Thoughts on cross-setting play?

[5crownik007]

So I have a friend, let's call him Dan.
Dan is an undying fan of cross-setting play, or as he calls it "inter-dimensional"

What this means is that essentially, you take a character from any setting, let's say an SFOD-D Operative and then plonk them into another setting, let's say Skyrim, from The Elder Scrolls. The means by which they traveled between two different universes can either matter or be entirely ignored. In fact, the travel can be so unimportant that it is inaccessible ever again and the entire point of the game is the interaction between this character and the world they are in.

The reason I bring all of this up is that I am a passionate hater of cross-setting play. I think it causes the rules of the setting to be severely damaged, changing the setting overall and also ruins the narrative stakes of many stories. I also dislike this because many times that Dan suggests cross-setting play it's someone from a sci-fi setting with overpowered abilities travels to a fantasy setting to kick ass and chew bubblegum.

He continuously begs me to run one-on-one games with him where he can play characters that are crossing settings, and I fail to understand his reasons. At this point I'm wondering, what do all of you think about cross-setting play? Can you confirm my biases please?

[Florian]

Back when I was young, we did a lot of cross-setting play because we all were eager to try out new settings and systems and everyone of us wanted to keep playing (and advancing) our most beloved characters. Ok, we were all young and stupid back then and basically murderhobo´ed everything, so it basically didn't matter.

You can scrap the whole idea should you be right and the whole reason for this is being a badass based on tech and knowledge that is not available in the host setting. But it might actually be worth trying to use a game setting that is mainly about crossing settings but can handle the apparent power discrepancies: The Strange by Monte Cook.

[hymer]

I'm with you, OP. Discretion is the better part of narrative sense in most well-crafted worlds. I can see the sense of child-like delight in seeing a beloved hero show up unexpectedly and handling a situation deftly. But I also know that for what it is - deus ex machina, a ploy so cliché it should be used as sparingly as possible, and ideally not at all. The story needs to end almost immediately after, or everything starts to look strange and pathetic.

Why don't you suggest to Dan that he tries GMing these scenarios rather than asking you to? I think he might learn something. And perhaps he can get someone else to be the player. You know, someone who thinks it sounds cool.

[DeTess]

I think it can be done and can be fun, but you can't just grab any setting. Ideally you want one that's built with dimension-hopping strangers in mind, where the metaphysics are robust enough to dampen power excesses without robbing them of their identity. A LARP I'm currently attending has this as one of its central concepts, with a powerful entity pulling people from all possible places into its world to help fix things. We've gt a very motley crew of PC's coming from a lot of different places, but probably the most extreme example would be the Warhammer 40k inquisitorial retinue. They came with a bunch of weapons which could have broken things, if the world itself didn't have a say about such things. As it is, the nature of magic on the world actually dampened the effectiveness of those weapons down to about mid-tier offensive magic, and recharging them was initially pretty difficult.

Anyway,w hat I'm trying to say is that I think it can work great, but you need to focus more on the fish out of water aspect and let circumstances reduce overpowered stuff. If a DnD 3.5 wizard gets brought into a low-magic setting, then he should be limited to lower magic, even if he used to be able to cast 9th's at home because that's the nature of the world. If a Modern SEAL gets taken to magical middle ages, he either shouldn't be able to replenish his store of ammunition, forcing him to use local weapons, or if he can replace ammunition, the local magic should make gunpowder unreliable, toning his modern weaponry down to be balanced to local magic bows.

[5crownik007]

Back when I was young, we did a lot of cross-setting play because we all were eager to try out new settings and systems and everyone of us wanted to keep playing (and advancing) our most beloved characters. Ok, we were all young and stupid back then and basically murderhobo´ed everything, so it basically didn't matter.

You can scrap the whole idea should you be right and the whole reason for this is being a badass based on tech and knowledge that is not available in the host setting. But it might actually be worth trying to use a game setting that is mainly about crossing settings but can handle the apparent power discrepancies: The Strange by Monte Cook.

He doesn't exclusively suggest sci-fi to fantasy cross setting play. Currently we're running a systemless basic d20 based game about a colonial marine from the film Aliens being transported to Star Wars at the time of the Clone Wars.

My concern is that this is another of his most common ideas. Enter a setting with two opposing sides, join the side widely considered to be the "bad guys" for no apparent reason other than to be contrarian.

I'm not exceptionally unhappy with it, but I still have a bad gut feeling about it. It deeply alters the setting when characters from different settings can just appear and radically alter the situation, it sort of interrupts the narrative stakes from my perspective.

