A Balance of History- - Kosmo 68 & Hostile Rpg Crossover Game Commentary

 Today we're going to pick right up from this play session report here.  When we're talking about using Cepheus Engine & 2d6 resources. Paul Elliot's Outworld isn't often mentioned at all. And that's a big mistake because Outworld contains about everything that a DM needs to use Hostile within an established 2d6 campaign. And it also gives the DM the maxium coverage for the worlds of Kosmos'68 woodpress.com campain setting. A world that Paul Elliot created with his intial Kosmos 68 campaign. And according to the tag line 'A Soviet Future that will never be'. Or is it?! 

If we start looking at Hostile's setting book we've got a solid overview of coming history or at least the coming history of all kinds of upheaveal that make what we're going through in 2023 look like a cake walk. According to Zozer Games Website on Outworld; "OUTWORLD is a short and simple setting, inspired by the movies Alien, Aliens, Outland and Silent Running (amongst others) and it uses only the tools and rules of Traveller Books 1, 2 and 3 to help build a rough facsimile of those movies. The setting is entirely original, and not  connected to the settings of Ridley Scott’s Alien or Blade Runner movies, but it is inspired by his films, by the others in my list above and by later movies (the Alien sequels for a start).   It is not connected to my game HOSTILE, either." 
And this was my mistake reading this blurb. Not connecting Outworld into the universe of Hostile. If it's plugged back into the universe of Hostile and Kosmos '68 then events between the East & West begin to make a whole lot of sense. And this provides a backdrop for the events of Orbital 2100 which are a hundred & twenty five years prior to the events of Outworld & Hostile. 

And this could be the universe of Kosmos 68 as well & right in the introduction it says it all;"Mankind’s vices, arrogance, folly and greed followed him into space. Today, in 2168, the USSP is an impersonal bureaucracy, composed of interlocking layers of redundant commissariats, councils, worker’s soviets, constituent assemblies and executive committees. This Byzantine bureaucracy is essentially governed by the elite of the Global Progress Party, all members of the Politburo, the highest policy-making authority within the USSP. The Party apparatus creates a ladder of loyalty and power for those who wish to climb it – but the party machine itself is oiled with bribes, extortions, kick-backs and threats. The frontier colonies have quotas to fulfil in order to keep the richer worlds (home to many of the Party hierarchy) supplied with food stuffs and raw materials." 

And here's where the rest of Cepheus Engine comes into focus because lurking on the edges of the universe may be other powers. The Zuhki are utterly alien & without a human touch stone. And recently I've used Cepheus Journal issue #8 to introduce two human factions, the space force & the space patrol into our games.  These were a part of the Earth sector & Clement sector respectively. These two factions could easily be ported over into the Kosmos 68 setting as a part of the Soviet side. 

This is the same game that we introduced the Martians & sent the players scrambling for an escape craft. And there's a reason why the Martains were there besides they were in  Cepheus Journal issue #8. This all comes back to our mini campaign that centered around journeying through the Tanhauser gate anomaly. More to come.