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Waterdeep Merch
2020-02-26, 10:50 AM
You've played roleplaying games before- countless, if you're lucky. Have you ever considered how your various characters would interact if put on a team and tasked with saving the world?

What's your best team? Your worst? The funniest? Do you think they could pull it off? Are they even going to try?

SimonMoon6
2020-02-27, 08:35 PM
Well, back in the 80's when I was in college, my group of friends were playing in and/or running several games. One day, I decided to have a cross-over game. For each of the five or six of us, that player's character from each game (or an NPC for the GM/DM) was brought to another world, where they were given quests to perform together. I've forgotten most of the details because it's been so long ago, but it seemed to work out, even though the characters were from completely different game systems (and their abilities were then translated into one particular game system). Some were D&D characters, some were superheroes, etc.

I do recall that the scenario began with something that I now consider to have been a mistake. The powerful being that brought them there started off by saying that each group (from one particular game) needed to try to kill the other groups. Obviously, they weren't gonna fall for that and they didn't... and I somehow thought at the time that they might spend some time fighting each other... but, I mean, obviously they wouldn't.

Kaptin Keen
2020-02-28, 02:22 AM
My personal crossover would be a bunch of grumpy old men who refuse to work with each other. There'd be clerics and paladins, hardnosed detectives, tough guardsmen - all with similar views of how the world needs to good kick in the groin to wake it up and smell the bullcrap.

I do play other things - but those crossovers wouldn't be nearly as fun or dysfunctional.

Lord Raziere
2020-02-28, 03:08 AM
I once made a story story of various characters I've played celebrating christmas mostly for feels and funnies, from four masterminds comparing their plans, to characters who never got their stories finished complaining about it, to inventors trying to make new tech and it going horribly wrong, things like that, topped off with them stopping Santa Rorshach from ruining Christmas so as to put the real Santa back in place: Santa Lelouche. it was pure fun nonsense.

if I were to do a personal crossover now? that would go super anime or super comic book real quick. like I play high-powered characters, from things like a dragon mad scientist who makes magitech as my first oldest one, to my second oldest character who is crazy reckless shonen protagonist up to eleven with storm magic, all the way to the cyborg lesbian time travelers who kill DBZ villains with cosplay martial arts, with various things in between like: an alchemist who created elemental life, a mastermind who controls shadows, naruto OCs, a greedy goblin fire mage inventor, a superheroine who is both shapeshifter and a multiplier with identity problems, a former supervillain with power armor and a robot army trying to redeem himself, an elf summoner diplomat who fell in love with human supersoldier cyborg who hated elves at first. a psychic who has to contain his wild incredible power with a helmet, a vampire tiefling spellsword who worships Tzeentch, also there were at least one con-man, might have to remake that one, don't remember him enough. it would be crazy crossover between many worlds to stop a powerful cosmic threat just to give them something that could even pose a threat to their combined power and intelligence, because I don't play stupid characters even when I make them silly. there would be some arguments and confusion at each other, but ultimately they'd all be fine with each other, save the day then go their separate ways.

and thats not counting the characters I PLAN on making that are just as crazy to add to all that!

Rater202
2020-02-28, 07:02 PM
Half of them would try to kill each other, the other half wouldn't give a crap, and Sarah Smith(teen with severe trust issues, openly lesbian) would be awkwardly starring at Pitosu(bronze-skinned demon-woman who dresses like a sexy genie.)

Ignimortis
2020-02-29, 09:13 AM
Oh, that's a neat one. So the basic cast would probably be, if I pick one from each game/setting:


