Chronology, Continuity, Comics and Champions

[RDU Neil]

Originally posted by MisterVimes
Hero framed as Future Villain is always nice (when done correctly: Hulk-Future Imperfect comes to mind... and then the disappointing Hank (Hawk) Hall/Monarch nonsense does as well.

Well (QUIT READING JOE!) my team will be discovering the joys of Time Travel coming up very shortly... and as I have just read the entire Avengers: Kang Dynasty (as well as read up on my old Steve Englhart Kang stories) ... they are in for a doosie.

Assuming you've read the excellent... Avengers Forever... by Busiek and Pacheo... right?

Wow... great stuff. Wrapping up all the twisted time travel plots in the Marvelverse was no small feat. Just wish Marvel had more of a legacy style universe, so we'd see characters aging and retiring and dying a bit more... which would allow for time travel stories to have even better resonance.

[MisterVimes]

Originally posted by RDU Neil
Assuming you've read the excellent... Avengers Forever... by Busiek and Pacheo... right?

Wow... great stuff. Wrapping up all the twisted time travel plots in the Marvelverse was no small feat. Just wish Marvel had more of a legacy style universe, so we'd see characters aging and retiring and dying a bit more... which would allow for time travel stories to have even better resonance.

Yep... I loved Avengers Forever. I love time travel and parallel world stories (Like the New Warriors Sphynx storyline or the Original Roy Thomas Sqaudron stuff).

I'd LOVE for marvel to do that... the closest we got was Earth X (Blech!)

Though the last run of Guardians of the Galaxy made a nice attempt.

[Supreme]

I too read and adore "Avengers Forever." This is simply one of the best limited-run series I've ever read. BTW, I believe the first super-hero to face an adversarial future version of himself was marvel's Adam Warlock who faced the Magus. It's a great concept.

I ran a silver age version of my favorite brick character, Champion. We were all allowed to write little inconsequencial side-stories on our characters for extra EPs. I wrote one about Champion experimenting with the cosmic radiation that gave him his powers to try and boost them. Something went wrong and he was catapulted into a future where his experiments to increase his powers went horribly right. He became the corrupt overlord of the Earth, Lord Champion. The good Champion defeated the bad Champion in a climactic battle that caused a space-time disruption which hurled the good Champion back in time to 1959, where he decided not to pursue the experiments after all.

After I was forced to leave the game because of schedule conflicts, another GM ran a Champs campaign set a few years later wherein the characters had to face Lord Champion. It was cool, as the GM consulted with me about all kinds of things including what the good Champion would be doing in retirement.

[MisterVimes]

Originally posted by Supreme
I too read and adore "Avengers Forever." This is simply one of the best limited-run series I've ever read. BTW, I believe the first super-hero to face an adversarial future version of himself was marvel's Adam Warlock who faced the Magus. It's a great concept.

I ran a silver age version of my favorite brick character, Champion. We were all allowed to write little inconsequencial side-stories on our characters for extra EPs. I wrote one about Champion experimenting with the cosmic radiation that gave him his powers to try and boost them. Something went wrong and he was catapulted into a future where his experiments to increase his powers went horribly right. He became the corrupt overlord of the Earth, Lord Champion. The good Champion defeated the bad Champion in a climactic battle that caused a space-time disruption which hurled the good Champion back in time to 1959, where he decided not to pursue the experiments after all.

After I was forced to leave the game because of schedule conflicts, another GM ran a Champs campaign set a few years later wherein the characters had to face Lord Champion. It was cool, as the GM consulted with me about all kinds of things including what the good Champion would be doing in retirement.

That's one of those great moment
I played a not-so-nice hero called Kestral. Some of the other players hated him because he was pretty mean and didn't play by the rules (he had no Code vs. Killing). But Kestral would pull their fat out of the fire, so they put up with him and his mean streak.

A few years go by and I hear that one of the players has resurrected the campaign for a whole group of new players. A few weeks into the game I ask if I can sit in and I get a 'Yes'.

I walk in and pull out the old Kestral sheet and the GM looks him over and says 'OK'

A Short while later the room fills up with a crew of kids 5-10 years younger than me. They introduce themselves and Sam (the GM) introduces me as "Kestral".

Suddenly they ALL inch away from me.

It appaears while I was gone that Kestral was the Bad-Guy...

It was great.

[MCMaenza]

Usually the campaign I start running in my world tends to take place at the same time/year it is in real time. Depending on how things progress, the characters can find themselves a few weeks/months off of real time depending upon the flow of the game, how often we played, etc.

Continuity and world history is very important to me though (as evidenced by the timeline on my gameworld site - see link in my signature). Characters age, retire, die, etc. Some have their heroic legacy picked up by a newcomer while others blaze new trails.

[Karmakaze]

We've been known to kick the "start date" back one to five years so that if we wind up with too much between game downtime, we don't wind up in the future.