[DeTess]

I'm not exceptionally unhappy with it, but I still have a bad gut feeling about it. It deeply alters the setting when characters from different settings can just appear and radically alter the situation, it sort of interrupts the narrative stakes from my perspective.

Right, so ask him if he only wants to jump to an established setting, or if he's willing to take his colonial marine into an unfamiliar setting of your devising? If he only wants to hop between things he;s familiar with and do things where he already knows the rough outcome, he might be better of writing fanfiction.

Or alternatively, take his original pitch and deconstruct it. Let his marine get taken to star wars, but then let his character first hand view the despicable actions of the bad side he said he was going to join, and let them treat him like they would if he was any other guy in that world.

[5crownik007]

Why don't you suggest to Dan that he tries GMing these scenarios rather than asking you to? I think he might learn something. And perhaps he can get someone else to be the player. You know, someone who thinks it sounds cool.

He once GMed a game with a low-fantasy, mid-industrial setting of his own design where my dimension hopping character appeared in a temple on a mountain of some sort. Usually we stop playing after a short while for boredom and then eventually restart it with a new character from the same starting position. In the latest iteration, he devised an actual short rulebook and we played with multiple people. Every time we play, we get slightly further in the story.


I think it can be done and can be fun, but you can't just grab any setting. Ideally you want one that's built with dimension-hopping strangers in mind, where the metaphysics are robust enough to dampen power excesses without robbing them of their identity.

Essentially what happened in that game ^. I didn't mind it so much because he had designed this setting with the express existence of people arriving from other settings in mind. Although his solution was to strip us of any starting abilities or equipment, which arguably made it experimentally moot.


Right, so ask him if he only wants to jump to an established setting, or if he's willing to take his colonial marine into an unfamiliar setting of your devising? If he only wants to hop between things he;s familiar with and do things where he already knows the rough outcome, he might be better of writing fanfiction.

Or alternatively, take his original pitch and deconstruct it. Let his marine get taken to star wars, but then let his character first hand view the despicable actions of the bad side he said he was going to join, and let them treat him like they would if he was any other guy in that world.

He only wants to jump into established settings, and specifically established settings of his choosing. If I suggest a different setting which he is unfamiliar with, he argues that he doesn't know enough about the setting to be comfortable playing in it.

Funny you mention deconstructing his pitch, because that series of events has almost happened verbatim. I won't get into the details, but most recently he's been tortured for information by the Separatist forces. specifically because they know he comes from another reality.

[georgie_leech]

So long as it doesn't involve basically complete custom systems that claim to be able to handle all possible settings, I think it mostly comes down to the reasons behind it. Someone that wants to explore a fish-really-out-of-water scenario is going to be looking for different things than someone looking to keep playing with a favourite character, which are both different from someone that just enjoys seeing contradictory elements mash into each other (how would Highlander react to Son Wukong's several different flavors of immortal?).

[EccentricCircle]

It can be done, but takes a bit of thought. As with time travel games, its hard to run an otherwise unconnected adventure, which just happens to have interdimensional travellers as the PCs. However when you structure the game around the idea of interdimensional travel, and how that impacts both character and setting it can work well. It sounds as though that is what you've done with your Star Wars cross over.

I ran a short campaign called Metamancer which took a similar approach. The PCs were interdimensional Secret Agents, using a mix of super advanced technology and powerful magic to fight in a cold war between different multiverse hopping wizards. In each session they would learn what world they were going to and pick a cover identity (a pregen character for the system we were going to be using). The pregens had enough variety that there would always be one that fit the base character's specialities, but the players soon had great fun playing against type as well. The base characters never had stats themselves, as we only used game rules while they were on their missions, not while they were at base. This meant that their base characters could be really crazy, a water elemental, a strange spider alien, and a weresquirrel in point of fact.

The first mission involved them having to travel to the Star Wars universe incognito and rescue one of their deep cover operatives from Alderaan, before the Death Star fired. They knew the history of the world, and so knew they had a ticking clock, but it also meant that they didn't have to be quite as careful about interfering in the course of history as they otherwise would, since they knew that the planet was about to be destroyed.

They later went on missions to Sigil in the Planescape setting, a Necron Tomb world in warhammer 40K and the campaign ended with them having to travel to the real world to stop a nefarious power from assassinating me, and preventing me from running the final session of the game, thus destroying their entire imagined multiverse. They had to figure out how to cope in the real world (using Call of Cthulhu stats), and locate the RPG club where we were playing the game. However when they got there they found the walls of reality breaking down, and the scenarios from all the games going on in the building coming alive. They ultimately saved me from a liquid metal terminator in a hectic car chase, and found a safehouse where I and their real world selves could finish the game, and save the multiverse.

