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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 5396026" data-attributes="member: 3820">That's more or less what I see as the basis for a workable model. The question that keeps drawing me back, though, is sort of this: "What's the advantage of a crossover event compared to the more tightly themed and personalized content that's the default?" The stakes are higher, but also more generic; when the elemental incursion happens, it really doesn't matter if it's another PC group or a bunch of NPCs that were the trigger, you're still dealing with someone else's mess instead of chasing your own ambitions. I think that's an unfortunate trade-off.  The trouble I have with that focus is that it cannibalizes themes, turning them into "survive the apocalypse." I realize I'm emphasizing the importance of theme and subgenre here a lot, but basically the games I run are things the players have voted on. When I run a swashbuckler, that's because the group decided that option (out of the 20 or so confronted with) appealed to them the most, in part influenced by a fondness for Assassin's Creed, I figure. Turning that game into a "brace against Armageddon" game would be a bait-and-switch.(succubi are devils now)I've considered this, actually, but all the best reasons I come up with for infernal intrigues playing out in the courts that PCs move in, particularly those that are playing a subtle game, instead of just marching a legion into the throne room and taking command, don't really require world-shaking epic events. They have a fascinating dynamic when the infernal types are bound by some rules to "play by the letter of the law" or cannot reveal themselves openly, and that plays at least as well in a stable world than one on the brink.To my ear those come across more like staging methods to set up an urban terror event than urban swashbucklers; there's the city element, but there's terror instead of panache. And an urban apocalypse is a decent idea for a game in its own right -- but if the players are signed up for a swashbuckler, they may very well prefer that to an urban apocalypse. It's already being buckled quite effectively, sans distractions. That's kind of the trouble I'm getting at: the way that Big Stakes Based On Some Other Group's Deeds tend to move the action away from the content that's personalized for this group.</blockquote>

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