I'm working on a scenario where the PCs find themselves thrown into 5000 AD at the end of mankind. The gate they came through leads back into millions of years in the past. They need to find a gate that will take them back to the twenty-first century. Finding themselves in a monstrosity-haunted wasteland with a cold and cruel totalitarian empire nearby, they won't wish to stay, but how do they go about learning about the gate home, and where would it be?

I want them to be captured by the empire at some point, but doing so means they need something special about them to let them avoid simply disappearing into the bureaucracy without a trace. If they're just picked up as random wanderers in the wasteland they're going to end up being sacrificed to Ithaqua. What makes them special in imperial eyes?

The empire is engaged in a holding action against the Dagonites and other Mythos-directed hordes. I figured the Dagonites would end up replacing much of the Earth's human population simply because Dagon is a fertility deity commanding his followers to care for their offspring. People possessed by Cthulhu would be too insane to raise kids and so would go extinct in a generation unless specially bred in farms for food, sacrifice, experimentation, brute labor, or, I suppose, cannon fodder.

Sometimes the games I run can lack a certain clear direction and motive for the PCs. I have some ideas about what they find in 5000 AD, but need that clear mission: Find the gate home, dealing with everything else as peripheral complications. Without this they may despair, which makes for bad drama, however realistic it may be.

Any input would be appreciated!

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on April 04, 2023, 01:48:24 PM
I'm working on a scenario where the PCs find themselves thrown into 5000 AD at the end of mankind. The gate they came through leads back into millions of years in the past. They need to find a gate that will take them back to the twenty-first century. Finding themselves in a monstrosity-haunted wasteland with a cold and cruel totalitarian empire nearby, they won't wish to stay, but how do they go about learning about the gate home, and where would it be?

I want them to be captured by the empire at some point, but doing so means they need something special about them to let them avoid simply disappearing into the bureaucracy without a trace. If they're just picked up as random wanderers in the wasteland they're going to end up being sacrificed to Ithaqua. What makes them special in imperial eyes?

The empire is engaged in a holding action against the Dagonites and other Mythos-directed hordes. I figured the Dagonites would end up replacing much of the Earth's human population simply because Dagon is a fertility deity commanding his followers to care for their offspring. People possessed by Cthulhu would be too insane to raise kids and so would go extinct in a generation unless specially bred in farms for food, sacrifice, experimentation, brute labor, or, I suppose, cannon fodder.

Sometimes the games I run can lack a certain clear direction and motive for the PCs. I have some ideas about what they find in 5000 AD, but need that clear mission: Find the gate home, dealing with everything else as peripheral complications. Without this they may despair, which makes for bad drama, however realistic it may be.

I'd say they need a good source of information - which would have to be an NPC. I think they should be contacted by an NPC who wants to escape mankind's fate by going back in time to the 21st century, and this person values them for their insider 21st century knowledge. I'd make it so that the NPC is sketchy, but promises to get them home and make them rich by bringing back a bit of 50th century tech back to their time. The NPC can info dump about what is around them in the empire, so they can make more informed decisions to be worried about.

And of course, once this NPC goes back with them, they might just have destroyed their own time.

Quote from: jhkim on April 04, 2023, 04:12:59 PM
I'd say they need a good source of information - which would have to be an NPC. I think they should be contacted by an NPC who wants to escape mankind's fate by going back in time to the 21st century, and this person values them for their insider 21st century knowledge. I'd make it so that the NPC is sketchy, but promises to get them home and make them rich by bringing back a bit of 50th century tech back to their time. The NPC can info dump about what is around them in the empire, so they can make more informed decisions to be worried about.

And of course, once this NPC goes back with them, they might just have destroyed their own time.

Excellent ideas to break the logjam. I can work with this, thank you very much! I can employ the imperial doctor who examines the PCs and notices that they are of queerly "ancient" racial stock. By 5000 AD there are no pure, sane white people anymore. The imperials are an Asian-European blend, the Radioactivists more Southeast Asian, the Dagonites are European-fish hybrids (i.e. either Deep Ones or fish-tainted with pop-eyes and wide mouths), and the Kau (Old Ones' feral livestock) are occasionally peach-colored but the PCs are obviously too educated and self-possessed to be that. They must be from another time and if so they might know a way back to that time . . .