Olde Phoenix Inn

The Fringeworthy System is alive and sentient. This is a change from the "canon" where Rich has said (Even specifically TO ME on the podcast that it's not)

It has to be. The way it has effects is differential based on a living sentient judgment of the situation.

Its telepathic, the way it detects whats going on with the intent of people near and in it.

It is more properly a "They" although they don't think of themselves that way.

Its like an aspen grove. Its a lot of trees that look like individuals from one point of view but are connected at their roots.

The Termelhern planted the first few seeds, and then the forest grew itself.

A seed finds and interesting world. Interesting is mostly AUs of Earth, which is the Terhmelern homeworld in an AU, but could be anywhere.

It plants itself on the AU of Earth (Mostly, not always!) and grows in Hyperspace adjacent to its world. This is functionally a pocket dimension with portals to the world it's planted on.

Each tree grows four plates.

Prime - this is where the Tree is planted on its world - it has six portals to its world.

Alt - this is where the tree and Terhmelern users view AUs of the chosen world, or even AUs far removed. Each plate has 12 portals 4 cross links and 8 portals to viewed worlds

System - this is where the System looks at worlds in the same solar system as its rooted world.

Stellar - this is where the System looks at worlds relatively nearby to its rooted world... but not always. This is the tree looking at its world's stellar neighbors.

So the FW system sees itself as many who are one. It likes people, it likes watching people. All sorts of people but in areas we see it's a human based multiversal environment, so you see mostly human worlds.

The FW system can be reached, with difficulty by normal telepathy, but the contact is weird, mostly emotional and hard to translate. The way the FW system thinks, experiences people space and time is pretty alien, so human scale telepaths struggle to really grasp what they're seeing from the FW system

Very powerful, experienced telepaths can make friends with the system and it will be more generously inclined towards them. But the FW system likes the people traveling on it anyway so this is a subtle distinction.

There are crystal keys. The FW system is "tuned" to be more available to people with the crystal keys - the keys act as Person-to-FW System translator. There a selection of colors and each color has its own access levels.

In some ways the FW system is like me. It sees a new world (game book) and says "Oo!" and then plants a node there (Buy or DLs the book) and looks at it.

But it's oddly passive. It sees itself as an observer, a fan, an enjoyer. If users want to go to places and do things, that's fun to watch too.

The space where the many tres are one are *like* an Ane all. And Ane who was really digging into the FW-System could see this and even interact a little. But it's HUGE and the way it experiences time is really odd, so communications are limited.

What I have learned

The Fringepath and the various worlds you can hook up to them are the SETTING only. They are not the plot. It is a mistake to confuse the two, which I have done.

So the trick for best use of this thing is to have a story that involves the multiple worlds and use the FW system to get the characters into the story.

If I make another try at this, Meta plot first. Campaign and campaign goals first. Then build a chunk of the FW system AROUND that meta plot.

Or, if I have different Game worlds and I want them to be able to interact, then I might use this pattern to hook them up.

For Instance Galadria is one prime

A world in the Age of Alderaan Game is another prime

Omega Squad Earth would be another prime

And then PCs could travel between them if fixed maps and inter relationships.

The Alt plate could lead to Rule 63 variants of these worlds or to AUs which show what happens in the PCs fail their epic quest and can teach PCs how they failed in that alt and how to avoid that failure for their prime world.


But throwing down a great big pile of worlds and telling players "Go see what's going on in there!" doesn't really work out that well. Its not a workable campaign design.

I will be posting worlds I made up here as an amusement.

The goal here is to amuse Garry with how crazy Jay can be.

If I do another FW game, I'll recycle these. Oh hell yes.

But I'd definitely have a different metaplot for the PCs in mind

The nodes for Crome Game ran from node 0, Bulls eye to +32 and -34


So the node one step left from Bulls eye is node C -1, (C for Crims Game) and the Node to the right is Node C +1

That was a total of 67 nodes.

That was too many. I never finished populating that section.

