Oh-ho! This definitely will be new territory for you. Introspective desolation is so different from active heroics. But it's awesome that you want to try.

I personally would avoid the glimmer of hope, because then it becomes just another save the world (universe) game. Been there, done that, would hate to bait and switch such a soul crushing setting into something so common. That said, it will be far easier to get any players at all, let alone motivated, for another save the world game.

It's a trade off, familiar playability for new barrens. And this might be jumping into the deep end for one's first go into completely foreign territory. Could be easier running a game of Victoriana, CoC, or Kult with vaguely similar themes, but easier to digest with bits of distracting hope.

As for my avatar, it's a spaceship! It's from an old 8-bit video game called Fantazy Zone. The ship buys wings to fly faster, drops 16 ton weights as bombs, and sprouts NERF feet when near the ground so as to walk fast and collect coin and paper money dropped by defeated enemies.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;700592No, I think there was some good realtalk in your opening paragraph; to be honest this is really the only place I post anymore, and I assiduously avoid "theory" discussion generally speaking.  I think G/N/S is a load of shit, and celebrity 'bloggers all need to be packed into a bus and driven off a cliff outside of GenCon (are there any good high cliffs in Indiana, though?)

You can't realtalk about geek activities, duh . I'll save it for some other time, don't want to potentially derail a thread that may be actually useful for a change. But remember - it'll only be pretentious if you'll do it wrong.

QuoteI think you're right about the timeframe.  Ten years is probably enough, thirty tends towards "so what" territory: we're all middle-aged, so we'll die a bit younger than our average lifespan would have dictated, so what.  Ten is "long enough that we don't just give up in despair, close enough that we have a vested interest in doing whatever we can to keep things quiet or try to find some kind of solution" (see: interpreting SETI messages)

Ten can work - just remember about, for the lack of better word, pacing. The bleakness of the game might cause players to be simply tired, if the campaign gets too long. Perhaps I'm saying only for myself, but there's only so much tragedy I can take in one sitting. Then again, RPGs have an advantage of being a rather weekly thing, so there's a "breather" time between them. Admittedly, the longer period of time also touches on the obviously bleakest aspects of this tragedy - PCs children.

Also, it may help if the PCs are basically not as much as Alpha Superstrike team, but basically Middle - Class CIA Operatives, so to speak - which I was a bit aiming at the previous luxury bit. I think it'd keep the game a bit more grounded, as it'd remind people of the more realistic conspiracy/superspy novels and films. I'd take a bit of inspiration from Delta Green here, alongside perhaps how the PCs were landed in the Agency in the first place. Perhaps they are forced to keep up the appearences with their loved ones? You can also mix the bit - while they live in a great luxury in a locked behind compounds, living a fake life in a fake world. Possibilities are endless, but you should give them some strong focus on what's going on after work, because as Opa notes, this is a very highly character focused game, where most of enjoyment will come from players pondering what the hell their characters are doing, why, and how.

That is not to say, that there isn't also a place for creme da creme of SEALS, Delta Force and what have you in that organisation, after all, there will be times where suits and low - calibre weapons simply won't do. But I think that having the PCs run the "investigative" department as well as the occasional "burst in doors and shoot" will simply work better for the premise, rather than relegate them to purely "burst and shoot" guys.

QuoteYeah, that's the thing...the short story mentions - peripherally - trying to figure out if other "nearby" stellar civilizations were sending research information to Earth in hopes that we could stop or reverse the damage or what, but decoding exactly what signals they were sending wasn't possible...the protagonist mentions that a survival bunker was being built that would outlast the local effects of the Rip by perhaps a half-hour, to continue to study and do research in one final attempt to if not stop or survive then at least to understand what was happening a bit better.

(I've swapped part of your reply for easier context for myself)

As Opa noted - if there will turn out to be a hope after all, to survive, that is, it turns the game around quite a bit. Nothing wrong with it, but it's also your decision. There is also a risk of "bait and switch" attitude from players, especially if they were forced to do such deplorable things as killing whistleblowers, threatening journalists, censoring the media, setting up the Great Firewall of USA, etc. etc. It turns the game closer to darker X - Com basically, except turns out the aliens never arrived.

