Crossovers....

[jkwleisemann]

I'm doing a bit of plotting for potential future games, and something occurred to me.

 

How many GM's out there actually run crossovers between the various games they run? I understand that there are sometimes serious potential logistic issues with getting (possibly) different groups of players together, but if you're online, or run multiple campaigns with your primary gaming group, it's a lot easier.

 

If you have tried to run a campaign crossover before, how did it go? What are the pitfalls? Would you do it again?

[tribe]

Re: Crossovers....

 

I love the idea. Even if I don't do actual cross-overs all the time I try to drop continuity points and events that are happening elsewhere. Usually this means name-dropping.

 

My Dawnstars game recently drew together characters/players from three games which was great fun, but half-way through I changed 'universes' and had to patch up a lot of continuity holes. I think it all worked out well in the end. Some characters who started had to disappear by the end though. One died. Several got lost in the timestream... stuff like that.

 

The end result is that I now have ten characters in my Dawnstars team.

 

The reason I did the cross-over was because one campaign that I was in (Majestic in the GGU) folded and I enjoyed the characters. So I invited them to the Dawnstars. Majestic was based in the UK and Dawnstars in Italy so that made sense. The third game was one that I had run in the past (New Men) but had folded because I just couldn't get the right feel for it. I invited one of those players across too.

 

Anyway, I think the short answer is that they are great fun but hard work. I think I started with four interested players from Majestic but ended up with two (who came across to Uberworld and are still active in the Dawnstars game as full members).

 

It's always good to merge character histories and this is done best with characters coming from different backgrounds/games. With ten players I'm thinking of splitting the team into two smaller teams. One of my players summed up the good points about this in an email this weekend:

 

I really like the idea of the two teams. I'm starting to get visions of

Avengers: east and west coast. or the various X teams that ran around for

a while, all loosely affiliated.

 

There's a huge amount of possibility and back story that's been created by

this wonderful fusion of teams and individuals into one whole. Chloe brings

all of the New Men history, past and present and future, Sound barrier and

Mindstalker the old Majestic or Knightwatch team. (I think that's right.)

 

On the Dawnstars side, Valkyrie and Slipknot represent the old guard with

Choir. Grak is the connecting link between the old and new. (literally and

figuratively considering his advanced age. He invented everything, just ask

him.) Forestall, Suleyman and Vertigo represent the new guard along with

Quantum.

 

I'd be drooling as a gm over the possibilities inherent in this mix. As a

player, I'm excited to see how Vertigo's tale will intertwine with everyone

else's.

 

Thanks Darren.

[OddHat]

Re: Crossovers....

 

I kind of do this. My Pulp Era, Golden Age, and Modern Supers campaign are linked, and events in one have often linked to events in another. My Age of Atlantis game is the distant past of my more modern games.

 

I've been thinking of doing a 70s Supers game for a while, but can't quite find the right angle on it.

[tribe]

Re: Crossovers....

 

I've been thinking of doing a 70s Supers game for a while' date=' but can't quite find the right angle on it.[/quote']

 

You must have thought about DISCO right?

 

Or what about a Blacksploitation angle (that was the 70s, right?).

 

Vietnam? That's be an interesting starting point for a game. The characters are in the same platoon and they either develop superpowers or else you run a skilled normals game.

 

...but I like disco.

 

...a lot.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Crossovers....

 

Our four-color Champions and Hudson City-based Dark Champions game take place in the same time and world; they're just at very different power levels and locations. A crossover and/or guest appearance one way or the other is virtually inevitable.

 

Our Pulp Hero game takes place in the same world, just 100 years earlier. A descendant of a Pulp Hero NPC from 1906 has already appeared in our Champions campaign as a PC; I don't expect him to be the last.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Crossovers....

 

The only thing like this that I have done: both the Champs GMs in our group (who concurently ran games, just rotated every few weeks on who GMed) noticed that at that particular time, the characters in the two games were fairly close in points, and power level - although the campaigns were a different flavor - mine had a JLA base in the moon feel, and his was a city/state team that went national occasionally- across between late 70's early 80's Xmen and West Coast Avengers.

 

So we figured out an overplot, and each handled half the story (with the details to be up to that GM). We split up which characters would be in which world (this allows favorite GMPCs/NPCs to be used as player characters) and ran a cross company crossover that lasted something like 3 months - and had a huge payoff.

