Crossing The Genres

[alex_greene]

Further to the topic of stargates or portals in Legend, thought turns to the inevitable crossover:-

The silvery shimmer of the Opening beckons them. Tired from their battle, still aching in places they never imagined could hurt, the adventurers struggle to push through the membrane ... and emerge in an unfamiliar room.

The group leader turns to the Opener. "This isn't home," she says. The Opener checks the dials on the Opening Medallion.

"The address is set for home," she tells the leader. Everybody looks around at the windowless room with its single table bolted to the floor, its grillework ceiling and its walls and floor of grey gunmetal steel, and what looks like a large screen of white frosted glass dominating the far wall.

The very air around them shudders. Everybody suffers a moment of disorientation.

"What was that?" asked the team's sorcerer. The leader looks at him.

"Now hear this!" booms a voice from the ceiling. All eyes look up, trying to locate the source. "This is your Captain. We have emerged from Jump, and we are six hours' flight time from the battle. All hands, General Quarters. I repeat: all hands, General Quarters."

"We're on a ship," the sorcerer says.

"A ship of metal?" the leader asks.

"Flight crews," booms the voice, "report immediately to stations. All crews stand ready."

The sorcerer looks to the others, then to the leader. "I think it's time we get out of here," he says.

"Intruder alert," the voice of the Captain says. "Security detail to Briefing Room Three."

The leader turns to the Opener. "Any time now," she says, as the Opener turns the dials ...

You know that a science fiction game does not necessarily have to mean Traveller, or even that you need to be able to convert from one system to another. I'm just thinking of the potential for fish-out-of-water scenarios; the Barbarian looking around at the metal box he's cooped up in and thinking "This is why I hate bloody civilisation!" and the ship's psychic Science Officer discussing comparative metaphysics with the team's sorcerer, and everybody teaming up to fight bumpy-headed bearded aliens who speak a funny language and who have a predilection for eating plates of live worms.

 

[The Wolf]

Many years ago a group of adventurers found an old wooden cabinet, bigger on the inside than the out which belonged to a long dead sorcerer - after discovering the operational tome of the strange device they managed to whisk themselves off to the distant future and interrupt a grisly human sacrifce.

It was only when a man in a strange hat yelling, "CUT!" and screaming blue murder at their eviseration of his stunt men, came running out did they cotton on as players they were actually elsewhere.

Cue the classic DnD crowd trying to face down a group of film studio security and attendant police.

Those were the days.

I love genre crosses/mix-ups or just plain homages.

 

[soltakss]

The thing about crossovers is that you need to decide up front how things work.

Magic-using characters in a SciFi world:
A sorcerer might be able to use sorcery, as the ability might be manipulating powers that still exist.
A divine magic user, however, might find that the deity worshipped has no power in this world, so the magic doesn't work.
Spirit magic also might not work, if there are no spirits.
Common magic might work, however, in the same way as sorcery.
Magical items may, or may not work, depending on their rationale
Enchanted items might still be more durable/whatever, in some unexplainable way

SciFi characters in a different world:
Most technology should work, as long as it can be powered, but without power it will be useless
Technology which relies on a supporting technology would be useless, for example an Internet connection would be useless without the internet
High-tech materials should still retain their properties
Psionic characters should still be able to use their powers

Other crossovers should be OK, though, as magic users in a different magic world might be able to tap into that world's energies and cyberpunk characters in a different scifi world should be OK.

 

[alex_greene]

I like the way you're thinking.

There was one episode of Sliders, once, where the characters turned up in a world where sorcery was supposed to work - and the "Great And Powerful" archmage who ruled the world happened to be the lead character's counterpart in that magical world - another slider, with slightly more advanced knowledge of sliding than the protagonist.

I can see the thought process here - a world where, for instance, magic works but gunpowder doesn't, or similarly one where psionics works within a scientific paradigm but sorcery, with its occult trappings, doesn't.

But one thing must remain a constant - the portal technology that allows entry and egress to these realms must rely upon some principle of dimensional physics above and beyond the laws of the local spacetime. A "slider metaphysics," as it were.

 

[alex_greene]

Who wants me to open up a discussion on this topic in the Traveller forum? :twisted:

Edit: Never mind. Chevron seven locked.