05-22-2024, 10:50 AM (This post was last modified: 05-22-2024, 10:51 AM by M Fnord.
Edit Reason: Cannot read, missed a thing in the outline
)
So I'm doing a thing, or at least I'm in the preliminary stages of doing a thing, that involves IST shenanigans. (A Worm crossover in fact, because it's about time I got the damn mind virus too.) More specific, I had the wild hair to do an IST world set in the late 2010s/early 2020s as the baseline. I've read the 90s update Bob did and I've skimmed the IST25 outline (lord but the forum change did a number on the formatting), but it's been a while since then (god we old) so I'm curious to see if anybody has any bright ideas on what kind of nonsense the IST got up to in the intervening years. There's a couple things that I want to include for story reasons, primarily the discovery of parachronics as the next new superscience, but other than that any and all ideas are welcome. Even the stupid ones - maybe especially the stupid ones.
"It is your job to personify the tyranny of the majority. You must brutally, ruthlessly oppress and persecute the fuck out of the poor misunderstood disruptive creep minority so that the privileged nerd funhaver status quo can be maintained. It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it. Fun Über Alles, all hail the Fun Tyrant, without him our campaign is lost." --SA user Angry Diplomat, on the GM's role.
I wish you luck. I've thought several times about going back and bringing the IST world completely up to date, since the 25th anniversary edition idea is almost a decade dead at this point -- but then I look at the lightly satirical American politics I created for the 1990s and realized I had predicted the real world, and I just get depressed.
-- Bob
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
(05-22-2024, 10:50 AM)M Fnord Wrote: So I'm doing a thing, or at least I'm in the preliminary stages of doing a thing, that involves IST shenanigans. (A Worm crossover in fact, because it's about time I got the damn mind virus too.) More specific, I had the wild hair to do an IST world set in the late 2010s/early 2020s as the baseline. I've read the 90s update Bob did and I've skimmed the IST25 outline (lord but the forum change did a number on the formatting), but it's been a while since then (god we old) so I'm curious to see if anybody has any bright ideas on what kind of nonsense the IST got up to in the intervening years. There's a couple things that I want to include for story reasons, primarily the discovery of parachronics as the next new superscience, but other than that any and all ideas are welcome. Even the stupid ones - maybe especially the stupid ones.
One thing to keep in mind is that the Worm entities effectively wall off the timelines they intend to use for their experiments from parachronic travel from outside timelines. You could have a team of parachronic travelers arrive in one of the affected timelines just as the entities are setting up their barriers and get trapped. In that case, you don't really need a detailed history of the IST timeline, just enough for characters to make references.
Another option would be to have them discover the parahumans timelines after Gold Morning. This assumes that killing off the entities removes the barriers.
The third option is to have the IST timeline(s) be inside the barrier. Imagine the panic when IST Earth loses contact with all other quanta and possibly a large chunk of their own quantum level. I'm assuming for simplicity's sake that all timelines isolated by the entities are at the same quantum level. Do IST supers have encounters with Cauldron? How does that play out? Tinkertech is notoriously irreproducible. The same cannot be said of the tech developed by gadgeteers.
(05-22-2024, 10:50 AM)M Fnord Wrote: So I'm doing a thing, or at least I'm in the preliminary stages of doing a thing, that involves IST shenanigans. (A Worm crossover in fact, because it's about time I got the damn mind virus too.) More specific, I had the wild hair to do an IST world set in the late 2010s/early 2020s as the baseline. I've read the 90s update Bob did and I've skimmed the IST25 outline (lord but the forum change did a number on the formatting), but it's been a while since then (god we old) so I'm curious to see if anybody has any bright ideas on what kind of nonsense the IST got up to in the intervening years. There's a couple things that I want to include for story reasons, primarily the discovery of parachronics as the next new superscience, but other than that any and all ideas are welcome. Even the stupid ones - maybe especially the stupid ones.
One thing to keep in mind is that the Worm entities effectively wall off the timelines they intend to use for their experiments from parachronic travel from outside timelines. You could have a team of parachronic travelers arrive in one of the affected timelines just as the entities are setting up their barriers and get trapped. In that case, you don't really need a detailed history of the IST timeline, just enough for characters to make references.
Another option would be to have them discover the parahumans timelines after Gold Morning. This assumes that killing off the entities removes the barriers.
