Saintheart posted:

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Greetings, all.

So here's what I think: the multiple-worlds-linked-through-one-nexus would be assisted in some measure by taking some cues from Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series. As background for those of you who don't know what the TDT is about, it's essentially this:

The Dark Tower is a series of seven novels that Stephen King wrote over the 35 years of his career as a writer. The story and its world grew larger and larger over time; eventually many of his later non-Tower novels had some reference to it.

This is because King posits that all worlds are connected together to something equivalent to a nexus in time and space, called the "Dark Tower". One image that's used is that it's the axle on which universes spin. All worlds do connect through to the Tower, but not all of those worlds have a gateway to it.

The overall dramatic question of the Dark Tower story is: will Roland the Gunslinger ever reach the Tower? Roland's headed there because an abomination called the Crimson King was imprisoned inside the tower at the beginning of time by the Builders (whoever they may be.) The Crimson King seeks to escape the Tower by influencing individuals and worlds outside the Tower to break its eight support "Beams" using psychic energy. This will have the effect of turning reality to chaos. When the story commences only about two or three Beams remain intact, and their destruction is already causing reality to warp or even unravel in some worlds. The protagonist of the story is Roland, a sort of knight called a Gunslinger from one of these worlds who sets out to reach the Dark Tower and defeat the Crimson King.

Now, we should not retread King here, mainly because the world in the novels evolved over thirty years and has so many bloody inconsistencies it's hard to read them, let alone patrol or adjudicate things in its world. But the Tower might well be a good model to build upon if we're looking to semi-plausibly link very different worlds together. Perhaps the Nexus -- which is sort of our "Tower" -- is the subject of a struggle to control it, which creates the possibility of war between worlds over it.

However, I have a hazy vision that knowledge of the Nexus is a first cousin to conspiracy theory, the Illuminati, or the Holy Grail -- known to a select group in the various worlds connected to it, and not commonplace knowledge by any means (or indeed knowledge of it is suppressed.) Perhaps in some worlds it is known to a larger or lesser extent than others; in the fantasy world its existence is known to most priests and wizards, but in the modern world it's only known to the mad or the very, very powerful. Conflict between worlds is therefore in the nature of a "secret war" for dominion over other worlds.

This is obviously different to the currently proposed concept of a civilisation of linked worlds with vastly different levels of technology. I propose it because if you're looking to create something that's semi-plausible and isn't just a ruleless free-for-all, it comes down to this: if there were such worlds, knowing of one another, and linked to one another, why would any backward world remain so? Why would the villains of the "Old West" world not be hiring out supervillains from the "extraordinary" world? And indeed wouldn't there be considerable trade and advances in technology between such worlds so as to bring the more primitive worlds up to speed with the others?

What I'm saying is that perhaps there needs to be some degree of separation between the worlds so travel between them isn't a commonplace thing. I mean, even in the modern world commonplace knowledge of movement between other habitable universes or civilisations would be an earthshattering development. It would fundamentally change the self-concept of our world, if nothing else than in a Star Trek First Contact "alien visitors unites humanity in a way never thought possible" way.

Now, that rather skeletal gentleman who invited us all here has expressed a concern that we can't allow the esoteric nature of this knowledge to cut off travel between the universes, and for that I've a solution: if you're playing in the game, you'll be informed of the Nexus's existence pretty shortly thereafter. Just like Neo and the Matrix, it's then a matter for you whether you just go on with your ordinary life inside the world of your choice, or whether you choose to brave the path of the Nexus and travel between worlds.

If, however, it's proposed that travel to and from other worlds is a secret, even taboo subject, that might be useful at controlling movement between worlds. It also gives you excuses for people to maintain their daily lives in their own worlds. And so the concept of the Nexus as the axle of worlds becomes important.

Turning to that axle, I think the concept of the Nexus is a very important one to nut out, because it is the linchpin of the entire Grand Unified RPG. My hazy vision of it is that it's more church than gas station on the way to other worlds, if that makes it clear; it is a mysterious place where physics doesn't work uniformly, where technology is so advanced it looks like magic, and a place where even the local inhabitants don't control its power.

So who built the Nexus? For my part, I've always liked the idea of "Vanished Advanced Race" as a building block for a universe; it gives you a canvas for expansion and for deeper mysteries. The current inhabitants of the Nexus are probably the equivalent of native Indians living in the ruined temples of the Incas: they can utilise the most basic elements of the Nexus but they're by no means its masters; all they know is how to move between worlds, a little about such worlds, and have stuff to sell, but not much more than that. It's similar to the position of the aliens that contact humanity in "Contact" -- they have access to and use the wormhole system, but they don't know who built it or where they went.

Some other random comments --

(1) LightSide_Apprentice's "Grand Unified NSWRPG" failed for one main reason: the lack of a definite universe. His world was, with respect, a poorly-defined D&D template without real structure or depth to it, and lacked any real principles, powers, or rules that people could live by. The "Integrated Balance of Power" RPG worked, by contrast, because it was based firmly in the Star Wars universe and it had experienced people in its upper positions. I think to replicate the IBoP experience you've got to create a similarly strong world, or set of worlds.

