All-in-one games and cross-overs

[Wolf1066]

Inspired by @dm4hire:'s "Quest for the "perfect" all-in-one game" thread:

Just thinking of one of the meanings of "all-in-one game" and wondering:

How many here run a game that requires the versatility to change/mix genres, time lines, tech levels or whatever?

I've sometimes joked about running a game in which you can expect to find anything from pretty much any genre (Dr Who, a mage, Billy the Kid, a Kzin, a spandex-suited mutant superhero and a cyborg going up against Daleks, lesser demons, vampires and Shadow ships, anyone?) and I have seriously thought of mixing in aspects of space travel (beyond Earth's solar system) and steampunk into a cyberpunk game and wondered what'd happen if I introduced "real" vampires and werewolves - a la WoD - into the mix. (The latter being fairly easy to do, thanks to Ianus Games' excellent source books...)

What "cross-overs" have people around here run, if any?

Obviously, bringing together related material is "simple" enough - even if it does mean spending hours converting ST, BSG, B5 and Serenity ships etc into a common format for a "grand space opera" scenario wherein the Enterprise and a White Star can take on Centauri warships, Cylon Vipers and Klingon Birds of Prey before tackling the Death Star. What about scenarios where magic and high technology must be reconciled? Or running a Cthulu campaign against a Cyberpunk or far-future background (instead of early C20)?

What sort of things do your games need to be able to handle? What game mechanics have had to be put in place?

 

[Nagol]

I run and been run through a bunch.

Some more memorable one include

CHAMPIONS superheroes --> AD&D
A dimensional adventure where the character concepts were translated between systems; the group ended up with a cambion, alu-demon, demi-god, and a bunch of mid-high level humans for a few sessions of play before the characters found a route home.

Aftermath! --> AD&D
A collision of planes scenario where the action took place on both planes

CHAMPIONS --> CHAMPIONS
Two different play groups had a dimensional cross-over where the groups collided and half the players switched games for a couple of sessions to stop the nefarious Dr. Despicables from both worlds teaming up.

AD&D --> modern earth
Group came through a planar gate and unfortunately ended in a TPK in a shootout with local law enforcement. Some cultural attitudes don't cross well!

Ars Magica --> Call of Cthulu Dreamlands
Covenant encountered a new type of magical adept who could project into the Dreamlands. The group managed to return with minimal psychic scarring expressed as a Wizard's Twilight in Ars Magica.

Traveler --> AD&D
The AD&D was a red zone world the Traveler group were tasked to investigate.

 

[Herobizkit]

That's all I run, generally.

Some of my best include:

Shadowrun + (Palladium's) Robotech + AD&D: Basically Robotech with AD&D races, monsters, and classes. I originally ran a homebrew of Shadowrun's setting using AD&D stats etc., and then the SDF-1 crashed on Earth. Hilarity ensued as a group of (PC) street toughs enlist and become Veritech pilots.

D&D 3.0 + d20 Modern + d20 Future: Characters start in a dystopian d20 Modern setting where gangs have risen to rule the streets. The half-vampire has an heirloom that inexplicably sends the party back and forth from Modern day to Fantasy (using 3.0 modules for the 'action' scenes). As the game progresses, the party eventually learned that they were in 'the Matrix' - their core consciousnesses were downloaded into a protected piece of software and their actual bodies were comatose (presumed dead) inside a star cruiser that had somehow gained AI. Said AI wanted to destroy the Earth, and it could have, were it not for the heroes (armed with Cyclone armor) who took out the Scorpionoid mecha the ship had fashioned as its protector.

 

[Wolf1066]

[Maxwell Smart voice]Ah, the old "Starship AI imprisons unconscious heroes in a fantasy virtual reality while it tries to destroy the world" trick.[/Maxwell Smart voice] Good to see it in action...

Seriously: that sounds like a freakin' cool game.

 

[Argyle King]

I once ran a Space game using GURPS and the party consisted of a Jedi, a HALO style SPARTAN, a character who was inspired very heavily by the Predator, and an uplifted alcoholic cat with a Hispanic accent. During this quest, they fought off an Alien infestation, had to find their way back home after the player of the cat critically failed an attempt to make a hyper jump, and compete in a drinking contest with a robot.

 

[Doug McCrae]

D&D already does this to some extent. Bards and druids are Celtic, paladins are from French romances 1000 years later, the monk is from a 1970s TV show. Lots of the monsters are from sci-fi or horror movies. It was a bit more popular in the early days when D&D was less influenced by LotR - Temple of the Frog, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Arduin Grimoire.

Superhero has always blended detective fiction, myth, sci-fi and a bunch of other stuff. It tends to be fascinated by whatever is current - aviators in WW2, radiation in the late 50s and 60s, spies in the late 60s, horror in the 70s - and this all gets slotted in to create one big stupid world. Incidentally this is why superhero systems can be fairly easy refitted to multi-genre - HERO, M&M.

There was very much a trend for this kind of thing in rpging round about 1990 - Rifts, TORG, Shadowrun, Amber, Over The Edge. It's not been as popular since then, though.

Good systems for it include d20, GURPS, Chaosium, HERO and M&M.

 

[dm4hire]

While I haven't mixed all genres I have mixed just about every campaign for D&D thanks to Spelljammer and Planescape. I had a group that had a knight from Krynn, Half-giant from Dark Sun, and a scattering from the various other settings.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Well, I did Palladium with time travel once, some interludes and adventures in 1970's New York crime movies.

My current campagin, (based on in character speach from one of the players, who keeps riffing off Col. Tigh from BSG2003) so I am now planning to mix in BSG, the Borg and the Far Realms.
I reckon I can do it with D&D 4 rules, just extensive reskinning and use of the monster builder.
So far it has been just incidental events but they are getting closer to a major encounter.

