>>30161181
>clockwork stewardesses

the stewardesses will bring you basic necessities and luxury items if you ask them - clothes, food, first-aid supplies, toiletries. they have basically infinite supplies of those things and in incredible variety, which they bring out from the pantries between carriages. passengers opening a pantry by themselves will find it empty. only items you would expect to find available to passengers on a luxury train is available. weapons, explosives, complex machinery, toolkits, etc, is not.

the stewardesses are completely pacifist. they will stay out of fights between passengers. they will not resist if attacked (giving a way to harvest scrap metal and parts). they will, however, gladly sacrifice themselves to save a passenger's life (so long as it's not another passenger putting them in danger). destroyed stewardesses are mysteriously replaced after a few days to a few weeks, when nobody is looking.

rumor:

>What if it IS possible to get the Stewardesses to bring you arbitrary goods- but only if you ask for them by the right name? So you can't ask a Stewardess for bricks - but if you can squeeze up your throat just right into an approximation of an alien vocal system and ask for a !GT'd~ , which is a silicate cuboid which is eaten by a race of clay-based beings, who consider it to have a delicate and sophisticated flavor (but which is, to human eyes, a brick), they'll happily give you one. After all, the Pantry includes it.

>So 'magic' is the trick of knowing the alien words which will make a Stewardess deliver special items and raw materials.

>the world beyond the Train

first things first: it is possible to get off the train. Easy, even. There have been many madmen who jumped off for one reason or another, with no help, and a good portion survived. Some simple engineering will net you a device that lets you off without a scratch. The thing is: why would you want to?

>"Because I looked out the window once - and I swear I saw a fork in the Track."

Beyond the Train, it is permanently night. It is cold, just above freezing. The earth is a uniform, coarse black sand that grows no plants and hold no water. There is no weather of any sort - no wind, no sun, no rain. It is, in short, completely inhospitable.

Every once in a while, the Train passes a ticket station. These structures are exact duplicates of one another, down to every last detail. There is always a ticket office - window shut, blinds closed, door locked with a simple padlock - with nothing inside. There is always a functioning ticket vending machine. The machine always have a slot in the exact right shape of something in your possession. Something of great value to you. Your favorite teddy bear. Your left eye. The memory of your dead wife. Your six-months-old child. In return, it gives you a Ticket.

>Tickets, and the Conductor
Actually getting back on the Train is a great deal harder than getting off. Not only do you need a device that lets you hook onto a moving train and climb back in safely, the occupants may not be friendly. And, if you were foolish enough to not have obtained a Ticket, you will face the Conductor.

The clockwork Conductor shows up unfailingly whenever someone climbs back on the Train. In polite tones, he will ask for your Ticket. Give it to him, and you are once again recognized as a passenger. Do not, and you die.

Borges is the man.

How much of a personality do the stewardesses and conducters have?

So, it sounds like a great existential short story, but what kind of stories do you tell over time? What sorts of adventures happen there? And what are the people born and raised there like?

>>30161181
>>30161189
>>30161214

>That feel when you read this and recognize stuff you posted
>That feel when ideas you came up with were good enough for someone else to save them

>>30161345
the stewardesses are courteous, friendly, and carry out their duties with high competence, but make very bad conversation partners. they are likely non-sentient.

>there is a rumor of a lonely man in a section of Train with no passengers, who fell in love with one, commanded it to stay by his side for decades, and eventually taught it to talk like a real person. It's considered a fairy tale.

no-one has ever seen the Conductor speak except to ask for tickets.

Reminds me of Pelevin's "Yellow Arrow".

Shit, I had some writefaggotry for this the last time I saw The Train, but I can't remember most of it.

Something about The Conductor being the Reaper, and being able to tell who had died based on how long it took for news to reach your traincar.

>>30161365
my own personal hypothesis is: if society grows around stewardess' supplying needs, it's possible many people cease to concern themselves with philosophy and basically become like the humans in WALL-E. They don't know what's going on about them, nor do they care.

Of course, if people are not entirely so, at least on an instinctive level, surely it means at one point, people did not always live this way.

DUN DUN DUUUUN!