(2) I can't emphasise enough my view that a simple world-hopping free-for-all won't work. Just as with LSA's failed effort, a lack of structure doesn't necessarily encourage creativity; it isolates unless you've got strongly creative roleplayers who are willing to fill in the gaps. This applies even to IBoP -- I suspect that without GrandAdmiralJello's unifying presence to make the Empire a real (and very deadly) threat, that too would have foundered.

(3) Designing this unified game universe really should be a top-down experience. We mustn't fall into the trap of deciding whether Custer or Sitting Bull rules the Wild West universe until we've sorted out how the various worlds relate to one another and to the Nexus. This is important because IBOP already came with this skeleton in place -- the Star Wars universe. We are not working from such a skeleton, and as such we need to take one step at a time.

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Darth_Elu posted:

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I would agree with the limitations of movement myself. A sort of Traveling Guidelines or at least how it's done was one of the major things on my list of things to do in the RPG to be honest....yes, I actually have written down a list

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peng posted:

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If I may expand on something really gnawing at my mind...

I'm a bit in the same boat as Saint. I'm no big fan of the massive world-hopping - it can work, yes, but then you've got about seven microcosms in a larger metagame. That's poorly worded, but my point is that you're going to lose out in one of these areas.

You either have too much detail in the smaller plots that your metagame is left out, or too much of a worldview that your individual worlds are forgotten in lieu of going onto the main problems.

Something I've been toying with in my mind is a great big "hard" sci-fi story that would/could do well as a game. I've always been enamored with black holes, and their limitless plot potential. I want to do a story in which a spacecraft is sabotaged/nav computers are faulty/something just goes wrong, and the craft has a set amount of time to solve their problems before the ship passes the event horizon and everything is pulled apart molecule by molecule.

It's like 24, but in space, and without the Chuck knock-off Keifer.

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Elu posted:

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I agree with Saint as well, to be honest.

And hmm...yes, I've been intrigued with black holes as well...but how to incorporate that? Or is that yourself talking out loud about your own ideas?

And I mean, it could happen in the Sci-Fi world/universe as I mean, each world should have their own stories as well...run by their corresponding GMs.(Who will be decided when we got everything tuned of course)

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Saint posted:

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IBOP managed to achieve the balance, though. There were smaller themes and stories going on inside the main story all the time - in fact the overall "plot," such as it was, was only occasionally referred to other than in terms of truly universal changes to events, which is in keeping with most players' status as small personalities in a big universe. The committed players who'd been there from the beginning had the opportunity to rise in status and importance by posting frequently with quality.

The trick is making the individual threads compelling enough that people will be interested enough to stay in them of themselves. And that's going to take a collection of committed and creative GMs to do it. The Nexus and the struggle to control it can be a background story in the nature of conspiracy -- for which a good analogy is the Templar Knight conspiracy theory in "The Da Vinci Code". Modern Europe still carries on with its own plots and machinations, but in secret is this much larger struggle being fought in the shadows.

By the way that's a nice story idea, Peng.

It might be worth taking a closer analysis of the IBOP structure to see how LSA did it. From what I remember there were these threads:

New Republic Thread
Imperial Thread
Smaller Factions Thread (Contained the Fringe, Assassins' Guild, Black Sun, and even the Hapans - run by Ktala as I recall.)
The Force Users Thread (both Jedi and Sith, I might note.)
Yuuzhan Vong Thread (after a while)
Interdenominational Thread (where the cross-faction battles were fought.)

The distinction between IBOP and our crossworlds game is that all of these factions operated in the same universe. That's one advantage we won't have when we're building this game, and our first and biggest obstacle. This is also the obstacle that caused LSA's Ultimate Fantasy to fold -- he had a single universe to play in, but not a strong enough concept or institutions for people to navigate against.

Also, broadly speaking each thread's occupants were working towards a unified goal. For the New Republic, it was peace and defeating the Empire. The reverse for the Empire. The YV were intent on wiping out everything. The Jedi and Sith had their own purposes, too. The least "unified" of these groups was the Smaller Factions, which tended to focus around individual missions and individual advancement -- so maybe a hunt back through the Smaller Factions Thread to see how that was handled might assist in a venture of this kind, because it's the closest to an independent universe as you had in IBOP.

Bear in mind also that you had some pretty major and experienced roleplayers running those threads - LSA, Handmaiden_Yane, GrandAdmiralJello, greyjedi125 (I think), and Ktala. Jello in particular had such a tactical acumen (at least in game terms) that he pretty much had the capacity to take out the New Republic in its entirety. The New Republic thread, even unified on its goals, suffered from a lack of cohesion (much as the fictional one did.) Ktala had a strong "underworld" vision for her part of the universe, so it worked well. I think we'll need similarly pragmatic and creative people running these threads for them to succeed. It's a topic I keep harping on, but just setting people loose in your sandbox doesn't create a game; you have to give them something to do in most cases, and some creative ideas for where to take them. They won't tell their own stories, at least not these days.

