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Old 02-02-2010, 08:42 PM   #1
Crakkerjakk
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Default Campaign Prospectus Critique

I was wondering if anyone wanted to critique the following prospectus. I found a group of GURPS players, so this is all the GURPS ruleset.

In particular, in my version of the prospectus I do a brief "flavor text" blurb. What is everyone's opinion on the added length v. more catchy descriptions? Also, if anyone has some other source material for any of the campaigns, I'd appreciate it. I was scraping the bottom of the barrel on some of them.

____A Night at the Opera
This is the apocalypse, and I've been fighting it tooth and nail since 1961. They made me retire in 1970 when Cambodia blew up in their faces and they blamed us, but I didn't stop then and I'm not stopping now. They think I gave it all up that day in the pentagon when they gave me the choice—the only choice—I would be allowed. I took it, and then, like most of us, I made the decision to continue the fight. I'm Delta Green, and I'm not dying alone.

Player Characters: PCs are government agents or interested civilians with relevant technical expertise that have been exposed to the truth. There is something infinitely greater than humanity, and it cares about us not at all. PCs will be recruited by a secret government conspiracy to destroy and cover up all evidence of various horrors slowly slipping into our reality.
Play Style: Gritty realism, with episodic missions dispatched from alpha cell. Players will often have little to no outside resources and must cover up any and all evidence of the unnatural while struggling to retain both their sanity and their humanity.
Source Material: Delta Green, X-Files, Conspiracy Theory

____Beyond the Mountains of Madness
This is the story of the 1933 Starkweather-Moore Expedition to Antarctica. Equipped with the latest in arctic exploration technology and led by gentleman-adventurer James Starkweather and reknowned geologist William Moore, the Starkweather-Moore Expedition seeks to retrace the steps taken by the doomed 1930 Miskatonic University Expedition, including visiting the cave full of strange biological fossils and the gigantic mountain range never before seen. But the frozen continent is jealous of her secrets...

Player Characters: PCs will be competent professionals. They must have a reason to want to accompany the expedition, and have either useful skills or be able to provide substantial financial backing.
Play Style:Mostly realistic, with an emphasis on environmental hazards. Limited plot protection for PCs, but not enough to protect them from rampant stupidity, just bad luck.
Source Material: Call of Cthulhu, The Thing, Scott of the Antarctic

____Expedition to Castle Ravenloft
Thick, heavy mist slowly parts, to reveal a storm wracked valley. Lightning flickers from the storm's belly, casting the scenery in harsh white light. The small group pauses, shifting to relieve the weight of armor, weapons, and packs. A tall broken castle, perched over a thousand feet from the valley floor, is illuminated by another lightning strike. A sense of foreboding, and curiously, despair, steals over the group. As the light from the last strike fades, they shake themselves, then descend towards the lights on the valley floor, indicating some small village where they might take shelter from the storm.

Player Characters: Highly competent adventurers. Roughly the equivalent of 6th level D&D characters.
Play Style: Old-school dungeon crawl. This is a revisit of the classic module, adapted from it's D&D3.5 update to GURPS. It will be combat heavy, although there is a storyline and NPC interaction.
Source Material: Ravenloft, Dracula.
Ruelset: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy

____For King and Country
It is the Year of Our Lord 1674, and the new world awaits the bold with untold riches and unspeakable danger. The English colonies struggle to survive against a harsh environment, with savages and worse beyond the town walls. Meanwhile, Spanish galleons groan under the weight of the gold extracted from their southern holdings. But deep in the unexplored jungles and forests of the new world, something ancient stirs...

Player Characters: Highly competent seafarers. Possible secret magic, be it Haitian Vodou or Renaissance Alchemy.
Play Style: Cinematic pulp, with plenty of buckled swashes and secret societies. Ship will serve as a home-base for exploration, trade, and travel.
Source Material: The Three Musketeers, Pirates of the Caribbean, any Errol Flynn movie, Solomon Kane

____Guardians of Freedom
Denver. The Mile High City. Home to over 300 registered class C or greater superhumans. Ever since the shockwave from the Betelgeuse Supernova hit in '79, **** has gotten weird. People being able to fly, shoot lasers from their eyes, read minds, stuff straight out of the comic books. But for every Superman wannabe out there, there's a hundred guys that just suddenly started being able to detect bees or smell with their ears. By and large, life goes on as usual. Of course, when you combine your average lazy guy with powers that let him walk through a bank vault door like it wasn't even there, you tend to have problems. Luckily there's some people that read too many Spiderman comics growing up, “with great power...” and all that.

