The Miscellanium

The PCs are gentleman (and lady) assassins in a steampunkified mid-19th century Europe. As the great powers maneuver in the Great Game and revolutionary ideas spread among the oppressed working classes, the PCs are hired to kill the German Confederation’s Iron Chancellor (so named because he is kept alive in a massive iron cybernetic case, of course). Intrigues will be plotted! Romances will flower in the least likely places! Loyal friends will turn out to be craven traitors! Karl Marx will tell bad jokes!

System: If someone has not yet created a light and humorous steampunk system it will be necessary to create one.

If I don’t get my act together, there will be more guest posts than me posts on this blog! Then I will face eternal shame and be forced to retire to a Zen monastery for the rest of my days.

Anyway, from the One and Only E:

The Harry Turtledove meets Flash Gordon Game

It’s the 1950s, with some 1930s/1940s “World of Tomorrow” technology thrown in for good measure. The Cold War is in full swing, but the American Dream is at its peak. We’ve got malt shops, huge tail fins on cars, couples are “going steady,” and everything is “swell.” The atomic age is at hand, and soon man will surely conquer the galaxy with rocket-ships and robotic men. Apart from a nuclear war or communism, the greatest threat to Western civilization is this new-fangled “rock and roll” music.

Until the aliens arrive. It turns out that pulp magazine writers are fantastically good predictors of what the aliens are like: green, completely brutal, and after our women. The Soviet Union and the USA quickly form a truce to fight back against the invaders, but even the mighty atom bomb is not enough to stop the green men from Mars, or wherever it is they’re from.

It’s up to an intrepid band of commandos and scientists to save the day, armed with little more than a few laser guns, jet packs, and an unending stream of over-the-top pulp cliches.

Suggested System: Danger Patrol has exactly the flavor and feel I want. PDQ or Risus would also work.

The Mir Game: The PCs are cosmonauts on an aging spacecraft put together on a shoestring budget with production overseen by corrupt officials. As well as completing their mission and dealing with alien horrors, they must struggle to keep their equipment functioning through the judicious use of duct tape (although even duct tape is not immune to poor quality control…).

System: Unisystem, maybe. Something pretty light with a future feel.

The Rocking Son of Genghis Khan (Inspired by the song).

The PCs are the late-teenage children of the Mongol nobility at the court of Genghis Khan. They experience oddly modern teenage problems; trying to escape the disapproval of their strict Chinese tutor, living up to their parents’ expectations, and trying to look cool in front of that cute guy/girl. Think a classic high school story in a decidedly unusual setting.

System: PDQ

So, in most monster hunting games, the PCs are given limited resources and forced to operate under the radar. It would be interesting to shake this up a little, so:

The PCs are members of the elite Strike Force Zero, a team of scientific and military experts stationed in a high-tech base deep beneath Tokyo and trained and equipped to hunt the horrible mutated creatures that crawl from the Pacific (as a result of American and French nuclear tests, of course). Rather than operating in secret, the characters are widely-known national heros, and travel incognito only when they want to avoid crowds of adoring fans. As the monster attacks escalate, they begin to notice patterns that suggest that someone or something is controlling the attacks, leading to a dramatic final confrontation.

System: Hmm, I’m not sure. Suggestions?

#38 + time travel.

So, I’ve been reading the Feng Shui rulebook and, I must say, it is pretty awesome. (I’ve been reading the LBS rulebook too, but a little more slowly, so more on that later).

The Classic Feng Shui Game: The PCs are a group of kung-fu cops, time-traveling sorcerers, cyborgs from the future, and animals transformed into human form who must band together to stop the bad guys from completing their scheme to harness the Earth’s natural magical energy and rule all time and space. Somehow, the battle always seems to end up in Hong Kong.

System: Feng Shui

On a similar theme to the last post: Rokugan 2000.

Basically, this is L5R, but reset in the near future. So, the Ancestral Power Armor of the Lion Clan, Wasp Clan Master Gunmen, the Phoenix Clan Baseball Team, you get the picture.

Now, being as huge an L5R fan as I am, I greatly enjoyed the modern resetting of the classic samurai and sorcery setting. All of the Rokugan 2000 fiction is available here, and it’s not great literature, but it’s a lot of fun.

Anyway, Rokugan 2000 could offer the intrigue of L5R, but with a lighter tone and sillier action sequences (I suspect that it would be necessary to load shotguns with jade shards were one to wish to hunt oni, for example). A Rokugan 2000 interlude might be a pleasant diversion from a longer L5R campaign (without turning towards an encounter with the Legends of the Hidden Chicken).

System: L5R

Der Freischütz: This is an idea I came up with a while ago, and even drafted some rules for. I can’t find that stuff now, but it’s probably still in a dark corner of one of my backup drives.

Anyway.

Exalted. With. Guns.

The idea is to take the basic Exalted rules and set the game in a light-hearted fantasy near future. Instead of giant orichalcum swords, the PCs would come equipped with giant orichalcum revolvers, say. All of the silliness of Exalted charms and complex martial arts styles would, of course, be retained. Some things, like a Computer skill and charm tree would need to be added or adapted.

It might make sense to keep many of the plot themes of the Exalted setting too. The PCs could be righting the evil Dragon Realm Inc., for example. Or legions of formless beings that have emerged from the depths of the Cyber Wyld. You get the idea.

System: Exalted Modern