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UserClone
2007-08-27, 07:21 AM
So I was thinking of maybe using this: An experimenting Cleric/Mage has opened a portal to another realm.
Accidently this corresponded with an
experiment in a modern-day underground military base which is performing a
physics experiment on time/space. A
trans-Time/dimensional portal is formed, both attuned to each other such that
neither can be closed until both are
closed simultaneously. Meanwhile, a military scouting party of Rambo types have
passed through and are exploring
the AD&D area (walky talkies, hand grenades, sub-machine guns and pistols, hand-
to-hand combat etc). They
don't believe what they've ended up in (save vs illusions and mind-affecting
spells at +4) and are taking prisoners of
anyone who can give information on the situation.

Problem 1: Stop the scouting party (including retrieving their gear if
possible).

Problem 2: Find what equipment is needed to close both portals simultaneously -
sages can probably help
with this - and get the required equipment. (I used a Redeye missile and Staff
of power, both of which were in the
possession of a Barghest on the plane of Gehenna).

Problem 3: Go through the portal to the Underground base, find the source
controlling the portal, and get
control of the area. The guards are the (US ?) army equiped with modern gear,
but the primary security structure is
to block access to the experimental area, rather than the area itself.

Problem 4: Destroy both portals simultaneously. For example, fire the missile
into controlling computer
complex, while simultaneously breaking (retributive strike) the Staff of Power
at the fantasy-side entrance to the
portal. Then get the surviving PC's from the underground base to their home
realm (either use plane shifting magic
or have a time delay on the portal destruction). in a D&D game. My questions are:


As a player, would you want to play in this game?
As a DM, would you enjoy running this game?
At which (level-wise) point do you think it would be appropriate to have the PCs complete each problem?
Would you change this? How?

martyboy74
2007-08-27, 07:29 AM
What happens if the PCs go into the modern world, use the gold to get a bunch of SMGs, then come back to fantasy-land? That's always a problem with multiple technology levels.

What about language? Is common english?

If so, will it be possible to convince that military to close down their portal without using a missile?

If the modern portal-generating equipment is shut down, can they just cast dispel magic on the portal, and have it go away?

Does magic work in the modern plane?

Does tech work in fantasy world?

UserClone
2007-08-27, 07:40 AM
1. What happens if the PCs go into the modern world, use the gold to get a bunch of SMGs, then come back to fantasy-land? That's always a problem with multiple technology levels.
2. What about language? Is common english?
3. If so, will it be possible to convince that military to close down their portal without using a missile?
4. If the modern portal-generating equipment is shut down, can they just cast dispel magic on the portal, and have it go away?
5. Does magic work in the modern plane?
6. Does tech work in fantasy world?

1. Agreed. but what's the fix?
2. comprehend laguages/tongues
3. Anything's possible, but who knows if the military would cooperate with foreign invaders? (not something the US military is especially known for)
4. It needs to be done AT THE SAME TIME, so this would be tricky.
5. I don't see why it couldn't. But probably nearly everyone would get that +4 vs. Illusions/M.A.
6. Again, I don't see why it couldn't, but having it degrade over a period of so-many hours into uselessness helps with No. 1.

Solo
2007-08-27, 08:02 AM
1. What happens if the PCs go into the modern world, use the gold to get a bunch of SMGs, then come back to fantasy-land? That's always a problem with multiple technology levels.
2. What about language? Is common english?
3. If so, will it be possible to convince that military to close down their portal without using a missile?
4. If the modern portal-generating equipment is shut down, can they just cast dispel magic on the portal, and have it go away?
5. Does magic work in the modern plane?
6. Does tech work in fantasy world?

1. At the level this campaign looks to be taking place, there's going to be a munch of guys running around telling the laws pf physics to sit down and shut up. Guns aren't going to particularly unbalance things.

That and none of them can pass a background check.

2. Been said.

3. If they can use tongues and whatnot, probably. Military might be hostile and ignore them though.

4. Make it un-dispellable.

5. Entirely possible.

6. Why not?

Sulecrist
2007-08-27, 08:48 AM
Sounds a little like Stargate mid-series. That's not a slur, I love Stargate. And I'm sure it'll be very different, but try to evoke the same feeling--have a corporate jerk on the modern side trying to capture them and grill them for secrets, and use the moderners to cause civil unrest (even unintentionally.) That sort of thing.

