Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 08-22-2019, 08:32 AM   #1541
Flyndaran
Untagged
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

That does kind of remind me of the Horrible Histories song about Dick Turpin. The facts of his life that apparently aren't well known are much more thuggish, and kind of pathetic. (I'd never heard of him before the song.)

While turning Robin Hood that way is certainly more realistic, I was mainly thinking of a reverse myth. The sheriff is noble, and not just performing his duty to catch an outlaw. Hood is despicable beyond that of a street thug.

Also lots of people idolize anyone that "sticks it to the man" no matter the method or collateral damage. Look at the wild west murderers that are still beloved.
__________________
Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check.

Last edited by Flyndaran; 08-22-2019 at 08:35 AM.
Flyndaran is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-04-2019, 04:57 PM   #1542
PTTG
 
PTTG's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Quote:
Originally Posted by PTTG View Post
Pazder-1 appeared to be different from Homeline history only in that the Satanic Panic of the 1980s was significantly more widespread and long-lasting....
Null-Pazder saw dramatically less backlash against tabletop roleplaying games in their early days; however, those events that did happen were more severe, including book burnings and even legal action against publishers and writers. These actions always ended up in the author's favor, however.

In fact, a lodge of the Cabal infiltrated a number of early RPG studios and their publishers, working functional power-building rituals and spells into the course of the game. When done properly, the effects would build over time, increasing from a gentle imagination-boosting effect to outright collective lucid dreams.

The lodge's goal is surprisingly mundane. They want to gather real, non-magical money from a homeline parallel which they can use in a nearby Normal-mana close parallel full of magical components and resources available on the open market. As a bonus, their product allows them to discover potential mages from the population and recruit them into the lodge. Maybe those make more sense the other way around. Either way, they protect their roleplayers and their games by manipulating society with their spells.

Ares-3 In this worldline, Mars is 80% Earth's mass and surface gravity. This resulted in a dramatically fuller volatiles budget, and an active core. The now bright-white planet is known as the Evening Star, often at its brightest when opposed to the sun (Venus is exclusively the Morning Star). Due to inertia, the history of this worldline was almost identical up until the late 1800s, as advancing telescope technology revealed a world with weather, volcanic flows, and a thin band of seas along the equator.

By 1990, several efforts to bring research settlements to the equatorial martian coasts are successful. War on Earth would trigger nuclear Armageddon, but on Mars, research bases disappear into the shifting snowbanks without a trace...

Last edited by PTTG; 09-04-2019 at 06:12 PM.
PTTG is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-04-2019, 07:44 PM   #1543
Astromancer
 
Astromancer's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Does "disappear without a trace..." mean they can hide easily or they're fragile and desperately need their lifelines to Earth?
__________________
Per Ardua Per Astra!


Ancora Imparo
Astromancer is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-04-2019, 11:19 PM   #1544
Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2
 
Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: The deep dark haunted woods
Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Quote:
Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
Does "disappear without a trace..." mean they can hide easily or they're fragile and desperately need their lifelines to Earth?
It means that the snowbanks ate them.

Listen carefully ... you can hear the snow daintily chewing ...
__________________
"When you talk about damage radius, even atomic weapons pale before that of an unfettered idiot in a position of power."
- Sam Starfall from the webcomic Freefall
Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-05-2019, 01:26 AM   #1545
PTTG
 
PTTG's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

All of the above. Mars' hostile climate means that even well-prepared military bases can and have been destroyed with all hands by avalanches, storms, lava flows, and the other hazards of this larger mars. This means that military conflicts here have plausible deniability to prevent the cold war from going hot just because the soviet martians raided an Allied mars base or vise versa.

The question, of course, is what the bases are there to find. And that's where MDL v3.2's point comes to the fore; Mars has life. What form it takes is hard to say, but it is clearly so deadly that its previous attacks have left no witnesses at all.
PTTG is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-05-2019, 02:43 PM   #1546
Prince Charon
 
Prince Charon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Quote:
Originally Posted by PTTG View Post
All of the above. Mars' hostile climate means that even well-prepared military bases can and have been destroyed with all hands by avalanches, storms, lava flows, and the other hazards of this larger mars. This means that military conflicts here have plausible deniability to prevent the cold war from going hot just because the soviet martians raided an Allied mars base or vise versa.

The question, of course, is what the bases are there to find. And that's where MDL v3.2's point comes to the fore; Mars has life. What form it takes is hard to say, but it is clearly so deadly that its previous attacks have left no witnesses at all.
"It's life, Jim, but not as we know it..."

Does seem like an interesting setting for a range of games, certainly.
__________________
Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life.

"The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates."
-- Tacitus

Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
Prince Charon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-05-2019, 05:14 PM   #1547
Astromancer
 
Astromancer's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Might I suggest that there are about four or five bases that have been on Mars since nearly the beginning of settlement which haven't been touched, by Martian life, and no one knows why. Some could be actually safe, some could be fool's paradises. Not knowing would be like an itch they can't scratch.
__________________
Per Ardua Per Astra!


Ancora Imparo
Astromancer is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-27-2020, 12:57 PM   #1548
PTTG
 
PTTG's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Conundrum-2 is an Earth where great apes never evolved, and there is no sign of active intelligence whatsoever, except for a region of the North American prairies near Homeline's headquarters. There, 100-foot long stone letters that appear to have been in place for the last 700 years spell out the phrase, in English, "You're overthinking this."

Homeline has quarantined the worldline for now, but there is a constant argument over whether or not that's doing exactly what the creator of this worldline wants.
PTTG is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-27-2020, 01:10 PM   #1549
Astromancer
 
Astromancer's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

One type of weird parallel is suggested by Flintstones. Basically a social structure blended with technologies that don't fit.

Picture a world with a very ren-faire like Medieval Culture, with dragons, wizards, fay, and all the fairy-tale bells and whistles. However, people read newspapers and watch TV and work 9to5 jobs. There was a cartoon like that back in the 1970's. Rifting off the novel To the Chapel Perilous (where the news media covers the quest for the Holy Grail) institutions can be slotted into times and cultures wildly inappropriate for them, like newspapers in 6th century Britain or a space program in 19th century Europe.
__________________
Per Ardua Per Astra!


Ancora Imparo
Astromancer is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-27-2020, 02:13 PM   #1550
PTTG
 
PTTG's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Oh that sounds adorable. I imagine a democratic election for the king of a fantasy realm, complete with town criers repeating short ads for the candidates; and each one ending with the magically repeated voice of the Monarchical nominee's voice saying, "I'm Lord Ploughammer, and I approve this message."
PTTG is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
infinite worlds, weird worlds

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 05:19 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.