[Knaight]

I'm not big on established settings in general, and I'm definitely not big on mixing established settings together. That said, genre mixing can be fun, fish out of water scenarios can be fun, and even portal fantasy can be fun. The issue here is less the cross setting play and more it being done poorly.

The overpowered sci-fi character is a classic example of that. Yes, they have impressive technology. The setting they're going into has outright magic, and more importantly they don't understand it. If they're genuinely more powerful then they're a bull in a china shop trying not to ruin too much making important decisions on low information and sweating every minute of it, if not they're just trying to secure some sort of basic functioning life in a dangerous and unfamiliar situation. There's no particular reason for it to be pure power fantasy with no challenge, and pure power fantasy with no challenge is generally boring.

I've run a short campaign involving a spaceship crashing down a day's walk from a wizards' tower (and surrounding village), where the blend was very much the point, and it worked well. It wouldn't have worked quite so well if instead of being based around that meeting they had crashed in the wilderness surrounded by monsters where they understood everything they needed (kill the hostiles...) and could easily implement it (...with our vastly superior firepower). One of those two needs to go. Possibly both.

[Tvtyrant]

A lot of settings have genre monsters that are invincible outside of specific counters. Werewolves in a faux medieval world with tons of silver, holy water and hunters/inquisitors? Solvable.

Werewolves in a Vietnam War setting? Horror movie. Bombs and machine guns tearing them apart and them sliming and crawling themselves back together and eating your best friend.

A marine in Stark Trek is likely so outclassed as to have the crews politely nod at them.

[Knaight]

A lot of settings have genre monsters that are invincible outside of specific counters. Werewolves in a faux medieval world with tons of silver, holy water and hunters/inquisitors? Solvable.

Werewolves in a Vietnam War setting? Horror movie. Bombs and machine guns tearing them apart and them sliming and crawling themselves back together and eating your best friend.

Well, maybe. That invincibility is generally only displayed against the other tools in the genre, and being able to resist swords is not the same thing as being able to resist the machine guns of an attack helicopter, followed by napalm.

[Florian]

Well, maybe. That invincibility is generally only displayed against the other tools in the genre, and being able to resist swords is not the same thing as being able to resist the machine guns of an attack helicopter, followed by napalm.

How do you come to that conclusion? "Only harmed by silver" or "Will regenerate any damage save fire and acid" sound pretty straight-forward to me.

[Particle_Man]

Well you could play hardball and take a page out of ad&d first ed and say that science fiction man has no resistance to magic and will fail every save against every spell and magical effect.

Or you can have a universal rule system in play (mutants and masterminds actually could work here since you can cap the power level) so that the character will be on par with the world they are in, just with different power descriptors for what they use (laser gun vs magical fire bolt).

The player wanting to help the bad guys is a different issue though.

[Tvtyrant]

Well, maybe. That invincibility is generally only displayed against the other tools in the genre, and being able to resist swords is not the same thing as being able to resist the machine guns of an attack helicopter, followed by napalm.

There is an old werewolf movie where they stuff tnt down its throat and throw it out a window, only to watch its bits worm back together and climb back up.

[Calthropstu]

There is a horrible gm I played about 5 sessions with. It was one of the worse game groups too. He wasn't just a fan of cross setting play, he was a fan of cross setting play. You played your character for a few sessions and then found yourself in another world. we had to rewrite our shadowrun characters as exalted. Then he wanted us to rewrite them as Traveler characters. It was really really bad.

We scrapped that and tried straight shadowrun, but the other players were jerks so I did a rage quit.

[Yora]

I don't like it. It breaks the assumption that the settings are actual worlds that could theoretically exist in a different universe. Some settings could exist in the same universe, like almost everything that is build around the rules of D&D. But when you combine settings with different rules how the universe works, it all breaks down and becomes just fooling around.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

I planned - but never completed - a mash-up of d20 game settings. I started the players out with d20 modern, doing the "paranormal investigators" style of campaign - fighting vampires, werewolves, cloned cyborg dinosaurs, that sort of thing. They started to uncover the deeper galaxy-wide plot that took them to Arecibo to transmit a distress call to the ancient astronaut protectors they'd discovered.

