The Library Between Worlds
I’ve been looking around for a while to find ideas for a setting which would allow flexible, one-shot style gameplay with fluid groups of players. I find one-shots hard to run - I’ve never managed to complete a one-shots in one shot - so I needed to make sure that the setting supported short, high action episodes and also included some sort of potential mechanical nod towards speedy resolution.
To suit the requirement I need:
- An easy way of generating targeted missions for characters to attempt
- A believable reason for characters to be involved in repeated missions
- A way to seamlessly include different genres
Enter “The Library Between Worlds”
Imagine a place between worlds, between all the plethora of realities and times that might exist in all the known universes. Somewhere (or is it somewhen?), nestled into the cracks between, built by long forgotten architects is the Great Library. No one remembers it’s purpose, even those who work there caring for the millions upon millions of documents, slates, crystal prisms, books, manuscripts, fractal-geometric recording devices and post-it notes that the Library has gathered over the millennia. All they know is that the Library exists to gather specific knowledge, wherever, whenever and in whatever form it might be.
You are Retrieval Assistants, Grade 3 (Probationary) working in the Department of Retrievals - Oddities and Manuscripts, 38th Floor, 93rd Branch, On The Left Through The Arch. You never quite know where you will next be sent but as Retrieval Assistants (Probationary) it might be to fetch a specific digital magazine (issue 42, volume 9) from a spaceport in the Crab Nebula in the year 4050, a dusty volume from Webber and Sons curios in 1970s London, or a papyrus from a primitive desert people on a dying world in Alpha Centauri. Wherever it is, you have your trusty Staffmark (like a bookmark but for staff members), your Omni-Modal Access Transducer (skeleton key), a Document Retrieval Pouch (Grade 3 - Refurbished) and… hopefully… a plan.
What could possibly go wrong?