(on a complete tangent, as I mentioned X - Com, I think the premise'd also fit here, minus the apocalypse - Alpha Centuri suddenly goes out in the sky, and four years later SETI decodes a signal that basically means that a Starhopping civilisation, one that uses a whole star to fuel their jump, is coming our way, and if we don't want the Sun to go cold, we'd better be ready for a fight)

Also, as I mentioned Delta Green, something clicked in my mind. What is often forgotten about Lovecraft mythos, in this age as we look through the lenses of Call of Cthulhu adventures (where those Ancient Old Ones usually need a group of d12+5 can opener wielding cultists to awaken them from their slumber), and general anthropocentric works of his continuators, I can't help but ponder that the inevitableness of apocalypse, of humanity being squashed like a meaningless ant which has outlived it's usefulness in some being's game, whether it was useful or not, was also part of the original Mythos - Cthulhu will one day wake up, whether there are cultists to greet him, or not. Perhaps they'd be rewarded, or perhaps they simply imagined that to give their lives meaning. And I guess what I'm trying to say is, that the premise did work in an RPG before, even if covered by horror & occult sauce rather than sci - fi one.

QuoteI like the Snowden angle, also the whole "world leader goes nuts, locks himself inside a command facility, tries to start a nuclear war" angle.  Now how do you explain the sudden insanity, the need to sanction that leader to a world ignorant of the coming Rip?

As for the Snowden angle - I think this may be a good introductory adventure indeed. Have players as CIA operatives, who think they are going after a whistleblower to force a political concession on NSA (as I suspect CIA and NSA likes each other as much as GRU and KGB did), and as they are asked for a briefing, they suddenly learn from CIA chief himself that Echelon wasn't created to spy on people, but to prevent the Internet from learning...

As for the Nuclear War scenario - well, this kind of depends on whether or not you want a more grounded in reality conspiration, or the Hollywood kind. By the latter I mean how in Hollywood films about, for example, aliens attacking Earth, you can note how US government is caught with their pants down, but everyone else wasn't wearing pants at all, just waiting for Uncle Sam to save everyone. And you can easily apply the principle here as well - US controls everything, the President knows, but the rest of the world is to be kept in silence, with extreme prejudice. The other kind - where most of the world's top brass knows (after all let's face it, it's not that Merkel wasn't trying to read Obama's mail as well), you need to ponder how they react to those things. The sooner the apocalypse approaches, the closer risk is that someone will just say "Let's go out with less of a whimper, but with a bang", though those kind of people are rarely found in top positions of governments - outside, at least, of perhaps military juntas. So at the very least, you have Pakistan and North Korea (well, the two most unstable nuclear powers that come to my mind right now) who'd be a high risk for something like this to happen, and of course, Iran - Israel (both sides may just prefer to try and flip one last bird before the end).

QuoteIt'd definitely require a thorough...screening? of players.  This isn't a "take this to a 'con, find a random group to play it with" type of game.  Well hey we can go play the Fellowship in that guy's Lord of the Rings scenario where we have a chance to fight the Balrog and so forth, fully realized in Dwarven Forge with hand painted miniatures...or we can go play this guy's scenario that sounds like its out of an episode of The Outer Limits if it was directed by Lars von Trier.  (I know where I'd be with my beardy self.)

Well, it depends if the Lars von Trier game will also use minis for me . Or, more importantly, if I could take a look at the tables, at which one there are more girls sitting.

QuoteI've seen most of those (and read up on Melancholia), I'll scope out Laundry Files.  And, since we're on the topic, if I may make a recommendation try 4:44 Last Day on Earth, or Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.

Thanks for your continuing input.

I'll check them out, thanks, and don't sweat it.

Quote from: Opaopajr;700693As for my avatar, it's a spaceship! It's from an old 8-bit video game called Fantazy Zone. The ship buys wings to fly faster, drops 16 ton weights as bombs, and sprouts NERF feet when near the ground so as to walk fast and collect coin and paper money dropped by defeated enemies.

For some reason I thought the answer'd be that it was Brazil's mascot for Football World Cup or something like that.

Is the concept viable?

Sure!

There have been some pretty damn bleak RPGs, Storygames and Paragraph games out there - so no reason your concept could not work in some format.

finding the format may be the tricky part.

Storytelling seems one route for group play.