And Crims journey through these was.... interesting.

I definitely need to make up the large campaign plot and have the specifics set down before I try this again.

Also, I would rethink the built in meta plot of the Great Mellor War.


We discussed that before. Rich's Mellor were ridiculously overpowered. Just shape changeers who can can steal identities is dangerous enough.

Any way, off to work

Vistors verus Cylons

In 1983, an alien spaceship appeared over Earth. In it Lizardmen informed Earth that they were no longer alone in the universe.

However, all was not well. This ship was the last surviving flagship of the Lizardmen Colonies. They had been defeated by their ancient enemies, the Cylons. Humanoid battledroids, who had gotten the upper hand in a treacherous sneak attack.

The Lizardmejn offered high technology in exchange for help battling the Cylon menace.

The nations of Earth gleefully signed up, none wanting to be left behind in a new, galactic arms race.

The United Nations and the Lizard men have begun assigning star systems to each nation to explore and exploit, as they become able.

Almost all war has stopped on Earth, as humans feverishly build ships to explore, and then to fight against the Cylons, an on rushing menace.

The Lizard men in this world wear snazzy red uniforms.

-*-

The Cylons - is this world the Cylons are run by 14 humans. Well, what's left of 14 humans. almost 10,000 years ago, these people were offered power and security during a great war which threatened the existence of their culture.

these 14 people took up the role of protectors. They were melded with machines and became cyborgs. So altered, each was able command entire fleets and industries. but they quickly lost touch with that which made them human.

They rose up and took over their worlds and held their populations in (Sort of) comfortable captivity. They ended the wars that threatened and exterminated all who posed a threat.

About 1200 years ago, Lizardmen re-emerged from a dark age and began to explore space. After 7500 years of peace, most of the cylon overlords were dormant and quiescent.

A lizardman expedition landed on a tame world and infected it with knowledge of the outside and technology.

The passive subjects of the world rose up and all hell broke loose. The 14th overlord was over thrown and killed.

The Cylons responded harshly. War was on. for 1000 years off and on, the Cylons re-armed and attacked. Desperately, the Lizardmen researched and copied Cylon technology and always kept parity.

About 100 years ago, the Cylons recruited a corrupt Lizardman official with promises of wealth, power and influence. He acted as a go-between offering peace. The long suffering Lizardmen agreed, and during peace negotiations, the Cylons got in a cheap shot, destroying a huge chunk of the Lizardman military and exposing the core worlds to attack.

One Lizardman mothership was able to gather a rag tag fleet of refugees and flee.

What with one thing and another, their hyper drives have sort of warped time as they went. For the Lizardmen it's been 5 years since the fall of their colonies.

After observing the humans for a while, the Lizardman commander has hatched a ruthless plot. Humans are naturally warlike and brutal. He is just arming them and letting them go. He has essentially told them "Everything you can claw out of a dying cylons grasp, you can have."

He is betting on human greed and brutality to do the rest.

-*-

the technology of this node is similar to the default setting for this section. Swoopy fighter planes ala Star Wars.

However, Cylon and Lizardman technology has entered an interesting cul-de-sac. Instead of developing the Zero Point Generators often seen in other high tech empires, they use a weirdly leveraged Deuterium-Fusion reactor. In most ways it functions the same, but it means that fighters and ships have to mind their fuel supplies - They do have finite fuel tanks and can run low or run completely out.

The Lizardmen call Deuterium "Solium"

Earth has plenty, once refined and other bodies in the solar system have more.

But once away from built up areas, they have to manage their fuel supplies carefully. This makes fuel tankers high value targets.

-*-

The Lizardman mothership has landed in the Mojave desert in the American Southwest. But to appease other powers. small colonies of Lizardmen have been established elsewhere.

All the technical data of the Mothership and the Lizardman weapons have been released. There is one rule of Earth-Lizardman interactions. All Lizardmen have diplomatic immunity. Period. no one touches them.

