Way back in the beginning of 2001 or maybe the end of 2000, I came up with a fantastic idea for a campaign. The basic idea was that there was a fairyworld that lived next to our own. It was a different dimension that was tied to ours by thought and fancy. All of the lands of myth and faire were real there. Atlantis, Neverland, Oz, Wonderland, Faerie, etc. They were all real, but in a much more sword and sorcery, gritty fashion. All the stories we had about the world were channelled by receptive authors, or taken from the accounts of children who had a natural ability to make the transition from one world to the other., Plus the journal of one of the few adults to ever make the jump unaided by technology: Lemuel Gulliver.
The world was conceived as a bit of Order in a sea of Chaos. Atlantis was the center of the world, and had served as its anchor to Order. The farther you got out, the more wild and crazy things got, the less rational things were until you entered Chaos, a realm of madness. The campaign was to take place in the between areas, the Borderlands.
The action of the campaign was to focus around a group of pulp-era adventurers. The players would be allowed to create a group of diverse individuals from the time when the world was about to head into WWII. The story would begin when they discovered a Nazi plot. A “mad scientist” had discovered how to breach the walls of reality. Initial probes had brought back tremendous gems (Oz is paved with them). A task force had been authorized to explore the technology and plunder the fairy world to fund the Reich. It would probably have been based on a battleship. The players would have discovered it and attempted to sabotage it, and a freak accident would have trapped them (and the Nazi battleship) in the Borderlands. The Nazis would be seeking something that would help them rebuild the device, and at the same time, setting about to exploit the fairy world. All of the inhabitants would have a severe weakness to iron. This would have made the Battleship untouchable, and the weapons even more devastating.
The players would need to do their best to thwart the plans of the Nazis, building alliances between the different (and warring) fairy countries. I had illustrations, maps, a logo, NPCs with political agendas–It would have been a glorious campaign.
At that time we were switching GM duties about every four months. A friend of mine said he had a great campaign he was working on and wanted to go next. I still had development I wanted to do, so I said “go ahead”.
He proceeded to unveil a campaign where we played pulp-era adventurers trapped in a time-lost alternate dimension where we fought Nazis…
Now, there was no way he could have seen my notes. I was keeping mum about this awesome idea. He had been working on it for at least as long if not longer. Serendipity strike.
Damn.
It would have been glorious.
RIP, Borderlands.