Einar Sorensen, a viking Brujah (VtM) from the 10th century who went to Americas with Leif Ericsson and got speared through the heart by natives, but resurfaced in the 90s due to some archeologists meddling with things. Equal parts honorable (for a given value of honor) and boisterous, not usually given to self-reflection, but sometimes surprisingly thoughtful.
Allyson Kyren (aka Lady), an elven (technically) supersoldier made as a testbed for bioware (Shadowrun, obviously) and genetic enhancements. Has a violent streak that she doesn't want to admit is her own and instead attributes it to conditioning and "her other self", A-274 (who prefers to go by "Countess" instead and who wouldn't exist if Allyson actually admitted things to herself). Otherwise cold and professional, doesn't have a lot of empathy for other people, but actively tries to develop it and follows a code of honor that's supposed to stop her from manifesting her more unpleasant sides.
Adrius Karnos, an elven gunblade master (actually Kensei Monk, D&D) who is pretty much a perfect hero - kind, wise and courageous. Functionally immortal unless killed in a fight, currently rules an elven colony island because someone has to and he's somehow the best candidate. Would actually welcome saving the world as something to do.

The only way those three would actually manage to save the world would be an action movie. Neither of them are good at talking things out, but all of them are great at kicking ass and taking names. Allyson is smart and logical, Adrius basically had a metaphorical third eye (passive Perception 32 is a real thing), and Einar is...well, he's actually just good at killing things, maybe some detective work, but he'd be beaten out by the other two there.

Still, I figure they could work together - Einar knows a lot about having to control darker impulses, being a Brujah who has always struggled to master the Beast and actually succeeded in overpowering it, so he can understand things about Allyson and give some advice there. Adrius would act as a moral compass, since Einar is more lawful than good, and Allyson doesn't care about most things unless they resonate with her somehow. Allyson would be someone who actually makes plans and analyzes what's going on, since the other two are pretty straightforward.

There could be some content about them being from very different worlds, of course - Allyson is more chrome than flesh, Einar is very different from both D&D and SR vampires, and Adrius basically lives in a late-medieval world with some magitek and stuff left from a previous civilization which fell apart and almost nuked the planet.

Matuka
2020-03-01, 01:27 AM
A ticking time bomb as it would be full both my good and evil characters. I can see my evil characters being smart enough to put on an act until they can shove the good ones off a cliff or catch them off guard. I can see my good characters all getting along. There all strong, axe/sword wielding badasses. My villains would also get along since one loves carnage but is smart enough to restrain himself and the other serves evil itself. It would be an interesting series to watch, wondering who gets who first.

Mongobear
2020-03-01, 04:03 AM
We have done a "crossover" campaign solely in d&d 3.5e before.

Using the city of Sigil, we ran a game that had connections to all of the named official settings (Greyhawk, Faerun, Eberron, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, etc) plus the DM at the time's custom setting that we had played in for a few years at the time.

The main gist of it, was that all of the Material planes started to converge, and it was causing catastrophic damage to all of the settlements where the landmasses were meeting. Neverwinter was being ground to dust under Sharn, Castle Greyhawk got shunted into Ravenloft, and smashed Strahd's castle, but he escaped to the Eberron city that had all the zombie slaves. Just all sorts of insane combinations that you dont get from a normal game.

The storyline, was that "The Architect" had awoken, a being that had a hand is creating all of the gods, and used to use Sigil as a seat of power, before all of his creations rebelled, and severed him into numerous pieces, which were used as seeds for all of the separate planes. When his conciousness began to awaken, all of the planes, which were grown from his "body" started to seek each other out, and reform.

The campaign never quite finished, but it required almost all of the god from every setting to ally, and raise army to fight off as yet unseen abominations that he was spawning as a defense mechanism, as well as a few nihilistic factions that decided to actually help him end all known existence.

We got somewhere close to actually finding where his "soul" resided before the game broke up, all sorts of RL issues a kept us from meeting for a long time, and the group never really recovered.

Mordar
2020-03-03, 02:35 PM
You've played roleplaying games before- countless, if you're lucky. Have you ever considered how your various characters would interact if put on a team and tasked with saving the world?

What's your best team? Your worst? The funniest? Do you think they could pull it off? Are they even going to try?


Ral D'Oriel - Rolemaster Montebanc;
Josef Kinder - Call of C'thulhu Historian/Linguist;
Kellen - AD&D Cavalier;
JJ - Shadowrun Rigger;
Lorinc Boros - Earthdawn Ork Skirmisher


Some tough choices there...but only because I had to eliminate characters. I pretty much always play "good" guys, so there isn't a lot of risk of characters not wanting to save the world, and they'd be able to put any personal conflict issues aside to do it.

