Outtime in the Third World, an open-ended campaign idea...

PTTG · 07-06-2014, 01:18 AM

Homeline is widely stated as a pretty poor place for an adventure. It's too wealthy, too peaceful, and too derivative. However, it's not all one big happy planet. Conflicts are certainly quiet, but they're still there, and the economic upheaval of out-world mining and manufacturing is still sending ripples through the world. And, as always, there are movers and shakers, and there are those who are shaken and moved.

The term "third world" implies something in the western mind that is far from ideal; a muddy place, with mud roads, mud-brick buildings, and mud in the drinking water- an unfair assumption of a place that nonetheless is kept a decade behind the times by politics and economics. Until the discovery of the Secret, these places usually had two major exports: minerals extracted at great cost, and foods that thrive in the local climate and are valuable enough to ship to civilization. And now, those things are more cheaply found in other worlds.

Naturally, the first world removed itself, leaving you with...

Well, some work filling in the mine workings as part of their duty to the UN (having access to the control over who may and may not access the bottomless well of outtime wealth has resulted in a much stronger UN in Homeline, and they insist on a certain amount of "environmental stewardship,"), but by now even those jobs are drying up. It's time to find better pastures. It's time to get our share of the wealth that's out there.

The PCs are a small group of low-CP locals (in the geophysical sense; crosstime-wise, they aren't locals locals, they're homeliners, which makes them crosstime-local to homeline, yes, but there's the connotation that... forget it) from Bolivia, Afghanistan, Moldova, Alaska, Ethiopia, or Myanmar... all regions that don't really have Crosstime agencies. If your players want to know what life is like, tell them to imagine life there today, except with slightly thinner, smarter phones (still beat-up, secondhand things with no hologram chips), cracked, dusty solar panels on every house (which provide enough electricity to charge a battery for nighttime electrical use if you're careful, and which is not nearly as impressive when the rich people have fusion-sourced grid power), and the gangs have slightly more impressive guns.

They have decided they need to get out. Specifically, they want to get out-time. How they do that is up to them; they might apply for a job legitimately (or illegitimately, if they decide to fudge their less-than-perfect records), they might seek out the gangs to see if organized crime can help them get secret passage to some outtime place that definitely isn't a labor camp, or they might go on a kind of odyssey to find a way to steal a conveyer themselves, in the ultimate of Overconfidence (CR 6) and naivete. They might even hit the books to try and find naturally-occurring portals. As a GM, this would require you to know the approach your players would like to take. I find that players like to pull at threads, though, so giving them a single lead to get started with might be all that's needed.

07-06-2014, 01:18 AM	#1
PTTG Join Date: Feb 2011	Outtime in the Third World, an open-ended campaign idea... Homeline is widely stated as a pretty poor place for an adventure. It's too wealthy, too peaceful, and too derivative. However, it's not all one big happy planet. Conflicts are certainly quiet, but they're still there, and the economic upheaval of out-world mining and manufacturing is still sending ripples through the world. And, as always, there are movers and shakers, and there are those who are shaken and moved. The term "third world" implies something in the western mind that is far from ideal; a muddy place, with mud roads, mud-brick buildings, and mud in the drinking water- an unfair assumption of a place that nonetheless is kept a decade behind the times by politics and economics. Until the discovery of the Secret, these places usually had two major exports: minerals extracted at great cost, and foods that thrive in the local climate and are valuable enough to ship to civilization. And now, those things are more cheaply found in other worlds. Naturally, the first world removed itself, leaving you with... Well, some work filling in the mine workings as part of their duty to the UN (having access to the control over who may and may not access the bottomless well of outtime wealth has resulted in a much stronger UN in Homeline, and they insist on a certain amount of "environmental stewardship,"), but by now even those jobs are drying up. It's time to find better pastures. It's time to get our share of the wealth that's out there. The PCs are a small group of low-CP locals (in the geophysical sense; crosstime-wise, they aren't locals locals, they're homeliners, which makes them crosstime-local to homeline, yes, but there's the connotation that... forget it) from Bolivia, Afghanistan, Moldova, Alaska, Ethiopia, or Myanmar... all regions that don't really have Crosstime agencies. If your players want to know what life is like, tell them to imagine life there today, except with slightly thinner, smarter phones (still beat-up, secondhand things with no hologram chips), cracked, dusty solar panels on every house (which provide enough electricity to charge a battery for nighttime electrical use if you're careful, and which is not nearly as impressive when the rich people have fusion-sourced grid power), and the gangs have slightly more impressive guns. They have decided they need to get out. Specifically, they want to get out-time. How they do that is up to them; they might apply for a job legitimately (or illegitimately, if they decide to fudge their less-than-perfect records), they might seek out the gangs to see if organized crime can help them get secret passage to some outtime place that definitely isn't a labor camp, or they might go on a kind of odyssey to find a way to steal a conveyer themselves, in the ultimate of Overconfidence (CR 6) and naivete. They might even hit the books to try and find naturally-occurring portals. As a GM, this would require you to know the approach your players would like to take. I find that players like to pull at threads, though, so giving them a single lead to get started with might be all that's needed. Last edited by PTTG; 07-06-2014 at 01:28 AM.