Player Characters: PCs will be X-men level superheroes, all just starting their careers in Denver, Colorado. They must be superheroes, but they need not necessarily be “heroic” so long as they have a good reason for fighting crime/bad guys/etc. Not everyone is a “mutant.” Various origins and power sources are acceptable, as no one is really sure how all these abilities work or what the supernova shockwave did to make them possible.
Play Style: Gritty but cinematic. A guy who can punch through a tank will not just knock out a thug, he'll probably put his fist through him unless he's very careful to pull his punches. Cops pretty much accept help from vigilantes, until they start dropping buildings or leaving behind bodies. The effect of this is that so long as the PCs behave like superheroes (in the real world, which makes it much more difficult) they tend to get the perks of being one from the comics. But once they start killing supervillians so that they don't inevitably escape and return to wreak havoc once more, they start running the risk of facing arrest and criminal prosecution.
Source Material: Freedom City, X-Men, Wild Cards.

____Red Justice
Robinson City, Mars/Teralogos January 1, 2100 . Traffic slowed to a crawl on the Robinson City hub of MarsWeb today as Free Mars demonstrators databombed major network relays with various pro-independence messages. American Governor Myrna Burton decried the protest as “wasteful and childish” noting that the Free Mars Party would have their chance “in fair and honest elections” two years hence. Chief Administrator of Red China Lanqing Wang noted that “this is the type of lawlessness and disorder characteristic of the Free Mars extremists.” Police estimate the economic damage at six billion USD (60 billion Yuan) due to slowed commerce. In other news, the Martian People's Armed Police intercepted an illegal Martian triad shipment of combat bioroids and drugs on the Elevator. Casualties were minimal, with two officers in the hospital for observation and three cybershells rendered inoperative.

Player Characters: PCs will play detectives in the organized crime division of the largest US colony on terraformed Mars. They may be normal or augmented humans, biological androids, artificial intelligences that can control cybershells (a robot body), or even an uplifted (sentient) animal.
Play Style: This will be a police procedural, with emphasis very much on investigation. There will be some combat, but the majority of the game will be investigating crimes, catching perps, and dealing with departmental and city politics.
Source Material: Transhuman Space, The Untouchables, Ghost in the Shell, The Wire, CSI.

____Roma Arcana
It has been almost a thousand years since the founding of the City, and the Empire is faltering. The gods have abandoned her for worshiping foreign cults, the Parthian Empire to the east eyes Roman lands covetously, savage Germanic barbarians fill the silent forests in the north, Druids are returning after supposedly being exterminated centuries ago, and monsters and spirits are being seen within the borders of the Empire. In the town of Burdigala, deep in Gaul, a group of citizens has pooled their resources to form a new college, recruiting exceptional individuals to defend the city from threats both internal and external. It remains to be seen whether they will defend the Empire, or watch helplessly as savagery claims the light of civilization.

Player Characters: PCs will be exceptional individuals, all with some form of special abilities that distinguish them for recruitment to the arcani. They may not have any disadvantages that would cause them to be seen as untrustworthy, and must keep their word and be willing to face danger.
Play Style: Low fantasy. There will be magic, but it will generally take some time and not be of the “fireball” variety. Combat will be realistically dangerous. The storyline will be somewhat episodic, but with the players taking greater control of their actions as they gain renown.
Source Material: The Gray Mouser, The Black Company, Julius Caesar.
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Old 02-02-2010, 08:42 PM   #2
Crakkerjakk
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Default Re: Campaign Prospectus Critique

____Seven Dragons
The emperor is dead. Slain by treachery and sorcery most foul, the empire trembles in his absence. The generals fight amongst themselves, and the conquered outer kingdoms begin to stir in revolt. There are rumors that the northern barbarians are stirring in a great horde, once again threatening the center of the world. But there are legends of a far-off land to the west, where strange peoples with alien beliefs may have a way to bring the emperor back to this world. You are all that remains of the elite imperial guard, brought together to save all that you know.

Player Characters: PCs will be highly competent cinematic martial artists from across Asia, capable of performing amazing feats and dedicated to the perfection of their art.
Play Style: Epic wuxia quest, wandering adventurers in Mythical Asia. Lots of combat and exploration.
Source Material: Legends of the Five Rings, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Seven Samurai.