>>30161365
ideas so far:

>all tea parties, all the time
>masque of the red death, train style
>adventuring party travelling Forward the train
>war between carriages
>exploring the wastelands beyond the Train
>cthulu on a train
>Blame! train edition

great thing about this is that you can do just about anything with it and it'll still fit the overall settig.

>>30161181
This.
Is.
Fucking.
EPIC.

>>30161412
>no-one has ever seen the Conductor except to ask for tickets.
FTFY
And anyways, does someone happen to have the link to the previous thread? I would bring it up but I'm on my phone and it would take forever.

>>30161478
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/29890362/

Luckily, archival is a thing on /tg/

>>30161451
freed from the toils of having to provide for themselves and having oodles of free time, I think people will start inventing increasingly more elaborate ways to alleviate boredom. art/philosophy/etc will get super-weird. hedonism and excess will go in and out of fashion like tides. there will be a great deal of energy spent exploring the various ins and outs of the train and beyond.

of course, a civilization like that lasts as long as it takes for them to meet a race of barbarian cannibals.

>>30161563
>them to meet a race of barbarian cannibals.
WHy don't you re-read that, and try again.

how would science advance in a world like this? I can imagine a great deal of energy would be spent on asking for various exotic items from the Stewardesses and reverse-engineering their principles. Would this make up for the lack of certain types of materials and equipment?

it must be possible to generate electric power by piggy-backing on the train's movement. from there, sky's the limit.

>Suicide, and the Brakeman

Suicide is quite frowned upon on the Train. In fact, it is nigh impossible. Upon the very initiation of a seriously self-harmful act, the clockwork Brakeman will appear, almost as if he was informed ahead of time. He will peacefully restrain the offender and take them to the rear of the train. They are never seen again. What happens to them after the Brakeman absconds with them is unknown.

There are tales of suicide cults consisting of entire train cars. The details are fuzzy, but it appears the Brakeman arrives and somehow manages to restrain them all before their lives are forfeit, where he promptly disappears with them to the rear of the Train. How any stories exist of these cults when all the members disappear is quite odd indeed.

There's an idea to explain why people don't just off themselves in this infinite abyss of existence. Critiques welcome

>>30161875
>>30161563

>become a race of barbarian cannibals

ftfy

>>30162020
>why people don't just off themselves in this infinite abyss of existence

I think the same reasons people don't just off themselves in the real world would suffice.

>>30162063
also, from an evolutionary POV, all the surviving Passengers are descendents of those who didn't off themselves.

>>30162063

If you want to look at it that way, I suppose. However, seems like existence in a small area would be very stilting after an extent of time.

Anyway, it was simply an idea to expand the setting. Perhaps the players all attempt "suicide" to see where the Brakeman takes people.

>>30162080
>all the surviving Passengers are descendents of those who didn't off themselves.

Doesn't make them any less predisposed to suicidal actions.

>>30162020

Why do you need to keep people from offing themselves?

You said earlier that people jump off the train all the time.

(By the way, I notice your impulse there too was to head-off the "out", describing it in such a way that a party is doomed to be on the train and do train things no matter how much the players hate it. Generally, I'd say that when PCs wand to break or escape or subvert a setting your impulse should not be to come up with some arbitrary reason why it's impossible. However, making it impossible to kill yourself and pointless to jump off does give the setting a certain vibe of existential horror, which is cool as long as that's what you're trying to do, and not just a knee-jerk response to player agency).

>>30162109

Just as a note, Brakeman guy isn't the OP. I was just trying to create a new idea.

>>30162108
>Doesn't make them any less predisposed to suicidal actions.

It does, actually, if there was a 'beginning' then suicides in the first few generations would have been vastly more common than now.

>>30162133
>suicides in the first few generations would have been vastly more common than now.

Unless the Brakeman has always been there, and no one (known) has been able to commit suicide.

>>30162020

The Brakeman is a myth told to children. People can, and do, commit suicide. In fact, there are plenty of ghost cars around, empty and abandoned. They're frequently looted for interior parts, and function as neutral ground in cases of intercar wars.

Alternatively, the Brakeman is a ceremonial title given to one of the Passengers who is entrusted with taking a census of the dead and living in each train car. The Brakeman moves through the train, accompanied by a following that sees him as a prophetic figure. When one Brakeman dies, a new one is appointed.