 

That was a blast.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Crossovers....

 

One of our current GMs is running two campaigns - One in Freedom City (ported to the Champs Universe) where we play the "new champions" and the other in is Vibora Bay with a mystic squad.

 

We recently had the hunted of one of the characters in the NC game show up to fight the mystic squad. Pretty cool.

[Sketchpad]

Re: Crossovers....

 

I run these occasionally ... Currently, I'm running 6 campaigns that happen within the same universe, as well as playing in 1 that someone else is running in the universe I created There are consistantly cross-overs ... one of the games is a villain campaign and the villains have popped up in the main superhero group that's being run I just finished an arc of a Teen campaign and some of the events that happened in my friend's Espionage campaign spilled over It's fun stuff ...

[ParagonAlpha]

Re: Crossovers....

 

Hmmmm I'd have to say that everything I've run in the last year has been all crossover (of course there are few exceptions).

 

I game with a group of 5-7 people and everyone of them has GM'd some major part of our continuity in the past ten years. Characters pop in an out all the time. The backdrop is fairly familiar and allows us to continue to build to the stories we tell.

 

Actually I guess it's less a crossover and more of a shared world.

 

The trick is to never close a page on any part of the story. Always allow a way for characters to meet, interact or hear about each other. Players like to see characters grow, even if they are playing different characters.

 

If you've ever done a round-robin storytelling (where each person tells part of the story leaving off in a place for the next person to pick up and continue) then you've got the understanding.

 

Also...very important here. Talk to your players after each session and find out what they liked and didn't like. Ask them if they like the direction. Find out if the story enertained them. Listen to what kinds of things they'd like to see.

 

Players love it when a GM give them what they want.

[wrestlinggeek]

Re: Crossovers....

 

I have always wanted to do something like this. At one point, I and another GM were running 2 seperate Champions campaigns with the same group of players. His was in the standard Champions Universe (5th Ed.), mine was in a home-brewed universe. We briefly talked about doing a cross-over between our universes, taking turns running and using our personal PCs as NPCs while we were running sessions, with each of the other players playing two characters at once. We never got past the initial talking stage, though.

[OzMike]

Re: Crossovers....

 

I kind of do this. My Pulp Era, Golden Age, and Modern Supers campaign are linked, and events in one have often linked to events in another. My Age of Atlantis game is the distant past of my more modern games.

 

I've been thinking of doing a 70s Supers game for a while, but can't quite find the right angle on it.

 

Social awareness or 'relevance' was the comic book movement of the time...

 

Or you could make it a legacy game based on the golden age game. Make each player pull a different character out of the hat and make a character who is in some way related-to, inspired-by, named-as, or powered the same as the relevant character in your golden age game. Make different players pick different characters.

[OddHat]

Re: Crossovers....

 

Social awareness or 'relevance' was the comic book movement of the time...

 

Or you could make it a legacy game based on the golden age game. Make each player pull a different character out of the hat and make a character who is in some way related-to, inspired-by, named-as, or powered the same as the relevant character in your golden age game. Make different players pick different characters.

 

From my timeline, here's what was going on among SUpers in my campaign's 1970s:

 

1966 – A gigantic humanoid robot falls under the control of Japanese schoolboy Daisaku Kusama. Daisaku joins Japan’s Science Patrol (Unicorn division). Research into the giant robot leads to numerous technological innovations.

 

 

 

1966 – Clark Kent retires from public adventuring. Clark and Lois Kent disappear.

 

 

 

1966 – Professor Roy Hinkley Jr. and six other castaways are rescued after being found on a large floating raft near Hawaii. Prof. Hinkley’s claims of having been kept prisoner on an island and in a village are dismissed by the authorities, but form the basis of a British science fiction drama and a popular and long running American comedy. Actress Ginger Grant is among those rescued; much tabloid speculation revolves around the changes in both her appearance and voice during her time on the island.

 

 

 

1967 – Dr. Kuami, assisted by young psychic Kyoke “Timmy” Kiritachi, spearheads Japanese Science Patrol research into remnant Ancient technology discovered in archaeological dig on Sogel Island. Kuami achieves limited success. Multiple Dai Kaiju class creatures gather on or near Sogel Island. Sogel Island is informally renamed “Monster Island”.