On genres: I'll throw in a mere suggestion: eastern world. Samurai and ninjas.

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Imp posted:

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My main concern is slicing the cake too thin...

You're only going to have a set amount of players to work with. The more worlds you make, the more separated your player base is going to be, and the harder interaction is going to be.

I think it might also be good to take a look at the other SWRPF Flagship, namely Sinre's 128ABY. It started off as one thread, and then split off. Perhaps this might be something to consider?

-I_H

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Elu posted:

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Exactly, I entirely agree, Saint. So I suppose you'd agree with me splitting up tasks within this game and beginning to hand them off to people? :-P

And I must also say: One thing I've always wanted to see in a game like this, is a cohesive time system. So everyone knows when it is night and when it is afternoon. Otherwise so many people fall behind, something to keep them progressing in a minor way as well as making it more realistic.

I had the idea of maybe even making an announcement of something like every four days for us is one day to all those IC.

Consider the first day to be morning basically. The second to be afternoon. The third to be a bit cut up somehow, yes. First afternoon and then night. The fourth and final day being night. Then starting all over again. I would probably post somewhere the dates of when is what if that happened.

The reason a whole day is one section of the day is because everyone always seem to do everything within the afternoon or night. There's not much in between in games. It's either afternoon. Or it is night. So I thought of that.

Thoughts?

Very true, bro, very true. But it seems the genres have been basically decided. It is not as much in number as previously thought. Manageable I think.

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Saint posted:

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You're only going to have a set amount of players to work with. The more worlds you make, the more separated your player base is going to be, and the harder interaction is going to be.

I think it might also be good to take a look at the other SWRPF Flagship, namely Sinre's 128ABY. It started off as one thread, and then split off. Perhaps this might be something to consider?

M(od).C. Hammer has a point there. NSWRPG does have a much smaller player base than SWRPG, so either we market this baby heavily, recruit a lot by PM ... or we make it simpler.

With 128ABY, I would have hypothesised that its need to expand was because of a truly massive player base, and again a very concrete universe to play in. But the numbers are deceptive, I think: SW Legacy has been hugely popular, and it's a comic so it's easy to visualise the world and attract players to it. I think that's a big part of the popularity of the thread. This is (once more) the joy of franchises coming into it, and something we won't have the advantage of with this game.

Consider the first day to be morning basically. The second to be afternoon. The third to be a bit cut up somehow, yes. First afternoon and then night. The fourth and final day being night. Then starting all over again. I would probably post somewhere the dates of when is what if that happened.

The reason a whole day is one section of the day is because everyone always seem to do everything within the afternoon or night. There's not much in between in games. It's either afternoon. Or it is night. So I thought of that.

Thoughts?

It'll be a nightmare to run, both from GM and player perspective. Compulsory movements of time according to RL deadlines have two main consequences IMHHO:

(1) It'll annoy people who have infrequent Net access or who are in different time zones. On 'Tide of Flames' I've been waiting on both Livi-Wan and CryoDragoon001 for two days to post, and all I can see their characters really doing this round is walking about thirty feet.

(2) It'll annoy those who have frequent Net access but then have to wait four days for the next morning (even if they're waiting for a letter).

Ad hoc time advancements, when you want them to happen, work a bit better IMHHO because it retains precious flexibility. LSA's method of a forewarned six-month-speedup was interesting; if he wanted to move events on significantly he'd announce it a few weeks ahead and have people post up what their characters were doing over those intervening months.

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Saint posted:

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Let's explore the "One Thread" option a bit more, though.

Let's say we started with a 'Nexus Lite' with only three or so worlds in place, and sub-GMs over each of those worlds. (The author of the thread would GM as master of the Nexus).

Come to think of it, that's exactly how IBoP originally commenced its life: as the Balance of Power, in one thread with all the factions together inside it.

Once we've got some momentum, that might generate sufficient interest to branch out into other threads and create more worlds in more detail. People could be enticed in on the promise that there are other worlds out there waiting to be 'unlocked'. Not to mention that they'll all see each other's adventures in different worlds. The cowboy sees a sci-fi post and thinks, "Hmm, that's interesting, I might go there."

Another random thought: allow a player only to have 2 characters at a maximum, and they can't occupy the same world at the same time on pain of obliteration of both. That way you stop players creating a 'girl in every port', so to speak. And don't allow people to play inhabitants of the Nexus, needless to say. Nobody gets into the Nexus until the game starts - period.

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candide posted:

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I agree with Saint on the time issue.

The most crucial thing to this game, I think, is figuring out a way to get the players to interact. It worked for LSA, because all of his story threads were in the same universe. So, I think, we need to figure out a way to connect all of the different universes. Once we do that, it'll be relatively easy to scope out everything else, I think.

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Sephy posted:

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Like what I see so far.

