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Laodicea
I've had this idea for a campaign in which the players have 2 characters. One is a shadowrun character, one is an earthdawn character. Obviously, this is something that people have done before. I'm mainly looking for tips on how to make the decisions that they make in one world effect the choices they're presented with in the other world.

The twist is that their earthdawn characters aren't actually in the past. They're in the Earthdawn VRMMORPG that was launched by the Atlantean foundation. I don't want the players to know this right away. How could the Earthdawn characters not know that they're characters in a game? Perhaps they're AI NPCs written for the game that cannot know that it's just a game. How do the two stories interact? Perhaps one of the actual human players that plays the Earthdawn MMO(in this case the actual human player is an NPC...) interacts with the Shadowrun team...Perhaps one of the Horrors from the Earthdawn game turns out to be a real, actual, Horror, and both the shadowrun team and the earthdawn team have to deal with it in their own worlds?

Thoughts?
Draco18s
QUOTE (Laodicea @ Jan 28 2011, 11:26 AM) *
How could the Earthdawn characters not know that they're characters in a game? Perhaps they're AI NPCs written for the game that cannot know that it's just a game.


See, it doesn't matter. The NPCs know their NPCs, but they don't tell the players that (do your normal SR NPCs tell the PCs that they're NPCs?).
And the players (as in the humans around your table) already know that they're playing a game, but they play the game in a way that they pretend that they don't know they're playing a game. Or, ideally they should. There are people who when playing an RPG like WoW don't know what "real life" is because they're so immersed.

A full virtual reality game with simsense only makes that easier. Its not that big of a stretch that the Earthdawn game characters don't acknowledge that they're "not real": the ShadowRun characters that are jacked in are too immersed in it to care and can separate one reality from the other.

Out of the VR, the player's ShadowRun characters don't know that their group is also their group online, so its not that big of a stretch that they don't mention playing it together.

Providing cross-over events is trickier though. They'd ordinarily be tricky anyway, because we're talking events a good 10,000 years away from each other. By pulling them into the same timeline you can rationalize "why didn't we know last week" more easily, but have a harder time providing a cause-effect relationship.
Seth
I too am contemplating doing this. The solution I have chosen is:

Each character makes a shadowrun character with around 500 starting points (plus a big wodge of points for the following). They are all immortal elfs. Either princes of one of the Tir's or an independant. The present day game is mostly a political game: council meetings, house politics, vendattas... but very little need for personal power, as these characters have people to do things for them

A deadly threat is coming close (horrors are good: I like Harlequins back), and they need to find out about it. In order to do this they need to "hero quest" into the past. This means that they relive the memories of an event in the past. But due to powerful immortal elven magics the past is effectively real. They are the same powerlevel that they were in the past. The past now can be in several places and times, as they chase the clues: before the kaers closed. During the time of horrors, Earthdawn, world war II...

Each place in the past will have a theme. They get points to keep from their character (so each time period they get to loose a different number of bps). Consistancy is not ultimately important, as this is an astral quest after all, not actually the past.

So this is a bit like a time travel game, except that all they are doing is reliving the past. They are actually there though, so they can die.

This type of game works best if you have a clear story with a beginning a middle and an end. It might be fun to start on an astral quest, then when they wake up, they realise who they are.

QUOTE
Providing cross-over events is trickier though. They'd ordinarily be tricky anyway, because we're talking events a good 10,000 years away from each other. By pulling them into the same timeline you can rationalize "why didn't we know last week" more easily, but have a harder time providing a cause-effect relationship.

Aha we see that this problem doesn't exist with this approach to the crossover game: the characters know they are in the past, but they are legitimately their and interacting with their friends, families and enemies from the time. There are no cause and effect, and the "why didn't we know last week" is because we forgot and are going back into time to remember. (I bet its hard to keep track of memories after 10,000 years)
Yerameyahu
I'm not sure WoW is the best example of a 'numbers? what numbers?' immersive RPG, but it does seem reasonable in 2070. smile.gif
Draco18s
QUOTE (Yerameyahu @ Jan 29 2011, 12:21 PM) *
I'm not sure WoW is the best example of a 'numbers? what numbers?' immersive RPG, but it does seem reasonable in 2070. smile.gif


True. Probably not.
sk8bcn
And why not kinda the same character?

