Story Seed - Haven

Image Source: http://shpacia.deviantart.com/art/Island-in-the-Sky-335042978

I opened my eyes and blinked at the brightness. We were safe; free of the caved in crypt where the soulshorn had trapped us. Beside me I heard Jeff get up, and I started to look around to get my bearings.  We were on a small hilltop surrounded by fog and mist. A great pine of some kind rose up above use offering a sort of timid shade in the indistinct light.  I could hear the sound of water nearby and caught a glimpse of a small coming down over a rocky rise. The whole hilltop was barely fifty feet across, but it was peaceful, and there was nothing trying to kill us.

I stood up myself, turning in place and taking in the view, or the lack of view I suppose.  Nothing beyond the hilltop was visible, the mist seemed to enclose and enshroud everything below and also obscured the view of the sky and the horizon. I mused that it was like some kind of pocket of clear air within a rolling fog front, or the eye of hurricane even, though the mist seemed as calm and peaceful as the hilltop itself.  I picked a direction, toward the stream and in the general direction of its flow, and headed that direction.

"Hey, don't wander!" I heard Jeff call after me.

I turned, walking backward and called back, "It seems safe enough to me." Then I thought about it and added, "Say, where the heck did you take us anyways, I don't think I've heard of this recursion."

"STOP!" he yelled, commanded really. I think he was using a little bit of the strange itself on me because I stopped dead. Jeff was jogging over and pulled me forward, spinning me around in the process. "You damn near walked off the edge of the world."

The mist was thinner than it seemed and I saw now that he was not exaggerating. The ground sloped downward a bit and then dropped off completely.  Below I could see a a large boulder floating within that sea of white, and beyond that apparently nothing.  "Where the hell are we?" I asked, sounding more scared than I wanted.

"It's my personal recursion," he replied, a hint of sadness in his voice.

I sensed there was something there, and discreetly asked, "What happened to the others?"

He looked at me, and shook his head, "That soulshorn happened. That wasn't the first time it and I crossed paths. This place is all I have left of them. We created on the down low, took time and effort and if the Estate finds out I'll be in deep shit, but its safe and quiet, and now you know about it. So I hope I can trust you to keep it secret."

I nodded, taking in the small world again, from an entirely different non-literal point of view.

Back Issues #7 - The Big Game(s)

Sport and the mass audience. Be it the arena in a fantasy game, a major pro sports event in a modern campaign, or some kind of futuristic sport for a science fiction game, sport has the potential to play a part in your character's background ... but first a word from our sponsors ...

Issue #7: The Big Game(s)

Sport started out as in many cases as martial exercise, both as competition for practice and to determine those most capable; the alpha (male). Over time much of the combative aspects of sports have remained. From football tackles, to the distance and accuracy of a javelin throw, and the obvious combat prowess of boxers, MMA fighters, and martial artists. In America Football is king, and with the possible exception of Hockey, is the most violent of the major professional sports. When one looks at a football stadium, at the number of people, the shape, and the activity within, that of men beating other men physically, it is easy to see the classical influence of the Roman Arena. Violent sport as entertainment for the masses.

What does any of this have to do with RPGs? To answer that we go back to fantasy RPGs and the Gladiatorial Arena.

The arena and gladiators are a possible source of character origins for fighter type characters. A slave who wins his freedom by surviving a number of matches for instance. You characters may find their way into the arena in game as well, perhaps for a crime they didn't commit (or one they did), or as a means of entertaining execution by the campaign's villain. Are you not entertained, indeed. Likewise the characters may use the chaos and crowds at a day of games to carry out the theft of a rare magic item, the assassination of a corrupt noble, or to stage the rescue of a condemned man!

In the modern age things may seem more tricky. After all, we don't have fights to the death, execution by gladiator, exotic animals being slain (or slaying unarmed comdemned criminals). We do have men who's training is as intense as any soldier's. We have boxers and mixed martial artists who are trained to disable and incapacitate their opponents. We have events watched by millions and attended by thousands of people, in the largest of venues more than 100,000 people.

The DC Comics hero Wildcat was/is a boxer. MMA and boxing, football, and rugby, all could contribute valuable combat training to a potential character. Likewise any of the potential game plots above, the theft of an item from a powerful figure, the assassination of a political or business persona, could join with such ideas as high-jacking a country or worldwide signal to use for mass mind control, a terrorist or super villain attack on the crowd, even the potential for game fixing and an effort to exploit or expose such efforts.

Extrapolating into the future allows you to put your own spin on things. What was old is new again. The Running Man and Rollerball both showed a future where televised sports were more and more violent. Deathrace (either of them) and Gamer both show futures where the collateral damage, the death and carnage of hyper-violent sports becomes the next great entertainment event. In a game set in the near or far future it is possible that with advanced medical technology and cloning that hyper-violent sports return, that duels to the death and gladiatorial combat once again becomes the sport of the masses when the damage inflicted can be repaired and healed, and those who fall in future battle sports can be revived and rebuilt.

Soldiers and cyborgs, doctors and and technicians can all be born from the forge of these new sports. Likewise giant robots and their pilots could find their origin in the new high tech extreme sports. There's a movie coming out this yeah called Real Steel about robot boxers/mma fighters. At first the idea may strike as silly but then again just a few years ago Robot Wars was on TV weekly featuring automatons beating the gears out of each other. Where the sport itself is regulated and refereed by computers and sensors the art of fixing and cheating a sporting even can enter the truly high tech. An entire campaign could be run around a hacker who is fixing games and winning an enormous amount of money for himself and his clients.

The next time you are working on a player character, an NPC, or devising the plot for your next gaming session give some thought to how sports may affect your character, your NPC, or the plot of your next session.

How have you used sports in the creation of your characters? How have sports been used in your games?

Story Seed - The Red Scarscape

Image Source: http://somadjinn.deviantart.com/art/Cauliflower-Kiss-eclusive-hdr-stock-490242994

"There it is folks." The captain stood up from his command chair.  All eyes on the bridge of the chaos skiff were locked on the view outside however. The usual swirling fractals of the strange were giving way to a dichotomy of uniform chaos. The colors bled from the area forward of the ship until only red remained.  Like some vast boiling flower the Red Scarscape floated amid the tangles of chaos, its crimson roiling surface changing at every moment in geometry but never in color.  Red like blood. The blood of some long dead world.

"The Red Scarscape. Our allies in the Cabal have warned us of the dangers below that roiling surface. As we get closer we'll see bits of structure in that chaotic soup." He looked around at the half dozen men and women around him, the entire crew of his little ship. He took in their trepidation, nervousness, excitement. Each was reacting differently to this mission, and even within the skiff there were signs of alienation starting to set in. Captain Barnes hoped that they would stick it out for the long haul, that they would follow him into chaos and history. "The leadership wanted us to verify this location first and foremost.  We did that, we could leave now and this mission would be successful."

He turned from the screen, putting the gut wrenching sight behind him and addressed his crew directly. "But we can do more. The eggheads want to study this place. The management wants to see if there is anything of value within. Our secondary mission was to locate and identify any potential point stable enough for the Estate to establish a long term scientific outpost. We have stores for weeks yet, and more than enough instrumentation to do that an more.

"My friends, I cannot lead where you will not follow. A leader without men and women to follow him is no leader, he is but a lone individual, capable only of achieving what things can be achieved by an individual. Together we are more than the sum of our individual selves, we can accomplish more together than we can alone, but only if we are all willing, all ready to stay out here longer, to leverage our success for greater gains. I will not require that we stay, but I will ask that we do so. We have a chance here to study a piece of the strange no human has seen before, a chance to show the Foundation just how valuable this ship, her crew, and her mission can be to the Earth."

He took a deep breath, calming his jangling nerves, and hoping that they would follow him now. "So, who's with me?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Summary - Mankind's first encounter with the Red Scarscape (core book page 224).