The third option is to have the IST timeline(s) be inside the barrier. Imagine the panic when IST Earth loses contact with all other quanta and possibly a large chunk of their own quantum level. I'm assuming for simplicity's sake that all timelines isolated by the entities are at the same quantum level. Do IST supers have encounters with Cauldron? How does that play out? Tinkertech is notoriously irreproducible. The same cannot be said of the tech developed by gadgeteers.
Oh no, I'm well aware of all that nonsense. I actually have the vague glimmerings of a plot and about 8k worth of gibberish already written at this point, and the barrier thing is a minor plot point that might expand into a major plot point depending on how people react to it.
And tbh most of the IST stuff is going to be random drips of exposition and/or flashback material, so I am honestly just looking for the broadest of outlines and ideas for dumb references. I am perfectly happy to just make shit up and fill in gaps as necessary, just figured that I'd come to the experts first before grabbing my spray cans. Especially because I'm prone to misreading shit: I'd somehow gotten the idea reading the IST25 outline that the US had gone full Amerxit at some point, which colored some of my initial worldbuilding until I reread it and realized that I'd fucked that up. So, experts.
"It is your job to personify the tyranny of the majority. You must brutally, ruthlessly oppress and persecute the fuck out of the poor misunderstood disruptive creep minority so that the privileged nerd funhaver status quo can be maintained. It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it. Fun Über Alles, all hail the Fun Tyrant, without him our campaign is lost." --SA user Angry Diplomat, on the GM's role.
Quote:I'd somehow gotten the idea reading the IST25 outline that the US had gone full Amerxit at some point, which colored some of my initial worldbuilding until I reread it and realized that I'd fucked that up. So, experts.
Well, it had, kinda. It's only because President Buchanan didn't go full Trump (because when I was writing >10 years ago, I couldn't conceive anyone on the national stage actually behaving like Trump) that it never got to the full "Fortress America, Us Against The Godless Liberal Hordes" stage, and Buchanan actually respected getting voted out of office.
-- Bob
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
Well yeah, but I had gotten the impression that the US had pulled a China - closed the IST embassies, evicted UNHQ, withdrew from the Charter and the Edicts, etc. instead of being a jackass about membership dues and crash-adopting the Singapore process reactors. You know, more of a proper Brexit clusterfuck with attendant issues spilling over.
"It is your job to personify the tyranny of the majority. You must brutally, ruthlessly oppress and persecute the fuck out of the poor misunderstood disruptive creep minority so that the privileged nerd funhaver status quo can be maintained. It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it. Fun Über Alles, all hail the Fun Tyrant, without him our campaign is lost." --SA user Angry Diplomat, on the GM's role.
"It is your job to personify the tyranny of the majority. You must brutally, ruthlessly oppress and persecute the fuck out of the poor misunderstood disruptive creep minority so that the privileged nerd funhaver status quo can be maintained. It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it. Fun Über Alles, all hail the Fun Tyrant, without him our campaign is lost." --SA user Angry Diplomat, on the GM's role.
I've just started reading this and am enjoying what I see.
-- Bob
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
(06-12-2024, 11:56 AM)M Fnord Wrote: Since it won't leave me alone, I did what I usually do in these instances - I opened up a spreadsheet and got to timelinein'
Some doodling in the margins submitted for your consideration...
1995 - United Nations: "The IST Academy is established. While primarily intended to groom future IST members, it is open to all young metahumans regardless of their career plans." The inaugural class had five metahumans, including a meta codenamed "Fadeout" for his invisibility and superspeed powers.
2019 - 30 September - Earth: "Draka Incursion ends with a counter-raid and the destruction of the Draka wormhole nexus generator by IST agent [WHITENOISE]." IST agent Fadeout, who doesn't survive the explosion.
Bob has had a copy of Fadeout's character sheet for years, but not in GURPS format -- we never got around to converting him, but he might have ended up in IST25 if that had gone ahead.
He's very very smart (IQ 30+), which is why he got to go destroy the generator. He isn't tough enough to stand up to a team of Draka on his own, though. He's a run-and-gun fighter, and they caught him standing still where he shouldn't have been... but he knew the odds of getting out were low before he went in.
-- Rob Kelk
Sticks and stones can break your bones, But words can break your heart. - unknown
Quote:but he might have ended up in IST25 if that had gone ahead.
Oh, yes, I had planned on it, I just never got that far. Ian's character, too, whose name escapes me and whose character sheet I don't seem to have in the IST25 directory.