 

[Wolf1066]

D&D already does this to some extent. Bards and druids are Celtic, paladins are from French romances 1000 years later, the monk is from a 1970s TV show. Lots of the monsters are from sci-fi or horror movies. It was a bit more popular in the early days when D&D was less influenced by LotR - Temple of the Frog, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Arduin Grimoire.

Superhero has always blended detective fiction, myth, sci-fi and a bunch of other stuff. It tends to be fascinated by whatever is current - aviators in WW2, radiation in the late 50s and 60s, spies in the late 60s, horror in the 70s - and this all gets slotted in to create one big stupid world. Incidentally this is why superhero systems can be fairly easy refitted to multi-genre - HERO, M&M.

Good points - though in general terms, fantasy and superheroes (for all they grab lots of stuff and mix them together in a fashion that makes purists scream) have become very much their own genres. Few would step outside the box and have firearms in a "fantasy" setting - not even single-shot match- or flintlocks - and other high tech things are generally right out. The boundary seems to be "as long as they used swords, clubs and (cross)bows, it's fine". Blurring the boundaries of a thousand years or so of relatively low-tech cultures and throwing in every "sword-'n'-sorcery" reference and fantastic monster you can find is "kosher" in that milieu - the authors of fantasy stories have been "guilty" of it for centuries.

It's possible to bring in higher tech, but the GM's going to have a lot of conversion work to do - unless they're using a system like GURPS etc that has all its data in a uniform format (whereupon you just pick up a copy of GURPS Space, or whatever, and the GURPS weapons supplement and your wizards are on their way to the stars along with Vargrs, Narns and Klingons).

Superheroes are rather more open to different times and greater or lesser degrees of technology (to the extent of some technology far in advance of the times they are set - Spidey's web spinners, Batman's "cool toys", Ironman's armour etc) and have settings that range from low-tech to distant future, so there is, as you say, plenty of scope to fit them into any "time" you like. Even "magic" is permissible, along with psionics, mutant abilities, alien races with weird powers etc.

That does make for a lot of flexibility for a GM with a good imagination. And the genre is such that if a Norse god can be running around being a superhero in fairly contemporary times, a spell caster can sure as hell be heading for the surface of Epsilon Eridani 3 in a drop ship alongside a couple of aliens with superhuman abilities...

One could also probably run pretty much any scenario they wanted using Cyberpunk as the base as well - by default, weapons cover everything from clubs to energy weapons; vehicles from horses to space ships. You can raise or lower the tech level as you like, set it on Earth or in space (not much of a stretch to devise other planets or more advanced space stations etc), and Ianus Games and others have done the donkey-work to bring in Vampires etc and stress/fatigue/insanity rules.

What I notice is that different game systems treat certain things differently or bring in ideas not found in other systems - Palladium's Insanity rules were quite the change from D&D's "get killed, be resurrected, carry on adventuring" outlook - I played one session of Palladium, fought something demonic and my rather tough and imposing Wolfen wound up becoming a transvestite from the shock of it all! I was better off than my fellow adventurer who died and was brought back - he was really messed up afterwards...

Vampires in D&D are monsters - you see 'em, they try to kill you, you try to kill them... one of you succeeds. WoD - any version. Vampires are entities with their own motives and goals - you see 'em, maybe you try to kill each other. And maybe the vampire says "Hey, you guys look resourceful, I've got a bit of a problem that requires the attention of someone who can go abroad in daylight - how'd you like to make more money than you've ever seen?"

It comes down to what the GM and players find is important to the game play - they may or may not want insanity rules or intelligent "monsters" or books that can drive you mad before you even get a look at the BBEG.

We've always been an experimental bunch - running traditionally NPC races as PCs (Minotaurs, Drow, Wemics etc), introducing Friday Night Firefight (2013) combat into Traveller (ouch!), playing werewolves in VtM before the WtA books came out... all sorts of stuff.

I'd quite happily have my current "Cyberpunk" game world shaken by the discovery of Earth by a Vilani trading ship and give the players the option of signing up to explore a pre-Imperium Traveller universe populated by creatures that resemble various races from Babylon 5 and Larry Niven's "Known Space". If they didn't take the opportunity to be the World's first Interstellar Edgerunners, Earth would be changing quite a bit with access to advanced technologies and that would be an interesting concept to explore as well...

 

[coyote6]

A GURPS game I co-GM for had the following PCs:

* An Amazon who was actually a daughter of Zeus.
* An ex-tomb guardian turned burglar, equipped with spells, magical tatoos, and gear, from a world where an Egyptian-like civilization survived into a manapunk future.
* A technomancer from a cyberpunk-ish world
* A sniper from a space war against bug-like aliens (specifically, the Kafir from 2300 AD) who had been enhanced with ultra-high-tech implants
* A blind Shao-lin trained supermodel
* an ex-Force Recon officer trained as a medieval knight who couldn't be permanently killed
* a SEAL & MD with psionic healing powers
* An ex-Force Recon NCO/mustang with shamanistic powers
* an insanely lucky gambler/pilot/bar-owner
* Another ex-Force Recon officer, this one a combat engineer that was very good at making things go BOOM.
* A Ranger sniper with the power to open parachronic portals
* a ninja/SEAL

The current events involve a cold war against a universe-conquering demon lord and his various allies/servants; the PCs currently being played are undercover as superheroes (with borrowed superpowers) in Freedom City.

(The two original PCs were Twilight: 2000 characters in 1990 or so; they got turned into GURPS Special Ops characters after one session; other PCs joined along the way, and the campaign got stranger. The current PCs are being played as M&M characters.)