>>30161989

An excentric scientist once asked a Stewardess for a "zero-point energy reactor". The robotic servant left for parts unknown, and never returned. The scientist repeated the request with five other Stewardesses, and they all left without coming back. Now he's nearing the end of his life and asked a sixth Stewardess for the item. But this time he's assembled an escort for her, a party of seasoned warriors and explorers. You are that party.

>>30162109
OP here. I'm >>30162063.

IMO the players should absolutely be able to get off the train. there might even be ruins or the like if they walk far enough away.

even then, however, the Train and its accessories should still cast a long shadow over them. Shit should get bleaker and bleaker the further away.

Chu-chu.

>>30162147
"Breakman" as a human trying to do the job of preventing suicide is much more interesting than infallible robot breakman IMO.

a better alternative to suicide, for the terminally bored: train hopping.

>get off the train at the station, taking with you your most precious possession
>pay for a ticket
>wait a week or so
>get back on a vastly different section of the train with vastly different everything, with the knowledge that you will likely never be able to return whence you came.

>>30162200

... That actually sounds pretty interesting.

>>30162200

This is my thought, I like the 'ticket booth" idea because it basically plops the party into a totally alien section of the train, which is their new home for the rest of their lives, but still same fucking train.

This is stronger if the car they started in had foreigner passengers from up-train. Hell, people might not even know they're from "up-train", they don't speak the same language, everyone might just assume they're from off-train and make up tall tails about them.

>>30162200

That requires surviving a week outside the train. Not to say that it can't be done, just saying there's things that come out at night that you don't want to face alone. They usually don't touch or come too close to the stations, though.

The question is, does this train make stops? Cause if you've bought a Ticket, then it should totally allow you on.

>>30162200
variation: party is forced to abort the train at a point far away from a station. cue long, dispirited march to a station, where they will give up their most precious possessions, only to end up somewhere far from home.

>>30162296
>does this train make stops?

nope. it's your responsibility to bring with you whatever you need to get back on, when you jump off. the ticket just placates the Conductor.

>>30162275
That's kind of lame IMO, given the whole "eternal night no food no water" thing.

I mean, it's hard enough existing off-Train; do we REALLY need to add immortal monsters?

Here's a little fluff/plot hook idea.

The Train moves along smoothly, almost appearing to glide. It makes absolutely no sound, which is quite disorienting when viewed from outside the train. However, observers standing on a Station can sometimes hear a very faint clicking like wheels on a track. However, it is invariably in the opposite direction of the Train.

>>30162342

You should be able to signal the train to stop at Stations. There's no real point to them otherwise.

>>30162275

That's cool.

A train moves at 60 MPH, 1,440 miles per day. A human will move, what, 80 miles per day? So every day you wait outside puts you 18 days walk down-train.

Hell, that's not a crazy distance, you could wait a week and check the new place out and still make it "home" within a year if you want, without having to rush.

But if you get off and on several times (assuming your ticket is still good? it should be), if you make a lifestyle of that, then you start to reach the point where you aren't coming home.

And every car would be familiar with people like that, from up-train, going down-train.

>>30162365

No, I get him, the train Does Not Stop.

I mean, think about it, if the train ever stopped then it would constantly be stopping, it would literally be constantly stopped.

>>30162344

I don't think they should be immortal, but I'd like some monsters at least. It could be anything from Lovecraftian monstrocities to degenerate troglodyte cannibals to just some kind of mutated wildlife. Just some opposition in the wasteland.

>>30162344
OP here. I agree. I think the players would almost be glad to see monsters, and I'm not okay with that.

the only monsters they'll see are hallucinations born of cold and dehydration. if they come across ruins, they will be completely deserted too.

>>30162147

I like the zero-point energy thing.

>>30162371
>But if you get off and on several times (assuming your ticket is still good? it should be)

The ticket is collected when the Conductor asks for it. Each new admittance to the train requires a new ticket. Otherwise the whole "most important object you possess" sort of loses its meaning.

>>30162388

You're just trying to make the wastelands more comfortable.

Putting monsters in the wasteland makes the wasteland less monstrous. The wasteland is most monstrous if it is empty, brutally and utterly empty.

