Of Icke's World and Traveller-U

Icke's forthcoming book... a sourcebook?

Earlier this week I was in a really bad place with the hobby. It's amazing what a difference a few days, lots of effort, and a really successful playtest session can make to my mood.

Today, as I ponder what I want to focus on, I realise that there are two distractions in the way of my return to writing for the Tikhon fantasy game ready for Friday's game: Icke's World and Traveller-U.

Icke's World

Icke's World is a concept that I have for that conspiracy-horror-weirdshit setting I keep mentioning.

David Icke is one of my favourite "conspiracy theorists", to use the commonly bandied around phrase. As far as I am concerned he's either completely right or a very mistaken, if sincere, fool.

The premise of Icke's World is simple: what if David Icke is right? That makes for a fabulous conspiracy game. It also allows you to explore his writings as source material, testing out the practical upshot of his claims. For me, at least, that sounds like a lot of fun.

Think about this: Icke claims that the real world is an illusion (think: The Matrix) and that we have all, in fact, forgotten who we really are. We are Consciousness taking a trip through one viewpoint in our mind-body constructs. There is a conspiracy of power to delude us into believing that "we", as individuals, exist in a limited time-space holographic world.

Imagine the characters: you can take an Average-Joe type hero and allow them to have a series of Realisations. Each of those Realisations opens up new abilities to first "see through the illusion" and then, later, to learn to do cool things with "reality". Sort of Psi-powers mixed with Hindu-mysticism.

As for the stories, WOW! Icke has blended every conspiracy into one uber-Conspiracy. There is a whole world of possibility for investigations and counter-conspiracy action. For me, it's the characters as counter-insurgency "freedom fighters" that really appeals as a schtick.

Let me know what you think.

Traveller-U

Traveller is my favourite SF setting for gaming. It's rich and very expansive. Having recently obtained (after years playtesting) Traveller5, I have been dismayed to feel like that game is too clunky for me. Going back to Mongoose Traveller is an option... but another option is to run My Traveller Universe using UbiRPG.

It occurs to me that only a few things are needed to make a game conversion to UbiquitousRPG:

• Create some Role templates
• Create some Race/Species templates
• Create the equipment, such as weapons and armour

Other than that, most of the system is generic and you can easily make tweaks to support the specifics of your setting. 

That last point is an important realisation: you can tweak the rules to fit the setting. UbiRPG isn't a "generic" system, and it's not designed to be. What it is instead can be described as a homebrew baseline rules set; from this baseline all manner of specific tweaks can be implemented to emulate your chosen setting.

I can just imagine finally getting that adventure on the Solomani Rim because my regular players are already becoming familiar with the rules. It's just a step in setting. 

There... now I've said it, maybe I can get back to the Tikhon prep.

Game on!