Ral would be the Face, of course, with solid stealth and combat ability. Josef is the behind-the-scenes leader with a very strong research background. Kellen is the front-line combat force...though it was tough to not pick a modern or future era character here. Swords and armor doesn't stand up against phasers (or even Uzis), but character over optimization here. JJ provides all the transport and a bunch of fire power. Lorinc has stealth, durability and offensive capability to spare.

Obviously the threat would have to be something they could conceivably defeat...but they'd certainly be all for trying regardless.

The list that didn't quite make the cut includes:


Mordar - 3e Dwarf Fighter/Wizard;
Smacks - Shadowrun Orc Ganger/Gunfighter/Street Sam;
Laurant - Earthdawn T'skrang Swordmaster;
Qwik - Mutants and Masterminds Speedster;
Sventovit Adreiovich iz Riga - Vampire the Dark Ages Gangrel


- M

EggKookoo
2020-03-03, 03:07 PM
Main cast:

Elliot Singh, 1920s-era Chinese-American paranormal investigator. Good with a shotgun.
Robert MacShinneigh, a wisecracking Scottish werewolf with a pet rabbit named Earatosthenes.
Wild Card, teen mutant with 100 superpowers and no way to control which one he uses next.

Guest stars:

Luther Aron, journalist, chemist, coward. Not necessarily in that order.
G'rune D'sair, a warlord with little compassion and less concern for morality. Armed with a magic sword that can slice through anything ("once per day").
Starr, an alien left behind on Earth, searching for a way home.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-03-04, 12:33 AM
You've played roleplaying games before- countless, if you're lucky. Have you ever considered how your various characters would interact if put on a team and tasked with saving the world?

What's your best team? Your worst? The funniest? Do you think they could pull it off? Are they even going to try?

I've played in two crossover one-shots from two different GM's, both times as Inquisitor Lord Loria of the Ordo Malleus. Was pretty funny, particularly because I considered the first time as "canon" for her the second time. I used her DH stats both times, but I kind of wish I had actually used her real 40k stats [though, to be fair, both occurred at a time when there weren't ****s-and-giggles custom character ability tables for narrative/open play 40k].


As for my personal collection of TTRPG PC's, I've been AEthelwyn the Human Poctdoc Mad Scientist Sorcerer, Castiel the Aasimar Anarcho-Communist Cleric, Euen MacFadden the Scottish WWI Soldier, Arabella Svanhild the Rogue Trader, Innoetzia the Human Businesswoman Wizard, Annelie the Planar Space Dread Vampire Sorcerer, and Elthrai the Drow Assassin Spy. Plus a couple of short term characters from one-shots and short events that didn't really count.

Castiel is a cleric from the plane of CG who believe government is bad and people should be nice to each other and cooperate and wanders the planes trying to help revolutions by the poor and working class to overthrow the rich and powerful. Last we left her, she was trying to overthrow a villain known as "the Tyrant" who was trying to take over a material plane. She'd be the leader of team, who has the character arc about learning to lead well, inspire everyone when things look bad, confront her personal failings, and be generally heroic.

Euen was a poor WWI veteran who was trying to emigrate to America to find a new life, and was last left having settled down in a fishing village on an island in the Canadian Maritimes that he helped to save from a Great Old One that had shipwrecked him and his party there using the BAR given to him by a much wealthier party member and a 5" deck gun from a wrecked destroyer. He'd be the "heart" character who has emotional reactions to bad things that happen but still tries his best and is steadfastly part of the team.

AEthelwyn is a well-meaning but not entirely stable or sane divine soul sorcerer of a currently active campaign. Right now, she's studying mutant flesh monsters from a global catastrophe to understand the nature of the catastrophe, while also being paranoid and doing combat with/trying to expose conspiratorial cults that seem to control the world governments. She'd also join team save-the-world, as the smart but kind-of-irritating character who has the eureka moment to solve the puzzle/create the thing the team needs to succeed in the end.