What happens if a waitress is thrown off the train?

>>30162399

No, not at all, if a player gives the most important thing they possess they should feel like they've gotten something permanent out of it. It doesn't lose its meaning, no one made you get off the train in the first place, the only difference is that if you do you then have the option to get off the train a second or third or fourth time if the style of game calls for it without having to give up your second/third/fourth/ad-nausum most valued possessions.

>>30162390
Preferably, I would like to evoke a feeling of loneliness and melancholy throughout the whole thing. The feeling should range from "the only being that's nice to me is a clockwork robot that isn't even sentient" to "I'm far away from home, on the wrong carriage, and everybody is a stranger." to "I am in the middle of nowhere, it's cold, I'm starving, and I haven't seen a living soul for days."

>>30162406

I'm just thinking of the Night Lands books and such. There should be something in the wastelands that makes staying there for a lengthy period of time impossible. Maybe a feeling of dread, a panic that takes hold as soon as you step off the train.

>>30162437
>>30162437
The lack of food and water might be a motivation.

>>30162430

I simply see that as a cop out. He wants to make the setting as bleak as possible, I think a permanent asset would counteract that. I think that getting back on the Train every time should require serious sacrifice. However, it's ultimately up for the OP to decide. I can only offer my humble opinion.

>>30162430
I don't think players are supposed to keep jumping. jumping should be something that happens rarely, maybe once per campaign.

this way, they can come into possession of something new (that they hold dear) before losing it to a vending machine.

this repeated loss of your most precious possession - that's the ultimate suicide replacement, no?

>>30162437

I don't think you have to add anything artificial. Just having it be empty and inhospitable is bad enough and feels more genuine.

If they pack cold weather gear and bags full of candies and bisquites and shit and make an expedition of it, they find.... nothing. And then more nothing. And then maybe some traces of passengers doing the same thing they're doing but hundreds of years ago. And then they sulk back to the train feeling empty inside.

You as the GM don't have to do anything to force them back, just let it run its course, let them have the experience.

>>30162151
Just spit-balling here, but what if, out in the wastes, the find another set of tracks, or even a road?

>>30162456

Yeah, but "no food and water" is a mundane, regular kind of motivation. I think a more supernatural or at least wierd, uncanny motivation is needed to supplement. Something like the stuff in Stephen King's Langoliers.

>>30162474
and they follow it to find...

the Train.

they have no idea if it's the same one.

>>30162462
>>30162458

It's a matter of taste, but I like jumping because I would like running a game where people who can't stand existence any more throw themselves down-train, and again, and again, and they become increasingly disconnected with the beings they find there and start to honestly miss home but it's still the same stewardesses and the same cars and the same wasteland outside and the same damn train.

How would a compass react on the train? What about outside it?

>>30162474

The Other Tracks should be a legend. A myth that there's another set of tracks in the wastes, with an Other Train that you could board. A train that's much like this one, only wrong in subtle ways.

Of course, if you find another length of track out in the wastes, you have no idea if it's the same one you left. And if board the train that passes there, how can you tell whether it's the train you left or not?

>>30162371
Logically, this means that there are more people down-train than there are up-train.

This could be neat. Further up-train, things are comfortable. Way, way down-train, people are packed in like sardines. This assumes, however, that the train only seems infinite, and is not actually innocent.

Is there some sort of Hell allegory for a caboose?

>>30162526

Theoretically, you could jump uptrain if you leave it and wait for it to cycle around. But that means you have to survive outside for quite a long time.

Does knwoledge of a world beyond the train exist? A normal world like we live in right now. Or is the train adn the blackness everything the passengers know?

>>30162484
if there were to be supernatural elements, I would make it entirely plausibly deniable. i.e. it could very well all be born out of cold/hunger/thirst-induced hallucinations.

in your fevered dreams, you make a deal with a feathered god of bronze and chitin, trading the meat of your index finger for the strength to walk another tenday - but it could well be that you just chopped off the tip of your finger because you're going out of your mind.

>>30162484
I respectfully disagree. OP describes the earth as covered in black, unyielding, dehydrated sand.

Being stuck in the wilderness is one thing, amongst trees and small animals. Being trapped on what's essentially the moon is another.

