In change from my usual blog posts, this is a new feature that will be looking at games in my “Work in Progress” folder that remain unfinished. We will be looking at what they are, why they are unfinished and how far along they are.

Before we dive in, let me preface that “Unfinished” doesn’t mean “Abandoned”. I fully intend to release all of these games …eventually. I am often working on several projects at once and I have found it helpful to put a game on the shelf for several months, so I can come back to it with a fresh mind. This also helps my sanity, as it is very easy to work yourself into burnout if you don’t take a break now and then. It just happens that I keep getting new ideas, but not any more hours in the day.
Currently there are 25 subfolders, with some games being almost ready for release and others containing nothing more than a sale pitch, and with that out of the way, lets look at the first entry.

Media Override – A Sci-fi Pop Culture RPG

RPGs need adventures. For those of us who are a little more mechanically focused, this can be a little frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, I like writing adventures. After all I have spent the last 20+ years being a forever GM, so this is very much my jam, but what I like more is creating systems, tinkering with mechanics and making sure all the numbers line up. This of course means that my games could really use some more adventures.
Media Override was started because I wanted to make a game that didn’t need adventures, or at least not published ones. It also came about because I had a really cool idea and wanted to put it on paper.

The game makes use of the Key Powered System, and I actually wrote it before Reanimated was even an idea. It adds a basic magic system (no spell list, there is a reason for that), and the theme is modern, but heavily inspired by Men in Black and The Matrix.

An alien invasion of Earth was the starting point. The Ethervarian Empire had chosen us as a prime target, but there was a flaw in their plan. They were not from another planet, they were from another dimension and fortunately for us they could not exist in our world, as they would have no physical form here.
Advanced technology did offer the aliens an option. It was subtle, but a few people noticed that our media had changed. A bounty hunter not shooting first, guns replaced by walkie talkies or a comedian not being in a genie movie. The Ethervarians had invaded our media and were looking for ways to enter our world, using the magic and weird science that fiction could offer.

While it sounded crazy to most, a few people took the threat seriously and the Quantum Agency was formed to fight the invaders. Technology needed to advance and with funding from a few eccentric billionaires and the work of a few exceptional engineers a machine was built called the Quantum Gateway.
this machine would allow a person’s consciousness to enter movies, books, games and any other form of fiction, where the agents could then foil the plans of our would be invaders.

This game allows the GM to throw the players into any number of pop culture settings. In one mission you could be trying to protect John Conner, while the aliens try to hack Skynet, then in the next mission you could be told to team up with Scooby and Shaggy, because the aliens have kidnapped Fred, Daphne and Velma. This is all as agents of a shadowy MiB style agency.

This game relies so heavily on existing IPs that published modules just don’t work, but it does offer a chance to crank the geek dial up to 11, which may appeal to some people.

So, how far along is it? It’s basically done. The main thing that is missing is the cover art. When I finished it I was already working with the wonderful and talented Klur_arts on Quest Nexus, and it didn’t feel right to run off and find a different artist to do this one, considering Quest Nexus was still a few years away, so it got put on the shelf.
That leads us to the obvious question of when is it coming out?, and to that I don’t really have an answer. In theory, I could hire an artist for the cover and a have a print run ordered in a week or two. The plan was to finish Quest Nexus and do the crowdfunding before pushing this one out, but if there was a significant demand, I could be incentivized to make it happen earlier.

And now a question for the reader. Is this something you would buy if I were to push it out in the next little while?
It is a 20 page, digest size book, just like Reanimated and would carry the same $15 price tag for print and have a free PDF version.

Remember that if you want to see more like this or you want to know when this game is actually released, be sure to follow Trapped Chest on our socials, which can be found at the bottom of the page.