quozaxx Posted February 13, 2013 Report Share Posted February 13, 2013 What if you found a portal to a parallel universe? What if you could slide into 1000 different worlds? What if it's the same year and you're the same person but everything else is different? And what if you can't find your way home? Some of you may recognize the words above as the opening title sequence from the TV show Sliders. Well recently I've been considering starting a Sliders type roll playing game (using Hero rules of course) on rpol.net. (Since Hero Central may not come back) Of course it would not star the original stars, but the player's own creations. Four seasons of the show aired, and they visited a lot of different worlds. (About half of which I haven't seen); but what worlds would you have added? Now, I know that the Empress book has several suggestions for parallel worlds, but I'm not looking for super hero worlds. If I'm gong to make this game happen, I need back up worlds in case I get writer's block. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sinanju Posted February 13, 2013 Report Share Posted February 13, 2013 Re: Sliders Dino-World. A world where dinosaurs still roam the earth, complete with lizard-man equivalents of cavemen. Nothing unusual...until the players discover a lizard-man village slaughtered by high-tech weapons and vehicles. Then they spot, in the distance, the spires of a high tech city (which turns out to be a settlement from some other, high tech world via the same technology the PCs are using). I ran this one just recently in my Expendables game. The PCs are the Search & Rescue team for a Stargate Command-type organization using a gate to explore alternate world. They get sent in when the first contact/exploration teams go missing, to find and rescue them. The PCs tracked their missing comrades (who'd been captured by cave-lizards) to said village, where more humans had killed all the lizard-folk and rescued the humans. Turned out, the high tech colonists (refugees from a world destroyed) had assumed the humans were some of their own people and rescued them when they attacked the village in retaliation for attacks on the work crews building a road out toward that area. Pseudo-Fantasy World. A world populated by centaurs, orcs, goblins, minotaurs, etc. all living in a pastoral setting. Except that they're all genetically engineered from human stock to provide entertaining game for hunts by genetically engineered super-soldier types. The "Sliders" have found themselves in the middle of a vast nature preserve/hunting park. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted February 14, 2013 Report Share Posted February 14, 2013 Re: Sliders Lots of ideas here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheQuestionMan Posted February 14, 2013 Report Share Posted February 14, 2013 Re: Sliders Alternate Earths, Superhero Universes, and of coarse Mirror Universes. Later in the series was a Slider Wars. Kind of like the Time Wars in the Star Trek Enterprise series at the end. The biggest obstacle would be the organizing the Power moving them without the PC's unravelling the main plot. Remember Teams of writers work of these shows. You only have your self and a very good friend or players or us! Good luck. QM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FrankL Posted February 15, 2013 Report Share Posted February 15, 2013 Re: Sliders A world where the PCs meet their alternates, and the alternates most obvious traits are everything they hate about themselves. Could be one shot between epics or you could roll with it to be bigger. A world where people never got out of the bronze age. They meet themselves, a team of sliders from a different universe. Post apocalyptic worlds. Russia won the cold war. The Civil War was won by the south, keeping the USA and CSA into the current time. Harry Turtledove wrote a series about this, but I never read it. The president prior to Lincoln was pro-union and pro-slavery, leading to the north seceding. The south preserves the union, but one step in the fight is that they offer slaves the ability to work off their bonds in the south's new factories, leading to a general emancipation years earlier. The continentals lost the Revolutionary War. Several worlds suffer from a strange disease. The PCs have to track down why this disease and why these worlds. Cromag biowarfare? Alien invasion. Lovecraftian world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quozaxx Posted February 16, 2013 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2013 Re: Sliders I would also like ideas of small differences. Ones you may not be so very obvious at first. So, when the team is tired, they have a place to rest, until.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FrankL Posted February 16, 2013 Report Share Posted February 16, 2013 Re: Sliders I would also like ideas of small differences. Ones you may not be so very obvious at first. So' date=' when the team is tired, they have a place to rest, until....[/quote'] First thought, and I don't know where you might take this. A world where left-handedness is more common than right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheQuestionMan Posted February 16, 2013 Report Share Posted February 16, 2013 Re: Sliders LONG LIVE THE SENTRY CITY CHAMPIONS!!! Cougar Jar Head Star Jack Solution Shroud LONG LIVE THE NEW SENTRIES! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quozaxx Posted February 16, 2013 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2013 Re: Sliders LONG LIVE THE SENTRY CITY CHAMPIONS!!! Cougar Jar Head Star Jack Solution Shroud LONG LIVE THE NEW SENTRIES! Unfortunately, with Hero Central gone, the game has... died. Even if Hero Central came back, I may not want to bring it back. We haven't played since November, and I honestly just don't have it in me to try to restart it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quozaxx Posted February 16, 2013 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2013 Re: Sliders First thought' date=' and I don't know where you might take this. A world where left-handedness is more common than right.[/quote'] Or a world where the standard qwerty keyboard is replaced by a more alphabetic keyboard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maccabe Posted February 17, 2013 Report Share Posted February 17, 2013 Re: Sliders A Sliders game could be very interesting, and the characters represented quite diverse. I'm including a link that might make things easier on the GM. http://brideofbigfoot.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/random-alternate-world-generator/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ranxerox Posted February 17, 2013 Report Share Posted February 17, 2013 Re: Sliders Hmmm, Cyberpunk world Steampunk world Dieselpunk world World where the future actually turned out like it was supposed to - i.e. by 2013 Martian colonies, flying cars and jetpacks World inhabited solely by ghost A fragment of humanity barely hang on to existence on literally shattered Earth Mundo Lucha Libre - Mexico is the worlds undisputed superpower and masked wrestlers it's greatest heroes Hermit's 3rd World Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted February 17, 2013 Report Share Posted February 17, 2013 Re: Sliders First thought' date=' and I don't know where you might take this. A world where left-handedness is more common than right.