My next setting was Star Wars d20 with the copyright names filed off - space cowboys and gangsters, ki-samurai, evil galactic empire federation, etc. In this setting, the players had new characters who were to have a short series of adventures leading to them discovering the distress call from the long-lost legendary planet "Earth" - and so they'd have their own PCs come to the aid of the original PCs... After which, they could select one of their two PCs to continue with, as we went off to have more galactic space adventures.

Finally, the solution to the big plot would be found to be a magical thing on an isolated magically infused planet where technology didn't work reliably... and I'd be using Conan d20 for that.

So rather than being "I transplant my awesome space marine into the dark ages and kick ass!" - it was planned to be much more "I'm totally out of my depth here, what the hell is going on?!"

Of course, it was far too ambitious, and didn't survive long beyond the d20 modern setting. We tried out some Star Wars games, but it fell apart when the player base started to fall out of real-world conflicts like infidelity and such. Since then, half my players live on the other side of the world anyway, so it's unlikely to be raised from this dormant state.

[gkathellar]

Maybe he just likes the idea of playing a stranger in a strange land.

You may want to take a look at how Planescape handles the Clueless, as it has some good ideas for how the whole fish-out-of-water-slider thing would work in a setting where their kind is pretty routine.

[Kiero]

Personally, I hate crossovers. What makes one property interesting is often at odds with what makes another one so.

If you mix all the colours in your palette, you get a horrible brown colour.

[Velaryon]

How do you come to that conclusion? "Only harmed by silver" or "Will regenerate any damage save fire and acid" sound pretty straight-forward to me.

It depends on how you want to interpret it. "Can only be harmed by X" could be literally true, or might need to have an asterisk next to it once you realize that Y and Z hadn't been invented yet when that statement was made.

Or to put it another way:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoExgr3yzvg

Anyway, with regard to crossovers I am very much not a fan. I find them immersion-breaking. It feels like playing out some 8 year-old's fanfiction story, which is just not something I have any interest in doing.

[2D8HP]

...take a character from any setting, let's say an SFOD-D Operative and then plonk them into another setting, let's say Skyrim, from The Elder Scrolls. The means by which they traveled between two different universes can either matter or be entirely ignored. In fact, the travel can be so unimportant that it is inaccessible ever again and the entire point of the game is the interaction between this character and the world they are in...


First, two of the settings you mentioned I believe are from video games (I've seen them mentioned in enough other threads that I figured that much out) and I assume that the third is as well, but I'm not willing to do any further web searches to learn more so my advice is based on guess work:

The "fish-out-of-water (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrappedInAnotherWorld)" trope is an excellent one to use, just don't make it a lame power-fantasy like you seem to suggest "Dan" wants, limit the power instead, HAVE NO INFINITE BULLETS!

A "six-shooter" with five bullets left is okay.

A fun example is the The Warlord (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Comicbook/TheWarlord) comics from 1975 to '89.

Do that.

Let me repeat, NO INFINITE BULLETS! 'cause that's just LAME!

Limit the modern technology that may be used, read Poul Anderson's The Man Who Came Early (http://vvikipedia.co/images/c/c7/Poul_William_Anderson_-_The_Man_Who_Came_Early.pdf) (pdf) from how it's done.

Also, bullets don't work well on Dinosaurs and Dragons!

See The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Reign of Fire for examples.

Also, is "Dan" 12 years old?

And what's with one-on-one?

Go "Hollow Earth" instead, have Dinosaurs and "savages", and have other players!

That would be AWESOME instead of LAME!

[Knaight]

How do you come to that conclusion? "Only harmed by silver" or "Will regenerate any damage save fire and acid" sound pretty straight-forward to me.

Those sound like system specific mechanical representations to me, not established constants for genre monsters with multiple depictions. Those are usually a little softer, as the Buffy clip above shows. Or, for werewolves specifically there's no shortage of depictions where they're vulnerable to both silver and fire.

[Son of A Lich!]

This would pique my eyebrow initially, and if it became a problem, I'd play hardball.

I'd probably use Mutants and Masterminds - there are write-up online for just about everything and lord knows I don't have time to cook up something unique for a mission to cross play.

I'd then ask him to pick out a character each player wants to play. For sake of discussion, lets go with T-100 from Terminator. Everyone like Terminator right?

I'd then start sessions in one universe and end them in another. at first, it'd be confusing but something that the party can cope with. We'd have to extremely focus in on inter-party complications for sake of any kind of plot, as the setting keeps changing; Can't bond with an NPC that isn't going to exist in t-minus 1 session, right?