Agree with Saint on the time thing, and probably on starting small.

Just tossing out an idea here: Nexus/Nexus entrance looks different in every world, something to....blend in. Modern world, perhaps its a run down Gas Station. Sci-Fi it's alien ruins on an uncharted planet. Wild West it's an abandoned mine etc.

Also, if the plot's gonna center around a fight for control over the Nexus, I think the next thing to determine would be the factions in said fight. Do we have baddies from one world trying to take over? A pervasive cult in all worlds? Left over Builders with a grudge? Evil extradimensional creature? Ansem?

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Imp posted:

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I like the One Thread thing. I believe its a good thing.

Yes, a unified story would be best...

Reynar and I made a good Kingdom Hearts RPG where its something like that. Perhaps the one group of baddies can use the Nexus? Like a league of evil sorta?

I'd say, if we're ready to agree on one thread, 3 worlds, next up would be which worlds get the spotlight and what the unifying story is.

-I_H

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Sephy posted:

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Does it seem to anyone else like we're getting through this way to smoothly? Like at any second Murphy's Law is gonna kick in? Or is it just me?

I'm loathe to admit it, since there are so many other worlds I want to roleplay in, but I think normal old everyday Earth would probably be good to have from the get-go. From a storytelling perspective, it's the most familiar, and therefore the most resonant. From a GMing standpoint, introducing normal vanilla modern Earth at a later point would just be weird, like, "Okay, so you've had your fun with Orcs and Goblins and Cowboys and Space Marines, here's the real world. Have fun." It seems like it would be a hard sell any time after the beginning of the game.

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Elu posted:

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I agree Sephster, something is going to happen. *worried look* :P

The one thread idea...hm...it probably would be the best way to start off, eventually branching off. Yes. And I always believe there should be a main storyline along with the little world stories.

As for main villains, perhaps...perhaps. I had liked the idea to start off the storyline as a sort of, remnant of the past or consequences of this world cluster, as I call it. Probably something generic like a Big Bad Monster that will at first seem pretty unstoppable, going around rampaging with everyone trying to figure out how to stop it. Of course twists and turns will be applied where needed.

And stuff like that, like final showdowns with main villains I had some pretty interesting concepts thought of...but I'm not getting into that right now.

And I like the point brought up that all the gates from the worlds to the Nexus look different. It's really the only plausible way to go.

Fantasy - Modern - Sci-Fi - Supers - Western - Dark/Horror

That's what we got to play off with, besides the all important Nexus. And personally, I can imagine the Horror world being a sort of apocolapytic (spelling escapes me at the moment, I'm still waking up) place. Probably the small storyline there being a fight between factions which will eventually be united when the main storyline spills over big time....but that's a discussion for later.

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Imp posted:

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What about if each "world GM" takes the role of the baddie for their world.

That way we can get a big baddie/deputy baddie dynamic going on.

As to worlds... I think the 3 candidates should be:

Supers (in the modern, grabbing Sephy's pt)
Fantasy
Western

That would be a bit for everyone. Sci-Fi and Dark can be "opened/unlocked" pending interest and turnout.

-I_H

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Sephy posted:

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Mar 7, 2008, 11:45am, Lord Death wrote:
Dark/Horror

...And personally, I can imagine the Horror world being a sort of apocolapytic (spelling escapes me at the moment, I'm still waking up) place. Probably the small storyline there being a fight between factions which will eventually be united when the main storyline spills over big time....but that's a discussion for later.


Eff that!

You want horror? Try this on for size:

Victorian Horror/Steampunk

Perhaps even a divergence from the Wild West world (since the timeframe would be about the same). It gives us the opportunity to hit up all the classic horror stories: Dracula, Frankenstein etc. If we go modern/post-apocalyptic for our horror genre, we're just stepping on Sci-Fi's toes only with viral zombies instead of Pee-Oh'ed aliens. Going Romantic allows a dark world full of sweeping castles, villagers with torches and pitchforks, mad scientists, you name it.

And of course, linking it with a Steampunk realm allows that much more fun to be had, with zeppelin engineers, iron-clad sailing ships, musket-wielding knights, dashing rapier-wielding dudes, etc. etc.

The way I see it, the Steampunk/Horror world would be set up thusly:

1 big city (Londonesque) where most of the Steampunk-y stuff occurs
1 Mad Scientists' castle (self-explanatory)
1+ little villages (Grab yer torch 'n' pitchforks!)
Nebulous foreign powers whom we never see (well, maybe their armies and airships) to serve as a catalyst for military buildup in big Steampunk city.

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xany posted:

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I've only skimmed the thread so far, but random comments:

On IBOP: generally speaking, the sub-GMs of each faction in IBOP were what defined (for lack of a better word) what the faction would be. Case in point is Jello and the Empire, yeah, but it wasn't just Jello - him, Mitth, NP, Thok, PoT and undoubtedly a few others I'm forgetting combined to make one fantastically dangerous Empire. By contrast the New Republic, while begun at the same time, was mostly LSA-run.

