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Old 05-25-2010, 02:46 PM   #1
Brax
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Hesse/Germany
Default Help Needed for a Multiple Timeline Campaign

Hello,

I'm in need for some help creating the concept of a new campaign I'm planning:

Since quite a lot of real life is disturbing my gaming habits I usually only get to play once a month. With this limited gaming time we can't play more than one campaign at once but still I don't want to get stuck in just one kind of background.

First I was thinking about an IW-style campaign, but I do not like the concept of modern characters running around in ancient times.

Then I thought about an Highlander-style campaign, but that would seriously limit the sequence in which I could play the different timelines and it would end up with some kind of 5000 year old semi-gods when the group that started in Ancient Rome finally reaches Traveller times..

That's when I had the idea about a group of "Eternal Heroes" (as in Michael Moorcock) - with each character in the different timelines being a reincarnation of his predecessors. This gives me the advantage of characters native to their time and locale while giving the players (and me) the advantage of only one character trope to play.

These reincarnations wouldn't know about each other in all but one timeline - and now comes the tricky part: I want one of the timelines (let's call it homeline) to be the "main-story" which connects the other stories - with characters who know or learn about who they have been in the past (or will be in the future). I just can't think about a good story to incorporate my timelines and give the homeline characters a reason and a benefit to find out about their past lifes.

The campaign will cover these timelines:
* Ancient Roman times - around the fall of the Republic with political adventures
* Middle Ages - around the time of the First or Second Crusade with combat/dungeon style adventures in the holy land
* Swashbucklers - swashbuckling dark-fantasy/horror adventures in the 30 year war in Germany
* Age of Napoleon - on board of one of her Britannic Majesties ships of war
* Old West - horror adventures in the Wild West
* Cliffhangers - the hunt for the Eternal Nazi around the world of the roaring 30s
* the present - this is my intended homeline with Action!-style mystery adventures
* Traveller - a group of sellswords and small time merchants in the Spinward Marches.

There will be 9 adventures in the season with 2 all-homeline adventures: the first and the second, and the remaining 7 adventures starting and ending in the homeline to give them a framing but for the main part being in their intended timeline.

Any ideas about a reasonable homeline-story would be very much appreciated!
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