When the party starts to understand that they are quantum leaping into new settings, thats when I take a seriously strong hit of acid (Don't do drugs, I'm joking about the Acid, serious on the disclaimer of drug use) and start mixing in the kitchen sink. Velicoraptors on the Enterprise, Crashing into Noah's arc, with 2 of each animal and Harry Potter with force powers. I might even whip up a random encounter chart and never in my life take it so seriously. Hell, I might even have complications when they go from movie worlds to TV world and serious issues arrive when they become 2D in a manga.

By the end of something like the 10th session, The party will have no idea what is coming around the corner, ever, and the only thing that remains constant is themselves...

Then I start handing them new character sheets based on who they are playing as. You were playing the Terminator? In this world, you are Arnie from Jr. Have fun being pregnant and not a robot. Also Monty Python is taking arms against the Olympians and Ender Wiggins is leading them to liberate Fascist Brittan (Seriously, take your pick of which universe that is from) with Professor X as their chancellor.

Honestly, The chaos would be liberating from your side of the screen, because... hey... Its not like you have to prepare anything meaningful...

[LordCdrMilitant]

I have a soft spot in my heart for crossover stories; though I'm not sure I would run one as a RPG.

All things considered, I have played in more than one one-shot game where we brought characters from different games, of drastically varying power levels, and it worked out. Both of these were set up as a group of heroes has been assembled from the greatest that could be spared [or by the assembling force's precognition] to confront a multiverse-threatening force in the setting subjected to them. Obvious points of challenge were both accomplishing the mission and trying to present a minimum level of disruption to the host setting.

As another hypothetical story line that hasn't been explored in RPG form is the sort of "I want to go home" story, where the displaced character has to survive the world, make new friends, and help people out until s/he can discover a way to go home.

[5crownik007]

The "fish-out-of-water (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrappedInAnotherWorld)" trope is an excellent one to use, just don't make it a lame power-fantasy like you seem to suggest "Dan" wants, limit the power instead, HAVE NO INFINITE BULLETS!

A "six-shooter" with five bullets left is okay.

A fun example is the The Warlord (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Comicbook/TheWarlord) comics from 1975 to '89.

Do that.

Let me repeat, NO INFINITE BULLETS! 'cause that's just LAME!

Limit the modern technology that may be used, read Poul Anderson's The Man Who Came Early (http://vvikipedia.co/images/c/c7/Poul_William_Anderson_-_The_Man_Who_Came_Early.pdf) (pdf) from how it's done.

Also, bullets don't work well on Dinosaurs and Dragons!

See The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Reign of Fire for examples.

Also, is "Dan" 12 years old?

And what's with one-on-one?

Go "Hollow Earth" instead, have Dinosaurs and "savages", and have other players!

That would be AWESOME instead of LAME!

Well, to answer your questions and your suggestions:
Dan explicitly mentioned the "fish out of water" trope at one point and then I made the mad suggestion that you don't have to break the laws of reality and travel to a new universe to be a fish out of water.

Also, about 96% of the times he's suggested something to me, I've rejected it precisely because of the power differential. In this Colonial Marine-Star Wars adventure, he started out with his full battle dress and a partially empty weapon but eventually lost all of his equipment when he was captured.

Dan is in high school, he's rather edgy and whenever I bring up the idea of involving other players, he gets uncomfortable/declines. Going full Hollow Earth probably wouldn't work too well. He wants dark and serious settings.

And just to give more information, here's a short list of things he's suggested:

Fallout 4 Powered Armour Infantry in Star Wars Clone Wars. [DENIED]
Modern Day Military Policeman in Star Wars Clone Wars. [DENIED]
World War Two German Panzergrenadier in Star Wars Clone Wars. [DENIED]
(these ideas are what originally sprouted the Colonial Marine in Star Wars)
SCP Foundation MTF member in Dead Space. [DENIED]
Rhodesian Soldier in Halo. [DENIED]
World War Two German Panzergrenadier in WH40k. [DENIED]
SCP in WH40K (this idea wasn't really fleshed out).


At this point I was going to write a long winded section on the most egregious idea he sent me and the most egregious story he told me about a game he played with another GM.

Instead I'm just going to finish off by saying that most, if not all game ideas he sent me have involved some kind of self-insert character traveling to another world to betray the perceived "good guys" of a particular franchise.


-snip-

We only ever play games that we both mutually agree would be interesting to play, which is why this would never work. He'd never agree to it. A pure chaos setting does sound fun to do though, with a different party. Though I wouldn't include established settings too often in that, it'd just be pure unrestrained creative chaos and unlimited suffering.

