Playing the Game: Crossing Over

Yes, crossing over. But not with that douchey John Edwards guy. No, we're talking about stories and characters that flow between campaigns and environments. This is closely related to the post I did back in May about Set Pieces.

One of the recurring issues in using Secondlife for gaming, versus doing it in a pencil and paper "desktop" setting, is that you only have limited control of the environment. Sure, within your own Sim you're essentially god. You can set the rules, build the world, define the backstory, control the main plot arcs, and generally do everything a Game Master does in a conventional RPG. There is nothing wrong with this. It's your sim. You're paying the bills.

If it was a live game, your players would expect nothing less. In a second life region, it's your region. Your visitors need to accept that.

Now, I'm not exactly saying "just go ahead and be as strict as you want," because, if you do, chances are you won't get a lot of visitors. At least not ones that stay very long. Unless they really, really, like your campaign. Which, of course, means you need to allow some flexibility. Find a balance between what you expect from your campaign space and what your players expect to get away with.

There are times when players/characters are going to want to play in a certain environment, but not as a Set Piece. They're going to want to participate in the story that's going on there and then. The difference between crossing over and borrowing a set piece is, often, one of perspective. When you are using a set, it becomes part of your story. When you cross over, you become part of their story.

Examples? When we evacuate the wounded from Hale's Moon to the high tech medical center on Beaumonde and we use the MedLab on the Babylon 5 sim as our set, for that time, to us, Bab 5 is Beaumonde. We're using it not as it is but simply as a set to represent something else. The same goes when the Trekies visit the Mining Colony of Earstwhile 3 and use Hale's Moon as their set. In either case, they've had a quick word with the sim's staff to be sure it's cool, and the event isn't really part of the local story. Local participants are doing so more as actors on the set than "really" being their characters.

The level of "Set" may be different, depending on what's going on and who's playing. When the locals are being themselves, and the visitors are being themselves, you've got more of a crossover.

Different campaign settings, and different story arcs, are more adaptable to allowing crossovers than others. Star Trek and Star Wars, for example, both exist in vast areas of space complete with Aliens and FTL drives. Introducing a new alien race or some distant government is usually pretty easy. As long as you're not directly contradicting established Cannon, it'll probably fit in just fine. The Babylon 5 campaign is also fairly easy to incorporate new Aliens into the mix. Though new Human organizations and governments aren't quite so easy. Bab 5 is more limited in that regard. Finally, campaigns like Firefly are much more restrictive. There's no FTL. No aliens. And everything happens in the same star system.

As a player, it's usually easier to crossover into a "more open" or "less restrictive" campaign than to shift into a more limited setting. For example, some of our players from the Firefly campaign RP on the Al Raquis and Splintered Rock sims, both of which are set, effectively, on Arakis (Dune), but are open to General SciFi. Because of the nature of the different campaign backgrounds, and the general environment, it's easy for them to do. If a local asks them where they're from, they can say "Zenobia" and when asked "where's that?" they can say "around Georgia," and no one will worry about it. In a Dune campaign, Zenobia is just another world and Georgia is just another star. It only becomes a problem if they (either the locals or visitors) get too heavily into the Big Picture. On the local scale though, not a problem.

As long as the visitors remember where they are and don't try to force their story on the locals, it can work pretty well in most settings. It's only when players try to bring in elements that just can't work that you have a problem.

Where does that leave us as players and Game Masters?

As a player, there's always the caveat of "respect the genre." If you want to become a regular somewhere, figure out how to best fit into the environment. If they're open to crossovers, great. If not so much, then adapt your own background as needed to fit in and enjoy.

As a Game Master, figure out a polite way to deal with crossovers. If they're not making waves, it's probably OK to let them slide. You may get some great RP out of it and you can retcon out any conflicts. If they are making waves, then suggest they either adapt or, perhaps, find another venue.

Anecdotaly, one of the most amusing encounters I ever had with a crossover/on-the-fly-adaptation was when some Trekkers showed up on Babylon 5. They were just visiting but were speaking in character and, when asked about their odd uniforms, quickly ad-libed something about being the crew of a freighter who's captain had an odd fashion sense. It was priceless. How they handled it in their story I never heard, but their quick ad-lib let them fit into Bab5 for the visit without so much as a ripple.