A lot of the subplots in IBOP were run by the faction leaders with minimal input from LSA, so this brings us back to the smaller-plots-within-the-grand-overarching-plan idea. You definitely need committed GMs, or players-turned-GMs as IBOP used, for a game of that magnitude.

On dividing the player base too thin: bear in mind that involvement in one faction/genre doesn't mean you can't be involved in another. I think that limiting the number of characters a player can have is a bad idea, precisely because we'll have a limited player base: let people have a finger in every pie. Why not? If you're concerned about players biting off more than they can chew, you get the same problem with people joining more games than they can handle and then taking forever to post. Let people have as many characters as they want, in whichever genres they want - it works out fine in the long run.

I completely agree with Saint re: compulsory movements of time. Then again, you do need some set rule regarding how long you can go without posting before your character gets not-so-gently moved along, because things like conversations lasting several months of real time is ridiculous, and something IBOP struggled against as well.

Also, if the plot's gonna center around a fight for control over the Nexus, I think the next thing to determine would be the factions in said fight. Do we have baddies from one world trying to take over? A pervasive cult in all worlds? Left over Builders with a grudge? Evil extradimensional creature? Ansem?

(I feel like a broken record spitting out what IBOP did, but I remember a lot about how it was run and stuff so that's what pops into mind first and... yeah.) Something LSA used to great effect was each time he needed to forge a plot point he'd introduce a new NPC 'faction' to be the catalyst, and the players would have to react to it. Or not, depending on what they wanted to do. Much easier than 'persuading' the player-run factions to invade or something.

One of my concerns when Elu first told me about this (and Saintheart posted something like this as well) was the different power levels between genres meant that, say, a single soldier with a laser rifle and a few grenades would slaughter the entire Old West. Greyjedi had similar problems with the Omniversal Arena thread, where people would basically create the most overpowered character they could think of and godmode their way around.

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Sephy posted:

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Mar 7, 2008, 7:54pm, xany wrote:
One of my concerns when Elu first told me about this (and Saintheart posted something like this as well) was the different power levels between genres meant that, say, a single soldier with a laser rifle and a few grenades would slaughter the entire Old West. Greyjedi had similar problems with the Omniversal Arena thread, where people would basically create the most overpowered character they could think of and godmode their way around.


Not necessarily. There would have to be limits in place, but it's doable one way or another to avoid the issue. I'm reminded of Exiles, we had characters like Link (me), Launcelot, Mugen, etc. fighting Aliens during the events of Aliens and even the Doomsday who killed Superman. Plus, I think if you come from a more primitive locale, you would automatically get some sort of 'bonus' to protect you, and certainly some sort of home field advantage.

It's really not as tough as you're making it out to be.

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xany posted:

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Oh no, I'm not saying it's tough, I'm just saying it's something we need to consider and define limits for, because there exists the potential for abuse. We could definitely make it so that, say, the dust in the Old West would foul up laser weapons or something (that's incredibly lame but ... you know) - but we just need to mention that at the start of the game, and not as an afterthought when a player tries to do it. If that makes sense ...

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Saint posted:

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All right, so assuming our three worlds are as follows:

Modern/Superhero
Schteampunk/Western and
Fantasy.

All three have semi-plausible entrances to the Nexus, in that if you've got superheroes running around the modern world people can accept worldshifting ideas without too much of a leap, and steampunk and fantasy just about have other planes of existence du jour. So I'm in favour of that.

On top of that is the Nexus.

I like Seph's idea that the gate in each world is "whatever it needs to be to blend in": it takes a cue from Dark Tower where a single wild rose growing in a vacant lot was in fact the Tower. If you just gave it a glance it looked like an ordinary, even weedy wild rose -- but if you were to examine it more closely you'd have the distinct impression the rose's petals looked like nebulae and its seeds stars -- as if the entire galaxy was there. It's a nice image, and one I'm in favour of: the gas station in the modern world looks run-down and abandoned, but when you look at the fuel dials you start noticing the black-and-whites of the numbers look like they've got whole star systems rolling around inside them. Remember the Galaxy from MIB? Look closely at it and it reveals something of its true nature? Something like that, perhaps.

It seems to me there are several questions we need to answer about the Nexus's relationship to all of these worlds. This is not simply navel-gazing, it's important GM material:

(1) How do you access the Nexus from each world? By gate, presumably -- but is there a key or other McGuffin item to open the gate? Are there many different keys for the gate? Do you need no key but rather need a way of turning your mind in the right direction, like with an optical illusion that has two images within it?

(2) How many gates are there in each world? Are they engineered? Accidental? Can new ones be made? Are there old ones that are lying deactivated? Can gates be closed? Can they be destroyed at all?

(3) Are there any physical/mental/spiritual consequences to accessing the Nexus? Is interplanar travel safe for humans? Does it destroy your mind unless You Are Teh One?

