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Post by Jaymz on Jun 30, 2014 2:14:56 GMT
Phaseworld Meets Robotech
At the end of Shadow Chronicles we see the SDF-3 drifting towardfs what was assumed to be a black hole. But it wasn't. It was a huge dimensional vortex. The SDF-3 eventually is pulled through it into the Anvil Galaxy and is literally left to fend for itself.
GO!
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Post by MacrossMike on Jun 30, 2014 3:55:11 GMT
Phaseworld Meets Robotech At the end of Shadow Chronicles we see the SDF-3 drifting towardfs what was assumed to be a black hole. But it wasn't. It was a huge dimensional vortex. The SDF-3 eventually is pulled through it into the Anvil Galaxy and is literally left to fend for itself. GO! *drops an anvil on it* Been there, done that... the "neutron-s warhead makes a dimensional rift" schtick has to be THE most common story hook for GMs who have gotten bored with the Robotech setting and tried to covertly export their games to other universes. The sessions that I've seen sue that do tend to fall into a pattern... either the plot ends up a retread of the Macross Saga where the UEEF ship is a single human ship beset by alien attackers on its way back home, or they end up gradually adopting the new universe's tech over their own and it stops being Robotech after a while (which is usually a massive improvement). Back before the Shadow Chronicles film came out, the same basic premise was usually applied to the SDF-3 vanishing due to a fold accident while en route to rejoin the fleet for the third reclamation force's attack on Earth. This seems to be one of those things that many Robotech games eventually turn to as their bored GMs look to escape the incredibly limited and stifling Robotech setting and migrate their game to a different universe or even a different genre. It's done one of two ways... either a GM gradually weans his players off the Robotech 'verse's gear to gradually change the setting with a minimum of bitching, or it's used as the GM's hard reset to start a new game right away without rerolling characters. My thought would be... why not just run a Phase World game? |
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Post by Jaymz on Jul 1, 2014 2:17:23 GMT
Because, believe it or not, some people do actually LIKE Robotech and just want to branch it out beyond it's own confines, that's all.  |
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Post by MacrossMike on Jul 1, 2014 2:50:59 GMT
Because, believe it or not, some people do actually LIKE Robotech and just want to branch it out beyond it's own confines, that's all. Depends on how you look at it...  On the one hand, you could view it as the GM trying to save the game from the stagnation of Robotech by making the setting anything other than Robotech. On the other, you could view it as the players wanting to branch the Robotech story out beyond the confines of Robotech's setting by making the setting anything other than... ... ... wait, these are the same thing. |
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Post by Jaymz on Jul 1, 2014 2:55:02 GMT
LOL either way though they are bringing robotech beyond robotech which is the point.
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Post by MacrossMike on Jul 1, 2014 3:49:15 GMT
LOL either way though they are bringing robotech beyond robotech which is the point. Still... I think the whole "neutron-s missiles create a space warp" thing is overdone... there's gotta be another way to go about it that isn't so cliche. As an example, there was one game run by a friend of mine where his Robotech game ended up having a tie-in to The Vision of Escaflowne... which was done in such a way that I was actually taken aback by the cleverness of it all. What he did with it was he had the Invid's energy shields be a kind of dimensional disruption, which, when overloaded by concentrated synchro cannon fire, collapsed and temporarily formed a bridge to Gaia, the hidden alternate Earth created by the ancient Atlanteans. The game went on to reveal that the reason that humans and Tirolians had so much trouble getting to grips with the flowers of life and robotechnology was that it simply wasn't operating on conventional physics... that the flowers of life were not the product of random evolution, but a piece of Atlantean magitek that was created to power the Zone of Absolute Fortune. As his plot went on, he established that the Invid's affinity for the flowers of life was the result of them being an aquatic breed of beast-man whose rulers used the Zone of Absolute Fortune to flee the Atlantean apocalypse. On the whole, he used it to spackle over a lot of the plot problems in RT and it worked shockingly well. |
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Post by Jaymz on Jul 1, 2014 12:21:17 GMT
That's pretty cool. Problem is by and large, Palladium players don;t think that deeply unfortunately.....mind most gamers in general do not think that deeply.
