So, as we get closer to the end of this chapter…volume…whatever of our Dungeons & Dragons campaign, I’ve been giving thought as to “what next?” I have some idea of what i want to do with the D&D game, but it’s not really been thought out beyond this point. Moreover, I’d really like to get some pulp action, which lead me to start working on idea for the next stage of the Hollow Earth Expedition game we put on hiatus earlier this year.
We ended on a pretty setting changing note: the Inner World was some kind of ancient prison built by gods(?) to hold in all manner of things. When the Great Machine that held the world inside the Earth in a pocket dimension of sorts was turned off, this Inner World slipped loose and eventually — inverted into a world of its own — sat in the same orbit as Earth, trailing some distance our world.
It’s a pulp game, so the hows, why, and do you mind if I don’ts do not matter…we have a Second Earth.
So, the ideas: there should be two sets of characters, one on Earth and one on “Atlantia”, as the place is being called by the scientific community. I like this, but as I think about it, I suspect leaving the old characters to be NPCs if an when they are discovered is a better way to go.
Second, the passage of the worlds, which were not quite in dimensional synch with each other means that some of the things from the Hollow Earth were deposited on the Surface World, and some people and things from Earth were transported with Atlantia. This would allow for the new players who weren’t there for the first campaign to be thrown into this new world without knowledge of what came before.
I mentioned that the Second Earth came through our world on the Pacific side, so most of the effects were felt in the Far East and South Pacific. Why? Because that’s where 1930s pulp stories often had the weird stuff happening: new islands with dinosaurs, half-man creatures in China and Tibet; on Atlantia, a missing Japanese Imperial navy task force…
Third, both the German and American expeditions to the Hollow Earth escaped with their Atlantean flying saucers. That means the Nazis and Americans are feverishly trying to reverse engineer the technology of the Ancients. And now the once-secret Hollow Earth is there for everyone to see 20 degrees trailing Earth…
I’ll be jumping the timeline three(ish) years from 1933 to 1936, to give the various powers a bit of time to come to grips with the tech and the new world. There’s best way to go, I think — 1) World War II will happen later or not at all, as Atlantia captures their attention, 2) a “space race” to get to Atlantia and discover its secrets with a Rocket Ranger kind of quality to it.
The Black Campbell 
5 October, 2017 at 15:51
This sounds like it will be a very cool campaign. Some ideas that might compliment/refine yours…
1. If this “Atlantia” is a copy of Earth where there are duplicates of those who are on Earth, why not change the NPCs in a meaningful way? The ardent anti-Nazi might have pro-Nazi sympathies, loyalties might be different, etc. This way the PCs will have to see them as unique people and not a 2.0 version of themselves.
2. Regarding WW2. While there will be a space race between the US and Germany, and any allies that might be let in on the secrets (the UK/Canada/Commonwealth for the US and perhaps Franco’s Spain or Mussolini’s Italy), I think that this could almost jump start the war. The factors that led to the war would still be there, and in the case of Germany’s Aryan philosophy, Atlantia could actually strengthen their claims. The Nazis are still ardent anti-communists and while I think they would do what they could to secure land on the new world, they would also use their new saucers to deal with the “communist problem”.
3. In the Far East, the upheavals could even be more dramatic. With the appearance of Atlantia and the disappearance of the IJN task force, the Japanese public could view the Emperor as either a true god or, depending on the demagogues’ ability, an impotent god who shouldn’t be given the time of day.
4. In the US, this would be one more thing for FDR to alphabetize and use as a works program (or make it into a “Long Island” project to rival the Manhattan Project. With US industrial capacity, General Smedley Butler’s “Business Plot” could actually be a reality and that would really spin things off into the Pulp stratosphere.
All in all, I think this is something that would be cool to offer as an e-book as a starting point; what the PC’s did and ideas to springboard it forward.
5 October, 2017 at 21:04
No, people weren’t copied, but more pulled from one world to the other as it “phased” its way out of the Earth.
I agree it could exacerbate the war, but I’m thinking there’s a distraction factor: Atlantia has ancient Atlantean/Aryan technology they can exploit. Hence the focus on that world. But a space race would still lead to conflict, and maybe war.
I like Point 4.