(4) How wide is the level of knowledge of such gates in each world? On this one I would've argued that the higher the tech level of the world in question, the less people know about the gate's existence -- sort of an "Age of Reason" blindness thing, but also so people don't get the advantage of superior technology as well as worldhopping.

(5) Does anyone police knowledge of the gates in each world? Are there MIBs for the Nexus? Are they one force across every world? Are they each working separately? Together?

(6) Our antagonists, who are seeking control of the Nexus: who are they and why would they do it? Does each of our worlds have something the others don't that makes domination over them desirable to evil outside forces? Why are our antagonists not content with dominion over one world, but rather all of them? Are our antagonists, as Seph mentioned, disgruntled Builders? Demons, perhaps - forces of Chaos who simply want the rule of entropy to be accelerated? Are they men? Women? (That'd be a bit more interesting than the standard Elk Club which seems the standard for conspiracies.)

(7) Are there any limits on travelling to other worlds through the Nexus? Can you only jump once a month before it starts affecting your brain cell count?

(8) What actually passes through the Nexus? Everything you carry? Your mule? Do we go the T1 route and say you go through naked, that nothing "dead" will go unless it's shielded by some technology from inside the Nexus?

In asking these questions I'm conscious I'm going nowhere near what's actually inside the Nexus. I've done that because ultimately that is a matter of windowdressing -- each of these questions affect all three of our hypothetical worlds, and we do need to come up with some answers.

With the group's permission, I'll now turn these questions over for discussion to the group. I would suggest we build on our excellent beginning and work systematically on answering these. The reason is that when each of our Heroic GMs in each world writes about the Nexus, they will have a very clear understanding of how it affects their world. That will come across in the writing on the thread, methinks.

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xany posted:

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Before we get into that, if I may make an organizational suggestion - why don't we start splitting things up into separate threads? The discussion on the Nexus could go into its own thread, say, and each genre (when we get to that) could go into its own, and when one of us thinks of a new thing to consider we can make another thread ... instead of holding all discussions in this thread? I just think it can get a little confusing, especially if we start discussing multiple things at once.

...Or maybe I'm just too big a fan of modularity. :P If it's too much trouble than it's worth, that's cool.



Now onto the thingy...

(3/7) We could steal a page out of His Dark Materials here and say that you can't stay too long in another world until your body/mind starts to go. The time limit in HDM is like ten years or something before you start feeling the effects, so it just prevents migration, or we could make the limit much shorter and impose real-life time limits as well as in-game limits, as an added encouragement for players to post faster or their characters sicken and die.

(8) Hm, we should let people bring stuff through, I think... actually, this brings another question, will stuff that works in one world work in another? Magic and technology alike... can a fantasy elf mage still cast fireballs in Superheroland?

(5) Could have different ones for each world. Maybe knowledge of the Nexus is some sort of priestly secret in Fantasyworld... the subject of research in Steampunk... something the players stumble upon by 'accident' in Superhero... etc. But in each of them knowledge is limited.

(6) I vote some kind of insidious 'secret society' with sekrit agents in every world. That somehow circumvent the rule that they can't live out of their home genre (if we use that rule) ... ooh or maybe their home genre was destroyed in some catastrophe and they scattered through the Nexus to others, so now they're trying to get control to reunite their people and get universal domination in the deal. Actually, this idea is becoming completely random so nevermind.

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Sephy posted:

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xany

Before we get into that, if I may make an organizational suggestion - why don't we start splitting things up into separate threads? The discussion on the Nexus could go into its own thread, say, and each genre (when we get to that) could go into its own, and when one of us thinks of a new thing to consider we can make another thread ... instead of holding all discussions in this thread? I just think it can get a little confusing, especially if we start discussing multiple things at once.

Probably a good idea.

(8) Hm, we should let people bring stuff through, I think... actually, this brings another question, will stuff that works in one world work in another? Magic and technology alike... can a fantasy elf mage still cast fireballs in Superheroland?

Magick has long been a part of Superheroism (see: Dr. Stephen Strange, Zatanna). I think it's safe to say that things would work for a while, but as an added incentive to not stay in a foreign world for too long, it would stop working. I don't wanna figure out magical mumbo-jumbo, but a simple example would be trying to find a fuel depot to refuel your speeder bike in the Wild West world. It wouldn't be too difficult to come up with good reasons why anything's use is limited in any other world.

Saint

(5) Does anyone police knowledge of the gates in each world? Are there MIBs for the Nexus? Are they one force across every world? Are they each working separately? Together?

Hmm...on the one hand, it'd make it interesting to have... the image that springs to mind is something akin to the Green Lantern Corps... keeping undesirables in their own world. Perhaps they're duty-driven to keep our heroes out while blind to the fact that the villains are about to conquer/destroy everything. On the other hand, they would logically be a very powerful group of people, and getting past them could become tedious to the point of players just wanting to relax in their own world, taking on odd side-quests to live the life of luxury until the fall comes...