I think I'd like to play in this sort of game on the condition that you keep the 'others' feeling wrong and different up until the very end. The party shouldn't get used to carrying around MP5s or driving monster trucks.

As for level... I'd start with six or eight. If you pace it right they should end at fifteen, at which point the adventure can continue. They'll still have enough magic to get back, but modern military things should threaten them, particularly if their magic works differently (or not at all) on the other side.

Kurald Galain
2007-08-27, 09:54 AM
Suggestion: take a look at TORG. Not for the ruleset per se, but because it has precisely this kind of cross-genre world travelling, including suggestions for when and where magic still functions.

Depending on your players, they may want to not close the gates and start taking over the military world with magic, or vice versa

MariettaGecko
2007-08-27, 10:06 AM
I like the idea, but I have a question that I seem to have missed the answer to in the original post...

WHY should the PCs go to the trouble of closing this? First, if they are powerful enough to take down the military personnel, then they also can get the tech, and build a city/castle/whatever around the portal, thus fortifying it and keeping it for themselves. What motivation do the PCs have to do what you want them to do? Perhaps the existance of the portal is slowly poisoning the area around it or somehow degrading the world, ultimately causing trouble for both worlds?

ranger89
2007-08-27, 10:35 AM
I like the idea, too despite the problems that others have mentioned above. Simply becuase it's so different than any campaign I've been involved, I'd be interested in both playing and DMing it (though definitelymore the former).


WHY should the PCs go to the trouble of closing this? First, if they are powerful enough to take down the military personnel, then they also can get the tech, and build a city/castle/whatever around the portal, thus fortifying it and keeping it for themselves. What motivation do the PCs have to do what you want them to do? Perhaps the existance of the portal is slowly poisoning the area around it or somehow degrading the world, ultimately causing trouble for both worlds?

That is an excellent question. I'll second the portal-is-destablizing-the-world idea. I'd also suggest that the open portals having are enabling outsider-type monsters to enter both worlds (perhaps the portals open into a small "planar pocket" that is the midway point between the modern and fantasy worlds). Doing so would either give the PCs and the army reason to cooperate or you could have the outsiders overrun the army base so the PCs would fighting them and not army guys armed with guns constantly. It gives you a lot more flexibility, I think.

Arakune
2007-08-27, 11:04 AM
As a player, would you want to play in this game?
As a DM, would you enjoy running this game?
At which (level-wise) point do you think it would be appropriate to have the PCs complete each problem?
Would you change this? How?


1: YES! Specialy in the modern world party.
2: maybe??
3: 4-8 level should be good.
4: Magic in the modern world are nerfed (the spell caster level becomes level/4 or /5), and only 5~10% of the actual complex resources send by the portal (SMG, veicles, standart non-combat equipement, etc) are actualy intact (the portal can't reshape these equipments clearly, destroying most of the equipment). Laguage barrier are a good choice.

martyboy74
2007-08-27, 11:14 AM
1. At the level this campaign looks to be taking place, there's going to be a munch of guys running around telling the laws pf physics to sit down and shut up. Guns aren't going to particularly unbalance things.

*cough*snipers*cough*

Drider
2007-08-27, 11:31 AM
If they're at the level to go to a layer of gehenna to fight a barghest(who certainly has minions+magic items in addition to the 2 McGuffins), Then they would probably be able to fight a good bit of modern earth...but if they don't do that, it sounds like a fun campaign.


There's just too many things the players could do to mess with it tho...without SERIOUS railroading.

Solo
2007-08-27, 11:33 AM
*cough*snipers*cough*

Coughwindwallmagearmorinvisibilitycough

Lyinginbedmon
2007-08-27, 01:22 PM
There's a Time War in the background of my campaign world at the moment. Allegedly the world the agitates are from is space-borne by virtue of the fact that the home planet was destroyed by ID38, a creature previously imprisoned after nearly wiping out all life in the Great War (Some 440 years previous), having been released somehow. The agitates are working to alter history such that she is never released in the first place, eliminating the destruction and saving billions of lives.

