A Discussion about science fiction and the world wars

[Hopeless]

Okay I've been running through a few ideas inspired by Achtung Cthulhu and I think its more science fiction than Cthulhu so I figured I'd explain here and see what holes you can poke through my idea.

Spoiler: Involves Time Travel, Horror and the Second World War are involved!

So far I'm still working on the characters principally one is going to be the time lost father of another PC.

Originally the son was part of a team sent to investigate a Nazi operation shortly before the official start of the Second World War, although successfully able to destroy the villain's laboratory the team were all killed.

Time proceeds as we know it and some time in the next century a child is born whose prodigious mental gifts result in a thesis on time travel that she discards as a failure however her thesis is recovered and used as part of a research that take several centuries to complete.

By that time humanity has spread to the stars and encountered other alien races some of whom see humanity as a foe.

Aiding a select portion of humanity with no loyalty to their brethren and seeking to improve their lot in life they agree to help their research which involves opening a passage through time allowing them to pass into the distant past and alter the past for their own benefit.

Focusing on wars to allow them to blend in anonymously their efforts drastically change the fate of the human race such that the Earth in 2158 is destroyed in the resulting paradoxes that insue from their stupidity and blind greed.

However that same child having continued her research seeking a way to reduce the amount of time needed to travel between star systems recognised the signs of what was about to transpire and using her experimental Rift Drive jumped back in time and barely managed to secure the temporal device and expel it off world before it caused the event that destroyed the world in her time.

Her ship crippled and stuck in Rift space her only means of travelling back to Earth is via the same rifts caused by the temporal incursion so she can access any time her foes have accessed but ultimately has no means to defeat the invasion by herself.

That's where the PCs come in.

The villain instead of dying manages to escape into the past and hunts down and kills the team sent to stop him.
By the start of the game the only survivors of the original team is the son, only because his father died in a suspicious fire forcing his widowed wife to take their surviving children and go into hiding.
Someone grabs the father during his service in the First World War and delivers him to the meeting place where his son and wife are about to accept a mission that potentially threatens the entire planet!

So what I wanted to ask is that enough to whet your appetite for this game?

 

[fusor]

If that's your pitch, I think you need to work on it somewhat - after reading that, I have no idea what his game is about or what the PCs do. Is it a futuristic scifi game or something about time travel or set in World War II?

 

[-Daniel-]

It sounds to me like you have a very complex time line within the story. Might I suggest you draw it out. Also in order to make the characters easier to follow in the outline, give them names, at least place holder names. It is much easier to know you are talking about John Smith and Nancy Jones than he and she or the PC and the other PC.

I would also keep in mind the exact task(s) you expect the PCs to do otherwise it could end up them watching you play out your story with the NPCs. Never fun from the player point of view.

Lastly, use care with time travel. Too often it ends up feeling more like Deus Ex Machina than a strong story element.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

World War II and time travel eh? What if the PCs have some competitors from another timeline, one where Germany won World War II, and they see the PCs trying to undermine their history, when they try to restore theirs. Maybe the PCs might stumble onto the Nazi's timeline. What would they see if they went to that future? The World population has stabilized at around 500 million with lots of wilderness areas, some species that were extinct in the PCs timeline are alive and well in this one, Wild elephants roam the savanna of an Africa that is mostly devoid of people, the pandas are doing very well in what was once China, there are the remains of many cities, that are now overgrown with vegetation, and wild animals roam the cracked streets, there are a few modern cities, lots of blonde haired blue eyed types, the PCs better watch themselves if they don't look like one of them, hope they speak good German too! Time to get back to the past and fix this history, and of course there will be others from this timeline that won't want the PCs to do exactly that!

 

[Hopeless]

So Lieutenant Ian Black is grabbed and pulled clear of the trench he was posted to just moments before a German barrage blows up the trench killing everyone inside.
The trench coated woman who saved his life escorts him inside an obviously busy office filled with military personnel clearly preparing for some operation.
She leads him to an office opening the door and the occupants inside stand in response to their arrival.
Captain Vincent O'Brien stands in shock as the father who died in a fire when he was six walks into the office escorted by some French operative, his mother who remarried a couple of years after her husband's death is similarly shocked especially as he looks exactly as he did when he left to get involved in the First World War.
The other two people in the room include former Police Officer, Paul Mansfield and Commander Anthony Poynter both of whom are shocked to see their old friend alive and well.

"I know, you really need to discuss this but in the next couple of weeks the Nazis are about to gain access to the means to win the war they're about to provoke by invading Poland. These four are the best chance you have of stopping them, make sure they're part of the team you send to Czechoslovakia to investigate the Three Kings and you'll be fine.
Now I'll let you get to reacquaint yourselves so I can get busy distracting your opposition, good luck!" she says releasing Ian from her grip and she literally disappears into thin air causing everyone inside the office to curse drawing the attention of those outside who didn't witness the strange French woman's disappearance.

Yes I can see that being too much!

Will be interesting to see if the players I was referring to notice I just introduced them! :twisted:

 

[Condottiere]

There's S. M. Sterling's Draka Domination series, to get an insight how a master race timeline might look like.

While the writing deteriorates, by coincidence, they do stumble onto our timeline.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

There's S. M. Sterling's Draka Domination series, to get an insight how a master race timeline might look like.

While the writing deteriorates, by coincidence, they do stumble onto our timeline.

There are people who live in that timeline who's existence would be threatened by the player's attempt to restore the natural course of history. Imagine there is a blond woman who grew up in Hitler's "Thousand Year Reich", a lot of horrible things had to occur to create that world she is familiar with, and she had nothing to do with any of them, to her they were history, kind of like what slavery is to the United States. Billions of people were murdered, the population on Earth is about 500 million, a lot of the planet is wilderness area and parks, and this woman, lets call her Greta, is a nature lover, and lets suppose she is recruited by a time travel agency who's mission is to stop some interlopers from changing the course of history, she goes back in time, to World War II to stop them, otherwise her world, and everything she knows will cease to exist!

 

[alex_greene]

While the writing deteriorates

I am getting a definite sense of that occurring here. I know that there are now two threads featuring both time travel and Nazis, and may I recommend that you both now wait until Mongoose releases a time travel RPG or superhero RPG and port both your competing, totally independent Iron Sky clone stories to that board?

To save arguments, catfights and associated fun, how about we all go back to the stories where it's the Third Imperium and the only thing we have to worry about are invading fleets of Aslan warriors or something?

Let's go and build some ships or something.

 

[rust2]

I know that there are now two threads featuring both time travel and Nazis, and may I recommend that you both now wait ...

But, but ... these ideas are at the cutting edge of the discovery of the secret history of Nazi science ... :shock:

http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/11482/nazi-time-machine/

http://www.conspiracyclub.co/2015/05/15/secret-nazi-bell-time-machine/

 

[alex_greene]

I know that there are now two threads featuring both time travel and Nazis, and may I recommend that you both now wait ...

But, but ... these ideas are at the cutting edge of the discovery of the secret history of Nazi science ... :shock:

So nobody will mind if I serialise my thousand-page epic about giant psion shapeshifting Reptilians infiltrating modern society ...

Or instead, let's keep it focused on the Far Future for now.

 

[rust2]

So nobody will mind if I serialise my thousand-page epic about giant psion shapeshifting Reptilians infiltrating modern society ...

Too late, David Icke already published about the Annunaki:

http://www.annunaki.org/who-are-the-reptilians/

 

[Hopeless]

Oh boy that's quite the ants nest I've stumbled into! :shock:

Here I was more thinking about a sealed time loop to explain what was going on and now I have Alternate realities popping up everywhere when it's infiltrators from the far future who inspired Lovecraft and other writer's with glimpses of other worlds best left to future humanity... provided anyone survives the multiple paradoxes caused by warring ideological factions all of whom are blind to how they're bring manipulated and some don't even care!

 

[Rick]

Oh boy that's quite the ants nest I've stumbled into! :shock:

Oh yes. Why people still link these 2 ideas I will never know, I thought it had been done to death by Dr Who, Battlestar Galactica, The Philadelphia Experiment, loads of books, etc. Given that we've had thousands of years of recorded history to choose from, as well as the rich future history of the Third Imperium, can't someone come up with something a little bit more original?

 

[Hopeless]

Previously I was wondering about a post apocalyptic society for the beginning of the game and have them travel back to the present and scaring them silly before they realise that the city they've just travelled to seeking a way back to their own time is actually sunk a mile beneath the surface of an enlarged Thames!

But that was intended for use with Legend!

Now imagine using a Stargate in the Third Imperium era and discovering that instead of arriving in the Third Imperium era Earth they arrive on present day Earth with no means of returning?!

