Campaign Setting Idea, Time Travel and Deiselpunk Celts Options

[hyzmarca]

It begins in the future, when a group of stereotypical Neo-Nazis gain control of a time machine. With the vast powers of time and space at their disposal, they decide to help Germany win WWII ( of course) by crippling Britain.

On November 12 1940, in a timeline already altered by minor time-travel butterflies, a nuclear bomb is delivered to Westminster via time portal. Westminster is leveled by the blast and the time portal is destabilized (if those wacky neo-nazis had read the manual they'd know that mixing nukes and time machines its a bad idea, drowing to engulf the entire city of London, which is conveniently moved intact to the year 60AD (where magic is oddly real, though extremely rare). (This also happens to erase the very concept of National Socialism from history, effectively cutting the Neo-Nazi agents in London from their future.)

The result is a setting where a bunch of Londoners under the leadership of Liz II (who is only 14, but is the Queen none the less, thanks to the nuke) try to avoid starving to death and keep their infrastructure from collapsing while the Romans are marching through Britain beating down every Celtic tribe in their way and a few with Neo-Nazis with limited atomopunk tech try to manipulate theis to their advantage.

All in all, its a good exceuse to have Queen Elizabeth wield Excalibur against uranium-powered cyborg Legionaries alongside Boudica, who has traded in her chariot for a tank that transforms into giant power armor.

[Critias]

Got a system in mind?

I can see a cool/goofy/over-the-top setting like that potentially being a really good time, but it could really depend on the crunch behind the fluff.

[hyzmarca]

Got a system in mind?

I can see a cool/goofy/over-the-top setting like that potentially being a really good time, but it could really depend on the crunch behind the fluff.

I'm not entirely sure yet, honestly. Do you have any recommendations?

[Critias]

When in doubt, I suggest HERO System. I'm the first to admit that it has a somewhat steep learning curve, but once I got used to it, I've used it for fantasy games, pulp action games, modern-day heist/crime games, regular-scale superhero games, and cosmic-scale superhero games, and it has worked well for each. Off the top of my head, it's the only system I play with much regularity that could handle Queen Elizabeth wielding Excalibur in order to fight alongside tank-chariot-powered-armor Boudicca against the disciplined ranks of the cyborg Roman Legions.

In point of fact, I'm kind of statting up several of those aspects in the back of my head right this very second.

To me, the testament of the system's versatility can be found here as much as it can be found in any official page: Surbrook's HERO System character archive. Mike Surbrook has a phenomenal web page where he's statted up a metric fuck-ton of characters from comics to video games, literature to tv shows, songs to anime. Their power scale is all over the place (you compare Aragorn to Ken and Ryu)...but I think it shows just what sort of stuff HERO can handle.

[hyzmarca]

How well does the Hero system handle strategy, diplomacy, and mass combat?

[Critias]

How well does the Hero system handle strategy, diplomacy, and mass combat?

On the nation-state scale? Like leading armies into battle, etc, etc? Not so much. Or, at least, I've never used it for that. When I made the suggestion I was envisioning more of a traditional small-scale RPG game (that just happened to be set in the larger-than-life setting), not something more skirmish/wargame/epic scale with armies and that sort of thing, with player characters actually being in large of large units or nations or what-have-you.

Such rules may exist for HERO, but I have yet to use 'em if they do.

[hyzmarca]

I've been reading a lot of 1632 novels, which were sort of the inspiration.

Any character with a 20th century high school education is a setting changer simply due to the knowledge he brings to the table. A college drop-out can create and destroy nations. Future science is that much of an outside context problem.


Setting it 1600 years earlier just makes it that much more traumatic to the local population. Machine guns vs phalanxes on the military from. On the social front, and the basic quality of life front, the improvements a future person can make are just absurd.

This is mitigated somewhat by having the protagonists comes from the 40s instead of the 21st century, but not by much. The Time Nazis' alliance with Rome limits the impact the PCs can make, but not by much. The infrastructure to mass produce their tech simply won't exist for a century or more even with their best efforts.

Thus the PCs would do things like go around and forge bickering tribes into a single cohesive nation using the miraculous power of propaganda and the movable type printing press, engage in resistance against Rome, and generally reshape the socioplitical situation of the entire continent.

They can't help but make major changes, really. They reshape the sociopolitical situation of the entire continent just by existing. That's going to throw them into difficult places, even if they try to avoid leadership roles.


There is plenty of space for smaller scale action. Not every PC needs to lead an army. But the PC's actions should always be world changing. Their poops should be sufficient to upset established social order. (Seriously, the first thing any modern person would do when tossed back in time is reinvent toilet paper, and toilet paper is a huge deal.)