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Post by MacrossMike on Jul 1, 2014 12:50:09 GMT
That's pretty cool. Problem is by and large, Palladium players don;t think that deeply unfortunately.....mind most gamers in general do not think that deeply. In my opinion, that's the real problem with doing a "crossover" type game... unless you've seriously thought it out, and there are some deeply profound revelations awaiting the players, moving the game to another universe is effectively the same as coming up with another set of very generic villains for the same universe. It doesn't really add anything to the game. The reason for the crossover should, ultimately, underpin the entire plot... otherwise you're just left with one of those Star Trek style bits of episodic dissonance where someone visits the mirror universe and they're all "Man, that place was a shithole. Glad we don't have to go back... now let's forget this ever happened within five minutes, plz." It should be a world-changing revelation because you are, after all, literally changing their world. To draw a couple of other examples from the broader realm of gaming (in this case, video gaming), you have Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy and Project X Zone. In the former, the plot involves the planet Ouroboros being temporarily dislocated in space and time by a natural (but intense) fold fault that periodically isolates the planet. It's not simply a plot coupon to allow the game to include cameos from all of the Macross titles that preceded it, it's actually vital to the plot because the villain du jour wants to use that temporal dislocation via an ancient Protoculture weapon to go back in time and make the destruction of Earth in 2010 un-happen. Project X Zone is a crossover between a few dozen game universes, but the whole reason for the crossover is the portal stone that the protagonist's family has been using to monitor and exploit alternate realities for their own gain has become intelligent as a result of their exploitation and is sick of their shit, so it created a few incarnations of its intelligence and "stole" itself. The Vision of Escaflowne is a great example of this from animation... the Atlanteans fucked the world over so royally the best they could do to fix it was create a whole second world and hide it, so their creations and all the people who knew they existed, could live in their relative approximation of peace and hopefully learn something from the mistakes the Atlanteans had made. Didn't work out, thanks to there being a working but unstable gateway between Gaia and the "mystic moon" (Earth) that periodically allowed two-way travel between the worlds. A negative space wedgie that ultimately let both the protagonist Hitomi and the guy who would one day become the big bad Emperor Dornkirk arrive on Gaia in the first place and set up the plot... the whole mess would've been impossible if not for people from one world being able to travel between the two worlds. |
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Post by Jaymz on Jul 1, 2014 16:27:26 GMT
You give typical gamers more credit than they deserve Mike. LOL
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Post by MacrossMike on Jul 1, 2014 22:25:33 GMT
You give typical gamers more credit than they deserve Mike. LOL I'd rather keep my standards too high than too low... which is why I make a shitty Robotech fan. |
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Post by Jaymz on Jul 1, 2014 22:53:06 GMT
Lol
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Post by MacrossMike on Jul 1, 2014 23:53:07 GMT
Unrealistic it may be, but I stand by my earlier point that a crossover shouldn't really be done "for the lulz"... if you're going to do one, then its plot needs to make the actual crossing-over into another universe a significant motive factor in the plot. They're not vacationing, after all, and travel between parallel universes isn't something that's exactly commonplace. |
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Post by Jaymz on Jul 1, 2014 23:59:13 GMT
Well the point is they want to get home preferably. How they go about that is the question and can they survive long enough to figure it out and make it happen.
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Post by MacrossMike on Jul 2, 2014 1:53:08 GMT
Well the point is they want to get home preferably. How they go about that is the question and can they survive long enough to figure it out and make it happen. Y'see... to me, that's a weak plot. They have to be there for a reason. It might not be immediately apparent, but there should always be some kind of deeper reason that your player characters are going to find themselves trapped in another reality. Just having them end up there by accident, bumming around some alternate universe like transdimensional vacationers on a particularly uninspiring pub crawl isn't going to get players to take the plight of their characters seriously. Just "stay alive" and "get home" don't make for especially compelling long-term goals, narratively. After all, just look at how well that didn't work out for Star Trek: Voyager. |
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Post by Jaymz on Jul 2, 2014 2:03:55 GMT
You mean 7 seasons and what 160 episodes or so? Dude you are reading too much into this. The original post is a basic premise not a full fledged campaign after all. |
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Post by MacrossMike on Jul 2, 2014 2:53:59 GMT
You mean 7 seasons and what 160 episodes or so? ... while presiding over an enormous drop in ratings 1, several desperate and largely unsuccessful attempts to jettison dead weight characters 2, damn near constant complaints from the actors 3 playing those characters, and so thoroughly neutering the setting's antagonists 4 that the one course of action the studio would agree to was to kill the mess and start fresh, while also managing to leave audiences wanting to tar and feather the cast, crew, and network. 1. About 50-60%, by all accounts... a fall that was briefly arrested, but not reversed, by 2, before resuming its headlong plunge to the worst ratings the franchise had until Enterprise's second season. Enterprise topped it by managing 66%, though the numerical drop in viewership was smaller by several million.
2. Captain Janeway, Commander Chakotay, Ensign Kim, and Kes... with Janeway being saved by a last-minute contract compromise, Chakotay by his actor's passive-aggressive attitude, and Kim by Entertainment Weekly taking a liking to a character the producers hated. Kes was jettisoned in favor of 7 of 9.