Plus, if their are monsters, it's theoretically possible to kill those monsters. Dead monsters = resources. Best to have nothing out their besides the ticket booths.

>>30162545

Or you could just walk through the cars. But there could be cars that forbid passengers to pass through them, militarized or barricaded ones.

File: 1392111271533.jpg-(474 KB, 1000x562, arrival.jpg)

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Arrival is a time of great social significance among the inhabitants of the train. It signals a time where one may readily venture to and from the Outside. For some carriages, it is a time of great upheaval and change, where passengers arrive and disembark from the Outside and add their presence to the carraige. For others, it may signal a period of terror and paranoia, as suspicious passengers fear the unspeakable horrors that lurk Outside, who have free reign to enter the poorer-classed carriages and wreak havoc. For the more fortunate and influential carraiges, it is a time of great celebration and triumph. Powerful factions such as the Vektra Hegemony and the Kallistan Confederacy use this period of time send out parties of heavily-armed and well-equipped search parties to explore the mysterious lands of Outside. Sometimes, these travellers return with tales of wonder and awe, marveling at the many strange sights and indescribable phenomena that lurk in the dark corners of the Earth; at other times they may simply find nothing but an empty dark land and a lingering feeling of loneliness. But on occasion this journey ends with these travelers beholden to sights no man was meant to see, and are driven insane by what they were forced to witness- and this is if they return at all.

>>30162563
>Dead monsters = resources.
This. You gotta think like a murderhobo here.

>>30162526
It's probably not an appreciable difference because not many people actually do that. It's a lo tmore common for people to wander up or down in-train, and actually I think in-train the flow of traffic would be more likely to be up (there would be road-blocks, though, in th eform of cars that don't take kindly to drifters)

I like the idea of a hell-caboose. Or, not that the train actually ends and has a literal caboose, but that things seem to become progressively more hellish the further downtrain you go.

>>30162518
>A myth that there's another set of tracks in the wastes, with an Other Train that you could board. A train that's much like this one, only wrong in subtle ways.

It's going in the opposite direction, for one.

>>30162518
I remember from an earlier thread someone floated the idea of another train, moving perpendicular to The Train.

Or, actually, here's a hook:

Party is exploring the nothingness of the wastes. They come across a road. They can somehow tell it doesn't run the same direction as The Train's tracks. So they start walking along the mouldering asphalt, for days, until...

They come to a Rail Crossing. And the lights flash, the bell sounds, and the arms come down.

>>30162571

"Arrival" shouldn't be a planned event, it should be something you spring on the PCs only after the PCs think they know the setting.

Then let them feel the surprise and awe along with the rest of the passengers.

>>30162571
So what? Like once a "year" (assuming time is a thing) the train just stops for like, a day or so?

I like this, it adds a lot of options and very real fears. Imagine having to spend an entire day with the door to the outside, your one protection from the unknown, suddenly open.

>>30162624
I mean, not that it shouldn't be planned, but that it shouldn't be anticipated, the passengers should not have any concept that the train ever stops for anything, they should view that as impossible, like if the earth stopped turning.

>>30162613
>They can somehow tell it doesn't run the same direction as The Train's tracks.

I think it's better if they can't tell.

>>30162646
i'd imagine the train stops with some frequency for the station

>>30162674

Again, no real argument as to why my concept of the setting is better than yours, but having the train stop as a regular thing and not an apocalyptic even ruins everything about the atmosphere. The train shouldn't stop, because the train shouldn't care.

>>30162604
>your party is convinced that the train is going the opposite direction that it used to

>nobody else notices, and everybody thinks you're mad.

>>30162598
Or there's stories of people who've woken up in The Caboose. They meet an old conductor, both kindly and sinister. Maybe he talks about his hated enemy, The Engineer, or his banishment from The Engine.

It needs some work, since that's a pretty heavy handed Judeo-Christian mythology reference, but it mite b cool.

Of course, it's just a dream...

>>30162674

It doesn't stop at the stations. Did you miss the part where getting back on is your own responsibility and you need to construct an apparatus to get on and off the Train safely?

>>30162598
>I like the idea of a hell-caboose.
>>30162700
>Or there's stories of people who've woken up in The Caboose.

