[TML] Weird jump phenomena (was jump weapons)

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 2 Aug 2008 at 22:05, Richard Aiken wrote:

> A while back, I bought the WoD book "Midnight Roads."  It's full of
> advice about running a nomadic WoD campaign (rather than the usual
> sedentary, city-based one).  While I don't like the game system for
> beans, I find that WoD supplements like this one are really
> interesting. "Midnight Roads" did not dissappoint.
> 
> I mention this because there are two adventures therein which are very
> similar to what you posted.  The first is a town that exists outside
> time.  The characters find a "Deliverance" style hick town . . . then
> find they can't leave it.  Turns out the local "rich weird eccentric"
> made a deal with Something back at the start of the Great Depression,
> a deal that would "protect" everyone from the disaster befalling the
> rest of the world.  The further the PCs get from town, the stranger
> and more dangerous/monsterous everything becomes.  The actual way out
> for the characters is left up to the Storyteller.  But over the
> decades of unmoving time, the townsfolk have discovered their own way
> out: *persuading* travelers - through whatever means necessary - to
> say the words "I will take your place in [Town Name]."  Whoever can do
> this can then leave without any trouble.  The poor traveler, however,
> ends up very gruesomely dead when the next dawn arrives.

Sounds like they filed the serial numbers off an Outer Limits 
episode. Remind me (I'm not at home right now or I'd check) and I'll 
look up which one (has to be season 1 of the original series, because 
that's the only one I have the DVDs of)
 
> The second Midnight Road adventure is even weirder.  It's a Road that
> has died.  When the character's reach the end of it (the pavement
> peters out in an empty field . . .), they discover that they can't
> leave.  Also, after a time, they realize that are (effectively) dead
> - complete with appropriate ghostly powers.  Then the spirir of the
> Road begins to manifest as dopplegangers, one for each party member,
> trying to get them all to die for real.  The only way out is to
> persuade the Road that (like any other ghost) it's actually dead and
> should give up and "pass on."
> 
> I think this would make a great misjump adventure, for one of those
> jumps that just keeps going and going and going and . . . About the
> end of Week Two, the events described above start happening.  Only if
> the Jump Space doppelgangers can be convinced that they aren't
> *really* the PCs does the jump finally end . . . at the correct
> destination, after only the usual week.  As far as anyone else can
> tell, the PCs all had a collective nightmare . . .

Well, there's also the old idea of a misjump that takes the PCs thru 
time as well as space. Great for jumping players from pre-Rebellion 
to one of the settings long after.

And there's always the idea mentioned in a couple of Andre Norton's 
books. Ship (implied to be ones with early versions of the star 
drive) popping out of hyperspace over worlds *centuries* after they 
jumped. Crews long dead of course.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com