I'm on a massive Aberrant kick at the moment, after the successful session I ran for my group last week and their exceptionally positive feedback.
We've one more session before our normal GM comes back from holiday and we resume our normal scheduled zombie apocalypse.
Thing is, whilst plotting out what I want to do with this next, last session, I've started thinking in terms of an ongoing game. This is probably a mistake.
Anyways, that aside, here's what I'm thinking...
Aberrant is very much a game if it's time. It was released in 1998 and is set in 2008, ten years after the first 'Nova' erupted.
Ten years of super (or Mega) participation has resulted in leaping technological progress and widespread cultural change. The world has embraced these enhanced beings, and is a different place because of it.
This is all great, until you run it in 2012. Now, the 'future' technology doesn't seem that impressive, and the world has turned. Events like 9/11, global recession, the first US black president, the Arab Spring, Hurricane Katrina, the Japanese Tsunami, Swine Flu and numerous more have changed our focus away from the direction the game designers predicted. Which is understandable. And inevitable.
The core conflict in Aberrant still stands up - Novas, Terragen, Aberrants, Utopia, Proteus, Aeon, Divas Mal, The Directive et al are all functional and relevant. It's just the timeline that isn't.
Which is why I chose to run the game from the day the day the Galatea exploded in orbit and spread cosmic charged radiation all over the globe.
The player characters are new super beings in a world that has never known supers.
Right now, a lot is going to shit, and the players don't know it. They only know what happened to them, and even then they don't understand it. They're currently running scared with amazing abilities that they can barely control. They'll find out soon enough...
So, my plan is to run with the Aberrant timeline from the start, and make changes where required.
I'm pleased to discover that the Galatea exploded on March 23, and we played on March 27, so that with minimal fudging I could run a campaign in 'real time'.
Which is awesome.
Sounds really great. Another option is to place the official timeline of Aberrant a few years forward (instead of starting in 2008 it can start in 2016, for example).
ReplyDeleteAberrant is actually a sequel to Mage: The Ascension.
ReplyDeleteDiscuss.
No, it's not. It's part of a trilogy formed by Adventure!, Aberrant and Trinity.
DeleteI know that :P It's just that whenever I come to actually play Aberrant, and I'm reading about the way the M-R node basically allows the human Nova to interact with the quantum layer of reality, I'm struck by the similarity to old Mage's "enlightened force of will" "belief defines reality" mechanics. In theory any Nova can do anything, limited only by their own perceptions of how their power (and indeed physics) works...
DeleteI was thinking of just pushing the timeline forward, but I think the tech and spirit of Aberrant Galatea +10 years doesn't gel with real life. All the comicbook future stuff seems a bit dated.
ReplyDeleteA Mage: the Ascension where the Technocracy have won, and magic requires a public scientific explanation? Where Paradox becomes Taint? Where Novas can do anything they want, but can only learn one rote at a time?
One of the recurring criticisms leveled against Mage (either iteration) is that its a pretentious Super Hero game, which is probably why the original Akashic Brotherhood Tradition Book had a costumed hero character at the back, and the Mage Chroniclers Guide has guidelines for hacking Awakening into a four colour heroes game using cWoD tropes.