____Shadow Puppets
Just across the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal from the CIA headquarters at Langely, Virginia is the smallest town in Maryland, Glen Echo. There's a nondescript strip-mall two blocks from Glen Echo's only gas station, and the office space in the back corner of that strip-mall has a small sign on the door. “Applied Solutions, Inc.” All in all, it's a very uninteresting office in an uninteresting town, which is understandable given the fact that its staffed almost entirely by former spooks and spec-ops. Applied Solutions is who the CIA goes to when they need plausible deniability, so that they can tell congressmen without perjuring themselves that there were no CIA personnel involved in the disappearance of a Columbian drug lord or Croation arms dealer. Yet nonetheless, destabilizing influences and threats to national security keep quietly self-destructing, disappearing, or being pulled down by rivals with suspiciously good intelligence.

Player Characters: PCs will be cinematic action heroes. They will be part of a team with each PC having a specialty (even if that's just “shoots well”). They are deniable assets of the US government that operate internationally to eliminate threats in the most expedient manner possible.
Play Style: Episodic missions with mini-arcs in a region. Combat is not guaranteed, but will be one of many equal options.
Source Material: Tom Clancy novels, Splinter Cell, Sneakers, The Good Shepard, Bourne movies.

____The Adventures of the Dan Daly
The Overlord of Jupiter threatens the inner Solar System, his warships waiting to swoop down on civilization. Luckily the Solar Patrol is always there to foil his nefarious schemes! Zipping around the Solar System the Solar Patrol is always ready to test their atomic guns against the nega-shields of the Overlord's ships! So long as the Dan Daly and it's sister ships are on the job, the people of Earth may rest peacefully at night, knowing they are secure from any force that may try to do them harm!

Player Characters: PCs will be highly competent crewmembers on board the Dan Daly, an Audie Murphy-class patrol ship. They must fill crew billets, and in general be square-jawed, true hearted, and ready to visit a solar system full of intelligent life on a rocket ship powered by a Tesla Coil.
Play Style: Sci-fi pulps. Players will be expected to battle mad scientists and their evil automatons, rescue the girl, protect the innocent, defend the weak, and believe whole-heartedly in the pursuit of Science!
Source Material: Flash Gordon, Buck Rodgers, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

____The Quick and the Dead
The war between the states dragged on for 17 years, ending in a bitter ceasefire between the Union and the Confederates. Meanwhile, the Great Quake shattered California into a million pieces, revealing a new super-fuel in the riven crevasses. “Ghost rock” burns hotter and longer than coal, and it fueled the race to build new war machines. And things keep getting weirder out west, pardner. Towns shutter their windows and lock their doors after dark, solitary points of light in the wilderness huddled against whatever goes bump in the night. But some folks aren't content to just sit and watch the world go to hell. Some folks pick up their six-gun, cinch their belt, and stare whatever goes bump in the night right back in it's beady little eyes. What type of folk are you, hoss?

Player Characters: PCs will be competent adventurers, with available special abilities including gadgeteering, chinese martial arts, divine intervention, sorcerous deviltry, or shamanic magic.
Play Style: Cinematic gunslinging, with an overarching plotline centered in California and beginning on a train through the Sierra Nevadas.
Source Material: Deadlands, Spaghetti Westerns, Appaloosa, Riders of the Purple Sage

____Uncommon Valor
The human capacity for self-deception is simply amazing. Despite myths, legends, folk tales, and even modern “pulp” novels about the magical or mysterious, humanity continues to ignore the fantastic. But some are more curious, more open to possibilities. A few secret societies here , a government sponsored archeology expedition there... there are those who are illuminatus in the literal sense, aware of the deeper powers at work in the world. They understand that myths and legends have power, and as the third decade of the twentieth century draws to a close, they have begun to gather that power to themselves...

Player Characters: PCs will be competent professionals who have realized that there is more to the world than conventional science would have us believe. They will start out without any extraordinary abilities, on par with Indiana Jones levels of competence. As the campaign progresses, all PCs will have the opportunity to acquire extraordinary abilities from a variety of sources and suited to their background.
Play Style: Cinematic pulp.
Source Material: Hellboy, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Indiana Jones, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Casablanca.
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Last edited by Crakkerjakk; 02-02-2010 at 08:47 PM.
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Old 02-02-2010, 08:51 PM   #3
Anaraxes
 
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Default Re: Campaign Prospectus Critique

I'm a fan of the flavor text, as long as it's brief, as in these examples. Pages of narrative would be out, but it's a good way to convey a tone.

