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Forums > Home› Champions Pen and Paper RPG

Snake Gulch & Tyrell Donaldson in PnP lore?

tigerofcachticetigerofcachtice Posts: 551 Arc User
edited June 2014 in Champions Pen and Paper RPG
Hi, how is the Snake Gulch robot amusement park and Tyrell Donaldson depicted in PnP lore pls?

I'm wondering, for example, if Tyrell Donaldson was portrayed as a famous robotics expert in the Champions books, even if something like Snake Gulch was invented by Cryptic for CO. Or is even Tyrell himself created just for CO?
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  • eiledoneiledon Posts: 1,287 Arc User
    edited May 2014
    this might help somewhat..

    http://co-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=135737
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  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    edited May 2014
    As the thread Eiledon linked to above suggests, Snake Gulch as originally presented in the PnP game was far lower tech than the Westworld-inspired park Cryptic converted it to. And I've been unable to find any mention of Tyrell Donaldson in Champions books before Cryptic took over the IP, so I must assume he's their creation.
  • kojirohellfirekojirohellfire Posts: 2,075 Arc User
    edited May 2014
    It simply struck me as a bad parody of a Yul Brynner movie.
  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    edited May 2014
    The pop-culture-reference-heavy tone of Champions Online has been noted many times. For the most part, as in this case, it's a feature of the MMO setting rather than the PnP's.
  • kojirohellfirekojirohellfire Posts: 2,075 Arc User
    edited May 2014
    Yeah, so I'm aware.

    Nevertheless, the cowboy theme park with robots malfunctioning and turning evil is unmistakably Westworld.
  • meedacthunistmeedacthunist Posts: 2,961 Arc User1
    edited May 2014
    One more instance when Cryptic should roll with PnP instead of trying to be writers... :rolleyes:
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  • meedacthunistmeedacthunist Posts: 2,961 Arc User1
    edited May 2014
    gradii wrote: »
    I dunno, I don't consider "world ends in 4 years" to be good writing. which is why I'm glad the CO universe is a different place from the PNP one.

    That's precisely ONE isntance where CU went worse and this one is only because CU must fit with the rest of the timeline for all Hero games, like space or fantasy.

    I can't call Cryptic's rubbish composed almost entirely of poor jokes and pop-culture references a real writing at all, let alone a good one.

    Makes me wonder why they did even bother with purchasing any IP.

    CO universe is a poor mockery of CU. And that comes from someone who thinks that CU has a few less than stellar ideas on its own.
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  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    edited May 2014
    gradii wrote: »
    I don't get why the Hero games timeline sees fit to have the world end at any specific date. seems counter productive.

    The world isn't supposed to "end" in 2020; that's the date when stopping an invasion of Earth by Tyrannon makes magic go away, bringing an end to superpowers. Hero Games's owners at the time, DOJ Inc., had chosen to create a single meta-setting with a timeline linking all of its official settings, past, present, and future. (I'd rather not debate the wisdom of that choice here -- it's just what they did.) This change would herald a shift to a dystopian near-future "cyberpunk" era, which genre typically doesn't feature much in the way of comic-book super powers.

    Just keep in mind that the timeline was first established in published books for the official setting in 2002, when 2020 seemed a long way off. I'm sure DOJ figured if they were still publishing Champions Universe books eighteen years down the line, they'd get around to revising that scenario. :wink:
  • meedacthunistmeedacthunist Posts: 2,961 Arc User1
    edited May 2014
    bulgarex wrote: »
    The world isn't supposed to "end" in 2020; that's the date when stopping an invasion of Earth by Tyrannon makes magic go away, bringing an end to superpowers. Hero Games's owners at the time, DOJ Inc., had chosen to create a single meta-setting with a timeline linking all of its official settings, past, present, and future. (I'd rather not debate the wisdom of that choice here -- it's just what they did.) This change would herald a shift to a dystopian near-future "cyberpunk" era, which genre typically doesn't feature much in the way of comic-book super powers.

    Just keep in mind that the timeline was first established in published books for the official setting in 2002, when 2020 seemed a long way off. I'm sure DOJ figured if they were still publishing Champions Universe books eighteen years down the line, they'd get around to revising that scenario. :wink:

    ^This.

    CU needed the way to get rid out of superheroes so they don't get in the way of the future settings.

    Or to have very high magic classic fantasy setting in the past.
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  • jonsillsjonsills Posts: 6,317 Arc User
    edited May 2014
    bulgarex wrote: »
    Just keep in mind that the timeline was first established in published books for the official setting in 2002, when 2020 seemed a long way off. I'm sure DOJ figured if they were still publishing Champions Universe books eighteen years down the line, they'd get around to revising that scenario. :wink:
    Not dissimilar to the official setting for the old World of Darkness games, that had all the various apocalypsi and such going off around the turn of the century - because White Wolf never imagined they'd have people playing their games that long, and it seemed like a good mystical deadline. Then 2000 came and went, and the books were still selling - so they ran with the setting-ending adventures, and rebooted their universe into a cleaned-up version without the built-in deadline.

    My attitude when running any of those games was that since I'd purchased the books, I got to alter the background any way I wanted. And since I never bought anything from Hero Games besides Champions, my world's timeline started differing from the real world in the 1920s (the first costumed adventurer, the Black Cat - "bad luck for gangsters"), aside from rare individuals earlier in history, and had no fated ending.
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  • xydaxydaxydaxyda Posts: 817 Arc User
    edited May 2014
    gradii wrote: »
    I dunno, I don't consider "world ends in 4 years" to be good writing. which is why I'm glad the CO universe is a different place from the PNP one.

    Not too worry, those are probably comic book years. Could take decades in real time.
  • kojirohellfirekojirohellfire Posts: 2,075 Arc User
    edited May 2014
    bulgarex wrote: »
    The world isn't supposed to "end" in 2020; that's the date when stopping an invasion of Earth by Tyrannon makes magic go away, bringing an end to superpowers. Hero Games's owners at the time, DOJ Inc., had chosen to create a single meta-setting with a timeline linking all of its official settings, past, present, and future. (I'd rather not debate the wisdom of that choice here -- it's just what they did.)

    That won't keep me from commenting on it, though....

    It sounds ****ing stupid.
  • tigerofcachticetigerofcachtice Posts: 551 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    Just a quick thanks for the heads up. The context was, if I do another comic, it might be about Snake Gulch robots.

    Regarding the Cyberpunk aspect...I had no idea. That was very interesting, thanks for that, too.
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  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    For anyone who's interested, 'way back in the early days of DOJ's ownership of the Champions IP, Steve Long wrote a short PDF laying out his vision, rationale, and timeline for the unified meta-setting and timeline of the whole "Hero Universe." It was offered for free on the Hero Games website; today you can download it from here: http://web.archive.org/web/20040901230708/http://www.herogames.com/FreeStuff/freedocs/HeroUniverse.pdf
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