You know who usually stays in the Caboose on Trains? The Brakeman.

File: 1392112111567.jpg-(22 KB, 317x345, survivor.jpg)

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"When the lights go out ten carriages down, you grab your gun. When it goes out five carriages down, you start praying. When it's in the cabin next to you, start saving a bullet for yourself."

-Lawrence Wells, watchman of Green Lake Carraige.

>>30162705

It doesn't stop at ALL stations. In fact, it probably doesn't stop at ANY stations. But once in a very long, very irregular period of time, it stops at a depot. A black, cyclopean thing of empty, dark buildings and crumbling platforms. The train stays there for a brief time (so you have to be quick if you want to get back on in your own car, since you don't know when it will start moving again), probably for service and repairs.

>>30162719
In the original sense, Brakemen were, obviously, responsible for braking train cars.

So, if in this concept, The Caboose is Hell, and The Brakeman is Satan, maybe he's constantly threatening to stop the train.

Or maybe The Engineer constantly asks The Brakeman to stop The Train, but he refuses.

Which is more unsettling?

>>30162705
Didn't you see the part about the tickets?

Also, having the train /always/ on the move kinda limits the expansiveness of the setting. It'd be good time have some events of significance in the background.

>>30162753

The Second, definitely.

Either the Brakeman is preventing everyone from having to fend for themselves in the Wasteland, or he's keeping them from Escaping.

The problem you get is waste. If one person in every 5th cart spits out the window, or drops a speck of food or waste out the window, 300,000 carts down the line the train is going to be ploughing through crap. Add in an infinite length and the train, which seemingly conjures matter, will be inundated with infinite railside trash.

Some solutions:

1) Anything not alive is slowly drawn away from the train, as if rolling slightly downhill. It trundles out into the darkness as if guided by a breeze, although the air is as still as ever. Larger items shift slowly into the blackness, or even move like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stone

2) All things dropped from the train are drawn under it onto the tracks, where it is re-claimed by the train's mystical/advanced mechanisms to provide a form of recycling and mass retention.

>>30162774

Could be service robots moving down the tracks, picking up garbage for reclamation in the Caboose.

>>30162765
>Didn't you see the part about the tickets?

Of course I did. IF you manage to get back on the train, the Conductor shows up, requesting your ticket. Give it to him or die. This doesn't mean the Train stops to let you back on.

>It'd be good time have some events of significance in the background.

The whole point is the background is empty. There is the Train, and the occasional Station. Nothing else.

>>30162753
>>30162772

Perhaps the Brakeman is some sort of redemption from the Engineer?

>>30162774
The infinite waste is what feeds the monsters. The monsters in the dark are then eaten by bigger monsters which live even further in the dark, etc, etc, until the waste is spread over an infinite area by increasingly large monsters.

>>30162690
It doesn't have to be something like "exactly 491 days and 3 seconds from now, the train will stop", but an event that is noted to happen with some regularity is also extremely effective in creating an atmosphere of tension or dread. What if the player characters are in some lower-tier cabin? The stopping of the train could be something that generates real fear and anticipation in the players as they know something really bad could happen but are kept wholly ignorant of what it is- or even if it would occur

>>30162774
Maybe a flurry of mechanical arms (made of the unbreakable black metal) reach out and snag anything non-living that falls near The Train?

>>30162806
>>30162774

Arms would also provide a way for people to get back on.

How fast is this train moving?

>>30162794
>The whole point is the background is empty.

Not according to the rest of the thread.

>>30162822
Go ahead if you don't like the idea of having arms.

Are there stars in the sky?

>>30162799
>but an event that is noted to happen with some regularity is also extremely effective in creating an atmosphere of tension or dread.

What if rather than knowing when the stop will occur, there's an almost imperceptible slowing down of the train and it slowly grinds to a stop over a course of days. That way, as soon as people notice it's slowing down (if they manage to do so at all since there are no reference points), they start to panic.

>>30162841
Yes.

They're headlights.

>>30162794
If we cast The Engineer as a reluctant god/creator, maybe this is a version of the universe he got wrong.