Annelie the Space Vampire is nominally evil but really only when on the punch clock, and protected her world when it was invaded by aliens who deemed it corrupted, because it's her world no other would-be villain is allowed to come and mess with it. Last we left her she was secluded in her planar fortress with her massive army of vampires, skeletons, and wyrwoods. She'd be the dark teammate of team save-the-world, and the 12th hour winged hussars who shows up from her seclusion to join the team when all seems lost.


Honorable mention to Lord Loria, who would be the wisewoman seer who delivers the quest at the beginning and gives a cryptic message to the team about the power of teamwork or something at the beginning and then is never seen again until just before the credits when the party finally understands the significance of her cryptic message.



Arabella, Innoetzia, and Elthrai would probably not be on team save-the-world. They'd be either the villainous lieutenants who betray the villain in the last act, the rival squad who's always in conflict and working against the core cast until they have to at least tolerate each other to win, or allies of convenience to team save-the-world who are in constant tension with the core cast. Arabella and Innoetzia are both profit-motivated and self-serving, and Arabella is additionally an excellent schemer who uses dishonesty and bureaucracy to get her way. Elthrai is just deficient in loyalty and morality, and very mercenary-ish and willing to work for the highest bidder without any real though or care about the consequences as long as she sees herself getting out okay.

togapika
2020-03-04, 08:56 PM
My personal crossover would be a bunch of grumpy old men who refuse to work with each other. There'd be clerics and paladins, hardnosed detectives, tough guardsmen - all with similar views of how the world needs to good kick in the groin to wake it up and smell the bullcrap.

I do play other things - but those crossovers wouldn't be nearly as fun or dysfunctional.

There was a game I was privy to at Gencon where folks came in with already generated characters and the party was 5 knight/paladin characters and a single half-elven bard...

VincentTakeda
2020-03-05, 12:34 AM
Pretty sure a comic was made representing what happens when all my characters get together. Its called 'crisis of infinite sues' by Kevin Bolk and Clare Moseley.

Quertus
2020-03-06, 11:06 PM
You've played roleplaying games before- countless, if you're lucky. Have you ever considered how your various characters would interact if put on a team and tasked with saving the world?

What's your best team? Your worst? The funniest? Do you think they could pull it off? Are they even going to try?

My various characters put on a team? I mean, I prefer to play games where each player can field up to 3 PCs, so… yeah, I've done that.

Characters from multiple systems? That's more rare. But I know from experience that I enjoy that kind of game. And, when I run "myself" as a character, getting my PCs together is definitely a goal. And, good or evil, most of my characters have "works well with others" as a prime requisite, so there's not gonna be huge issues - if they buy in to the task.

Saving the world? Which one? Here, we start to run into a little trouble, as some of my characters would rather destroy the world than save it - depending on the world.

I've made team-ups ranging in size from 2 to just over 100 before. In the larger team-ups, there were definitely some… infrastructure issues, multiple people qualified for the same positions, different base expectations, etc. Fortunately, such huge team-ups generally involve some very serious focus, so it's easier for my characters to accept certain issues (unfair finance distribution, annoying leadership, etc) than under normal circumstances. I would say that, in D&D terms, the "law/chaos" axis caused more friction than the "good/evil" one, although simple "conflicting personalities" was a larger issue.

In one of the stories I wrote about my characters teaming up to save the world, most of my chapters were dedicated to their distrust of one another. The story actually opens with a particularly paranoid character learning that he has a visitor, and spending several rounds buffing himself while you listen to his train of thought of how to deal with the intruder in case he's a doppelganger, or a disguised assassin, or even actually what he appears to be. I think that they would qualify as the most dysfunctional team-up I've made.