What they don't know, however, is that time travel doesn't take you back to your own past, because that would create a paradox :nale:

But, as for the logistics. By their method, it's very hard to get from D&D to D&D Future, because you need to track them until they open a portal back and then get through it without getting disintegrated (Disintegrate weapons being heavy artillery in that era). They harshly restrict what technology they bring, so that it either goes back with them or is destroyed on their leave. As a result, you would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a D&D Future character and a D&D Character.

However, in your particular context, this is an unintentional trip. Therefore, military protocol dictates that they would go through fully armed whilst the portal would be heavily guarded (Similar to my disintegration issue above). By the Laws of Magic, magic should work in the modern world, given that knowledge of it was wiped out during the Crusades (I've seen things in homebrew campaign settings that would approximate this happily)

UserClone
2007-08-27, 01:45 PM
I was really thinking more of a Fantasy World (D&D)/ a Gritty, Modern world (D20 Modern) and maybe using the portals a lot like the Stargates were used (ancient, nearly indecipherable Magitek) and actually, what do you guys think of 1 (or 2 collaborating) DM(s) running a D20 Modern Game in which the PCs work for the US military, Dept. 7 (X-Files Dept.) and simultaneously running the aforementioned D&D game, then at some point having the DM(s) and both groups discover each other's worlds? There could even be some caveat that says there must be a balance, such that if one character from one group crosses over, one character from the other is sucked through involuntarily. Comments?

Wolf_Shade
2007-08-27, 01:53 PM
So I was thinking of maybe using this: in a D&D game. My questions are:


As a player, would you want to play in this game?
As a DM, would you enjoy running this game?
At which (level-wise) point do you think it would be appropriate to have the PCs complete each problem?
Would you change this? How?

In D&D, no. As a player I would not want to play this game, but I might be of limited imagination. It's just that if I'm going to be running around in medieval fantasy with rogues and warriors and barbarians and wizards, the last thing I want to see is fatigues and shoulder boards, let alone grenades and walkie talkies.
In D&D, no. As a GM/DM I would not enjoy running the game. There's too many cross rules that D&D was not designed to handle. There's a lot of houseruling that could be done, but another system would be better suited to the concept.
I don't know which levels would be most appropriate.
I would put it in another system, but that's me.

UserClone
2007-08-27, 02:04 PM
I would put it in another system, but that's me.

Heh. Dream Park could handle it. Sig me if you know that one.

de-trick
2007-08-27, 02:15 PM
In the realms isn't time travel baned by mystra or some other god

but out side the realms we did it, well we went forward for fun we were evil epic I was playing asmotious son I met my self and touched myself(no pun intended) and died

but I had a bayonet rifle and thought it was a double weapon a dagger and club combo then I fired it and scared the **** out of the party

UserClone
2007-08-27, 02:18 PM
Yeah, I would never consider running this in Faerun. Just a generic fantasy world, probably hombrewed.

Rex Blunder
2007-08-27, 02:27 PM
Doesn't sound like it violates the spirit of D&D to me. Futuristic weaponry was in D&D as early as 1980 with Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_to_the_Barrier_Peaks). And there might have been some modern-weapons damage chart in the 1e DMG.

CASTLEMIKE
2007-08-27, 08:44 PM
It sounds like you just created a very localized D20 Modern/Urban Arcana Shadow Portal modern world to the D&D. Could be a lot of fun.

Yakk
2007-08-27, 11:03 PM
Idea: the portal isn't as accidental as one would think. It is instead a gambit by a lord of the abyss.

The portal actually does (fantasy land) ---> (zero-length route through hellish abyss) ---> (modern land). That zero-length route is the key.

Technology and beings that comes from the "modern" world are corrupted by the portal's magics. The infection takes time to spread, but it gets worse and worse.

The first symptoms of the infection is that those infected don't see the later stages, they see many magical effects as mundane, and they are paranoid and cliquish. It gets worse and worse as they go through the portal more times and as the infection spreads.

What starts out as mildly shell-shocked scouts ends up blossoming into a full-fledged modern-technology based invasion of hell-fiends.

...

So the players can start out thinking "neat, let's set up trade", but as time goes on the moderns get more and more aggressive, crazy and monster-like. Players who are using modern tools start noticing that the tools are becoming evil. It devolves into "break the portal connection or have the world end".

UserClone
2007-08-28, 09:28 AM
Yakk, I LOVE it! /you. nah. I don't like animals like that.:smalltongue: