A while ago for some project I compiled a timeline that incorporated a lot of tv shows, games, movies, books, etc, running from the big bang to the end of the universe (and it's restaurant). I don't remember exactly why I did this, but part of the project was seeing how different fictive visions of the world interacted with each other.
Anyway I'd like to use this to run a crossover game that incorporates a lot of different fandoms - Doctor Who, LotR, Marvel Comics, DC, the Aliens/Predator movies/comics/etc, Terminator, Resident Evil, Supernatural, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc etc etc. Even the stuff that directly contradicts itself. Especially the stuff that directly contradicts itself. As long as it conceivably is set in the "real" world and I'll stretch that to include stuff like Lord of the Rings and Conan (supposedly both neolithic Europe. Was Nemenor Atlantis? Was King Kull deposed by Deviants who angered the Celestials into creating the Great Flood?)
Anyway I've got that worked out so I'd like to run a time travel game in this setting, one that allows the players to zip about and experience stories happening in different eras.
Considerations that feedback on would be great:
- Should players be from this fictive mishmash world, or from (more or less) our world? Natives might have background elements that incorporate elements of the different media, but visitors have the advantage of in-character knowledge of the secret nature of different media. In effect, that IS their power - genre awareness.
- The basic structure will be jaunts to different eras to participate in/witness/alter events from popular media (eg you jump back in time to Isla Nublar on the day the power goes down in Jurassic Park), and then jump back to your baseline timeline to live "normally" for a few months until the next jump. So when is the baseline? I'd like to have the events of media set in the baseline year occurring in the background/affecting the players' lives... but setting that in 2020 is an issue because it's kind of a weird time for movie releases and if we outpace real-time I won't even be able to look up synopsis of stuff that hasn't been released yet. So set the baseline game in the 2010s? 2000s? 1990s?
- The mechanics of time travel. How much agency do the players have? Can they guide where they go... and when they leave? Or are they at the mercy of unpredictable and irresistible world-slipping? Are they choosing to visit other eras dangerous events, or are they being thrown into them?
- For that matter who ARE the players? Hapless strangers brought together by fate? Scientists breaking the Fourth Wall into the Storyworlds? Time Patrol recruits? Kids testing a new VR game? Companions of a nihilistic Time Lord? Something else?
If this premise interests you, feel free to weigh in on the above options or ask for clarifications.
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Okay, I'm narrowing it down to these two concepts.
1. The players are participants in a psychic research study who find themselves in a world built from popular media (books/movies/tv/etc) that's possibly dimensional bleed into the real world or possibly the collective consciousness of all human creativity. They can leave the "present" of 2010 for short jaunts to other eras to interact with the media of those other era though they have little actual control over where they end up.
2. In the near future of 2050 Disney owns all media, and they've created massive AR theme parks where all of these different intellectual properties have been gamified. Players are a gaming guild enrolled in a mashup tournament with a fabulous prize, and have to compete to earn sponsorships, improve their reputation, and improve both their characters and guild standing. There's a lot of intrigue out of the tournament as well, industrial espionage, organized crime, cheating, and maybe even signs that some game elements are *leaking* into the real world somehow.
So if you're interested in one of these options over the other, have suggestions, questions, etc, let's hear it!
This message was last edited by the user at 17:24, Sun 25 Oct 2020.