(8) What actually passes through the Nexus? Everything you carry? Your mule? Do we go the T1 route and say you go through naked, that nothing "dead" will go unless it's shielded by some technology from inside the Nexus?

I think we oughtta avoid the T-1 route. Part of the fun, I would think, would be in being a complete outsider, I'm just envisioning a space-age soldier teaming up Shanghai Knights-style with a cowboy, and hilarity ensues.

(1) How do you access the Nexus from each world? By gate, presumably -- but is there a key or other McGuffin item to open the gate? Are there many different keys for the gate? Do you need no key but rather need a way of turning your mind in the right direction, like with an optical illusion that has two images within it?

I think if you could just stumble into the Nexus it would be best. Otherwise all our characters will have to be educated, wise people or spunky young kids who just happen to have the right mindset. The less mental gymnastics required to get in, the broader the character base we can expect. And once again, we make it too tough to get in, we lose out on potential worldhoppers. In this situation for real, it would probably be wise to limit the types of people who can jump to a different world, but for gameplay reasons, I'd be annoyed if I couldn't play a bumbling idiot and still get through the gates.

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xany posted:

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Mar 9, 2008, 10:23am, SephyCloneNo15 wrote:

I think if you could just stumble into the Nexus it would be best. Otherwise all our characters will have to be educated, wise people or spunky young kids who just happen to have the right mindset. The less mental gymnastics required to get in, the broader the character base we can expect. And once again, we make it too tough to get in, we lose out on potential worldhoppers. In this situation for real, it would probably be wise to limit the types of people who can jump to a different world, but for gameplay reasons, I'd be annoyed if I couldn't play a bumbling idiot and still get through the gates.


Hehe... why not both? Say that prior to the game starting, going to/through the Nexus required some mental gymnastics or access through a restricted door or something - but now due to some Catastrophe of Indeterminate Origin (this could also be our Plot Point once we figure out what it is) portals to the Nexus are opening up all over the place for people to stumble upon.

Naturally, the secret societies or whatever that previously controlled access to the Nexus would also now be scrambling around in panic to find out why.

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Elu posted:

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All right, so assuming our three worlds are as follows:

Modern/Superhero
Schteampunk/Western and
Fantasy.

All three have semi-plausible entrances to the Nexus, in that if you've got superheroes running around the modern world people can accept worldshifting ideas without too much of a leap, and steampunk and fantasy just about have other planes of existence du jour. So I'm in favour of that.

Sure does seem like we've decided on those. Though the Modern Genre should probably the first unlockable world. To make it appealing enough to not bore others, the mafia or some such should probably be high up in that side story.

I like Seph's idea that the gate in each world is "whatever it needs to be to blend in": it takes a cue from Dark Tower where a single wild rose growing in a vacant lot was in fact the Tower. If you just gave it a glance it looked like an ordinary, even weedy wild rose -- but if you were to examine it more closely you'd have the distinct impression the rose's petals looked like nebulae and its seeds stars -- as if the entire galaxy was there. It's a nice image, and one I'm in favour of: the gas station in the modern world looks run-down and abandoned, but when you look at the fuel dials you start noticing the black-and-whites of the numbers look like they've got whole star systems rolling around inside them. Remember the Galaxy from MIB? Look closely at it and it reveals something of its true nature? Something like that, perhaps.

I agree. Though I don't want to get too close to Dark Tower or MIB ideas. :P But, eh, oh well.

(1) How do you access the Nexus from each world? By gate, presumably -- but is there a key or other McGuffin item to open the gate? Are there many different keys for the gate? Do you need no key but rather need a way of turning your mind in the right direction, like with an optical illusion that has two images within it?

Personally, I think there should be a mindset or some sort of 'mental gymnastics' but like xany said: Make it so after a while some random gates start opening for a while, though probably get closed again after some time.

(2) How many gates are there in each world? Are they engineered? Accidental? Can new ones be made? Are there old ones that are lying deactivated? Can gates be closed? Can they be destroyed at all?

I think they've always been there, ever since this "world cluster" as I call it, has been formed. I think there should be two or three gates per world, though there are hidden deactivated ones that we can activate through main plot device for a while suddenly. They'll be kept a secret.

(3) Are there any physical/mental/spiritual consequences to accessing the Nexus? Is interplanar travel safe for humans? Does it destroy your mind unless You Are Teh One?

I know I'm alone in this, but...I don't think there should be any side effects...but for some reason, the character think there will be if they stay too long. Maybe they are told that there is, but it's just a lie so there is no imbalance. A way for those who risk it all to really expand on their character (or for those "aww!" inter-world romance stories some do).

(4) How wide is the level of knowledge of such gates in each world? On this one I would've argued that the higher the tech level of the world in question, the less people know about the gate's existence -- sort of an "Age of Reason" blindness thing, but also so people don't get the advantage of superior technology as well as worldhopping.

I can agree with that, myself. Though that shouldn't make it so many know of it in the Western world for example.

(5) Does anyone police knowledge of the gates in each world? Are there MIBs for the Nexus? Are they one force across every world? Are they each working separately? Together?