Like, The Engineer not only runs The Train, but he created the train, and he sees that his universe is terribly, terribly flawed. Imagined as an infinite paradise, with clockwork angels tending to the needs of every soul, it's become a jingoistic, tribal nightmare. The Engineer desperately wants the whole thing to be over, but being on the opposite end of the train, infinitely distant from his adversary The Breakman, the omnipotent Engineer is, for the first time in eons, helpless.

>>30162799

The train stopping at a random time offers a chance for truly apocalyptic upheavals. Imagine barbarian hordes of raiders swarming in to pillage and destroy advanced civilizations that have successfully held the hordes at bay by barricading their cars, but now find themselves forced to defend the doors of each carriage. Imagine the raiders waiting for GENERATIONS for this moment to come, raising their children with tales of the battle and their prophesized plunder. It would mean that no stagnation is possible, any status quo can be disrupted. I like it for that reason.

>>30162851
> there's an almost imperceptible slowing down of the train and it slowly grinds to a stop over a course of days

This is still occurring with some sense of regularity, like I already mentioned. There are signs to anticipate its coming.

>>30162851
Also worth noting is that an infinite train would have infinite momentum, and thus stopping it would be impossible.

>>30162797

No offense buddy, but I think 'Infinite black, featureless desert' is all we really need about what's off the train. My version is no better than yours, obviously, but the setting is about an infinite train. Who the fuck needs monsters, other tracks, roads or other trains?

If you get handed something as great as 'endless mega-train with mysterious purpose', you don't go wandering off looking for something cooler. Why bother with the setting if you want to flesh out the purposely empty surrounds? Only add to a setting what supports its theme and purpose, like the ticket stations.

A metaphor: When the comely maiden gives you a sultry look from the bed, don't stop to check behind the curtains for forgotten candy bars.

think about it this way: the Stewardesses conjure unlimited resources out of nothing. conservation of mass is not a law in this setting.

when the Stewardesses dispose of your trash (or when you throw it out the window), it simply disappears after a small amount of time. Somebody fifty carriages down isn't going to see your trash.

Have a big plan to throw down travel provisions at set intervals? you will recover the first three or four, and then... nothing.

Same with the stations: logically, since infinitely many people will have been there before you, whenever you go to a station somebody would have set up camp / left dead bodies there already. but that is not so. Every station you visit is deserted.

Why? The same reason the earth is made of black sand.

>>30162878
The problem being that the endless mega-train is still really boring. It's useful for telling exactly one story, a sequel to Borge's Library, and no others.

>>30162863
Again, like I said in >>30162868, this still means it's occurring with a semblance of order. "Arrival" would still be something very noticeable in a carriage's society and will be something that can be anticipated

>>30162744
Love it.

>>30162889

I don't know if I'm impressed or appalled by your lack of imagination.

>>30162889
I agree. Just writing about the train is very limiting, especially when very few people have elaborated on the kinds of society/people in it.

>>30162891

It CAN be anticipated, and it probably SHOULD be anticipated, because it's a literal apocalypse, a complete reversal of the established order, a time of war and mayhem. Legends would abound concerning the previous Arrival, three generations (or was it six?) ago. But no one would be able to predict when it happens. And if it would occur, it would be a shock to everyone.

>>30162889
Not at all. Think of it like a campaign set entirely in Sigil. Yeah, there's portals to literally everywhere else, but trapping mortals, angels, demons, monsters, aberrations and so forth in one single, self contained city is very interesting. Or look at Battlestar Galactica. It's a bunch of people stuck on a handful of ships in the middle of space. Isolation and confinement can lead to very human stories.

>>30162878

This nigga has it right.

>>30162897
>>30162744

One problem with this. Guns probably don't exist in the setting.

I like the "arrival" idea: it should happen no more than once per decade, and will sometimes go for centuries without happening.

It is almost inevitably a great disaster when it does happen. lots of people die. civilizations fall.

throughout the ages, people try to predict when the train would next stop. this is a great driver of science.

however, it is all for naught. arrivals are truly random. anyone claiming to have a prediction is a charlatan. (but the players won't know this. nor would the charlatans.)

>>30162917
Sigil itself is interesting, yes.

The Train isn't.

It's simultaneously too weird and out-there while also being too limited and constrained.

