Monthly archives: September 2002

You know you’ve been there:

Keeper: Okay, so you are all coming out of the ruined building, the cacophony of cultists in the wake of their fell god’s death growing dim behind you, your Tommy guns still warm in your hands, your trench coats wrapped about you tightly to keep out the cold of the October night. As you enter into the field, an irregular disk with lights of various colors can be seen descending from the sky and landing in the field. (Players announce various actions to confront this strange sight.) A ramp descends from the side of the vessel, and three figures emerge. Two are obviously human, one blonde, clad all in black, with a strange metal tube of some sort hanging from his belt. The other human is darker-haired, wearing a long-sleeved white shirt, a black vest, black pants, with a low-slung gun holster around his waist. Behind them is a large, hairy humanoid with a crossbow and a bandolier slung across its chest.

Player: Okay, I’m going into the kitchen to get a Mountain Dew, and when I come back, you are going to explain to me calmly and rationally that my 1920s investigator did not really run into Han, Luke and Chewie stepping off the Falcon.

Crossovers are one of those things that every gamer seems obliged to face, usually as a player, but sometimes as a GM if he or she is running a setting where “anything is possible”. Done well, they provide the opportunity to explore the meaning of genres by blending them and examining the overlap. Done poorly, they just, well, suck. So for this article I thought I would explore the ways of crossovers can be done, and hopefully how to avoid getting Doritos thrown at you. In the future, I’ll be doing some pieces on specific Cthulhu-crossover settings, hopefully without a lynching. Please, no hate mail.

Continue reading »