Holy Lost and the Hyper-Hyper Reality

[Jack7]

Lost is like Church for television.
I tell my wife this all of the time, but she just doesn't get it yet. She will one day.

I almost hate to admit this, not being a real big fan of most of modern television, but not only has Lost become to me a sort of Grail of television entertainment, if it is at all possible, and other obligations do not interfere, then I will go out of my way to watch it.

In addition, when I first saw the show years ago I was less than impressed. Then I started watching the show from the first episode as reruns on G4, at lunch time. Since then, not only is it the best show on television, and that includes shows like Battlestar Galactica to measure it against, it may be the best show in the entire history of television.

The idea is so brilliant, and the execution so phenomenal, that it is almost a type of religious experience (not to mention the deep religious symbolism that often plays in the background) for me.

In any case I am deeply interested in watching the season premier.

I've often thought about putting a "Lost-type" island in my gaming worlds. Something that would be similar in theme but would involve the particulars and specifics of my settings as plot-line/storyline backdrop(s) and background. For instance I've seriously thought about putting a Lost type island off the coast of the Isle of Wight in my D&D/Fantasy milieu. An island that also contained the Grail. And an isolated and small planetoid/asteroid type locale in one of my Sci-Fi milieus, filled with God technology, which would be the Lost region of that setting. The idea is perfect for my pulp game, and would even make a fascinating trap-area for my superhero and espionage games. In short the idea of a "Lost Area" would make a fantastic adaptation to nearly any setting. Player characters could come aboard as either 'Them,' 'Us,' or 'Others,' or with nearly any other connection to the setting and events surrounding it. And you would have an almost inexhaustible supply of agencies, groups, people, characters, organizations, and institutions to provide conflict and to develop over time.

The "Lost Area" would not be the setting of course, it would be a world within a world, a sort of hyper-hyper reality that functions counter to the apparent world in certain respects and greatly amplifies and magnifies the apparent world in other respects. In fantasy settings magic would either not work, work in totally different ways than normal, or would become greatly amplified. In sci-fi settings technology would behave bizarrely and have dramatically unexpected consequences. In pulp settings magic might really work, advanced technologies and throw-back technologies appear and disappear. Miracles would manifest, and then seem to imply something wholly different than as they originally appeared. Schemes would be advanced. Initiatives undertaken. Ghosts would walk about, the line between Death and Life would blur.

But such an "island" would have to be so well-developed and so ingenious in the way it operated that I almost pale at the thought of the work that would be involved. Still, it would be such beautiful work...

 

[Jack7]

I’ve decided to go ahead and start work on a “Lost Island” for my various games. In my spare time. The idea is too good to waste, and fail to develop. I play, or actually I should say I DM and write adventures, scenarios, and missions for fantasy/semi-historical games, modern games, and futuristic/sci-fi games.

So I’ve determined to create three different versions of the “Island,” one for fantasy games, one for modern games, and one for sci-fi games. Yet the island will be the same island in each setting, thereby creating a bridge-way or doorway to each separate setting (I’ve been wanting for a long time to have some means of connecting all these various worlds to one another), but each island will be a differently “evolved version” of the same thing.

The Modern Island will be much like the island on Lost. In the way it operates and in some of the features it possesses. The Fantasy or Past Island will be heavily laced with both Magic and Miracles, and will lay off the Isle of Wight in Ghantik. Bizarre creatures and Khimeras will dwell there, it will have “dead zones” and “amplification zones.” The futuristic version will not be placed on an asteroid at all, but will be placed on a small, inhabitable moon that was once an outpost for a long dead, or disappeared at least, race of aliens. The island will be the strangest single locale on a very strange moon. The moon itself also has other functions. For instance from space it appears to shine brightly, because in some areas the surface has been polished smooth, like glass. Nothing appears to live there now of greater than basic animal intelligence. But the moon itself is not what it appears to be; it is actually a mechanism, part of a series of nearby mechanisms. The island was the control center for a series of biological and genetic experiments. The island of the moon will also be filled with “God Technology,” as well as alien technology. Much of the alien technology will in fact be biological technology, though that will not be apparent at first. Over time the explorers will discover that a full-fledged biological war was fought there at one time, and that the animal life is not what it appears to be.

As for as the past and modern versions of the island I also want to include very dark and extremely creepy horror elements. The horror elements of the future version will more involve the ghostly remnants of the aliens and what happened to the moon. The island in the future version was both ground zero, and partially shielded in some way during the Biological War.

The modern version of the island will be a sort of Keystone, or perhaps I should say Cornerstone of the other versions of the island. The past or fantasy version of the island will also be home to one of a kind creatures that are entirely unique to the island.

I’m also retaining the idea of the island being able to be moved, or to move itself, through time and space. And in the modern version of the island, the hatches. In the fantasy version there will be three underground labyrinths and a buried library, in the future version there will be transportation gateways leading to other places, as well as a biological library. The explorers won’t realize it at first but I’ll leave clues that there is data encoded in the genetic codes of most of the animal life, and some of the plant life on the island (the animals and plants are the library), data that encodes useful information that can be in fact read by mechanisms on the island. It will be hard to know if the information recovered is valid or corrupt because it seems possible that the Biological War may have “twisted” the genetic data, or the data may have escaped unharmed, or the data may have “recovered” over time. The data will lead to other things off-world, but not necessarily to what the data seems to say it will lead to.

Each island will be a campaign unto itself (or maybe more than one), though each island will also interconnect to a series of other campaigns of which the islands are periphery elements of themselves.

And of course I’ll need to create a set of fascinating and bizarre NPcs for each island.

All that being said since every island will be a composite of inter-connected elements that fit into a loose working model I’m open to taking ideas suggestions for others. So if any of you have any suggestions for how to build such an island (any version), what to include in it, and what you think it might be interesting for the island(s) to do, then suggest away.

I’m all ears.