Quote:
Cinematic pulp, with plenty of buckled swashes... Any Errol Flynn movie
"The Charge of the Light Brigade"? "Dawn Patrol"? "They Died With Their Boots On"? "Objective: Burma"? "The Sun Also Rises"? :)
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Old 02-02-2010, 09:05 PM   #4
sir_pudding
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Default Re: Campaign Prospectus Critique

How are you doing the voting?
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Old 02-02-2010, 09:08 PM   #5
Crakkerjakk
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
I'm a fan of the flavor text, as long as it's brief, as in these examples. Pages of narrative would be out, but it's a good way to convey a tone.
Yeah, that's what I'm trying for, but some people seem to go cross-eyed when asked to read more than a page.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
"The Charge of the Light Brigade"? "Dawn Patrol"? "They Died With Their Boots On"? "Objective: Burma"? "The Sun Also Rises"? :)
... oops? Replaced with "Treasure Island."
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Old 02-02-2010, 09:11 PM   #6
Crakkerjakk
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Default Re: Campaign Prospectus Critique

Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
How are you doing the voting?
Quote:
Originally Posted by me
You have 24 points. A zero bid indicates you would rather not play in the game. If the only game selected is one you bid zero on, you will not be asked to play, so please only bid zero if you would rather not play than play in that campaign. I realize this doesn't leave many points left over if everything sounds at least playable. This is intentional.
I've had problems with the first time I mention "Bid" the players dump all their points into two or three campaigns. Think this is clear enough?
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Old 02-02-2010, 09:18 PM   #7
sir_pudding
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Default Re: Campaign Prospectus Critique

Quote:
Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk View Post
I've had problems with the first time I mention "Bid" the players dump all their points into two or three campaigns. Think this is clear enough?
I've had similar issues. You might want to specify that the bids have to be from the set of natural numbers. Before I starting doing that I'd get negative and fractional bids.
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Old 02-02-2010, 09:19 PM   #8
Mark Skarr
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Default Re: Campaign Prospectus Critique

Quote:
Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk View Post
____Guardians of Freedom
Denver. The Mile High City. Home to over 300 registered class C or greater superhumans. Ever since the shockwave from the Betelgeuse Supernova hit in '79, **** has gotten weird. People being able to fly, shoot lasers from their eyes, read minds, stuff straight out of the comic books. But for every Superman wannabe out there, there's a hundred guys that just suddenly started being able to detect bees or smell with their ears. By and large, life goes on as usual. Of course, when you combine your average lazy guy with powers that let him walk through a bank vault door like it wasn't even there, you tend to have problems. Luckily there's some people that read too many Spiderman comics growing up, “with great power...” and all that.

Player Characters: PCs will be X-men level superheroes, all just starting their careers in Denver, Colorado. They must be superheroes, but they need not necessarily be “heroic” so long as they have a good reason for fighting crime/bad guys/etc. Not everyone is a “mutant.” Various origins and power sources are acceptable, as no one is really sure how all these abilities work or what the supernova shockwave did to make them possible.
Play Style: Gritty but cinematic. A guy who can punch through a tank will not just knock out a thug, he'll probably put his fist through him unless he's very careful to pull his punches. Cops pretty much accept help from vigilantes, until they start dropping buildings or leaving behind bodies. The effect of this is that so long as the PCs behave like superheroes (in the real world, which makes it much more difficult) they tend to get the perks of being one from the comics. But once they start killing supervillians so that they don't inevitably escape and return to wreak havoc once more, they start running the risk of facing arrest and criminal prosecution.
Source Material: Freedom City, X-Men, Wild Cards.
I know that there are several of us, here on the fora, that live in Denver. If you need any information, feel free to send a PM.
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Old 02-02-2010, 09:23 PM   #9
Crakkerjakk
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Default Re: Campaign Prospectus Critique

Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
I've had similar issues. You might want to specify that the bids have to be from the set of natural numbers. Before I starting doing that I'd get negative and fractional bids.
I haven't seen that problem yet. Your gamers are more math-inclined than mine.

I've thought of just saying "list in order of preference, 1-12." But that lacks the ability to rate two campaigns evenly or indicate a lack of desire to play in some.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Skarr View Post
I know that there are several of us, here on the fora, that live in Denver. If you need any information, feel free to send a PM.
Thanks, if it gets selected I probably will!
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Old 02-02-2010, 09:24 PM   #10
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Default Re: Campaign Prospectus Critique

Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
I've had similar issues. You might want to specify that the bids have to be from the set of natural numbers. Before I starting doing that I'd get negative and fractional bids.
I found it necessary to do that as well. Negative bids strike me as especially objectionable; they amount to saying "Not only do I not want to play this, but I want to prevent other people from playing it."

Bill Stoddard
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