[Adventure/ Campaign Ideas] You Me & Her

[jay042]

There's this indie short film called You Me & Her, it's about a woman who discovers a bunch of alternate reality versions of herself have been falling into her universe. Meeting all these other versions of herself make her realize all of the possibilities her life could have been, and how bad her life really is. Because so many versions of her are coming through, the whole fabric of reality is in danger, and she must maintain her current life and avoid the temptation to change or else reality might cease to exist.




I haven't seen the whole movie, but just from the trailer I've gotten a few ideas.


The Five Companions: Flip the trope of the multiple Doctor story. Suddenly, everyone at the table (who is not the Doctor) is playing the same character. There's the companion from this reality, there's the one from some apocalyptic universe, the otherwise normal one that never met the Doctor, the hippie sky-pilot version, the highly successful super smart version, and the prerequisite evil universe version (goatee and/or eye patch optional) Maybe one of the alternate universe versions is planning some kind of evil plot and figured out to try and bring a parallel universe version of them to take the blame?

The Department of Parallel Realities They off-hand mention the DPR in the trailer (I assume that's what the acronym stands for) which might make for something like an American version of Torchwood Three. In some major city there's a space-time rift that intersects with a lot of parallel realities. And some underfunded bureaucratic agency is established to deal with this problem and keep it out of public view. Lots of other nasty stuff can pop through the rift, giving you stuff to shot at, but maybe the most dangerous thing you might have to deal with are the elected officials you have to constantly placate to justify your job.

[Catsmate]

Sounds excellent, very much my thing. If you're looking for a US city to locate a space-time rift in I'd recommend San Francisco, lots of weirdness in it's history.

[Catsmate]

I'm reminded of this piece from GURPS Infinite Worlds

Lord Byron limped into the room, brandishing his sword-cane.“Which of you renegades has been impersonating me?” he demanded of the group standing around the fireplace. The eerily familiar men, in slightly varying degrees of theatrical posture and widely varying costume, drew themselves up and began to respond in a veritable Babel of aristocratic drawls and alcoholic sputters.
“Impersonating you? Tchah, fellow, you’ve been ’personating me!”
“None of you can possibly claim to be inconvenienced, compared to what poor Augusta has gone through.”
“As if I’d bother impersonating someone in that ridiculous cravat.”
“Begad, sirrah!”
Before matters could come to blows, one of their number fireda pistol into the ceiling. Into the silence, he said, in the clear, ringing voice they all shared (when sober, at any rate), but with more than a hint of aScots burr: “I have no idea who you gentlemen are, but I’m fairly sure we’re none of us Billingsgate fishwives. Do let us sit down and discuss this matter as befits men of quality. I am Sir George Gordon, heir presumptive to the Earldom of Urquhart. I returned to Edinburgh from a swimming jaunt to find that someone had been forging cheques in my name.”
“Swimming, eh?” said a florid, but recognizably similar,gentleman in a blue broadcloth coat. “I swim meself; but I’m no laird. I was Captain Gordon of the Protector’s Ship Perilous until two days ago, to find some impostor had resigned my commission right in the middle of our scrap with the bluidy Danes!”
“Danes? You’re a drunkard as well as an impostor, ‘Captain Gordon.’ Everyone knows our war is with the Turk, over Greek independency!”
“It was with the French, over Pitt’s investments and fear of radical revolution, and it’s been over for years!” insisted another dark-haired man, dressed more shabbily than most. “And I, Citizen Byron, am proud of the part I played in it, and very much resent whichever buffoon it was who published a blatantly monarchist poem over my name in the Saturday Review!”
“Poem?” Three of the more lavishly dressed men perked up their ears at this, and began a storm of argument about meter and scansion and which of them had plagiarized from the other
“Gentlemen!” A new voice interrupted them, setting their nerves a-jangle somehow. Another figure, much like themselves, only far paler than even the most artistic of the poetical disputants, stood in the doorway.
“You are all George Gordon, and many of you are Lord Byron, as am I. I have taken your lives for mine. You all share a certain native skill with sword and pistol, and have a gift for words, whether political speeches, seductive whispers, lyric poems, or naval reports. I require these talents in order to redirect the very course of history on a score of worlds.”
The Byron speaking seemed to grow taller, the shadows around him darker, and his teeth sharper, with every sentence. “You shall be my instruments, blood of my blood, and you shall open the floodgates of time to forces far darker than anything any of you have ever dreamed, forces . . .”
The words choked off with a meaty scraping sound as a length of cherry-wood emerged from the speaker’s chest. “You have no idea of my dreams, brother,” gritted a contralto voice from behind the now-desiccating corpse. The dust fell away to reveal a slender, raven-haired beauty dressed in the height of Court fashion, clutching a sharpened billiard cue.
“You, my brothers, on the other hand, shall hear quite a bit of them, I expect. I am Lady Georgia Byron, and I believe you can guess why you are called here tonight.”

[sbrpearce]

The DPR's regular workload is, mostly, what they call "bouncing strays" - rounding up things and (more often) people who've wandered out of the rift-zone and into our world. The longer they stay here, and the further they get from the "laminar zone" (and the more entangled they get in local events and life-streams) the harder it is to shuffle them back into the Rift. Ideally, you can do a "clean bounce" - to reinsert the wanderer back into the rift-stream on a reciprocal bearing, so the strange eddies return them to their place of origin.

Sometimes the job involves dealing with actual refugees - people who fled into the unknown of the rift to escape something horrible happening on their prime reality. Then you have to decide - if they're too dangerous to allow to stay, do you simply send them on somewhere else, on a so-called "wild bounce" or "roulette entry"?

As the old song goes - "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here..."

[Catsmate]

Oct 28, 2014 23:33:08 GMT sbrpearce said:

The DPR's regular workload is, mostly, what they call "bouncing strays" - rounding up things and (more often) people who've wandered out of the rift-zone and into our world. The longer they stay here, and the further they get from the "laminar zone" (and the more entangled they get in local events and life-streams) the harder it is to shuffle them back into the Rift. Ideally, you can do a "clean bounce" - to reinsert the wanderer back into the rift-stream on a reciprocal bearing, so the strange eddies return them to their place of origin.

Sometimes the job involves dealing with actual refugees - people who fled into the unknown of the rift to escape something horrible happening on their prime reality. Then you have to decide - if they're too dangerous to allow to stay, do you simply send them on somewhere else, on a so-called "wild bounce" or "roulette entry"?

As the old song goes - "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here..."

Interesting. This would fit well into GURPS Infinite Worlds where accidental parachronic travel isn't unknown or a game based on Piper's Paratime Police.