Re: Ideas Are Easy
 

I think you both misread my (admittedly, probably poorly made) point. It isn't Arthurian England, but one of the characters, a Twain fan, might make that comparison. You would be unlikely to find a Pournelle or Fortschen fan in a WWII era paratrooper unit.

Re: Ideas Are Easy
 

True enough. Unless the Connecticut Yankee isn't the only one doing time travel, I suppose.

Re: Ideas Are Easy
 

That'd be a fun game to play. Give everyone some sort of extra secret and let them each choose when and if to tell everyone else. One guy became a vampire during the french revolution. One guy is a time traveler from the modern world. Another is from a fantasy world, either the one being returned to or a completely different one. And so forth.

Re: Ideas Are Easy
 

Someone or other made a thread about cyberpunk recon. That made me think of an idea. Suppose the PCs are a team assigned to case the Iranian nuclear facilities in preparation for launching Stuxnet?

Re: Ideas Are Easy
 

A similar idea: a town is sent to a fantasy world, but not all at once. Bits and pieces of the town from various points in history appear like a patchwork quilt, simultaneously. Of course, individual buildings and entire neighborhoods going missing are not recorded in the town's history.

Re: Ideas Are Easy
 

Task Force Psi: You are exemplary service wo/men from around the world, and displayed minor psionic powers during a crisis that those who know what to look for could notice, and the crisis has been filmed in some way. You are made an offer: Join Task Force Psi, which is kind of a Rainbow Six but with psionic, and fight the Cult of the Exalt, a paramilitary society worshiping psionic powers and planning on setting up a worldwide magocracy, or go back to just being an ordinary soldier and missing the promotion of a lifetime. The Cult of the Exalt has all the cool but impractical powers. Your team has all the subtle-yet-incredibly-effective powers like an ESP based wallhack, or minor technopathy allowing you to sniff out any electronics based trap, and lay awesome ones...

Re: Ideas Are Easy
 

Okay, I've been reading too much fan fiction, and now I can't stop imagining this scene:

Colonel Goings: Now you'll also be trained and evaluated by a few civilian specialists. The civilians are here because they are our very best source of information on abnormal abilities. One of the most qualified is our M.T.A.R.P., callsign Merlin. She is our foremost expert in virtually every field of ability we've been able to document, and she's also a civilian contractor, so you do not salute her. But you'd better listen to her because the Pentagon listens to her about your proficiency. It's all yours, Merlin.

Merlin: No need to stand on such formality, Colonel. Please, call me Twilight Sparkle.

Re: Ideas Are Easy
 

I recently read about Pedro de la Gasca. I think his time in the limelight would make an excellent basis for a campaign.

Scant decades after the Spanish conquistadors take for themselves the Aztec and Incan empires, the crown attempts to halt some of the worst abuses by passing "The New Laws". In Peru, Gonzalo Pizarro, brother of the original chief Conquistador of Peru, raised a banner of revolt and killed the governor.

The Spainish King had recently been embroiled in a number of wars throughout Europe, and had no troops to send to the new world. Instead he gave a bishop extensive Royal Authority (on paper) and sent the clergyman (La Gasca) to the new world with no money and no army. If that doesn't sound a like a job for a player character, I don't know what is.

What abuses will you tolerate, and which will you pay with in blood? how do you convince the mostly unsympathetic but rebelliousness forces in the north to supply you? How do you balance political goals with the likelihood of success?

Several different scenarios present themselves to my mind. Playing out the historical situation may have more depth and richness than others, as well as making the setting easier to flesh out. Its not for every group, but I think I'd enjoy this option.

Setting this sort of adventure after the traveller interstellar wars is also interesting. Abuses in the conquered territories by fleet admirals have been reprimanded, leading to a rebellion. The PC's are sent from Terra with a small ship and authority from the terran confederation, but very little in the way of resources. How do you deal with these rebels, especially when some of them are heroes from the last war...

Fantasy versions are also possible, if harder to construct. I just look at this sort of scenario and see lots of room for courageous action, hard moral decisions, and player empowerment.

Re: Ideas Are Easy
 

Sardaukar meets Hunger Games:

The Evil Empire depends on slave soldiers for it's cannon fodder. They are held by pain inducing implants, battlesuits with security modules to keep the wielder from running off. And secret police controlling or observing these.

They are kept in regular training in a Deathworld with live ammunition. Regiments of trainees are sent into battle against each other, with their children behind as hostages. The losing regiment is executed but they have to watch their dependents tortured to death first. The winning, gets a delay. Regiments who pass through this are sent against "real" enemies of the Empire under similar threats if they retreat or surrender without orders.

Possibilities include being a slave soldier in this grim regime. Leading a revolt of slave soldiers. Being a foreign spy among them.

Re: Ideas Are Easy
 

Mechanical warfare can be terrifying, especially in hostile environments.

The players are the damage control team for a most unlucky spaceship. The campaign starts when enemy weapons set off a chain reaction of damage in the ship, and it ends when the ship is saved. or Not.

obstacles include venting atmosphere, naked wires, raging fires, radiation hazards, secondary explosions, smoke, malfunctioning gravity generators, and whatever else your GM can dream up.

Players must stop the remaining ammunition from blowing up, patch small leaks, seal off large ones, keep the reactor from going critical, free trapped survivors of the blast, get life support on before folks run out of oxygen, connect various portions of the control computers together, get a semblance of a command chain together, and stop those fires!

Help will eventually come, but it will take a while: the rest of the fleet is still in battle. It may even be the enemy who shows up to take you all prisoner.

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I thought it would be interesting to run a war game where you never saw the enemy. In this scenario the challenges are almost entirely environmental. How would you do aboard a ship still undergoing damage? It can also be oddly similar to a dungeon crawl: what's behind this next door?

This is inspired by damage control stories in world-war era ships. If you'd rather ran it there, go right ahead.

If you're feeling particularly cruel as a GM don't tell the players that the game is almost completely damage control. Let them build their characters for a spaceships war game, and then stick them into the inferno of a damaged ship.