After a fun, highly abstract (card-based) game of W40k on Saturday night, Sunday's Encounter Critical UWoM game was fun of a different sort.
The PCs, having found that independent aimlessness wasn't as fun as they thought it could be, have found structure and drive in acting as a space exploration team for an Imperial-era AI. Additionally, they are representatives of the Greater Yirinn Sphere / Dryvv, expanding both groups' influence as they travel.
A lot of the things that had happened in the (year?) of gaming had been undone, and now are being re-introduced to their current timeline. The massive war against the Q'Lish and the loose federation of species that couldn't happen in the Humanosphere and Species Empires section of the former galaxy was possible in the galactic offshoot (cloud, etc.) -- but that all collapsed as that timeline was undone from the PCs' perspective when a critical character disappeared from time.
Now, the same group, and the replacement PC (and new addition), are finding that probabilities are clustering around the same lines and similar events are occurring, as well as 'memories' of the other timeline returning to them.
Presently, they are on a planet most of them had previously visited once or twice before, where the Imperial descendants were in a global prison state run by a minority of Hierophantic Church, Psionic College, and Imperial Nobles, suppressing a population of psionics. I'll skip the previous encounters with these people, but, let's just say that it isn't a happy place. Additionally, the planet itself is less than hospitable, but livable.
Psionic technology and Tauron the quasi-40k, Haelbean-Other Human character is playing a major role, while I'm trying to keep the other characters engaged. I think magic will have a few things to add to the mix, but my main concern is integrating Sam Crow (former Guild Combine assassin) into the higher powered storyline. Sam has pretty neat teleport capabilities, but without combat, he doesn't have a lot of face-time.
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My Thursday night Hangouts game is continuing to draw thew PCs into the exploration of my version of Ben Djarum's Yngarr setting. The area the PCs are in now is like tribal Afghanistan if set in Iceland and populated by folks from the Beastmaster setting. I'm taking some inspiration from Talislanta, and HPL's Dreamlands as depicted by Chaosium.
