Planet Jumping Setting Premise Help

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Arith Winterfell

I’m looking for help figuring out how to write up an advantage for my groups characters as part of a setting premise. I’m also looking for ideas on how these abilities existed would impact the setting.

The general idea of the campaign is that the heroes of our story are psychically gifted to be among the relatively rare people who can jump between worlds (same universe, different planets). The power is always “safe” in the respect that it won’t take you to an airless rock, or a planet whose atmosphere is deadly to humans. But that doesn’t prevent you from arriving in a dangerous situation (say arriving in the middle of a forest fire). There is limited ability to control where you arrive on a planet. Say the general area, but no real exact positioning (again not into a volcano or what not).

You need to define the minimum level of the range, and why. In other words, if John can Jump from Earth to Generica IV, why can't he Jump from NYC to Denver?

Also, you probably need to be make the power a little more specific on 'dangerous situations'. There are a lot of places that' are widely 'midrange' on risk. That is, they'll kill you in a hurry if you're not ready but are quite survivable if you're prepared.

For ex, say Janet Jumps from Generica IV to Earth...and arrives in the middle of Antarctica in light summer clothes or less. Technically habitable, you can certainly breathe the air and so forth, but (un)equipped as she is, it's going to kill her fairly quickly anyway, even in summer. In winter, it'll kill her fast.

Or she could arrive in the middle of the Sahara Desert, miles from the nearest help or water. Again, quite survivable if prepared but deadly fairly quickly otherwise.

Your Jumpers probably need to be able to 'tune' it a little more than you're description implied.

The jumps are often blind, but based on a vague sense of where you will end up (generally a vague vision what kind of world to expect, e.g. a cityscape, an alien forest, etc.) They can bring one other person with them (even if that person can’t jump) or a small amount of equipment outside of themselves.

These jumps have long periods where they can’t be used, say potentially weeks or longer, forcing the characters to sort out and deal with issues on that new world for a while before being able to leave again.

Here's a suggestion: the Jump power usually needs to cool off before it's used again, days or weeks as you said. But maybe a Jumper can risk using it again quickly, at a huge Fatigue cost and with a lot of other resource costs, and maybe knock it out for months or years if s/he does. That might give them a 'get out of Antarctica in an emergency' card to play if they really need it, but be expensive enough not to be used casually.