[Torg] Re: A redesigned Possibility War

[Morgan Nash]

Ha, too much to do?! I thrive on the challenge. Plus, my mate Karl
will be running it with me so there's actually two of us doing the
hard work.

Re: Kanawa/Core Earth. I had been thinking much along the same lines.
Take the covert, espionage and corporate elements and just apply them
to the baseline reality.

In fact, I'm toying with the idea of secretly making Core Earth ....
*not* Core Earth.  ie: tell the players: "yeah, your reality is the
real world" but actually have their own reality also being subtly
manipulated by its own Darkness Device. My thinking is that this
Darkness Device is terribly old and takes the form of the first weapon
ever used to murder another human. Since then it has been guiding the
growth of "Core Earth" and carefully promoting this Hope vs Villainy
thing through the constant wars which have been a part of our history.
The extremely long-term plan is that the inhabitants of its reality
build up a huge store of Possibility Energy (hence why Core Earth is
pulsing with yummy P.E.), allowing it to use that power to wipe out
all other cosms without the tiresome need to invade. Or something like
that anyway.

Anyway, that would allow me to have some super-secret stuff happening
behind the scenes as the 'local' Darkness Device manipulates events to
fight off these upstart invaders and to prepare for the culmination of
its uber-plan.

Re: fantasy. I agree entirely. I'm not sure exactly how to describe
what I have in mind for the Chinese Fantasy realm (currently called
"The Outer Kingdom", contrasting with the cosm which is called "The
Middle Kingdom"). I might steal a few ideas from Legend of the Five
Rings, even though it is more Japanese than Chinese. I like the yin vs
yang suggestion too - it's like the whole "Lo Pan is cursed because he
is out-of-balance".

Morgan

PS: Apologies for using the email group for my own personal sounding-board! :-)

On Nov 16, 2007 9:37 AM, Phil Dack <philipdack at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Some interesting ideas, I just hope you haven't given yourself
> too much work to do!!
>
> Couple of specific thoughts, I think I agree around Kanawa. I
> got over the 80s/90s ninja-love-in in my teens, and had no
> desire to bring that into my Torg game. But on the other hand,
> the industrial conspiracy theme is one that resonates so
> strongly in modern media that I think it's a shame to lose it
> entirely. Possible compromise: make it a Core Earth element.
> Just look at the relationships between governments and arms
> manufacturers now (US with the likes of Lockheed, but the most
> recent one I'm aware of is the government-led decision to pull
> an investigation into alleged corruption in British Aerospace /
> Saudi Arabia deals).
>
> Secondly, I think the cross-over of fantasy and core earth could
> work really well, but I don't think Shadowrun quite got it and
> neither do I think Torg did. Aysle in particular had an
> underlying element of campness in the way some of the denizens
> were portrayed. Make it a harder fantasy realm, more akin to
> Middle Earth or indeed myriad other fantasy novels, which takes
> itself deadly serious and isn't inhabited with comic relief
> imps, goblins and demons. That might appeal more. But YMMV.
>
> Good luck and hope it goes well.
>
> Phil
>