Ok, let's say that the characters were kindnapped by an Immortal elf/dragon. He has a goal that has to be defined. He injects them either chirurgically/magically a similar effect like the BTLs from Dreamchipper.

The characters get brainwashed and freed.

Up to this point the game starts. Each ED adventure would have his version in the SR world. The characters dealt with Throal royal family. They somewhat did something in real with Seattle's politic. They killed an horror? It's a power spirit that was killed in SR. Each ED scenario pushes the dragon/IE plot forward. Up to the character to find out before he reaches his goal that they're manipulated.

You may go even a step forward in manipulation. Let's now imagine that the manipulator is a corrupted dragon from ED (I can't remember his name right now). When mana was lower, he was fine but as the mana-spike goes up, his madness re-emerge. He want to generate multiple high blood magics to open a rift for the horrors.

For that, he needs an immortal ennemy that anyone would hate (bad Immortal elves who manipulates all nation around the world), someone to be thrusted to be the heralds of that truth (the characters who are blessed and -think- they see the past) and him as their good powerfull ally against the bads (the story within the BTL-ships is twisted so that he looks heroic and good).

The game goes on.

Players pick their SR characters.
Player A picks 1 Samourai, B picks a mage, and C a hacker.
Start of the game.

Players create ED chars:
You say: I need 1 mage, no more.
Player A picks the mage, the 2 others fighters. In fact, player A plays player B Earthdawn persona (that will certainly obsfucate the thruth).

Part 1:
SR: Small indications about weird events (actually done by them)
ED: Plot starts with bloodelves as enemy careless at what horrors represent. They got their rituel to protect themselves.

Part 2:
SR: They work for an unknown person against a real danger that slowly, seems to be elves.
ED: Mad-dragon reveals to the PC and gets a real help to them.

Gamebreaker:
ED: They do get sure that bloodelves do manipulate whoever (Thera? Throal?) but the victim refuse to listen. Mad-dragon propose a complex plan to create fake proofs of what the PC knows as certain.

Part 3: SR: Mad-dragon reveals to be they employer. They are send on a very important mission where they get the proofs of the elves misdoing. The fake proofs were actually put there by themselves !(as ED characters!)

Part 4: Start of cracks in the reality:
SR: some characters recognize them (exemple: In Armodillo's bar, the barman knows them very well, because it is their ED favorite bar). Some events, looking back at it, have surprising similarities. Mad-dragon madness emerges everytime something isn't done his way. Mad-dragon will try to push them to reveal everything (including his help, especially that part btw).
ED: Similarities start to arise (depending on the PC wiseness) or better said, the illusions start to fade. Houses get bigger (because in thruth, they are buildings). Towns get larger. Horses ride too fast or stops at intersections. If they're really slow to understand, artefacts appears (like erm, an Ares Predator II artefact).

Part 5: Re-reading of history:
They go back into the full ED story, exploring what really occured in SR universe. They find out about the thruth and that they are manipulated. A Major X NPC (Harlequin? Icewing/Ghostwalker? whoever) tells them the truth about the mad-dragon. Epic final fight. End of the campaign.
Laodicea
I've been thinking about this more. Here's what I have so far as an outline:

An earthdawn horror has entered the world of shadowrun in an insubstantial form which caused it to take shape in the Matrix, almost like an AI. Barely able to retain its form, identity, and wits, the horror seeks out some kind of famliarity in this strange new world. It found the VRMMORPG "Earthdawn" created by the Atlantean Foundation. There it could easily take on its natural shape, securing its identity and intellect. However, it was going hungry. It could not harvest the kind of terror it needed from the meta-human population like it used to. It could kill as easily as ever, yet its opponents kept coming back from the dead, sometimes stronger than before. Not understanding that it was existing in a game world, bewildered, and hungry, it began seeking avenues to other Planes. It found it very difficult to leave the game, and unnerving when it did so.

The horror takes on the form of a starving, beggard, human, and tricks the adventurers into helping him by telling them that he is Horror marked. He is seeking out the most powerful mage in the world to rid him of this mark. In reality, he is seeking someone who can help him understand the world that he is in, and escape it into a Plane where he can torment people to slake his thirst. The horror will manifest in its real form in the game world on occasion, and the starving horror marked peasant man will be missing during those times. He will always have a good excuse, though.

