[HOE] Lost Colony

["Leybourne, Brian" <Brian.Leybourne@airnz.co.nz>]

Although this made it to the Lost Colony list (in link form), I thought it
was of general interest to Deadlands and HOE players as well. Apologies if
it was already posted to those lists, if it was I missed it. One extremely
minor spoiler for Deadlands players, nothing particularly spoilerish for HOE
players.

--

LOST & FOUND: TAMING PEG'S LOST COLONY
by Shane Hensley

The idea for Deadlands started on a long trip home from GenCon back in '94.
White Wolf was handing out free copies of their magazine, and this creepy
Confederate undead soldier was on the cover (they later used it for the
cover of Necropolis: Atlanta). The ride home from GenCon for me is about 14
hours. We usually get started about 6 or 7pm after closing down our booths
and then drive through the night. Four days of constant stimulation,
followed by a long night's drive through the desolate prairies of Indiana
and Ohio, then the mountains of West Virginia, give rise to all sorts of
ideas. I love this drive, and it is an annual source of inspiration for me.

So two years later, we decided to become a full-time company and do
Deadlands, the Weird West. Our bad guys, which had been a nebulous "forces
of darkness"-type evil, became the Reckoners, and their ultimate goal was to
"destroy the world." While it worked to create our setting, we felt it a
little cliched. The powers of darkness always want to blow up the world and
the heroes always win. So we decided to do something a little different and
actually blow the world up. That became the Hell on Earth setting. There was
a lot of concern at first that we would turn off our Weird West fans. If
they thought their heroes' efforts to thwart the Reckoning were all for
naught, why keep playing? We addressed that by saying that HOE was just one
possibility, creating Saints from the greatest heroes to preserve something
of a legacy, and more importantly, by adding a third chapter to prove all
that sacrifice and hard work would eventually pay off.

But what would this third chapter be? The year Hell on Earth debuted, John
Hopler and I talked about it. We knew we had always wanted to play a true
"space-horror" game. Not a sci-fi game with some horror in it, but true
space horror. But was there a way to tie this in to the third and final
chapter of Deadlands? I'll be honest, the path wasn't clear at first. We
knew the setting we wanted, we knew which of the major players in Deadlands
would be involved in its creation, but we weren't sure exactly how it all
fit.

Then in '98 I ran a Lost Colony live-action game at our office (not
something we normally do). The idea was part Event Horizon the movie, part
Deadlands, part Paranoia. While it was a great time, it also helped me
cement the central plot for Lost Colony. I can't say much now, but be
assured it revolves around Dr. Hellstromme and his creation of the Tunnel
(the device that allows travel between Earth space and Faraway-the setting
for Lost Colony). This is one of the greatest secrets of Lost Colony, which
we'll reveal within the first year.

Cut to the recent past. We did a playtest game of Lost Colony where I tried
a few things out, including exactly what our bad guys would be. In this
adventure, a group of terrorists called the Reapers sabotaged the Tunnel and
this *very strange* alien race (that's the most I can say right now) came
out. We called them the Screamers. They had legions of troops, incredible
ships, and weapons that could rip through PCs like a hot knife through
butter. But the problem was the PC immediately became too militaristic. That
wasn't the feel I was looking for. Though Aliens is definitely one of my
favorite movies of all time, we were going for more horror, less guns. Ships
should be used to isolate characters and terrify them. We weren't interested
in giving players complex computer programs to create ships and how many
guns they could cram inside.

So we talked a lot, and Richard Pollard, Jenny Hise, John Goff, John Hopler,
and Dave Wilson gave me some great ideas about how to refine things. The
Reapers became more of the overt threat. They weren't especially scary, but
gave a group something mundane to fight so that everything didn't have to be
monsters. The Screamers have been replaced with lots of different things
that are much less common and powerful, but a bazillion times as creepy.

That's what the action in space is all about. Now let's talk about Banshee,
the only inhabited planet in Faraway. From the beginning, each of our games
have been Westerns. The Weird West is obviously set in the West, but so was
Hell on Earth, both in geography and genre. The mutants in HOE are the
Indians, the Law Dogs are the sheriffs, marshals, and rangers, and the
Combine is the cavalry. Survivor settlements are the isolated towns and
forts of the frontier. In Lost Colony, the native anouks are the Indians,
the Colonial Rangers are the lawmen, and the UN troops are the cavalry. The
colonies that remain are the isolated frontier settlements .

That gave us some good ideas on what the anouks should be like, too. If we
wanted them to be a model for Indians, they needed to be raiders, probably
not so good in a standup fight, and they needed access to some sort of weird
magic the humans had never seen. We added a bit of Mongol to them, gave all
anouks a touch of magic, and their shamans a little bit more. Their real
"witch doctors" turned out to be ancient creatures-much like liches-called
the "skinnies." These creatures are the anouks' "big guns." They can take
control of UN pilots and have them cluster-bomb their own men instead of
anouk villages. They can also cast a sort of lightning strike that rips
through an entire company's troops and fries their brains in an instant.
They have incredible power, and the source of their energy is yet another of
our famous secrets we reveal as the game goes on (this one is revealed
pretty early, though). One of the first things that will happen in the game
is the "Worldstorm." This is a massive skinny ritual that reverses the
powerful winds of Banshee and unveils something sinister hidden beneath the
Outland sands. This gives us the one thing we felt was still missing from
Lost Colony-exploration. Between this and the abandoned or overrun outposts
in space, there will be plenty of weird places to explore and bizarre
creatures to encounter.

That's the skinny (pardon the pun) on Lost Colony so far. There are still
dozens of details to be worked out, and I'm known for changing my mind about
some things at the last minute. No matter what, though, you can expect lots
of creepy horror and gunslinging action. Fans of hard sci-fi won't be
disappointed, but they shouldn't look for a Traveller-esque game with lots
of intricate charts on how to design a spaceship. The science is there to
support the story and the action-not the other way around. Not that there's
anything wrong with the other approach, mind you, it's just not our bag.
Zombie mutants in space-now that's something we can sink our jagged teeth
into.

Brian "Can't wait" Leybourne.

.-->
"The Web brings people together because no matter what kind of a 
twisted sexual mutant you happen to be, you've got millions of pals 
out there. Type in 'Find people who have sex with goats that are on 
fire' and the computer will say, 'Specify type of goat.'"

Brian Leybourne
brian.leybourne@airnz.co.nz
bleybourne@hotmail.com

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