The best group I've made… would be one that's kinda "the Avengers" of my characters: a team with somewhat shifting membership, that at times includes most of the characters that I most commonly discuss, and a few more. Some of the "core" members include…

Quertus is my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named. A very epic D&D Wizard with more custom senses than there are spells in (3e) core, and sporting a Christmas tree of artifacts from multiple realities, Quertus is also the most familiar of the group with world- and reality-hopping. Quertus' usual tactical ineptitude does not hold him back as much in this group, as there are several who will give Quertus… requests. Quertus prefers to study and learn, and generally takes an active hand only if forced to, if no one else is able to do so, or if someone makes a reasonable request. Quertus is voted most likely to not get out of bed (or his lab) for anything less than an "end of the world" scenario… or because a friend asked him to.

The only one I would consider more powerful than Quertus is Cutter. Hailing from a homebrew system called Paradox, Cutter can, in theory, do, well, anything. Basically, name the DC (to walk through a Wall of Force, to jump to the moon, to punch you so hard he knocks you into slithery dimension, whatever), and he evaluates that as a price, and asks himself if he's willing to pay it. His items are few, but they are literally entire characters themselves. In practice, Cutter is mostly comic relief, failing at juggling, rhyming, or at hitting foes that dodge (or are more than a few feet away, in whose general direction he may lob a seemingly inexhaustible supply of bouncy balls). His motives… he seems to actually enjoy adventure (the loon!).

As long as we're discussing characters who don't do much, I should probably mention Raymond. A telepathic vampire, also hailing from Paradox, Raymond was, mechanically, an Illithid Savant about a decade before such was published. Raymond would be able to go one-on-one with Charles Xavier but, as he was specialized in one-on-one, Raymond would boggle at Xavier's ability to manipulate a crowd - let alone a country. Raymond prefers to telepathically link the party, then act as Control… from a safe distance (like, you know, several planes away). Raymond has very little motivation beyond survival and enlightened self-interest.

Although Raymond may be Control, the best tactician is undeniably Armus. As a weak character, Armus… often acts as Face. And uses a custom Polyhedron Gateway to transport the party. And fights a lot (he's not one to let his weakness slow him down). Armus is… complicated. And emo, and broken.

Hailing from the World of Darkness, we have… hmmm… the Deacon, who is probably the most comfortable of the group with, well, the group, reality travel, etc. He does everything with gusto and style, even - perhaps especially - when he's not terribly good at it. He used to be the one most likely to destroy the world (one of his many titles was "The Destroyer of Worlds"), but he has… mellowed in recent decades. He's in it for the LOLs.

Combat really should generally be left to the Scion Hunter, who can easily solo small armies. Although he has numerous divine tricks up his sleeve, Hunter mostly focuses on mundane tasks, like stealth or hunting. Hunter is nearly as broken as Armus, and fears the loss of his companions.

And then there's two Jack-of-all-trades characters, Crystal from D&D, and Immergent the superhero. In a backwards style, Crystal does everything through personal power, while Immergent acts through a Christmas tree of items. Crystal is a free spirit who has little to do with the group anymore, while Immergent was raised from… "birth"… to be a superhero.

Lastly, although he's not in the group yet, I'll mention one that the group has their eyes on: the superhero Victor. Having survived the destruction of the multiverse, Victor is driven to gather the power/tools/allies/whatever he deems necessary to guarantee that such a cataclysmic event never happens again, while exploring the new multiverse. Victor is a multidimensional sentient nannite swarm, capable of creating bodies ("organic components") and advanced technology tools out of any available matter, in multiple locations / realities simultaneously.

There is very little I wouldn't expect them to succeed in accomplishing, as a team, if they put their mind to it. Would they get along? Yes, but… their teamwork and organization are both suboptimal in several ways. Probably the most jarring is that, rather than lead the team, Armus is subservient to Quertus, and Quertus considers Armus to be too… dull… to pay him any mind, tactically. Also, the Deacon will finish the milk, and put the empty cartoon back in the fridge.

Trask
2020-03-08, 07:00 PM
Most of my D&D characters would probably get along reasonably enough, stolid and stern clerics, boisterous and brash paladins, barbarians, and fighters. I was never much for wizards and their ilk. But my most recent character, a ice-queen type merciless warrior and sorceress with ambitions of royalty, she would definitely clash with the others.