This is for analysis of Fimbulwinter, and for saying a hopefully temporary good-bye to our senior player, Doulos as I call him.  Derek being slightly more accurate.

He's gone from Earth to the Black Box Imperium with China and America ruling the world in joint tyranny for fear of madmen with WMD's and almost time jumped to alter that future; and then he arrived in Fimbulwinter and assured that the human race had a chance of survival after a nuclear war between Pakistan and India went global and caused a nuclear winter.  Along the way he also shot a polar bear and learned some TK, and I had a copy of a diary his future self made appear in Kate's world.

I hope his duties slacken up for him to rejoin us on a regular basis, but for now Karack!! Back to the Salt Mines with ye' yah scurvy dog!

Playtester

Well it's certainly been a lot of fun and I apologise for not being around very much in the latter days.

Some thoughts on Fimbulwinter...

I really enjoyed the idea of a world in its death throes and living out the last days of a nuclear winter.  There are a LOT of different things that could have happened in this world, depending on what side a player chooses to take.  If I would have stayed with Loki then it could have been a fun way to wage war on the Collegiates but would have given me a very interesting moral dilemna once I realised that the entire population was basically hypnotized.  Or I could have tried to bring about a revolt from within the ranks of Loki, although I think that would have got me versed out of there awfully quick.

The route I chose was a lot of fun and I think gained me the greatest number of skills in the end.  If I had stayed on the ship for an extended period of time then that would have been VERY interesting as well.

I was almost tempted at one point to give up on both main parties and find a way to live with the little group of people that I came across.  For some reason they seemed to be the best group of people that fit with my own personality.  Sadly, I knew that they were basically just going to die a slow painful death and that didn't interest me so much.

A fun world and I think that it gives whoever is GM'ing it a lot of different options and freedom to work with.

I didn't know a lot about Norse mythology and that seemed to deter me a bit.  I wanted to look stuff up at times but figured it would be more honest to myself if I tried to play along with the knowledge I had in reality.

I think from this comment, and from your experiences, that I need to outline a bit more some of the alternate routes for this world, and even the contingency in space world-setting.

I'm thinking that aliens might show up, and recruit the humans into their society after a while of doing the survival in space thing.  Or a well-developed explanation of how to survive in space would be nice...although pretty hard.  It would be a "Colonize the Solar System" with five hundred people and little tech game.  Scrounging for parts from satellites, and...hmmh..sounds like a good idea.

Probably easier to have the humans joing the galactic alliance.

Well it sort of becomes an entire new game once you get up and out into space.  At that point any number of things could happen, including just normal survival in space.  How to keep the population of people growing with such a small base to work with?  What kind of long term plans to make while on board and the polotics that exist once people start growing tired of each other.

It could go any number of ways.

Or you throw aliens in there and see what happens!

I enjoyed this one, and wouldn't have minded if I had ended up here.  Interesting setting, and good roleplaying.  :)

One thing I wonder about, though -- with all of the planning and advanced technology required to send a manned rocket into space, it seems a stretch to think that a college could do it when they are scrounging for stuff like Craftsman wrenches.  The suspension of disbelief suffers a bit there...  Or did I gloss over something that would have explained it?

No, you didn't gloss over something.  I guess I thought that rockets are simpler than NASA makes them out to be, and if you,in addition, were willing to accept a fairly high degree of risk of the thing blowing up on the launchpad, you could find it a lot easier to build a rocket.

I'm not sure if this arguement flies for Craftsmen wrenches or not.  Maybe I should have pointed out that they had tools, but they did not have enough tools for everyone to use at the same time.

I think I need a list of scroungeworthy items for this.  Also some about living in space, some issues that might come up, and so forth, not really an adventure, but a toolkit.

I also think my original location for this world works better...I had it in South Dakota or something...and there, they have access to nuclear weapons, and can potentially build an Orion rocket.

PT