Meta Plot for game system; Lend me your Genius

[Shallown]

I ran a game several years ago that was a mish-mash of Genres.

Basically I allowed people to roll up a character of any type and time period they wanted. I then through them together via a series of Gates that would spontaneously appear. They all fell into a variety of worlds and more or less set about surviving the experience. It was fun and running short term adventures was not very hard.

The main fault with the world I created is I never really had an over all reason the gates opened. I didn't have a meta plot that guided the characters so it ended up with the players/characters feeling like they were drifting with no ultimate goal other than to survive. Living day to day can be fun in the sort term but no long term goals or story line made them feel disjointed or adrift and whatthey did had little impact.

It was more or less an experiment that I have been thinking of revisting but still haven't developed a "Big Picture" veiw of why these things happened.

This are the properties the gates had.
1) They opened at Random.
2) probablity of one opened increased with events of power. (massive storms, Nukes, high magic etc.)
3) they could be sensed by people of power (Psi's, Mages, Mystics etc)
4) They were attracted to people and living things more so than objects though objects did fall through by themselves attimes.

I'm not married to any of these traits just what I used before.

Type of characters I had in the game and would like to have in the future
A jedi Knight
A shaolin Monk
A Pirate
A 1998 City Homicide cop
Psychic Veitnam vet
A wind MAge
A cleric of a God of healing
An Amazon warrior
A house wife
A Modern Day B&E specialist.

SO more or less what I need is a Metareason the gates exist that wouldn't be to cliche. I was running with it being a natural event that was more or less the universes pressure regulator. A safety feature that occasionally sucked people in. That unfortunately wasn't very fulfilling for the players.

Thanks for any ideas I can steal.

 

[random user]

What level ranges would you want this campaign to run through?

 

[Stormborn]

An evil empire has arrisen on one of the Material Plane world and is expanding through out the multiverse, conquring or steralizing the worlds as it goes. The techninque it uses is damaging the fabric between worlds, and thus the portals spreading to the PCs homeplanes and beyond. Start dropping hints, have them run into other travelers, run into a scout team or the like. As they continue to move from world to world they are getting closer to the Dimensional Empire's Core Worlds. And someone has taken note of them.

 

[Shallown]

Well Random It isn't d&D or any level system. Its a home brew designed to be like Gurps, in as far as, it is a universal system. Characters are more or less professionals in thier chosen fields. Competent without being experts yet.

Storm Born That's an idea. I just had a problem with who had that kind of power to rip chunks of reality out of... well reality. It might be interesting for the Big Bad evil guys to just be taking advantage of the reality ripping. Maybe they know how to encourage it without neccessarily controling it.

Thanks later

 

[Tonguez]

I once had a world (based on the console game Pyrates) which used 'Nexus Storms' - basically naturally occuring gates which manifested as huge storms (caused when the boundaries of two worlds rubbed against each other)
The Nexus Mages of Blackport had discovered a way of predicting and harnessing the Storms so that Ships could actually sail into and through them to emerge at a predictable destination. Blackport had access to three stable Nexus gates (harnessed storms)

Of course there were still wild storms and sometimes the storm changed throwing off the Predictions (so there was still randomness and risk involved)

The PCs were Merchants who used the Nexus gates to visit all the known (and unkonwn) worlds, fighting Sky Pyrates, Dragons and Seaserpents on the way

You could use that idea if you wanted

 

[Impeesa]

Rip off Chrono Trigger, and replace time travelling with plane hopping. Example: Some horrendous entity of Cthonian proportions sleeps at the heart of the multiverse, spinning off new planes and gates between them with its mere presence. Eventually, the planes closest to it are drawn in and entirely consumed by this entity, giving it the energy it needs to create its spawn.

--Impeesa--

 

[Dogbrain]

On a more naturalistic note:

The multiple universes don't "really" exist. They are actually an oversized quantum aberration. Every once in a while, the wave forms of a few universes collapse into a single universe. Gates are the beginning of such a collapse. Eventually, everything will collapse into one universe, unless something manages to maintain the instability. Alas, the laws of thermodynamics foredoom any such attempt, but there will be those who will keep trying. To this end, some of the more powerful denizens of various universes might go so far as to use other universes (not their own) as a "power source" for this. Thus, some universes could be "force collapsed" to maintain the existence of other universes. One sign of this force collapse is a higher-than-normal frequency of gates.

Thus, instead of one great big bad, there are many entities around who are collapsing universes to maintain their own. Whose universe is the "real" one? Maybe there is no "real" one and the final collapse is the elimination of reality, which is merely a gigantermous virtual particle. Maybe there is a "truly real" universe. Who could know?

 

[Shallown]

I think the greates problem is not why these gates happen but what connection and affect can the PC's have on them.

I don't care much what the Why is as long as the players have some investment in the Why.

Thanks for the ideas but I still feel like the connection from Game/Campaign to player is missing.

Maybe its just me

Later

 

[Stormborn]

OK, how about a different approach, with a nod to Warren Ellis in Planetary:
The universe as the PCs know it is actually a giant calculating engine, a computer made up of alternate realites, attempting to create "the perfect world." Of course once that world is created the multiverse will collapse into a single universe, obliterating all those alternae people and places.

Somewhere, on one of those worlds, someone has figured this out, figured out the "code" for the system, and has introduced a virus bent on locking the system, keeping all the worlds going forever. A secondary effect is "bleedthrough" as the system attempts to fight the virus. At first its just people type programs, soon its going to be large chunks of reality.

Once the PCs learn this, however they do, they have to make a decision: whose side are we on? Do they work to repair the damage? Do they help the virus-makers, and save all those worlds? Are do they side with the "Maker" and try and stop the virus and allow thier respective worlds to live out their intended course?

 

[blargney the second]

It sounds like Chaos is winning in the endless battle against Law. Did Law's forces screw up, or did Chaos' servants succeed at one of their endeavours?