And yes they covered that in a Stargate episode too!

 

[rust2]

Now imagine using a Stargate in the Third Imperium era and discovering that instead of arriving in the Third Imperium era Earth they arrive on present day Earth with no means of returning?!

This would be a case of "Bait and Switch", letting the players design their characters for one type of setting and then transporting these characters into a very different type of setting. While this kind of surprise tends to look good from the point of view of the referee, it rarely goes down well with the players, who often feel cheated. Frankly, I would hesitate to play that trick on any group of players without a warning.

 

[-Daniel-]

Now imagine using a Stargate in the Third Imperium era and discovering that instead of arriving in the Third Imperium era Earth they arrive on present day Earth with no means of returning?!

This would be a case of "Bait and Switch", letting the players design their characters for one type of setting and then transporting these characters into a very different type of setting. While this kind of surprise tends to look good from the point of view of the referee, it rarely goes down well with the players, who often feel cheated. Frankly, I would hesitate to play that trick on any group of players without a warning.

I watched a game group disintegrate over just such a trick. The GM then spent several weeks both angry that the players wouldn't just go along with it and confused as to why the group broke up. Sad thing to watch take place.

 

[alex_greene]

I watched a game group disintegrate over just such a trick. The GM then spent several weeks both angry that the players wouldn't just go along with it and confused as to why the group broke up. Sad thing to watch take place.

That's awful.

But such a story is not without its precedents. There have been science fiction and fantasy stories where the protagonists have ended up stuck behind some sort of barrier and forced to survive somehow, such as the episode of Stargate Atlantis where John Sheppard finds himself stuck in a valley where time is accelerated compared to the outside world, or that episode of Voyager where Tuvok befriends Lori Petty playing, well, herself.

The only suggestion I could make, as a Referee, is to point out that when it happens, such as the crew of the Enterprise getting stuck on a planet with no apparent way off, usually a way out presents itself fairly quickly to the Travellers, such as a half-buried ancient starship which requires minor repairs, or some sort of device which they either uncover or build from component parts found lying around.

The story would then revolve about them getting together a bunch of new-found allies which they will have encountered, putting together the means for their escape and then triggering it before the local hostiles destroy them.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Now imagine using a Stargate in the Third Imperium era and discovering that instead of arriving in the Third Imperium era Earth they arrive on present day Earth with no means of returning?!

This would be a case of "Bait and Switch", letting the players design their characters for one type of setting and then transporting these characters into a very different type of setting. While this kind of surprise tends to look good from the point of view of the referee, it rarely goes down well with the players, who often feel cheated. Frankly, I would hesitate to play that trick on any group of players without a warning.

I watched a game group disintegrate over just such a trick. The GM then spent several weeks both angry that the players wouldn't just go along with it and confused as to why the group broke up. Sad thing to watch take place.

Getting out of the past is simple, you just wait a long time using things such as low berths!
A surprise is no good if there is no surprise.

 

[-Daniel-]

I watched a game group disintegrate over just such a trick. The GM then spent several weeks both angry that the players wouldn't just go along with it and confused as to why the group broke up. Sad thing to watch take place.

That's awful.

But such a story is not without its precedents....

I think there are two things going on, the in game "surprise" that could be fun and the in real world expectation of what I have given up my time to play. If someone arrives at a game group expecting to play a SciFi game, they build SciFi characters, and the GM dumps them in an 1890's Cthulhu game, regardless of how much fun it might be, it is not what the expectation was.

If I wanted to play some kind of setting switching game, I would warn the players to expect something "odd and strange" or even go so far as bluntly say "I want to try something, play along for at least one night and then if you guys don't like it we will change things." That way the players come with expectations that would allow us to have fun even with a "surprise" like moving from SciFi to Modern or Fantasy or what ever the shift would be.

Just my .02 :mrgreen:

 

[Hopeless]

Maybe a Westworld reveal?

They had an episode in Stargate where O'Neil and an old friend were left stranded on a moon whose location was hidden.
It had been intended as a place of safety but one of the refugees brought a hallucinogenic plant that eventually turned the refugees against each other killing everyone until O'Neil & co turned up.

This one could easily be a long forgotten Disneyland-like complex replicating certain eras so they think they're in the past but eventually it becomes clear things are not what they appear!

Does that sound better?