Anything goes???

[Oni]

Would it be possible to have a setting where the characters can be of just about any type (ignoring balance for the moment) and still maintain some sort of coherence. That is to say could you have a world where you could have a party with a vampire, a robot, a school girl with magic powers, and a knight (these are random example picked off the top of my head) and still maintain some form of internal logic? If you can do it, how would you do it? Would there be any chance of having a tone for the game other than comical?

 

[Crothian]

The only thing I can think of is a world that different types of people are collected and brought there. Or a world like Torg, that wasa fun game that I think you could do this sort of thing in.

 

[Oni]

Torg?

 

[Crothian]

Torg?

Another Role Playing game. I think it's out of print now, I haven't seen a supplement in about 7 or 8 years.

 

[arwink]

A game in vogue around, I think, the early nineties. Focused on this thing called the impossibility wars, where other dimension basically colonised earth. London became a fantasy world, with dragons flying overhead and fey kings and queens taking up residence. Egypt was taken over by lizard creatures and pharoahs in a two fisted, pulp style world. Other places were suddenly nazi encampments and sci-fi influenced realms. The heroes were basically people who could manipulate the infinate flow of possibility that this rifts had created.

That's how it was explained to me, anyway. It was an interesting idea, but I never got a chance to play it. Someone more familiar with the setting will undoubtably explain better...

For what it's worth, Tales from the Floating Vagabond was capable of supporting nearly any kind of character. Not terribly well, mind you, and there wasn't much by way of logic...

 

[Brisk-sg]

Of course it is possible. Just takes a little creativity. I would probably start such a campaign off by 1st having the players make their characters at least a week ahead of time and giving me the details. Then I would design short solo games for each player so that they intertwine at the end, some predicament that will require them to work together. When you get to the point where they meet ,then end the solo adventure and when you get together as a group run the real adventure dealing with how to get out of this predicament.

If you do it right it shouldn’t seem comical… and your example comes very close to a comic I read a couple of times called Battle Chasers. It had an ex-knight, a little girl who possessed a powerful artifact that gave her magic powers, a giant robot golem, and an ancient wizard. It mixed hi tech, low tech, medieval feel, and magic together without seeming silly or comical.

-Josh

 

[Dagger75]

Uggh hate saying it... Rifts is just that isn't. D&D wise, Planescape or even Ravenloft could slap those things together.

The new Oathbound game might work to.

 

[Hygric]

Yep, definately Rifts. Great setting, terrible rules system (I really don't like the Palladium rules system).

 

[rackabello]

Another way to do this might be to stage the campaign in some sort of "metropolis of all worlds," a sprawling city-plane populated by beings from throughout your campaign universe. There would be many opportunities for intrigue with so many religious, philosophical, species and political factions (a la Planescape).

Another possibiliy I like is the "infinite bazaar," a sort of endless trans-planar (and trans-temporal, if you like to mix magic and technology) flea-market / auction / antiques roadshow / swapmeet. Several of the books in Robert Aspirin's Myth Adventures series were set in such a place. Again, great opportunities for intrigue, though rooted more in the wheelings and dealings of thousands upon thousands of wheelers and dealers, hucksters, confidence tricksters and the universally despised used-wand salesmen.

The chief difficulty with an "anything goes" campaign is lending it a sense of verisimilitude while keeping it balanced for your players' power levels. It makes it even harder to explain away why your players' foes always seem to be closely-matched in power to the PCs if those PCs start out in a world where they might rub elbows with a Balor down at Shakey Jake's Tavern.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

...vampire, a robot, a school girl with magic powers, and a knight...

Planescape: tiefling, modron, young sorceress or bard, aasimar

Oathbound sounds like it could do it, too. Of course, Oathbound sounds like Planescape-lite (no offense intended to the creators of Oathbound. It's #2 on my purchase list right now.)

Final Fantasy could pull it of also. Of course, that's assuming you accept that the Final Fantasy games have consistent internal realities, which is not always 100% true, IMO.