[/quote'] I wouldnt be a freak anymore. Though, I have gotten used to living in a world that discriminates against me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balabanto Posted February 17, 2013 Report Share Posted February 17, 2013 Re: Sliders A world where vegetarianism is the norm, and eating meat is against the law. A world where the Devil is a hero, and God stinks A world where the gun was never invented A world where some crazy home remedy is believed to be functional but actually kills people. (See mercury and how people used it in the 17th century for an example of this) A world where the Cubists never lost their artistic force A world where the greatest artists are in charge. A world where the greatest engineers are in charge. A world where the heroes pets are in charge, and human beings are simpletons. (Oh. Wait. Too Much Like Real Life) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted February 18, 2013 Report Share Posted February 18, 2013 Re: Sliders For a source of ideas, I liked the TSR supplement "Tangents" which presented a Sliders-like option for one of its cross-time travel methods. One idea in it was a world that never had the "common cold" arise. It was a "Patient Zero" kind of plotline, trying to find a fellow traveller who brought the cold virus to this world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted February 18, 2013 Report Share Posted February 18, 2013 Re: Sliders A world where ape rules man.......or has that been done? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted February 18, 2013 Report Share Posted February 18, 2013 Re: Sliders A world where ape rules man.......or has that been done? Or androids rule humans, but humans have started a resistance, and both sides are planning to send a warrior to the past to change history. That is a novel concept, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zen Archer Posted February 18, 2013 Report Share Posted February 18, 2013 Re: Sliders That is a novel concept' date=' right? [/quote'] I read it in a book once, so, yes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted February 18, 2013 Report Share Posted February 18, 2013 Re: Sliders How about a world where people get plastic surgery except they are beautiful and trying to look like the "normal" monsters? Note: actually I do wonder if a few Twilight Zone episodes could work in the Slider scenario. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClassifiedTSBBR Posted February 18, 2013 Report Share Posted February 18, 2013 Re: Sliders A world in which "The War on Drugs" involved strychnine as a cutting agent... A world in which "The War on Terror" involved desnsitising everyone to the sensation of terror... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clonus Posted February 18, 2013 Report Share Posted February 18, 2013 Re: Sliders Looking for specifically superhero worlds you have to first cover the classics 1. The Mirror Universe. This isn't necessarily a world which has a simplistic alignment reversal. It could be a world where a hero is still a hero, but his psychological limitations are reversed, so that the bad tempered hot head is relaxed to the point of being lazy or the anti-villains motivated by leftwing convictions instead become hedonistic and materialistic selfish brats. 2. The world with different sex counterparts for all the characters (making it also a world in which women are far more dominant in fields like politics, the military and academia.) 3. The world where the counterparts of the characters came along a lot earlier and they are now mostly retired leaving their hypothetical children behind to carry the torch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McCoy Posted February 18, 2013 Report Share Posted February 18, 2013 Re: Sliders I would also like ideas of small differences. Ones you may not be so very obvious at first. So' date=' when the team is tired, they have a place to rest, until....[/quote'] . . . they notice the Azure Gate Bridge. Might track down a 4th ed supplement, Champions in 3D, looks like there are about half a dozen on e-Bay. It gave one-page treatments to several alternative worlds. Pick any conflict and reverse the outcome. Nazi World - Axis won WWII Dixie World - Confederacy won American Civil War Dixie World A - North America Balkinized, the United States and Confederate States still exist, but so do the Republics of Texas and California, the Empire of Louisiana, and the Free State of Quebec. Dixie World B - The CSA went on to conquer the USA. Brit World - The American Revolution was crushed, and the Queen of England is the absolute monarch of the World Spanish World - the Armada successfully invaded England, Spanish is the official language of the Americas. Aztec World - the indigenous Americans successfully resisted the Conquistadors. You get the idea. A couple of others. Cold War World - Berlin Wall never fell, USSR never broke up, USA and USSR still rattling missiles at each other. The PC's sure ask a lot of questions, they must be Commie spies. Red Dawn World - USA invaded by USSR (or PRC) within the last generation. Lots of insurgent resistance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McCoy Posted February 18, 2013 Report Share Posted February 18, 2013 Re: Sliders One other I want to mention, Humanoid World, inspired by Jack Williamson's Humanoid novels. The Earth is overrun by polite, helpful robots who will not let humans do anything remotely risky. "Rent a car? No need, Sir, a humanoid will drive you anywhere you want to go. Now that humans no longer drive we have totally eliminated traffic accidents. Sports? We've developed games that let you get exercise and have fun without the risk of humans running into each other or getting hit by balls. Travel between worlds? I am so sorry Sir, but we cannot allow that, some of those other worlds will be hostile. We will need to keep you here for your own good. We would prefer to do that without medicating you." Ultimate Nanny state. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheQuestionMan Posted February 18, 2013 Report Share Posted February 18, 2013 Re: Sliders Champions In-3D GURPS Infinite Worlds Torg Infinity Wars Cheers QM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quozaxx Posted February 19, 2013 Author Report Share Posted February 19, 2013 Re: Sliders Hmmm, Cyberpunk world Steampunk world Dieselpunk world World where the future actually turned out like it was supposed to - i.e. by 2013 Martian colonies, flying cars and jetpacks World inhabited solely by ghost A fragment of humanity barely hang on to existence on literally shattered Earth Mundo Lucha Libre - Mexico is the worlds undisputed superpower and masked wrestlers it's greatest heroes Hermit's 3rd World I was actually trying to figure out if the Steampunk era really happened, what would Earth be like now. That was one of the Earths I was considering Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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