Now and again, my FLGS gets some used stuff and puts it up for sale and I, lover of old RPG stuff, go running like a fat boy in lead shoes to see what I can see. One time, I found Stormbringer 4th Ed. and a companion campaign book, Rogue Mistress. I'd seen ads for it in old Dragons and had no idea what the hell it was about, but my wife liked the look of it and we had some extra monetary units so WHAM."The multiverse", says a description of the product, "is a complex system of intertwined universes, each unique, with peculiar physical laws, varying influences of the gods of Law and Chaos, and differing in the degree to which the use of magic and technology are effective.
"Heroes of sufficient cunning and ability traverse the physical barriers between these universes by means of special devices, spells, or magical portals. Risking their very existence, such heroes reap the reward of fabulous magical knowledge or exotic technological weaponry.
"The Rogue Mistress is a vessel able to navigate among these million universes - a pirate ship of ancient origin, captained by the beautiful Maria de Tres Pistolas who leads an exotic free-booting crew gathered from across the Million Spheres."
There, now we all know about the same amount about it.The other day I was looking over it. There's a lot to read, so I was really just skimming. However, I keyed in on a few vital points about this campaign:
1) It's a Multiverse-hopping campaign, presumably taking PCs from one reality to the other in search of some MacGuffin;
2) The Rogue Mistress is a multiverse-hopping sailing ship, on which the PCs travel; and
3) It has a laser cannon on it.
Forget the busty gunchick on the front, man. "Multiversal sailing ship with a laser cannon" got my blood pumping. She's not that good-looking anyway.
I've never run a game that spanned multiverses, but I was really keen on the idea as a teenager. A lot of my angsty teener "Someday-I'll-Make-This-Into-A-Movie" story idea revolved around multiverses and realities and blah blah blah, but I got over it and kinda stuck the notion in a mental box somewhere and then I think I piled up some old blankets over it, or a burro, or something.
Looking over the book, though, made me go, "Hmmm."
The way I see it, I have a few options for using this thing.
A) I could learn Stormbringer, and run it in its native environment;
B) I could convert to another system, and still use the plot at least; or
C) I could take inspiration from it and run my own damn thing with my own damn techno-magical anachronism Bustass-Wagon.
Hmmm.
What would Thrazar do...?
Most importantly, what if instead of a ship, it were a Damnation Van...?
