Else Earth: BOOKKEEPING! And brain farting

[Enforcer84]

So, Else Earth is basically me indulging in the conceit that one day I'd publish our high school campaign world. Only it was mostly Champions Universe with Champions characters and it spanned about eleven campaigns from 1984-1991. But I also love making characters. So I decided to simply take our originals and palette swap the CU characters and organizations for something I came up with.

 

25 years removed from that and our original characters have long since been reduced to blips on the timeline. A great idea I had about a team of tween heroes I called the Class '09 because they were 8th graders in 2005 when I started...are now what? 22? - so I need a new name if i'm going to update them. Else Earth is basically 2 years behind the real world but even that I can't keep straight.

 

But it's been this kind of thing for me. I know how marvel and dc feel vis a vis continuity. I'm constantly revising when teams formed, broke up, etc. 

 

So my latest project (ie Started last night) is sorting my heroes and villains onto their respective continents, get everyone converted to 6e and fill out my villain ranks. (I vastly prefer to make heroes which is why I do so many Rogues Gallery threads.)

 

So last night I started converting Operation: Ragnarok a criminal organization that drapes itself in Norse mythology but is just a high tech cult of personality. And as I'm working on this I realize that...I have New Asgard. I have actual asgardian gods and goddesses running around my world and they would NOT find this amusing. They are also orders of magnitude more powerful than most of the "Gods" in Odin's back pocket. So I've kind of pushed them back in time. They were a big threat in the 70's and 80's before the Night of Fire signaled the return of Thor to the Real Ragnarok and the reintroduction of a new Asgard to the realms. This amuses me. Converting Odin to 6e I found i had yet to really make him Else Earth friendly - he still had many skills and disads regarding CU organizations and threats. I know my world building ADHD will strike and I'll wander off, ignoring Them for another decade but for a few days I'm pleased with my progress. 

 

 

So what do you guys do for campaigns? Do you follow real time at all? I know campaign is a strong term since I've not run or played in our old world since the early 90's and it's all just stuff for me to do as an intellectual exercise. 

[Enforcer84]

I may brain fart in this thread more. Apologies in advance. 

[Amorkca]

There have been some real world deaths in recent months involving political party members that I plan to use in my campaign world to add "Reality" to the game, and hopefully get some - "How did you come up with THAT"? comments from the players...

[Nothere]

I think I'm about to take your question way too broadly, but you were talking about world building and timelines. I mostly use home grown campains, which leads me to the how much is too much problem. When Hero system puts out a book like Hudson city its 150 pages and covers stuff that 90% will never be used in a particular campaign. I'm not gonna write up that much. So I hit the high lights and will mention in passing other stuff like the upcoming gala. If players don't seem interested, I don't bring it up again.Of course as this is the first time players have heard of the club, they won't know all the interesting features I put in it. But when world building you don't know what sort of charecters and backgrounds players will come up with. So if a player makes an actor I'll give them far more info on the local studios than I otherwise would. But your question was mainly about time. I deal with it by ignoring it. I've never mentioned what year it was in a game. And despite how many games set near Christmas we play the 23 year old is still 23 years old.

[segerge]

Back in the day (1982-1992), our gaming group pretty much followed the nebulous concept of "Comic Book Time" best described on TV Tropes.  Upon relearning the Hero System starting in 2012, I reinvented those characters in a universe whose history split the difference between Real Life and the published Champions Universe up until February 29th, 2012 -- sort of like the intellectual exercise you've gone through with Else Earth and its timeline.

 

Sticking to a timeline when writing stories is far easier than when gaming.

[DShomshak]

In my old campaigns, I often worked RL events into adventures or at least acknowledged that they were going on. Since the Millennium Universe has become an occasional thing, I'll probably be a lot looser in keeping campaign events (and characters) tracking with the wider world.

 

OTOH, since I have superhero stuff starting in 2000 instead of reaching back to WW2 or even earlier, I have a lot less timeline to try to rationalize.

 

Dean Shomshak

[assault]

If I was going to design a campaign setting from scratch (and I should, just to keep myself entertained), I'd probably start with "5 (or10) years ago", and work from that. That would allow for the trope founders to have done their thing, while providing enough background for the players.

 

Assuming I wasn't setting it in a real city, Campaign City would probably consist of an overview map, a few notes, and 20 or so marked locations (marked on my map, anyway), each of which would be mapped in tactical detail. Because, of course, these would be the main sites where the action would be in the early scenarios. They would have associated NPCs as required.

 

Obviously I would have a stockpile of scenario outlines, loosely tied to the marked locations. They wouldn't be fully scripted though, to minimise railroading.

 

So, the Blue Lady would have her base in one place. Informants who know something about her could be found somewhere else. A few other places would be likely targets in her Master Plan. And so on.

[Sketchpad]

I've always asked myself, "What would the world be like with super beings in it?" With all of the super-gadgets, mystical mojo and alien technology, would the world benefit from such things?  

[assault]

I've always asked myself, "What would the world be like with super beings in it?" With all of the super-gadgets, mystical mojo and alien technology, would the world benefit from such things?  

 

On the other hand, I would never approach things like this.

 

Fun first, hypotheticals second, if at all.

[Tasha]

I've always asked myself, "What would the world be like with super beings in it?" With all of the super-gadgets, mystical mojo and alien technology, would the world benefit from such things?  

 

Questions like that lead to explanations like "Super science gadgets only work for the inventors and a few others" or "Super Science gadgets are highly customized tech that would take years for companies to figure out how to mass produce" or "Such Gadgets use rare expensive materials in their construction that make mass production not possible"

[assault]

Questions like that lead to explanations like "Super science gadgets only work for the inventors and a few others" or "Super Science gadgets are highly customized tech that would take years for companies to figure out how to mass produce" or "Such Gadgets use rare expensive materials in their construction that make mass production not possible"

 

Or "the world gets overrun by zombies".

[Nothere]

To Tasha's point there was an old Superman episode where a scientist found a way to make gold.Thieves immediately went after the machine. Until they found out the materials needed to make gold cost twice as much as the gold made.

[assault]

Actually, I probably would let super-science change the world, after a certain time lag. The question would be, how long would it take before the changes went beyond the point where they disrupted the tropes of the genre?

 

That would determine when I started applying the negative effects of the changes.

 

So, the Army has powered armour now? Awesome! They're just in time to deal with the zombie outbreak!

 

And what was that project that developed those new Air Force drones called again? Project Mechanon?

 

Reed Richards isn't useless - and neither is Dormammu.

[Tasha]

Actually, I probably would let super-science change the world, after a certain time lag. The question would be, how long would it take before the changes went beyond the point where they disrupted the tropes of the genre?

 

That would determine when I started applying the negative effects of the changes.

 

So, the Army has powered armour now? Awesome! They're just in time to deal with the zombie outbreak!

 

And what was that project that developed those new Air Force drones called again? Project Mechanon?

 

Reed Richards isn't useless - and neither is Dormammu.

Though it's easy to forget how long it takes to turn a successful science (or Magic) experiment into a mass produceable product. 

[assault]

Though it's easy to forget how long it takes to turn a successful science (or Magic) experiment into a mass produceable product. 

 

Yep. So there's a decent lag in terms of in-game time, which means it probably isn't an issue for any game that isn't going to last for decades, and can be ignored.