Divorced from the whole Dan issue, there is one cross-over setting that I think I might legitimately enjoy to the fullest extent possible. Cthuhlupunk. Call of Cthuhlu in Cyberpunk 2027. Just because it's so metal, not for any story value that could be salvaged from it, though you could make an interesting plot there.

[Son of A Lich!]

Oh, I didn't realize this is one on one. I thought it was a party and 'Dan' wanted to play an 'inter-dimensional' character.

Well... First things first, he seems to be a big fan of guns. I wouldn't consider a firearm better then a Blaster, for the example of a colonial marine v. Star Wars universe. It sounds like he is needing some praise in his personal life and finds it at the bottom of a loaded D20 to me.

You might want to take him up on just such an adventure, but file off the serial codes on both settings (The Native and the implanted, Star Wars and Colonial Marine respectively).

1 on 1 sessions are typically a bit harsher then full party games (Most rpgs are set up to give players a slight edge in the action economy - therefore, more party members can do more with fewer actions and having a bigger party can let you handle more extreme things). If you set up his character as being a bit higher level then the setting calls for, this can help balance it out and let him feel like a badass without gimping his ability to have success.

Then you would need to work on conveying success outside of the physical violence. Taking the last hit point of a Clone Trooper is something that happens almost every round, but being able to counter play Chancellor Riggle's deployment of clone troopers entry invasion into Kormass by working with Trade Federation and successfully setting up a trap; That's something that can make you feel like a badass without Initiative ever being rolled.

The filing off the serial numbers is important, because it means that he can't meta game the current Native setting and his own implanted setting. Sure, force powers might exist in this Swords in Space military setting, but that doesn't mean that there is a Jedi Council, or that he can kill Yoda and take over the Jedi Temple. He has to explore this strangely similar world to what he already knows, and that can build into him learning the value of his role in the story.

If he's conflating big numbers with being important and valued, then I think working in how to do the most impact outside of combat is the best way to mitigate him facerolling the competition, while still having a challenge that he can be proud of over coming.

But if your not interested in what he wants to play... then... give him a copy of a rule book and have him find players for his own game, I guess. We all need to learn to DM at some time right?

[5crownik007]

-snip 2 electric boogaloo-

Yes, we're both big fans of guns(just find them interesting, like swords), it's one of the things we have in common. It's actually not a well known fact, but Stormtrooper armour(and clone trooper) is virtually undamaged by 'slugthrower' type weapons. In fact, his M41A Pulse Rifle is only effective because the 10mm ammunition it fires is both armour piercing and explosive. Essentially, it's the mid-way evolution point between a modern assault rifle and a WH40K bolter. It's still not optimal(hint, most stormtroopers actually survive being shot with a blaster directly).

As for taking him on a "loaded" adventure... It's always been an anathema to "let the players win" for me. Being successful in a campaign is something that is earned by the players, and that makes it all the more valuable. But, you may be right. The issue is what I see happening when I'm just enabling his character to win, enactments of brutal slaughter and betrayal. There's a reason that treachery is the worst sin, and you realize it when you place in a Lawful Good NPC who does their very best to help the player, and the player(who happens to be a blatant self-insert) deals behind their back to betray them for personal benefit without any self awareness. It's very, very uncomfortable, and makes me not want to enable him.

As for filing of the serial numbers, I can see the point of that. Both to make sure he can't predict the outcome, and to prevent him from identifying the colloquially defined "good guys" and "bad guys" of each setting. Though it does come with the issue that he probably won't agree to it. I can influence the former point though, simply by adding alterations to the setting that don't go against the established rules, e.g:

General Grievous in ROTS and the 2008 Clone Wars television show is a complete pushover of a villain that still always managed to get away. However, he did once have a representation that was actually menacing, villainous and appealing to me(and he had a better voice actor imo).

Little alterations can make the setting unpredictable, but still remain within the established ruleset of the universe. Slight nudges in goals here, minor character alterations there, and you've got an entirely original campaign with major departures to the established canon.

When it comes to conveying success outside of physical violence... Well, he does pursue non-combat goals, but the issue comes when he pursues a goal that is:

impossible with his current equipment
logically flawed
plainly evil

That last one is major. Yes, yes, I know we all have some PCs who play characters of an Evil alignment. That's normal. The reason it concerns me so much here is when he doesn't view the goal as evil. Simplified example from an actual game we played(that wasn't cross-setting):
Semi-hard sci-fi far-future setting, powerful aliens invade a city on a terraformed Triton, pursuing genocide. Survivors hide in an underground bunker. OOCly, he desperately wants to betray the humans to the aliens for his own personal safety, but can't find the means to communicate it. When I bring up the moral injunction, he questions my intentions, "Wouldn't you? Aren't humans terrible?" in an entirely non-joking manner. In this scenario, assuming he could work out a deal with the aliens, he certainly would sell out the thousand+ human survivors fleeing their destroyed homes for his own safety and free will. It only gets more uncomfortable when you realize that every single character he makes is a parody of himself.

