New Reality Seeds

[AlexanderHowl]

Federated league?

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Re: Gothic-4, should the European Union (under whatever name) perhaps be a "federal league of democracies" rather than a "feudal" one?

Again, I'm going with what GURPS Horror: The Madness Dossier had, and it said, "European Union (feudal league of democracies, CR3)."

I did always think that "feudal" was weird, but as GURPS set up the world description system, I copied them.

Anyways, knowing the "Great Powers" isn't so important on this world, or any that are so like are own (on the surface), since we've all got a pretty good idea what the world looked like in 1996, or 2013.


For World of Darkness, an argument could be made that none of the democracies actually are democracies, but in fact secretly run by oligarchies of vampires, magicians, etc.

But I've always thought of the world descriptions as how Infinity sees the world. Like how Taft-1 seems to just be a world with a more powerful USSR.

[AlexanderHowl]

While Infinity likely cannot detect any supernatural creatures, they likely can detect Infinity agents.

[Inky]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

It would be extremely unlikely for even a relatively thorough scouting to detect a single teenager in a single school in California exhibiting overtly supernatural abilities. Even for those who know about the series, why would their minds go that way when encountering vampires, werewolves, and magic spells?
I would most likely assume classic myth parallel. Even locals mentioning, "the slayer" could be written off as pseudo-gothic speech common to a lot of such genres.
What would trigger your, "aha moment"?

I've developed a bit of a habit of absent-mindedly noting powersets and possible RPG stats in my head for fiction I like. And, of course, an Infinity scouting party would also note things like that. So if I were the Infinity agent it would probably be when I was either writing a report on the vampires or reading somebody else's, and going "Superhuman strength and speed, have not been observed to use magic. Faces transform when about to bite. Collapse into dust on death. Highly inflammable - Just a cotton-picking minute. I'm probably being silly here, but could you get me a map of California? No reason".

Either that, or the Wiccans, (the ones who actually did real stuff, which wasn't all of them), who barely seemed to make an effort to conceal things at all and were rather distinctive.

Not too sure that you'd be likely to hear about the Watchers and the Slayer unless you knew to look for them. The Initiative seemed to be entirely surprised to discover them (well, one or two seemed to have heard of "the Slayer" but thought it was a myth), and they'd had a lot longer to investigate than an Infinity first-in team. Talking to vampires might not get you anything either, because since Buffy vampires most often abandon their "young", most of the vampires don't know anything about anything themselves. (And the ones who've survived long enough that they do know what they're doing are a lot harder to catch.) Demons maybe, but, again, harder to catch.

What does "WB" stand for?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Inky

I've developed a bit of a habit of absent-mindedly noting powersets and possible RPG stats in my head for fiction I like. And, of course, an Infinity scouting party would also note things like that. So if I were the Infinity agent it would probably be when I was either writing a report on the vampires or reading somebody else's, and going "Superhuman strength and speed, have not been observed to use magic. Faces transform when about to bite. Collapse into dust on death. Highly inflammable - Just a cotton-picking minute. I'm probably being silly here, but could you get me a map of California? No reason".

Either that, or the Wiccans, (the ones who actually did real stuff, which wasn't all of them), who barely seemed to make an effort to conceal things at all and were rather distinctive.

Not too sure that you'd be likely to hear about the Watchers and the Slayer unless you knew to look for them. The Initiative seemed to be entirely surprised to discover them (well, one or two seemed to have heard of "the Slayer" but thought it was a myth), and they'd had a lot longer to investigate than an Infinity first-in team. Talking to vampires might not get you anything either, because since Buffy vampires most often abandon their "young", most of the vampires don't know anything about anything themselves. (And the ones who've survived long enough that they do know what they're doing are a lot harder to catch.) Demons maybe, but, again, harder to catch.

What does "WB" stand for?

Warner Brothers. The WB network merged with UPN to create what is now known as the CW network.

As for Infinity versus Wolfram and Hart, it wouldn't be difficult for Infinity to figure out it's a normal Mana setting, and normally they just avoid those worlds to avoid them using their Planar Travel spells to visit parallels instead of more exotic realms.

[Inky]

Realised on re-reading my post that I overlooked something daft. Of course, I'd recognise the vampires as soon as I saw one in gargoyle mode, or a photo of one. It's a difficult costume to forget. (I've seen others along the same lines, but still, it narrows it down a lot.)

Originally Posted by fchase8

Once the I-Scouts know that it is a world with vampires, one might get bored and look to see if there's any Sunnydale or Wolfram and Hart, just as a joke (especially if the time period is late '90s - they might have done that on Gothic-4). From there, it wouldn't take much internet sleuthing (even in late '90s internet) to find a "Summers, Buffy".