Storygame or paragraph game might be another route if you want to tell a more specific tale or allow for solo play.

Also sounds like a story that could be plugged into any one of the various "GM-less" storytelling game systems like Mythic, etc. Not sure how well that would go over without some sort of event notes as triggers.

Your game sounds interesting, and I definitely think it's playable as you describe it. There's a game called Dying Earth which addresses the same point but from a completely different angle, to whit it's thousands of years into the future, the Sun's on the way out and folks behave as if it's their last night on Earth, since it could blow at any minute. However, unlike the short story you linked to, it's set in a world of magic and superstition, but might be worth checking out anyway. The books, by Jack Vance, are top notch SF- well, if you like that sort of thing, which I do, but of course you and others may not.

Good luck, and keep us posted .

P.S. Apologies if other peeps have already mentioned DERPG, I only had a quick skim through the thread before replying.
P.P.S. I realise this reply hasn't been of much practical help. I'll try to come up with some ideas, and will reply again if/when I've managed to so do .

Hi, Catty_Big; like a lot of AD&Ders, The Dying Earth stories greatly influence my DMing and play style in a lot of ways (and in others, not at all).  A thoroughly decadent society at the end of the World - a world billions of years in our future - has it's own vibe I think beyond what a sudden onset cessation of totality would.  Check out 4:44 End of Days and Melancholia and even Seeking a Friend for the End of the World for what I'm aiming at.

I'm not sure if this is something I'll try in the near future or distant future or what, but if I think to I'll definitely report back.  As to system I'd probably use d20 Modern or Hero System for nicely customizable characters.

I am also leery of trying any "story game" type systems; I've no interest in them or the baggage that comes with them.

Quote from: Rincewind1;700737You can't realtalk about geek activities, duh . I'll save it for some other time, don't want to potentially derail a thread that may be actually useful for a change. But remember - it'll only be pretentious if you'll do it wrong.

As I said below (above?) I'm not going to hitch such an adventure to a story-telling (not Storyteller, mind you) type system; if I set the Event far enough down the road the characters are "contractors" (or maybe trying to get the truth out?) who need more agency than what I've seen story games as able to provide.  A gritty, guns-a-blazin' shootout between a faction and the PCs wants a good system, not something from the "emotional laboratory" of the Forge, good lord.  THAT way lies pretense.  But, onward to the rest:

QuoteTen can work - just remember about, for the lack of better word, pacing. The bleakness of the game might cause players to be simply tired, if the campaign gets too long. Perhaps I'm saying only for myself, but there's only so much tragedy I can take in one sitting. Then again, RPGs have an advantage of being a rather weekly thing, so there's a "breather" time between them. Admittedly, the longer period of time also touches on the obviously bleakest aspects of this tragedy - PCs children.

Yeah; I think ten (or thereabouts) is the best way to go.  Far enough away that the world by and large doesn't know, close enough that it may induce moments of "Wait, why are we even bothering" in characters (not players, hopefully!) even though they're being given truckloads of money and amenities.

QuoteAlso, it may help if the PCs are basically not as much as Alpha Superstrike team, but basically Middle - Class CIA Operatives, so to speak - which I was a bit aiming at the previous luxury bit. I think it'd keep the game a bit more grounded, as it'd remind people of the more realistic conspiracy/superspy novels and films. I'd take a bit of inspiration from Delta Green here, alongside perhaps how the PCs were landed in the Agency in the first place. Perhaps they are forced to keep up the appearences with their loved ones? You can also mix the bit - while they live in a great luxury in a locked behind compounds, living a fake life in a fake world. Possibilities are endless, but you should give them some strong focus on what's going on after work, because as Opa notes, this is a very highly character focused game, where most of enjoyment will come from players pondering what the hell their characters are doing, why, and how.

Hmm.  I wish I had more to say than "okay".  The "resources" they'd be able to tap would be available for two main reasons: firstly, their employers would literally spare no expense to keep this under wraps (again, dying quietly and peacefully versus word getting out and 18 months later a few million ragged survivors spend the rest of the time left in brutal agony, then nothing - there's some things that can be even more bleak than the mere end of the universe!).