He's not a murderhobo. He doesn't automatically seek the violent option. It's not like he doesn't care about a story, it's just that he wants the story to be about himself taking control. When it comes to combat, if he makes poor decisions, it's not like I just let him delete enemies with his assault rifle.

Funny you mention him DMing. Recently he invited me to play D&D 5e with him. Just regular 5e, only major change being he's come up with his own little setting for it, but it's not that far of a departure from a standard D&D setting. It's actually going quite well.

With that, I'd like to thank you for your insight, it's been revealing.
That said, the thread is slipping dangerously away from the topic at hand and turning into "I Need Help With My Players 2: My Player is an Evil Psychopath"

[Florian]

Hm. I always understood this kind of behavior as being the hallmark of players who are totally self-centered. They don't really have a desire to truly engage with the game world, they don't want lasting consequences to their actions and decisions and the only thing that matters is advancing the character from one encounter to the other.

That doesn't have to be a bad thing per se.

For example, when running more sandbox-style games that explicitly don't focus on a group or party, rather on the individual, like, say, A Berlin by Night VtM campaign, where each Vampire acts on his own, the complications that can arise from this will actually enrich the game.

In a more traditional group-based or story-focused campaign, tho, I find this to highly disruptive.

[Arbane]

Maybe it's because I'm a jerk, but Formian's post makes me think the entertaining approach would be to send this guy's character on their Isekai Treachery Happy Fun Hour...

...and drop them on the 'wrong' world. Put his loaded-up soldier in World of Darkness or Kult or something. Not where they'd be hopelessly outgunned, but somewhere where the player doesn't think they know the setting or the rules, where a lot of enemies are Outside Context Problems, and enough moral ambiguity that ANY side they pick could be the 'bad' one.

[DeTess]

Yeah, the kind of game this player wants to play seems perfect for a deep intrigue world of darkness game, where this sort of backstabbery is the norm. If nothing else, it might hold up a mirror for him.

[Quertus]

Sounds like you have some major problems, which have nothing to do with the perfectly valid practice of cross-setting play.

Address your actual problems, then consider how you feel about cross-setting games.

[5crownik007]

Address your actual problems, then consider how you feel about cross-setting games.
Well, when I consider the idea outside the context of Dan, here's what I come up with.

It could work. I think Cthuhulupunk is a genuinely fun idea. There's a lot of things that I wouldn't like in terms of cross-setting play, but I can think of specific combinations that have interesting outcomes I might like to explore.

I do still find myself averse to a large amount of cross-setting ideas, generally because it deflates existing narrative stakes and violates enshrined and established rules.

[Drascin]

I've done it, and it worked pretty okay. Basically what I did was kind of a Planescape thing, only portals in Sigil didn't just open to things as boring as the Great Wheel planes, but to all kind of settings. Players were basically troubleshooters for a sort of faction who meddled into a lot of stuff in various places.

I used Mutants&Masterminds for this. A reasonably generic system is important to getting a concept like this to work, seeing how the party included Definitely Not A Space Marine, a sorceress who killed people with summoned magical spears, and a SOLDIER Second Class from FF7, to name some.

[Dawgmoah]

I like them, though they have a tendency to fall apart. Back quite a few years ago I had a conversion booklet that would assist in converting from one game rules to another. That was in the heyday of D&D 2nd edition, Star Frontiers, Dark Conspiracy, etc. The book had conversion rules for at least fifty different systems. It was a pain to use but got the job done versus everyone having a different opinion of what things converted to.

In the past twelve years I stick to the D20 games (One can find a rule set for anything in D20 it seems) and things go a bit smoother on the conversion. So from space to fantasy to dark future to a bleak present; it makes genre-hopping a bit easier. These games appear to last about six to eight months and then people lose interest. But it can be entertaining for a bit. I build it all out separate from my regular games so no mayhem escapes into the other games.

I figure GURPS and who knows what else that has been released can do the same. My only take-away is they don't seem to last long but can be enjoyable.

[JMS]

Well, when I consider the idea outside the context of Dan, here's what I come up with.