Especially in that parallel, if the amount of data accessible by a bright 16-year-old in the series actually reflected how secure their networks weren't. :-D

[DangerousThing]

It would be interesting to see parallels of Buffy-1 (set pretty much right after the CW Buffy series ended with Sunnydale being sucked into hell.

The writer had a comic, Fray, about the "future slayer". The premise was that there were no slayers for a couple hundred years, then Fray was chosen, without having the dreams that were supposed to help a new slayer to deal with the new powers/responsibilities.

It was somewhat of a dystopian future, though the rich had flying cars. :)

And of course, there were vampires (hidden in the sewers and undercity, called "Lurks" and though of as just homeless thugs by the poor). There may have even been a few aliens.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Inky

Especially in that parallel, if the amount of data accessible by a bright 16-year-old in the series actually reflected how secure their networks weren't. :-D

Willow had extremely powerful magic. She didn't know it in the beginning, but it may have helped with her hacking. Personally, I preferred her as a hacker without magic.

I wonder what would have happened if they made a file on Buffy in high school. Would this file have changed when Buffy acquired a sister? I believe that the files on her world did change, but I don't know how powerful this magic was on other worlds.

The Buffy comic that continued the series was interesting.

[AlexanderHowl]

Buffy seems to use RPM style magic (heck, it was probably one of the primary influences on the development of RPM), so mana might not even exist in a Buffy timeline. Willow seems to use grimoires a lot in the early part of the series and then becomes less dependent on them as she improves her magical capabilities. She also does not seem to learn any spells per se, as she does not have to spend months studying a specific spell before she can use it, which would weigh against the standard magic system.

From the viewpoint of RPM, Willow was a natural adept, probably with IQ 16, Magery (RPM) 4, and Ritual Adept at the beginning of the series (though she did not know about the last two). By the end of the series, she would have developed Magery 6, Thaumatology-18, and a few Paths at 18, making her quite powerful. Of course, she was capable of tapping into Corruption as Dark Willow, which explained her apparent increase in power.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by Inky

Not too sure that you'd be likely to hear about the Watchers and the Slayer unless you knew to look for them. The Initiative seemed to be entirely surprised to discover them (well, one or two seemed to have heard of "the Slayer" but thought it was a myth), and they'd had a lot longer to investigate than an Infinity first-in team. Talking to vampires might not get you anything either, because since Buffy vampires most often abandon their "young", most of the vampires don't know anything about anything themselves. (And the ones who've survived long enough that they do know what they're doing are a lot harder to catch.) Demons maybe, but, again, harder to catch.

I think The Initiative wasn't nearly as knowledgeable about the occult than it claimed to be. Sort of stereotypical military-science guys who think they know everything. Though that could also be said about The Patrol...

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

As for Infinity versus Wolfram and Hart, it wouldn't be difficult for Infinity to figure out it's a normal Mana setting, and normally they just avoid those worlds to avoid them using their Planar Travel spells to visit parallels instead of more exotic realms.

I think The Patrol still goes to mana worlds, albeit they are heavily restricted. White Star has it's own trading house on Yrth, and Infinity is on the three Merlins.

And Infinity doesn't seem properly suspicious about 'normal' non-parachronic close parallels (such as GURPS Horror: The Madness Doctrine's Abzu, or my own Gothic-4).

The Patrol's willingness to go to mana worlds is really just dependent on whether the GM wants to go to them...

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

It would be interesting to see parallels of Buffy-1 (set pretty much right after the CW Buffy series ended with Sunnydale being sucked into hell.

There was an 'official' comic that was a continuation of the series (started with 'Season 8'). It even had a time travel crossover with Fray.

It also had 'The Secret' (magic being real) getting out - and vampires became trendy (it was when the Twilight series was popular - the first main villain was called "Twilight," which the authors swear they came up with before the book series).

That would be a really weird world for Infinity to find - supernatural magic, not just spells like the Merlins, but vampires, werewolves, gods, etc., is known on an early twenty-first century parallel. It would be like Merlin-1, but even more so.

And a world like that, other worlds/planes are known about. There's even alternate worlds, like the one where Buffy never came to Sunnydale and it went to hell.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

From the viewpoint of RPM, Willow was a natural adept, probably with IQ 16, Magery (RPM) 4, and Ritual Adept at the beginning of the series (though she did not know about the last two). By the end of the series, she would have developed Magery 6, Thaumatology-18, and a few Paths at 18, making her quite powerful. Of course, she was capable of tapping into Corruption as Dark Willow, which explained her apparent increase in power.

There was also an official Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG (and a connected Angel one) that was pretty good. Obviously designed for Buffy fans who were new to RPGs, but did a good job of introducing RPG, and capturing the spirit of the show.

It pointed out that the series characters, certainly by well into the series, were kind of ridiculously powerful (even Xander leveled up).