In its quest, assisted by the players, the horror will eventually find the most powerful magician in the game, but he will not be able to help. At some point, they will meet a demi-god(admin for the game.) who will insist that the horror should not exist and try to delete it. He will fail. Ultimately, it will be up to a technomancer(hopefully a PC) to free the horror, which at this point the technomancer believes to be an emergent AI, from the game. Once free, depending on the form he takes when freed, the shadowrun characters will begin having to deal with him.
Doc Byte
QUOTE (Laodicea @ Jan 28 2011, 05:26 PM) *
The twist is that their earthdawn characters aren't actually in the past. They're in the Earthdawn VRMMORPG that was launched by the Atlantean foundation.

[...]

Thoughts?


Perhaps the whole team's jacked into some AI created UV host (or even a resonance realm ) and both the ED and the SR party are virtual adventures with the ultimate goal of escaping the system.


€dit: Thinking this over, I like the idea. One could create a computer system with one ED overlay (e.g. an old Kaer or another encloses construction) and anothe SR overlay (e.g. an Arcologie). Each subsystem would have a counterpart in the ED world and the SR world. A blocked access in the Kaer might be open in the Arc. So both teams would have to work together for freeing the characters trapped in the system.
Mongoose
QUOTE (Laodicea @ Jan 28 2011, 04:26 PM) *
I've had this idea for a campaign in which the players have 2 characters. One is a shadowrun character, one is an earthdawn character. Obviously, this is something that people have done before. I'm mainly looking for tips on how to make the decisions that they make in one world effect the choices they're presented with in the other world.

The twist is that their earthdawn characters aren't actually in the past. They're in the Earthdawn VRMMORPG that was launched by the Atlantean foundation. I don't want the players to know this right away. How could the Earthdawn characters not know that they're characters in a game? Perhaps they're AI NPCs written for the game that cannot know that it's just a game. How do the two stories interact? Perhaps one of the actual human players that plays the Earthdawn MMO(in this case the actual human player is an NPC...) interacts with the Shadowrun team...Perhaps one of the Horrors from the Earthdawn game turns out to be a real, actual, Horror, and both the shadowrun team and the earthdawn team have to deal with it in their own worlds?

Thoughts?


I think you should take a look at http://johnwickpresents.com/market/products/flux.html
May not have the answers, but seems a good jumping off point.
hyzmarca
1) Give every Shadowrun PC Mysterious Cyberware without counting it towards their qualities limit. Make it up to the mages by permitting them to initiate at chargen with the extra BP.

This cyberware is a headwear comlink with a personafix and a connection to an Atlantean Foundation server. At certain points in time, due to triggers determined by the GM (sleep is a good one) the comlink will activate, jacking them into the Atlantean Foundation server (cold sim) and applying the personafix to them so that they really believe they are the Earthdawn characters they're supposed to portray.

There are no Horrors involved in the game. The PCs are Sky Pirate antagonists. Because the easiest way to crate a realistic antagonist NPC with human-like intelligence is to chip up a real human. They flly around in ther airship stealing stuff and fighting PCs.

The point of the whole exercise is that these Sky Pirates were real and they stashed their loot somewhere. Alachia reproduced their personalities in painstaking detail because she wants to know where and is monitoring the PCs activities, along with the activities of countless other iterations of those characters on countless different servers. The PCs are the most accurate reproduction of the historical pirates, and their activities will reveal the locations of loot caches more often than not.

If the players want to peruse such a cache they created in their supposed dream of the past, then roll some dice behind a screen and cackle like a madman. The results won't matter, give them a bone at first, then just do what feels right.

In the end, the airship will be severely damaged in a battle and they'll have to set it down somewhere. This location will be the location of the airship in real life. It is worthless as a weapon; there is a reason no one uses Zeppelins crewed by archers and swordsmen in war these days. But as a ancient magical artifact it is worth more than the GDP of Azerbaijan.

The PCs goal should be to get to it before Alachia does and get their piece. This isn't about saving the world. Alachia having this airship will not hurt the world in any way. All it would do is let her corner the market in overpriced flying boats. This is about money, my dear, like any good run should be. That and revenge for being used as unwitting guinea pigs in an insane experiment. But mostly money.

Anyway, I think Horrors have been done to death. It has been proven many times that we can beatt them. And after the Dragonheart Trilogy it is supposed to be impossible for them to come through.
Laodicea
Awesome thoughts, hyzmarca!
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