How my Players get to Rewrite History

Since Harambe was killed, it almost seems like we’ve been living in the worst timeline. Things have just been getting harder and more obviously terrible. America is being taken over by the world’s most senile dictator, Israel is revealing itself to be a cartoonish evil empire that has been revealed to have been behind so many more horrible events in our recent history than we suspected, we got our world’s first trillionaire, and 1984 is being used as a “How To” book rather than a cautionary tale. 

I’ve never been more embarrassed to be an American, and more pessimistic about what the future holds for us. Worst of all, there is very little I’m able to do in my day to day life to make things better for the people around me, and practically nothing I can do to make life better for the people of the world. For a control freak with the everpresent need to help others and constant feeling of never being enough… that’s kinda its own form of torture. 

(For those who may feel concern at this point: 1) Been working on that last bit with a therapist, the book “How to be Enough” is a great resource, and 2) just because I’m embarrassed about being an American doesn’t mean I hate the country or want it to fall, I just want the people destroying it to be dealt with properly, face justice, and for America to actually become what we were promised it was supposed to be. The kind of place Captain America would be proud of). 

With all the terrible things happening in the world right now, and there are many terrible things happening, a game where we are playing heroes in that world gives us an unprecedented chance to do some of the greatest things that can affect change with power beyond what we as mere mortals can even dream of wielding. When the game started, it was 2019, COVID hadn’t happened, and honestly, we thought the worst that was going to happen was Trump would just embarrass the country and set our laws back about thirty years, then America would wise up, kick him out for good, and start to heal. I never expected the shitshow the world has turned into to become my playing field. 

Honestly, it became a bit overwhelming. At times, I didn’t even want to play because the issues they were dealing with in the game were too parallel to the issues we were facing in the world. Toppling fascist regimes and having to parley with corrupt billionaires was hitting too close to home when originally it was supposed to be a cartoonish oversimplification of the real world. When that became too real, it hit close to home and drained my will to run the game because I didn’t want to get into that headspace, I didn’t want to have to pretend to be these assholes, even to watch my players thwart their plans and give them their inevitable comeuppance. It was just taking too much out of me. 

But then, we realized something: The clock in our pretend world was moving much much slower than the clock in the real world. COVID was long over by the time the first hints of it were coming to my game world. So, we took the time to do a one shot where Smithers and his old gang of now elderly black ops companions went out into the world to stop the disease from ever being released (that will be a story in an upcoming collection, though not for a while, so in the words of River Song, Shh… Spoilers!). 

Once we were able to affect change on the world to the level of a global pandemic, we began to realize that we diverted the timeline again, and we could look into the terrible things that were happening in the world, and we could not only stop them, but we could redirect them completely. We could stop wars, we could punish those who were getting away with murder, and we could do it organically by introducing them into the game as distant lantern villains. 

(NOTE: Lantern Villain - A villain in a story that doesn’t have an active or direct role in the day to day lives of the main characters, but rather is a presence off in the distance affecting the world at large.)

This didn’t make the story about these particular individuals, but rather allowed the players to experience the effects they were having on the world, put a stop to them, and then go to the source if needed. It kept our game fun and focused on the overall villains while allowing us to take our frustrations out on our real world villains without having to shift our campaign’s focus. We just got a little payback, you know, as a treat. 

In order to see everything that my players were able to change, you’re going to need to keep your eye on the books and their releases. Things get more intense as time goes on, and as the plan is to have the series run for over 20 books as it currently stands, there will be a lot of time between now when these events are fresh, and when you’ll be reading about the alternate universe where what we feel is the better timeline occurs. 

Until then, we will continue trying to make the world we live in a little better every day. It may be difficult, but we need to keep being kind to each other when possible, supporting our local communities, and working together to create a better global community, one selfless act after another, in hopes of one day tearing down the greed and corruption that has rotted us at our root.