When I last left off talking about the Brave New World Roleplaying Game, I’d gotten to the destruction of the city of Chicago by the Devastator in 1976 during an event known as the Bicentennial Battle. It’s finally time to reveal what really happened on that terrible day.
Chicago wasn’t destroyed on July 4, 1976. It was teleported in its entirety to a pocket dimension set up by the Omegas for just such a purpose. Everyone in the place was permanently trapped inside this neodimension, unable to escape. This included not only the alphas and deltas but all the regular folk as well.
The heroes captured the Devastator after the blast went off. From their point of view, the rest of the world around Chicago disappeared, but nothing happened to them directly. The people they left behind in Chicago’s suburbs didn’t fare so well.
Although the world’s most powerful heroes were stuck in Chicago together, they could not escape their prison-home. This didn’t stop them from assaulting the walls of their prison dozens of times over the years, but nothing helped. They were doomed to their exile forever.
In 1999, the people of Chicago were still stuck. The past 23 years had been hard, but they had managed to survive. Still, they never gave up on their dreams of freedom.
Back when I put BNW together, I hoped to produce a sequel game: Crossroads. I planned for a large BNW adventure centered around the return of Superior, the first and greatest of the alphas. He finally made it back home, although the effort tossed him into a deep coma. As the players worked through the mystery behind Superior’s reappearance, they would learn about the fate of Chicago and have the opportunity to follow Superior on a mission back to Chicago to rescue the people there.
Returning the city to its proper home would be impossible. Even if it could be done, the sudden reappearance of the city would be nearly as devastating as its disappearance.
Instead, the heroes’ best hope would be to figure out a way to pierce the dimensions with ease, letting the residents of Chicago come and go as they liked. The next challenge would then be to take the battle to the Omegas, who would otherwise take steps to recapture the Chicagoans and reimprison them.
In Crossroads, the heroes would be powerful alphas who traveled through the various dimensions at will, evading the Omegas and working to secure the freedom of both Chicago and its original world. Of course, I never got to write that game, but I can still dream.
