From: smith@ctron.com (Lawrence C Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Funny/Strange Campaign Settings
Date: 12 Nov 92 18:38:47 GMT
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.

As a break from the regular campaigns in fantasy and SF, I've tried any number
of one-offs.  One was the "Beaglecosm" adventure I posted about last year,
wherein the players were presumed to have died and had their brains rendered
into equivalent software programs, which were loaded into a deep-space probe
assigned to explore the galaxy.  The probe had hundreds of these programs, and
activated a handful of them at random whenever approaching a new star (of
course, the handful it choose always seemed to be the same as the ones who
showed up to game that day...).  The probe was equipped with drive, power,
fabrication (to build smaller vehicles for exploration) and so forth.  It was
a pretty free-wheeling sort of game, which always ended with the probe gath-
ering raw materials to build a comm laser, to beam their report for that system
back to Earth, and then jumping to another star.  It was fun.

Some other one-offs that were pretty strange: I started a couple people off
as "themselves", but in a very strange environment.  It was completely dark,
except for a tiny spot of light in the middle of their vision and little cones
of light they could see coming from the single eyes of other creatures.  Soon
they discovered they _were_ creatures like the ones they saw, a complete
ecology, with pets, castles, etc.  They were mollusc-like critters living in
a sandy desert.  The "light" was really sound waves, they were "seeing" by
sonar.  Travel too far in any direction, and they began to get cold or hot.
Too cold or too hot was death.  In the hotter direction were many giant clams
and enormous tube-worms.  Then there was the wrecked spaceship and the hulks of
human ocean-going ships lying around, including the one with fresh bodies
of themselves with the brains eaten out...   Of course, the beings were aliens,
whose metabolism had evolved to "read" neurons of kills in order to become a
more effective predator.  They had crash-landed on Earth and set up a colony
near a volcanic vent in the Marianas Trench.  When a human ship sank nearby,
they (of course) ate the neurons (they have a special stomach for this) and
gained all the memories and personalities of the humans, which is why each
_remembered_ being a human being.  This was also a cultural thing, very aged
members of this species would arrange banquets at which _they_ would be guest
of honor and main course...

I once set up the players as mechanical golems, powered by steam and magic.
They had been established nearly a thousand years ago as "gods" and protectors
of a little valley wherein was preserved all the many, many species of faeries.
Then the humans came...and their warranties were running out.

My SF campaign occasionally used a variant of the "Beaglecosm" idea, where
personalities could be "read" out of a living brain without damaging it, but
leaving it a "tabula rasa" - a blank slate.  The personality could then be
read into a body designed for it - not just another blank body, the neural
structures were too dissimilar, but a robotic body with a more generic brain.
This let me transfer character to android bodies of some very alien species
for specific adventures, and transfer them back to their own bodies afterward.
Using this scheme, they could visit the surface of, for example, a mighty gas
giant and investigate the interesting doings of the locals whose bodies were
the models for their android selves (swiped the alien culture and descriptions
from Asimov's "Victory Unintentional", from "The Rest of the Robots"
collection).  I used a similar idea to adapt "Mission of Gravity" by Hal
Clement.

In article <1992Nov12.021300.27255@oracle.us.oracle.com>, szielins@oracle.com (Stephan Zielinski) writes:
>	"Something about `Abandon all hope, ye who enter.'"

My players used to visit Hell fairly often.  We ran a total of about four
campaigns where one or more characters wound up in the Inferno.  I found
the Penguin edition of Dante's "Hell" to be most helpful.  A long time ago,
in a galaxy not too far away, Judges Guild (I think) published a really
excellent module entitled "Inferno", which detailed in AD&D-type form all
of upper Hell.  They announced plans to do lower Hell, as well, (hey, that
rhyms!) but it was never published as far as I can tell.  If you can find a
copy (mine is _NOT_ for sale!) it's invaluable.  Otherwise, stick to Dante.
By the way, the really successful devils and dukes live in castles built of
human bones...

What else?  Ponder...ponder...ponder...then there was the time all the players
became energy beings like those in James Blish's novel "The Star Dwellers",
galloping about the weird landscape of stellar interiors and having fun with
those entertaining little humans in their pokey little metal seeds...

There was the assault on a Wicked Witch's castle by a paladin just one inch
tall...  'Course, it wouldn't have worked were it not for the faithful aid
of his War 'Roach and the good mice of the dungeons.  He did eventually
manage to reverse the curse.  He was even going to spare the life of the
witch for doing so, until she stepped on his steed...

There was quite a series of games in the fantasy realm that were set up like
Star Trek games, players were crew on a ship, boldly going where no one [of
their country] had gone before.  One series was a magical Viking-like war
boat that could fly though air or rock, float, or scuttle about on land with
its oars...  Another used a wind whale - like a living Zeppelin, and another
used an elvish-bronze-clad warship whose steam engines were powered by a bound
salamander who was none too happy with the job...

I ran a series of games with the players as owners and crew of an icerigger,
like the Slanderscree from "Icerigger" and "The Deluge Drivers" by Alan Dean
Foster.  It was aboard the White Flame that my players finally discovered
the center of the world - and who lived there.

You just _gotta_ have an imagination, you know!

Larry Smith (smith@ctron.com)  No, I don't speak for Cabletron.  Need you ask?
-
Liberty is not the freedom to do whatever we want,
it is the freedom to do whatever we are able.