It could work. I think Cthuhulupunk is a genuinely fun idea. There's a lot of things that I wouldn't like in terms of cross-setting play, but I can think of specific combinations that have interesting outcomes I might like to explore.

I do still find myself averse to a large amount of cross-setting ideas, generally because it deflates existing narrative stakes and violates enshrined and established rules.

I do agree, even as someone who enjoys inserting D&D characters into every book I read, and I mean everyone, but what makes sense needs some thought
maybe a checklist for cross setting play?
1) Power Level - You can't have the level 30 caster on earth. You can't have the Bronze age hunter in Star-Trek. You can have D&D meets avengers. (I have put a lot of thought into that one.)
2) Scope - even if both sides can kill each other, they might do it in diffrent ways
3) Themes - you can't have exalted and warhammer. forgotten realms and eberon would be... odd. (Not that familiar with settings)

Anything more?

[Pauly]

As some others have said
: The power levels need to be compatible. 40K, according to the fiction, outpowers every other fictional sci-fi setting.
: The tone needs to be compatible. The grimdark of Warhammer is at odds with Tolkein’s high fantasy.
: There needs to be some logic to make the crossover interesting. For example a native American shaman type being brought across the Atlantic to hunt the beast of Gevudan in Louis XV’s France has a logic that’s interesting. Tarzan running around the streets of London is interesting. A kungu-fu monk wandering the Wild West has a logic that’s interesting. It needs to be more than just a fish out of water, but some special skills that make the story more interesting.
: The society needs to be open to the outsiders. For example outsiders turning up in Edo era Japan is an automatic war of extermination.

[Quertus]

As ever, having played in a group with (functional) Thor and an (actual) sentient potted plant, I just have to point out that, like Smallville, balance of power level only matters if you make it matter. Yes, for most groups, it will, but there is nothing inherent in RPGs that says that you have to balance the power of the group to have fun.

Similarly, I have a lot of fun when the characters - even if they're from the same setting - are approaching the problem differently, with a very different tone or theme. Say the party finds a cookie jar. One character may be taking the cookies as food, another the cookie jar as loot, and a third evaluating the ingredients of the cookies to understand what must be in the area, and a fourth evaluating the style of the cookie jar to determine its origins. I find that much more enjoyable than a party of D&D determinators all evaluating the optimal GP to weight ratio of the loot.

In short, most anything that anyone says "you can't do", I look at and say, "that sounds fun"! :smallbiggrin:

[Florian]

Ah, ye goode olde Quertussi.

Contemplate a funny little thing for a while: Marvel Heroic Role-play received excessively good praise because they managed to handle nearly any Marvel character simultaneously in a very good and overall balanced way. Yes, that starts with Bob, Agent of Hydra (Which is basically the equivalent to your potted plant) up to Dr. Strange.

[Quertus]

Ah, ye goode olde Quertussi.

Contemplate a funny little thing for a while: Marvel Heroic Role-play received excessively good praise because they managed to handle nearly any Marvel character simultaneously in a very good and overall balanced way. Yes, that starts with Bob, Agent of Hydra (Which is basically the equivalent to your potted plant) up to Dr. Strange.

I mean, I'll bet Bob had amazing super powers, like "move under his own power" and "push buttons". My sentient potted plant would be jealous.

Anyway, I'm curious what Marvel Heroic Role-play's trick was.

[Jay R]

There are lots of different ways to play, and nobody wants to play all of them. When this kind of situation comes up, talk to each other, listen in good faith, and recognize that some ways to play can't work together.

The DM needs to be flexible with player ideas that are not opposed to the point of the game.
The player needs to be willing to play in the game the DM is running in a way that doesn't hurt the game for others.

If the game the DM is running now is not compatible with the only game a player is willing to play now, then that player can't play in that game. This could mean changing games, or that the player can't play in that game.

Don't be cruel about it. Wish the player good luck in finding a DM who wants to run the kind of game he or she wants to play.

I will not allow a cross-genre or cross-setting character in a world I'm playing unless the game was designed with that in mind. This is no different from saying that if you want to play baseball, and I'm running a football game, you can't play in that game. Don't expect to bring a baseball bat onto the football field and complain that the referee is being unfair for not allowing it.

[Knaight]

Anyway, I'm curious what Marvel Heroic Role-play's trick was.

Logarithmic scales. It's pretty much the same way Fudge manages to do it across an even broader range of characters; log scales are just incredibly useful for hugely varied numbers.

[Arbane]

Anyway, I'm curious what Marvel Heroic Role-play's trick was.

From what I recall, its trick was 'Not caring much about balance'.