To be honest, I think the closest to that should be the inhabitants of the Nexus. But there should be, obviously, some knowledge in each of the worlds.

(6) Our antagonists, who are seeking control of the Nexus: who are they and why would they do it? Does each of our worlds have something the others don't that makes domination over them desirable to evil outside forces? Why are our antagonists not content with dominion over one world, but rather all of them? Are our antagonists, as Seph mentioned, disgruntled Builders? Demons, perhaps - forces of Chaos who simply want the rule of entropy to be accelerated? Are they men? Women? (That'd be a bit more interesting than the standard Elk Club which seems the standard for conspiracies.)

I think the standard Elk Club should be out, yes, but hmm...antagonists...to be honest. I think my idea would be this: *would like feedback of course* There are hidden protectors of the world cluster (Saint, I mentioned this briefly to you before), that are a bit...eccentric in personality should I say. Perhaps they are the mistaken antagonists. They are there to protect, but are't corrupt exactly...but incompetent. Their screw-ups result in countless recent upsets, releases of 'minor' villains, creatures, and what not. I think even one time of a sort of plague that weakens and threatens to kill the players would be interesting. A race to a cure. In the end, everyone must find a way to remove or help their own protectors. Who, through their sheer personality, might prove resistant to any 'help.' It would be interesting as its the last place the characters would expect all the trouble to come from. They search to see who let out the disease, for example, only to find out it was them themselves. Could at least be a starting idea. What could we do to flesh this out, guys?

(7) Are there any limits on travelling to other worlds through the Nexus? Can you only jump once a month before it starts affecting your sperm count?

*laughs* Hm...Traveling Guidelines do need to be worked on. I'd say...jump three times in a month?

(8) What actually passes through the Nexus? Everything you carry? Your mule? Do we go the T1 route and say you go through naked, that nothing "dead" will go unless it's shielded by some technology from inside the Nexus?

I think everything you carry should be allowed. It just wouldn't be fair to some characters, though it would be interesting.

(3/7) We could steal a page out of His Dark Materials here and say that you can't stay too long in another world until your body/mind starts to go. The time limit in HDM is like ten years or something before you start feeling the effects, so it just prevents migration, or we could make the limit much shorter and impose real-life time limits as well as in-game limits, as an added encouragement for players to post faster or their characters sicken and die.

Like I said earlier, I think characters should be allowed to stay in another world if they want...though if they decide to live there...they have to blend in and something enforces that. Perhaps the 'mystical protectors'?

(8) Hm, we should let people bring stuff through, I think... actually, this brings another question, will stuff that works in one world work in another? Magic and technology alike... can a fantasy elf mage still cast fireballs in Superheroland?

First part. I think so too. Second part, I think they should work. Interesting again, but it might take too much from some characters. Keeps all characters on a somewhat even playing field.

(5) Could have different ones for each world. Maybe knowledge of the Nexus is some sort of priestly secret in Fantasyworld... the subject of research in Steampunk... something the players stumble upon by 'accident' in Superhero... etc. But in each of them knowledge is limited.

*agrees on the presented ideas there* It would be interesting in the normal Modern Genre, if it is a mafia ish story or has one in it, that the Don/Head of one Family/Mafia, holds the knowledge of the gate and already goes through occasionally and gets items and ideas from other worlds already...the key to his/her success in other words.

(6) I vote some kind of insidious 'secret society' with sekrit agents in every world. That somehow circumvent the rule that they can't live out of their home genre (if we use that rule) ... ooh or maybe their home genre was destroyed in some catastrophe and they scattered through the Nexus to others, so now they're trying to get control to reunite their people and get universal domination in the deal. Actually, this idea is becoming completely random so nevermind.

Already presented my idea. :P

Hehe... why not both? Say that prior to the game starting, going to/through the Nexus required some mental gymnastics or access through a restricted door or something - but now due to some Catastrophe of Indeterminate Origin (this could also be our Plot Point once we figure out what it is) portals to the Nexus are opening up all over the place for people to stumble upon.

Naturally, the secret societies or whatever that previously controlled access to the Nexus would also now be scrambling around in panic to find out why.

Agree!

So I was talking to NP about this, and I think I'm going to try to get a private Focus Group board on the JC for this.

Stay tuned to see if my efforts do anything...

What's wrong with Dreamwrights!? :P Let us know.

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xany posted:

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Traveling Guidelines do need to be worked on. I'd say...jump three times in a month?

But why three? Why not four, or two? I'm not trying to be difficult here, but whatever we pick needs to be justifiable because players will be asking the same questions. Perhaps going through the gate drains your energy, or constantly shifting worlds causes your body to go all out of whack?


The reason I asked if magic should work in other worlds ties in with the "can you carry stuff with you" deal... because magic is (usually) internal and technology is external, not being able to carry stuff through the portal disadvantages the tech characters more than mages. But if we're deciding that you can bring stuff through worlds, this isn't a problem.

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