 

 

 

1968 – Vampirella publicly asserts that her stage persona is genuine, and that she is in fact a vampire. The public at large treats this as a publicity stunt by a metahuman entertainer. Vampirella registers with the OSI.

 

 

 

1968 – Darrin Stephens, husband of powerful mystic Cassandra Ghostley Stephens and father of Tabitha Stevens, vanishes. Cassandra and Tabitha vanish shortly thereafter.

 

 

 

1969 – Sogel Island data contributes towards limited success in Japanese metagene research. Number of Japanese metahumans begins to significantly increase.

 

 

 

1970 – Anthony Nelson is assigned as deputy director of OSI – Nevada. His wife, Jeannie Nelson, accepts a field operative position.

 

 

 

1970 – Dr. Rudy Wells successfully completes the Cyborg project. Col. Steve Austin becomes America’s first Cybernetic operative, at a cost of over six million dollars. The OSI begins to cut back on funding of independent metahumans and metahuman teams in favor of those under more complete government control.

 

 

 

1971 – Richard Grayson retires from adventuring. Bruce Wayne Jr. takes over as Batman.

 

 

 

1971 – Researchers Alec Holland and Ted Sallis attempt to create a variant of the Super-Soldier formula from a private lab concealed in Florida’s everglades. This new formula is in-part based on fluid samples taken from the metahuman Solomon Grundy. An attack on the lab by individuals seeking the formula results in the apparent death of both researchers, but only after Holland has ingested the hybrid formula. Holland, greatly physically altered and possessed of very unusual abilities, re-appears several months later. He begins a limited adventuring career.

 

 

 

1972 – Kara Kent begins to adventure under the name Power Girl.

 

 

 

1972 – Diana Prince formally resigns from the OSI and vanishes. Reports of Wonder Woman sightings will continue for some time, but become increasingly rare.

 

1972 – Jericho Drumm, Haitian occultist and gifted psionic, begins his adventuring career as “Brother Voodoo”. He will later move his operations from Haiti to America, where he will operate under the name “Papa Midnight”.

 

 

 

1973 – Professor Goro Ibuki creates Jet Jaguar. Advances in Japanese giant robot technology threaten regional stability in Asia. Japanese government publicly places moratorium on giant robot research.

 

 

 

1973 – Roy Harper, aka Green Arrow II, vanishes. Clinton Barton briefly adventures under the name Green Arrow, and then begins adventuring under the name Hawkeye.

 

 

 

1974 – 23 nations, including the United States, the USSR, China, and Japan sign giant robot anti-proliferation treaty. Japan reserves right to maintain current stable of giant robots as check against Dai Kaiju attacks.

 

 

 

1974 – An extra-dimensional incursion in Denton, Ohio is foiled by OSI associate Dr Everret Von Scott, Brad Majors & Janet Weiss. Majors & Weiss are eventually inducted into the OSI. The cult founded by the Mad Scientist who led the incursion will continue to thrive until well into the 21st century.

 

 

 

1975 – OSI researcher Dr. Frank Heflin field tests Project Electra. The project is closed after equipment failure leaves the primary field agents missing in action.

 

I'd want to work around these events, and involve 1970s action movie and TV elements at least as much as real world history and comic books. The problem is that I'd want to do something wiith a distinctly different flavor from my 2006 Superhero campaign, without going for more simplistic stories. The campaign themes would also need to contribute to the development of the setting.

 

Ideas are always welcome.

[Guest daeudi_454]

Re: Crossovers....

 

What we used to have was 2 GMs who would switch groups back and forth.

Each game had a bout 6 players, but we had a total of 10 players...

some players could only show every other session, some PCs ended up in both games, some played separate characters in each game.

 

Once a story arc was completed, the 2 GMs would switch, just to keep it interesting. It was kind of an Avengers East/West universe.

[loraxxx]

Re: Crossovers....

 

we have a GM who runs 3 games that are all part of the same multiverse--while it's rare for players to cross over, villains do it fairly regularly...

 

we even had an incident recently where a player was allowed to spend one of his character's "fudge points" in the champions game because there was a big, over-arch plotline that allowed for metagaming on that level, and the player had the inspired idea to actually ask if he could...