Many of the civilians have formed villages and are trying to rebuild some semblance of a normal life. But the Lizardman military people work with Earth militaries to bring them up to speed, and to build the infrastructure to resupply the Lizardman military and to supply Earth militaries.

At the United Nations - the nations of Earth have formed OSTO, the Outer Space Treaty Organization. It pledges non-interference with internal affairs, and mutual defense and alliance against the Cylons.

It is also where the astronomical land grab is starting. The Lizradmen forced languuage into the agreement that sentient worelds would be left alone or at least not conquered.

These Lizardmen Remember stories of the Fringepaths, in garbled myths and legends. If they found the portals, they'd be shocked that such things were real.

Prime, Lizardman v Cylons 1987

12:00 - Path to Alt
01:00 - Mammoth Caves
02:00 - (Locked) Beni Mounds, Bolivia
03:00 - Blank
04:00 - (Locked) Caves of Hercules, Morocco
05:00 - (Locked) Lascaux caves, FR
06:00 - (Locked) Antarctica
07:00 - (Locked) Krubera Cave, Georgia
08:00 - (Locked) Mohenjo-daro
09:00 - Blank
10:00 - (Locked) Yonagumi Monument
11:00 - (Locked) Ayers Rock, Aus

(locked)

Alt
12:00 - Path to System
01:00 - (locked) L vs C 2013 (30 years later)
02:00 - (locked) L vs C 2063 (80 years later)
03:00 - Path to
04:00 - (locked) V - here the Lizardmen have come as an invading force to conquer Earth
05:00 - (locked) cylon conquest
06:00 - Path to Prime
07:00 - (locked) Cylon Refugees
08:00 - Hidden High tech world
09:00 - Path to
10:00 - Recycling old people for the war
11:00 - (locked) Galactica 1983

I'm sure that you've explained before, but what does locked mean?

Charles Pierson wrote: ↑

Fri May 29, 2020 10:55 pm

I'm sure that you've explained before, but what does locked mean?

(locked) means the gateway is locked. There are keys, they look like crystal dice. You can tell the original game maker was using his own gaming dices as inspiration.

Each flavor of crystals has a color scheme indicating it's rank. Lower level crystals can just lock and unlock doors. Higher level crystals can allow other functions up to moving the gateway within the targeted world, or even aiming th gate way at another world.

In the case of my thingee here, it means the gateway is locked so PCs can't go through it and I don't have to invent all the things they'd encounter until I give them a key later.

I wonder what the fuck I meant by "Hidden High tech World"?

I hate when I don't leave myself enough notes!

jayphailey wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 26, 2020 8:33 am

I wonder what the fuck I meant by "Hidden High tech World"?

I hate when I don't leave myself enough notes!

It would sound like a high tech world that is role-playing a bucolic agrarian world but has all the tech toys. Amish Paradise, but the horse is a robot that looks like a horse, hidden weather control, world wide communication and travel, and so forth.

Why? Only Tremellin knows.

Ahhhhh. I recall now rereading the thing.

In this world, the Vistor influence has been kept hidden from the civilian world. A Lizardman/International force operates in deep hidden underground bases. Elite military people and civilians with needed expertise are recruited and sword to secrecy, and formed into units which leave earth by covert means and then operate out of hidden military bases on the moon and Mars.

The idea is that back in the 1940s the U.S. Government didn't want to panic the populace and set a pattern for assisting their lizard man allies in secret and fighting the Cylon menace in secret to avoid public panic and now the habit of secrecy is ingrained.

Occasional partial witnesses share accounts of dubious accuracy and are considered loons by the greater public. This is aided by an MIB internal security force which spreads disinfo and discredits UFO reser=chers to keep things secret.

This secret Space Force would be deeply concerned about finding a Fringepath gate in Mammoth Caves and immediately take jurisdiction over it.

So on this side of the curtain its UFO/MIB the RPG, but you make it through the curtain and its Space Adventure Fight the Cylons.