Vajra Game Graveyard is a series of write-ups of games and game settings that we wanted to make, but that (most likely) will never be made. If you’re reading this and have a strong desire to help one of these dead game ideas become reality*, email creative [aht] vajraenterprises [dot] com.
Setting Concept
The setting of Veterans of Interdimensional Wars is a Pacific Northwest trying to recover from the worst war humanity has ever known. Many years ago, portals opened and our world was invaded by the denizens of an alternate Earth. This strange, alien alternate Earth had spent centuries ruled by a Mesoamerican empire that conquered their world using biotechnology and whose leaders were nearly immortal and barely recognizable as human. This was a war for nothing less than the survival of our world. In the end we won, but not without suffering terrible losses, not without nearly every human on the planet having been conscripted into the war effort, and not without our side having done terrible things, both to the enemy and to our own people. Now, those who have the privilege of being able to forget want to “get back to normal,” to rebuild society and try to forget about the war.
Heroes
Players play those who don’t have the privilege of forgetting: front-line soldiers who have been physically, mentally and/or spiritually scarred by their experiences in the war. When dangers remaining or engendered by the war threaten innocents, they are often the only ones able to recognize and deal with these dangers. The intense training and biological enhancements that they were given during the war can help them face down the dangers of the current setting.
Antagonists
Anyone who would take advantage of the disenfranchised and unwanted (such as disenfranchised and unwanted homeless veterans). Racist hate groups who hate refugees from the other world. The allies we joined forces with in order to win the war, some of whom are almost as evil as those we fought. Bioengineered monsters left over from the war. Veterans who have become a danger to those around them.
Themes
The negative effects of a war, both on individuals and societies. The ethical questions of doing terrible things to survive. The futility of trying to ignore a society’s problems, which only causes those problems to grow and fester in the dark. The way society tries to hide the people society deems unwanted in places like housing blocks, homeless camps and mental hospitals.
Aesthetics
The gloom of a rain-soaked Pacific Northwest. The visual motif of war-scarring will be used: bombed out ruins, abandoned neighborhoods, depopulated cities, and scarred people. There will be huge brutalist housing blocks, reminiscent of those built in Britain after WWII. In flashbacks, the alternate world will combine mesoamerican motifs and styles with strange Gigeresque biotechnology, and will be shown from odd and twisted perspectives to make it seem nightmarish.
Mechanics
The game would modify the flashback rules first introduced in Hoodoo Blues. Players will play in modern times, but then be pulled unexpectedly into a flashback of the war. How well they deal with the situations they encounter in the past will affect them in their present-day situations.
Research Needed
Historical treatment of veterans. The psychological effects of war on individuals. The historical effects and aftermath of war on society.
Challenges
It will be important not to perpetuate stereotypes of veterans, homeless people or the mentally ill as inherently dangerous. We should also be careful not to paint Mesoamericans as inherently evil. It is also important to separate the moral arguments for or against war from an objective look at the after-effects of war, so as to be able to say that even if a war is completely justified and necessary, it will still have predictable effects on societies that engage in it.
P.S. We don’t use AI generated art in our games, but we have just for the Vajra Game Graveyard series. You can read more about our position on AI generated art here.
*Not literally become reality. That would be awful.