3. Robert Beltran (Chakotay) in particular, who condemned practically everything about the show, but also Jeri Ryan (7 of 9) over her role as wank material, and Kate Mulgrew (Janeway) over Janeway's inconsistent characterization that she thought made the character feel distinctly bipolar.4. The Borg, in particular, got screwed so hard that, after Nemesis neutered the Romulans, there were no credible antagonists left in the 24th century and they took a step backwards with Enterprise... which turned out to be a step backwards into a minefield... while blindfolded... and drunk... with an inner ear infection... followed by a marching band.Dude you are reading too much into this. The original post is a basic premise not a full fledged campaign after all. Nah, I'm offering good general advice for doing a crossover well... you're reading a scathing indictment of something into it.  |
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Post by Jaymz on Jul 2, 2014 3:07:53 GMT
Drop in ratings or not it still lasted 7 seasons And I am not reading a scathing indictment. The original post was just a basic premise to the whole thing. Who ever runs it can do whatever they wish as the underlying plot line. |
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Post by MacrossMike on Jul 2, 2014 14:04:56 GMT
Drop in ratings or not it still lasted 7 seasons Sometimes producers who are simply too dumb to live refuse to give up on projects that are demonstrably bad ideas... like hiring Shia LeBeouf for an acting role, or hoping that cheap, PG T&A from Plenty of Two and T'plastic of Vulcan will help save a failing franchise built on intellectual and character-driven sci-fi. (Mind you, Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was nothing if not ironclad proof that just arbitrarily throwing T&A in won't save ANYTHING for which the audience is older than about sixteen.) And I am not reading a scathing indictment. The original post was just a basic premise to the whole thing. Who ever runs it can do whatever they wish as the underlying plot line. *nods* And I'm offering guidance in the form of a suggestion that doing crossovers simply for the sake of a crossover is a bad idea, and that without some kind of actual plot-significant reason to take characters from one universe and dump them in another, doing so leads to a lot of frankly insipid and pointless storytelling... never mind having only "get home alive" as a goal. If you're writing for a crossover game, you gotta be clever. |
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Post by Jaymz on Jul 2, 2014 14:33:20 GMT
A lot of that does have to do with the specific players too though.
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Post by MacrossMike on Jul 2, 2014 16:37:14 GMT
A lot of that does have to do with the specific players too though. True, but on the whole the premise of "you've been dropped a quintillion miles from anything familiar, now get home safe" doesn't tend to hold interest for very long... hence the issues with Voyager's writing that necessitated the crew develop a bad case of attention deficit disorder and a fixation with shiny objects so the trip home wouldn't just be a boring one-way commute. There's gotta be a hook... a serious, planet-sized hook that'll make the trip to another reality more significant than a sightseeing tour. Is one of the players secretly from the alternate reality? Is the other reality plotting an invasion and dragged some schmucks over to scope out the local opposition, etc. |
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Post by Jaymz on Jul 2, 2014 18:09:44 GMT
You and deal with very different gamers then lol
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Post by MacrossMike on Jul 2, 2014 19:27:27 GMT
You and deal with very different gamers then lol Quite possibly... then again, is that a function of the fact that Palladium's system is called the best game almost nobody actually plays? |
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Post by Jaymz on Jul 3, 2014 0:41:26 GMT
Or the actual intellect level of the gamers in question.
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Post by MacrossMike on Jul 3, 2014 0:53:47 GMT
Or the actual intellect level of the gamers in question. Man, I wasn't gonna go there... shame on you. Still, with as many plot holes as Robotech has, I think even the slow children can appreciate a carefully crafted crossover plot that exploits those plot holes for narrative gain. |
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Post by Jaymz on Jul 3, 2014 1:01:27 GMT
You'd be surprised. Most gamers I've dealt with for the last 20 years are largely hack and slash man. They just want shit to blow up.
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Post by MacrossMike on Jul 3, 2014 1:16:56 GMT
You'd be surprised. Most gamers I've dealt with for the last 20 years are largely hack and slash man. They just want shit to blow up. You'd be surprised how many hack-and-slashers get onboard with the idea of being the "Chosen one" instead of just arbitrary sword-wielding jackass number 305,298,294,112,104. |
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Post by Jaymz on Jul 3, 2014 1:20:48 GMT
The problem lies that most of those hack n slash gamers are also hack n slash GMs.
Myself, for my own games prefer deeper plots etc, as you do and as a couple of my personal fellow gamers. We are not the norm sadly.
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Post by MacrossMike on Jul 3, 2014 3:34:29 GMT
The problem lies that most of those hack n slash gamers are also hack n slash GMs. Myself, for my own games prefer deeper plots etc, as you do and as a couple of my personal fellow gamers. We are not the norm sadly. So, you might say they're... hacks? *puts on sunglasses, walks away as the CSI theme starts playing* |
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Post by Jaymz on Jul 3, 2014 11:16:11 GMT
Unfortunately I cannot disagree with that statement
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Post by kryptt on Jul 5, 2014 13:10:07 GMT
I still don't understand how Janeway helped some of the Borg rebel yet didn't use it to get home faster. I mean the sphere is right there. She could have had Torres adapt voyagers shields have the sphere open a transwarp conduit, follow it to the alpha quadrant, assimilate the borg tech help the drones like she did 7 of 9. Oh no that's not good enough. Instead allow Janeway to blatenly break the temporal prime directive and call it a day. Talk about lazy story telling. Don't get me wrong now that I have Netflix and lots of free time it's ok to watch, but some of the creative choices just don't make any sense. I hope Renegades fares better.
Don't even get me started on Enterprise. The best part of that show is T'pal and the theme song. The nx-1 wasn't a bad design, but again lazy story telling. It looks like they copied the Akira design and only inverted the nacelles.
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