Oh, and "Whitenoise" sounds like a great hero name itself.
-- Bob
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
Okay, so one point: [WHITENOISE] is a known quantity - a parachronic jumper with the provisional IST codename of Telcontar, who was also the agent involved in the Shibuya Isekai incident - I just didn't want to name 'em because I thought it might be distracting. More fool I, eh wot?
"It is your job to personify the tyranny of the majority. You must brutally, ruthlessly oppress and persecute the fuck out of the poor misunderstood disruptive creep minority so that the privileged nerd funhaver status quo can be maintained. It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it. Fun Über Alles, all hail the Fun Tyrant, without him our campaign is lost." --SA user Angry Diplomat, on the GM's role.
06-12-2024, 03:46 PM (This post was last modified: 06-12-2024, 03:57 PM by robkelk.)
Hey, that's okay. We can kill off my self-insert somewhere else.
EDIT:
(05-23-2024, 09:00 AM)M Fnord Wrote: And tbh most of the IST stuff is going to be random drips of exposition and/or flashback material, so I am honestly just looking for the broadest of outlines and ideas for dumb references. I am perfectly happy to just make shit up and fill in gaps as necessary, just figured that I'd come to the experts first before grabbing my spray cans.
In that case, backstory: The first cohort of the IST Academy had five metas enrolled, Fadeout being the only male. He was smart enough to know that he'd have to work with all four of the girls, so he deliberately looked for a girlfriend outside of the academy. We never decided whether he actually found one, or whether he thought he found one but he'd actually found an espionage agent looking for IST secrets, or never "got lucky".
-- Rob Kelk
Sticks and stones can break your bones, But words can break your heart. - unknown
Quote:but he might have ended up in IST25 if that had gone ahead.
Oh, yes, I had planned on it, I just never got that far. Ian's character, too, whose name escapes me and whose character sheet I don't seem to have in the IST25 directory.
Oh, and "Whitenoise" sounds like a great hero name itself.
Hi. The character is Misato Saito, also known by her alias, Azure Star.
After she was whipped up for a theoretical Warrior's World game I decided to play her in Ken's recurring Marvel Advanced game. So I'll attach her Marvel character as well, as she's currently specced (Some karma has been spent increasing her combat skills, pumping up her physical stats, and learning new spells.)
In the Timeline of Some Sort entry for 31 December 1994, our Fun Tyrant Wrote:Noted supervillain William "Marquis" Lavere
I don't think his forename ever registered with me before. (Does Amelia exist, and stay in his custody, in that timeline?)
In the Stuff That Needs To Be Figured Out As We Go Along tab, he Wrote:Who takes over for Ventura?
Who takes over for Wellstone?
As continuity would have it, I came up with a candidate for 2016 whom I consider equally suitable for 2004: Senator Joe Kazanski, tentatively of Alabama.
(06-12-2024, 05:04 PM)Mamorien Wrote: I don't think his forename ever registered with me before. (Does Amelia exist, and stay in his custody, in that timeline?)
As far as I am aware he doesn't have a canonical forename. (I could be wrong, can't be arsed to bother looking.) On the question of Amelia, she either does not exist or remained in the custody of her mother, who didn't join her supervillain baby daddy's quest to become king of we-have-Rapture-at-home.
(06-12-2024, 05:04 PM)Mamorien Wrote: As continuity would have it, I came up with a candidate for 2016 whom I consider equally suitable for 2004: Senator Joe Kazanski, tentatively of Alabama.
Yeah, I could see that working. I shall make a note.
"It is your job to personify the tyranny of the majority. You must brutally, ruthlessly oppress and persecute the fuck out of the poor misunderstood disruptive creep minority so that the privileged nerd funhaver status quo can be maintained. It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it. Fun Über Alles, all hail the Fun Tyrant, without him our campaign is lost." --SA user Angry Diplomat, on the GM's role.
"It is your job to personify the tyranny of the majority. You must brutally, ruthlessly oppress and persecute the fuck out of the poor misunderstood disruptive creep minority so that the privileged nerd funhaver status quo can be maintained. It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it. Fun Über Alles, all hail the Fun Tyrant, without him our campaign is lost." --SA user Angry Diplomat, on the GM's role.
Especially because I'm prone to misreading shit: I'd somehow gotten the idea reading the IST25 outline that the US had gone full Amerxit at some point, which colored some of my initial worldbuilding until I reread it and realized that I'd fucked that up. So, experts.
