Pro-millinerial tension

Hats can be big in adventure fiction. Best known of all maybe is that myth made for Indiana Jones.

But how do we know how important they are, or more importantly when they've fallen off? In mass wargames, who cares? In skirmish games many might, and in tactical roleplay it could be critical, not least because there could be things under them. But where's the rule, or rather that option?

And what about wigs, bandannas or weirder, grimdarkling-ish things? The navigators of 40K have a third eye with an effect that in D&D and related games could be save or die: if it slips, we really need to know. They might be the season's must-have accessory - or not - and affect reactions. Here's a simple approach:

The glad lightness of a far future and alterpluristemics

The recent focus on paths among universes or settings set off some thinking here. What if the journey could be planned, or the destination known, or a traveller could move back and forth? You could import/export between paradigms. Then came the next thought...

Which item from any given setting or universe could really change the nature of another?

One that came to my mind was the flower from the classic Star Trek episode "This Side of Paradise". It sprayed spores that removed resistance to empathy and freer love - see the first video below. And I thought of the grim dark of a setting like the 41st millennium.

Wouldn't work? Xenophobia between the factions is just too strong? In the second - and potentially very offensive - video, of Richard Herring's Hitler Moustache, a train of thought starts at 3:32 in which Herring jokes that while many of us embrace the existence of so many nations, anyone who sees only Them and Us is just one step from universal love.

Of course, in a war-torn far future like M41, anywhere the flowers were planted could be subject to Exterminatus or the equivalent, and probably would be once their effects were known. Conflict can be made profitable, or be the sum total of experience or a source of identity - that we know. So what mechanism could be used to spread the love around?

Well, the Orks are a major, dynamic vector. And they multiply via spore release. What if a rogue xenobiologist or bad dok raised an Ork to produce the love spore too? Orks get everywhere and could inherit the galaxy. Now they'd share it. What would that mean?

At any rate, a transpluristemic path like one of those for the Ends, especially if it could be hacked or co-opted, or a follow-up found, could give rise to a new kind of protagonist: a figure who travels the settings, maybe the genres, altering them for a given purpose...

Back-to-back reality, or Ouroboral gaming

Cygnus of Servitor Ludi reminded me of this at the dis-Atlantean post. It's a sequence from an old episode of Red Dwarf, a sci-fi sitcom about a group of humanoid misfits lost in space three million years in our future. Just before the clip begins they're blown up...

After watching it again I really want to set up a marathon session with a mix of settings and systems, with each game flowing on into the next and the players running through scenes based on this one, or using the kinds of framing at the Conan le Barbare post.

It could be another approach for S. P.'s guerilla gaming concept, and there might even be a universal supplement in it, just inspiration and possible methods for transformation.

Maybe it could be integrated into the Pluristem campaign when it gets up and running?

_

Triffles (9) - A broken fall

If you opened that trapdoor, it would be well to be careful, or hope for a broken fall.

                                           a limb trapped / strap caught /

                                          branch / ledge / outcrop / pile

              /

a broken fall

/             \

 a good vantage point /           a cry of pain / clatter of
 fortunate line of sight             equipment / breakages

Rules simulating this kind of thing could well be found in skirmish games, and they suit roleplaying too. If a model is close to an edge and struck, on a certain roll they might fall, on another roll get stuck and become a sitting duck. In exchange the model could get a clear shot. Think Han Solo above the sarlacc, here from 8:22.

In general lots of questions. What exactly has the individual fallen on and how will they get down, or even back up? What can they see? What have they lost? Most importantly perhaps, what will be attracted by the noise they've made, and will they fall further? 

It's good for comedy too.