This quick post offers an adventure idea that works with almost ANY campaign, almost ANY genre.

Image from Pixabay, no photo credit provided, cropped by Mike

2 1/2 weeks ago, I started a quick little article, 5-10 paragraphs long. For the last 10 days, every day, I’ve thought “It’s almost finished, any day now it will be done”. The last time I checked, it had topped 35,000 words. But it’s almost done, it will be ready to post any day now.

Meanwhile, I’ve missed not one but two Campaign Mastery deadlines in succession for the first time ever. No excuses, just an acknowledgment of reality.

So this is a short filler post to keep the site ticking over. And I have an even shorter one in mind for if I need it next week. Just in case.

“When it’s time to railroad, everyone railroads.”

That’s a popular truism amongst my players and often quoted as an objective reality. It’s meant to signify that when the technological foundations are established, it doesn’t take genius to take the next step forwards and apply those foundations to a new and possibly socially-revolutionary application. Once someone’s invented the steam engine, railroads naturally follow.

The same was true of heavier-than-air flight, the light bulb, radio… hence all the debate in each of those fields about who was first.

What about the converse?

“When it’s NOT time to railroad, no-one railroads.”

Those who might have railroaded have to spend their money, resources, time, and whatever genius they can bring to bear, removing obstacles and paving the way.

I’ve used this principle a lot in many of my modern day / sci-fi campaigns. Genius can’t and won’t be denied, but it can’t do more than it historically did. Take away one forward step, and every genius who built on the work of those who came before them has to plug the gap; progress is set back, but not stalled completely.

That’s something of an over-simplification, because you do need to take into account opportunities, luck, and personalities, but as a general principle, and when confined to general fields of study, it works.

A near-universal scenario

I was musing upon that this morning when something connected in my head, and out popped an adventure concept that can be applied to almost any campaign, any genre (though it may need a little tweaking in some cases).

It stems from the concept that societies evolve and change over time, and each such evolution is generally viewed as an improvement in some respect over what was there before by at least some of those who experience it.

But such evolution is always in response to circumstances and stimuli. It’s not as simple and clear-cut as “When it’s time to railroad,” but if the starting conditions and the stimulus are the same, the logical evolution will – at the very least – be similar.

But if conditions are wrong for an idea, it can be massively counter-productive. That was the dilemma at the heat of the Classic Star Trek episode, “The City On The Edge Of Forever” – Edith Keeler’s social perspectives were so far ahead of their time that they actually put social progress itself in danger, by making the USA vulnerable to Nazi Germany.

That dilemma is a far truer reflection of “When it’s NOT time to railroad” than the traditional formulation.

So, picture this: The ruler / leader of some nation starts inexplicably flashing forward in time, finding himself in the body of an ordinary person in some future period, and learning the social mores of the day. He carries these experiences back with him when the effect wears off. Everything he experiences in that future time tells him that in some respects, the social patterns and mores and restrictions he observes are an improvement over those of his time.

That evolution might not be in the direction of greater inclusivity; evolution doesn’t have to be in any given direction, it’s simply change brought on as a response to circumstance.

And so he starts implementing some simplified version of what he’s experienced. And for a while, the changes are beneficial, and everyone lauds him for being an ‘enlightened ruler’.

But eventually, the truth is discovered the hard way: some changes are only tolerable, only beneficial, when the circumstances to which they are reactions exist, circumstances that the evolution is meant to control or counter or undo or restrict. The nation becomes massively weakened as a result – details will be situation-specific.

It might be that (in a fantasy campaign) the flash-forwards were intended by an enemy of the nation to have this very effect. Or maybe they were intended by an ally to be beneficial. Or maybe they were accidental, somehow – though that seems less than satisfying. Whatever the cause, its going to be up to the PCs to solve the problem and protect the nation until it recovers.

In a sci-fi campaign, instead of magic, it’s mad tech that is responsible. The same trio of responsible-party options exist.

In a wild-west campaign, maybe it’s a visionary describing the society of the 20th / 21st century and convincing a city mayor or state governor to implement the forecast ‘progressive’ policies.

In fact, it’s only time-travel oriented campaigns and Cthulhu campaigns where this general outline can’t really be hammered into a fit – and it even works in some of them, if you’re creative enough.

The most straightforward implementation is to project the ruler forward into the modern-day society that surrounds the players. Take the institutions and cultural assumptions with which they are familiar and show why they DON’T work in a completely different era.

But you can subvert that for an even more interesting concept – as soon as the situation is described to the players by some concerned party, that’s what they are most likely to expect. So instead, you have the monarch impressed by the bureaucracy and control of Nazi Germany, or the near-adoration of a suppressed population under a totalitarian dictator, or the romanticized ideals of Communist Russia – and then you show why THOSE won’t work in the everyday reality of the campaign.

And, to keep them guessing, file off the serial numbers – have the future experienced not be our modern today, or 1940s Russia, or whatever – add a couple of centuries to the destination date, and invent details out of whole cloth as necessary.

Pick a sci-fi novel you like and let that be your future ‘setting’ – and remember that the ruler / leader doesn’t fully understand what he’s experienced, and so won’t describe it very clearly.

The most important thing is that it should sharply contrast with the everyday reality. And, ultimately, your goal is NOT to show that a future culture is all wrong for the world of today, it’s to show that the culture that was in place is the natural result of the circumstance surrounding it. Think about that for a moment, and then have some fun with the idea!

So there you have it. Now, back to that monster article…