QuoteThat is not to say, that there isn't also a place for creme da creme of SEALS, Delta Force and what have you in that organisation, after all, there will be times where suits and low - calibre weapons simply won't do. But I think that having the PCs run the "investigative" department as well as the occasional "burst in doors and shoot" will simply work better for the premise, rather than relegate them to purely "burst and shoot" guys.

I think there'd be some room for "advancement", a sort of "'You've comported yourselves admirably, I think it's time we moved you to a more hands-on role...', said the Administrator." type situation where they do the paperwork and the legwork after some point.  It also might help get them to buy into the game's premise a bit more if they "merely" watch Seal Team Six take down an independent news source somewhere in the US's heartland because of a certain editorial that Must Not Get Out on monitors to get an idea of what and why they should do when they have the personal responsibility to deal with matters concerning the cover up.

QuoteAs Opa noted - if there will turn out to be a hope after all, to survive, that is, it turns the game around quite a bit. Nothing wrong with it, but it's also your decision. There is also a risk of "bait and switch" attitude from players, especially if they were forced to do such deplorable things as killing whistleblowers, threatening journalists, censoring the media, setting up the Great Firewall of USA, etc. etc. It turns the game closer to darker X - Com basically, except turns out the aliens never arrived.

Wow that could make for some powerful gaming.  Your team has literally "silenced" some of the most brilliant critical thinkers and scientists outside of the Administration...and now there's a chance - however slim - that things could be changed (or can they)...I like.

QuoteAlso, as I mentioned Delta Green, something clicked in my mind. What is often forgotten about Lovecraft mythos, in this age as we look through the lenses of Call of Cthulhu adventures (where those Ancient Old Ones usually need a group of d12+5 can opener wielding cultists to awaken them from their slumber), and general anthropocentric works of his continuators, I can't help but ponder that the inevitableness of apocalypse, of humanity being squashed like a meaningless ant which has outlived it's usefulness in some being's game, whether it was useful or not, was also part of the original Mythos - Cthulhu will one day wake up, whether there are cultists to greet him, or not. Perhaps they'd be rewarded, or perhaps they simply imagined that to give their lives meaning. And I guess what I'm trying to say is, that the premise did work in an RPG before, even if covered by horror & occult sauce rather than sci - fi one.

I think I follow what you're saying here - the overall premise of DG was (remember, the book came out in 1994 during the height of Y2k/X-Files type paranoia) that the stars are right, and the Great Old Ones are coming and that moving into a Laotian cultist's village and killing every man, woman and child buys us time...possibly only a day, but it's something.  That's what I'm after here.  

QuoteAs for the Snowden angle - I think this may be a good introductory adventure indeed. Have players as CIA operatives, who think they are going after a whistleblower to force a political concession on NSA (as I suspect CIA and NSA likes each other as much as GRU and KGB did), and as they are asked for a briefing, they suddenly learn from CIA chief himself that Echelon wasn't created to spy on people, but to prevent the Internet from learning...

Completely doable.

QuoteAs for the Nuclear War scenario - well, this kind of depends on whether or not you want a more grounded in reality conspiration, or the Hollywood kind. By the latter I mean how in Hollywood films about, for example, aliens attacking Earth, you can note how US government is caught with their pants down, but everyone else wasn't wearing pants at all, just waiting for Uncle Sam to save everyone. And you can easily apply the principle here as well - US controls everything, the President knows, but the rest of the world is to be kept in silence, with extreme prejudice. The other kind - where most of the world's top brass knows (after all let's face it, it's not that Merkel wasn't trying to read Obama's mail as well), you need to ponder how they react to those things. The sooner the apocalypse approaches, the closer risk is that someone will just say "Let's go out with less of a whimper, but with a bang", though those kind of people are rarely found in top positions of governments - outside, at least, of perhaps military juntas. So at the very least, you have Pakistan and North Korea (well, the two most unstable nuclear powers that come to my mind right now) who'd be a high risk for something like this to happen, and of course, Iran - Israel (both sides may just prefer to try and flip one last bird before the end).

All very good stuff.  Good grist for the idea mill.  Another possibility is that the sudden blow-up between the Obama administration and the rest of the world that's going on right now is a carefully manipulated (in the press) story...the real blow up is that Canada, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Brazil et al are getting the news at a governmental level, and Snowden's leak was that we'd been hiding news of the Big Rip from our supposed allies...