As far as campaign to campaign continuity goes, I tend to use a more alternate universe sort approach than the US Comics sort of major retcon. If you're importing characters from another campaign, it's kind if like the difference between, say, Superman (the comic book), Superman: the Animated series, and Smallville. The general flow of things carry over, but details may be adjusted to fit the new setting.

And yes, this can cause some repeat players to think they know how a subplot is going to work out... And if they get too sure, then they are sure to be wrong...

[Savinien]

Who was that masked Necroposter?

[keithcurtis]

Alert! Alert! Thread Necromancy!
This thread is over two years dead!

Keith "I miss Mister Vimes" Curtis

[TheRavenIs]

Well the game I am running right now was started on 7/4/1995. I have to move the game upto early 2016, so I have to be aware of time and it's movement. The PC's all know that they will age, change and (I have one player who has a C that will not grow personalty wise, that will....even if I have to make it happen, happen). The reason for the need to go thru the 20+ years is that this world has a direct connection to one that has run for over three real years and over 11 game time years.
I have the game more or less ploted out for the complete 20+ yrs. The two worlds are in many ways an Earth 2 (Defender Earth: DEF) and Earth 1( Jump Start Earth: JSE) type worlds. The first one is Earth 1 and my world is a Earth 2. The two worlds are interdimensionaly connected, meaning the the two worlds will have to work together to save each other in a few game years, DEF years.
I played in a game that ran from over 13 yrs, it had a full history. Heroes aged, died, married, had kids. They changed and grew, it is one of the things I want and need to happen for my personal enjoyment and my players.

[sinanju]

The only long-term game I've played in was one back in Virginia. It started my freshman year in college (1977-78) and the campaign is still active. I played thru it until I moved away in 1991. It began as a "Traveller" universe game with bits and pieces of Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha and Starguard (SF minis game) background and continued to mutate over the years into a 100% homebrew system.

The GM kept track of passing in-game time. Years and decades accumulated (especially early on, when we were using Jump Drives--one week/jump--constantly. Players have retired characters and played their kids or grandkids on a number of occasions.

Anyone ever been tempted to play out a retcon? Do a Crisis on Infinite Earths game?

I've played thru several. The campaign described above has undergone constant change over the years. Sometimes minor changes, sometimes major. Changes of game system, changes of combat rules, background changes, etc. Once or twice the entire campaign was essentially "rebooted" with a whole new background, though recurring NPCs and many PCs usually got transplanted, sometimes rewritten from the ground up and sometimes not.

At one point, the GM decided to switch to an entirely swords & sorcery campaign; he ran a series of linked adventures that culminated in a complete transition to a single world campaign with swords and sorcery. Some PCs were translated into fantasy version of themselves and never knew anything had changed. Others remembered the previous campaign universe. (It became traditional, when such characters thought they're met a fellow refugee to throw a term into the conversation that only a fellow rememberer would understand, like sign and countersign.)

"Sure wish I had a microwave oven."
"Yeah, and some frozen pizza...."

Now in its third decade, the campaign continues. Most of the NPCs from early on have long since retired or died; the campaign is full of their descendants. Most of the adventures these days are based on relationships--good, bad or indifferent--between NPCs and PCs. One Fu Manchu-like immortal bad guy is still around...sort of. The native version of him was murdered by his more ruthless "evil twin" from another universe, who is currently causing most of hte trouble in the campaign world....

[Matt Frisbee]

Anyone ever been tempted to play out a retcon? Do a Crisis on Infinite Earths game?

I'm in the process of setting it up in my campaign -- I've been leading into something called "The Time of Gathering" when the dimensional barriers of the established parallels of earth (about 20) become so tenuous that modestly powerful creatures (i.e. superheroes and their ilk) can cross them without magical intervention. Because of this, new alternate earths are created as the merged realities mix and mingle and then separate again with creatures of alien dimensions still within.

Essentially, each dimension must fight the influences of corrupting dimensions to remain intact. Of course, for the sake of adventure opportunities, there will be plenty of interdimentional enemies (including analogues of the characters themselves) who will be trying to end all existence for the game dimension. In the end, what stays and what goes will depend on what the characters do and when.

As a way to tell when The Time of Gathering (TToG for brevity), Arcainus Prime of the game dimension (named Dr. Who, just because he looks a lot like Tom Baker after he's raided Dr. Strange's closet) created The Five Pillars of Reality, which would disappear one by one if the game universe were in danger of being lost in the shuffle. As of the last adventure, one of the characters in the group was in possession of one (unwittingly) and it was destroyed...only four left now, and the fun is just beginning.

Actually, TToG was intended to be the major story arc for the campaign, but it has taken 13 game sessions just to set everything up for the big event to get started. I must be getting older or something.

Matt "The-Don-Quixote-in-search-of-the-ultimate-campaign" Frisbee