It's both too simple an environment to write complex stories in, and too weird of an environment to make any of the remaining stories believable.

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>>30162921
What happened to homemade weapons?

>>30162937
Pretty much. Too much effort in this thread has been put into simply making the setting unusual, and while it may make for an interesting read, it does not make good rpg material

>>30162937
Agree to disagree. A lot of us in this thread find it interesting.

I don't really have any interest running a game in this setting, but as a setting, it's fun to develop.

And I could see it as a basis for other things. Really, this whole thing is a hop skip and a jump from SCP territory.

>>30162938

I shouldn't have said don't exist. I should have said are very rare. And certainly wouldn't shoot bullets, as I can't imagine any way outside of magic they would get their hands on gunpowder.

>>30162938
exactly.

also, toiletry kit + cake ingredients + chemistry -> IED.

What happened to the idea of other Alien Beings living on the train?

>>30162937
There is an infinity of carriages with an infinity of different types of creatures inhabiting them. This seems to be a thing that is overlooked by a lot of people. There can be aliens, there can be demons, there can be minotaurs charging through cars that can only be stopped by a concentrated effort.
You want a carriage of talking pears that sit around argue Shakespeare all day, you have it.
This is a very much limited by your own imagination kind of setting.

>>30162963
I find it interesting as well. Hell, I made a quarter of the posts in the last thread. This is the kind of world-building that made me like /tg/ in the first place.

But without any description of what it's actually like to live there - and I'm not able to come up with any ideas either, I tried - I just don't know if it can be made interesting. I'm not sure if you can have complex societies in a line twenty feet wide by infinity long.

Where did the Train come from? Why a train, specifically? Is it going to anywhere, or from anywhere? Why clockwork Stewardesses? Why?

>>30162991
Infinity is really, really boring.

(This is why all settings with an Infinite Multiverse kind of suck.)

>>30162964
>magic
See
>>30161189

>>30162964
>gunpowder
small, indoor-safe fireworks are available in the Pantry if you know what to ask for. now, if you take them apart...

>>30162994
It's do-able, we've just been working from the outside in, rather than from a character/characters out with this world building.

We have precedents: that movie Snow Piercer is set on a train after the end of the world. There's similarities, too, to Riverworld, which was wider, but essentially a very long, narrow path.

an example of a non-trainbound narrative that doesn't require you to flesh out the void:

- Down-tripping bandits. They raid the train, and in a hurry steal provisions, medicines and all the resources they need to spend another season beside the tracks. They also take prisoners. They hurl passengers from the train and steal away children, because every raid needs a new ticket, and they aren't the kind of folk for paying high prices.

>Why do they not just stay on the carriage where they get fed for free?
A sense of freedom and superiority? Maybe tradition instead, they are like a nomadic tribal society, they do as their ancestors have always done? Maybe they always intended to colonize an abandoned section of the train, but took so long they are now raiding inhuman passengers in environments they cannot endure for long, always seeking for humans to rejoin once more.

>>30163014
Certain stewardess requests (such as those to powerful items) can be knowledge jealously hoarded by the aristocracy and/or be found among long-lost texts and data banks in the remote parts of the train

>>30163010

Yeah, I second that. I'd rather the train was finite, but immense.

>>30162994
The passengers of the train say that it is headed to a utopia, a paradise even. They tell their children that they might be the lucky generation to reach it in their lifetimes. The train shouldn't have infinite carriages, I think a large unknown number works better.

>>30163043
How immense? Immense enough to still contain every possible arrangement of matter which could fit in a twenty-foot-wide triple-decker train car? Or just immense enough to be really really big?

>>30163029

The nomads have a mission that was given to them long ago by the tribe elder. They had to venture to a particular carriaga to do something there, but as the raiding party moved down, generations passed and their original purpose has been lost.


Btw, guys:
http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-train-doesnt-stop-at-stations-2013-12

Something like this for boarding and leaving the train, maybe? For one of the more advanced car-societies?

/tg/ is back gentlemen, /tg/ is back.

The fires of our rebirth has been kindled. Soon a new age of prosperity and creativity shall return to our land once more.

I got something. I like the idea of Forward, but not backwards. So how about that the only way to move between carriages on the train was forwards? