I’m working on a new game setting for the Cypher System, called Predation. It’s in what I call the “shower idea” stage of creation, that weird brainplace where you just suddenly have the most brilliant idea at the most inopportune time. I know that some of you are following along on progress as I work on The Poison Eater, so I thought I’d start posting about Predation too. Writing a novel and writing a game setting are very different and yet also the same, and I think there’s a lot to be gleaned by watching two very different types of projects come to fruition.
In short, the idea for Predation came about because I wanted to make a game about dinosaurs. BUT I also wanted to make stuff up. (I like to research, but I hate having to stick strictly the research when I write; my preference is to use it as a jumping point for wild and weird ideas). So I was trying to find a way to do both things, and came up with the premise for Predation: that the humans walking among the dinosaurs are scientists from the far future who are stuck in the Cretaceous period. They brought back high-tech weapons and advanced sciences, the ability to bioengineer themselves and the creatures around them, and a knowledge of the future–a future that they might be changing with every choice they make.
Predation Overview
The history of Predation is actually in the future. A few hundred years in the future, to be exact. That’s when an interglobal conglomerate known as Space and Time, Int. (SATI) began sending bioengineers, paleontologists, and other specialists back to the late Cretaceous period on top-secret missions.
For those traveling back in time, it was the career opportunity of a lifetime. The unprecedented chance to walk among the dinosaurs, and return with tales of discovery, scientific breakthroughs, and experiences. But something went wrong—no one knows how or why, but the time travel process broke down, leaving them stranded with the dinosaurs.
That was almost a hundred years ago now. Those early travelers had to find a way to survive, and even thrive, in this harsh world. Using the technology and knowledge they brought back with them, they built communities; bred, bioengineered and hunted dinosaurs; raised families; and never gave up hope that they would find a way “home.” That generation is dying out now, leaving the world to a newer generation, one that has only ever known this place, this time as their home.
That’s where you as the player come in. You’ve read the story in history books of the asteroid that destroys your home, and you know it’s coming soon.
In this land of tame and wild beasts, a land of far-future technology and far-past materials, of a historical catastrophe that is about to become your future, can you find a way to survive? Will you instead try to use your skills and knowledge to accomplish what your parents and grandparents could not—find a way home? Or will you join the fight to let this humanity die out, so that future humanity may still find a way to rise from the ashes of evolution?