something like Torchwood or the ARC or my own Riedlow Institute, created for this campaign seed. You would then need to adapt the Temporal Damage rules from the Primeval Rpg and expand them to cover any form of "reality damage", for example by crossing over not only into another time, but also into a parallel reality.

For characters, I would largely use the Primeval Rpg character creation, with the characters not having any fantastic abilities. Gadgets would then have to be constructed/researched under the Primeval system, taking much more time and using only Technology skill and Technically Adept trait.

Which system of intiative to use? That's down to personal taste. As I rather like the Torchwood template of adventures, I would use the Primeval Rpg conflict rules, but the A Question of Reality campaign framework would work with the DWAITAS conflict system as well.

An interesting idea. You could have multiple possible futures battling in the present, by supporting different factions, to influence the chance of their reality becoming the dominant one, or indeed to avert it happening at all. Assuming you don't keep the Primeval anomalies, or don't have them connect to the alternate futures, any assistance would have to be indirect, transfer of information, recruitment of agents et cetera. Or perhaps caches of stuff left in the distant past.

In fact this could be the secret hidden behind the PCs patron, only after several missions do they learn that their superiors have an agenda influenced by messages from the future...
The various alternate patrons listed in (IIRR) the Primeval Companion could represent different present day factions (government, military, criminal, scientific, corporate) being used to manipulate the future.

[rulandor]

Thank you for some really good advice!

Yes, indeed, the adventurers' employer might well have ulterior motives. The campaign so far already implied a battle about the future, with one unknown future party who established a temporal outpost in the Miocene by use of an Anomaly or Time Corridor or some such things (still needs to be defined). This outpost met their doom and was found abandoned by a geological survey operation stumbling over a time portal in the Caribbean. (What doom? A strange bacteria? A fungus from the future which now has already infected the Miocene?) It is top secret information gleaned from data storage devices of the Miocene Outpost, but the near future looks really grim - so the survey corporation is building a refuge in the past, primarily for their top brass, not informing the "foot soldiers".

The Riedlow Institute is investigating the strange Caribbean goings-on on the "Isla de los Perdidos", and the adventurers don't have a clue that their superiors are agents of the same future that founded and lost that abandoned earlier Miocene Outpost.

The future people are not evil, by the way - they try to establish an alternative future timeline more beneficial for mankind, but they unknowingly contribute to quite a lot of Temporal Damage. That is a dilemma I have planned for the characters: try to make the future better, but generating temporal fault lines and disturbances every step of the way? Tricky decisions will have to be made.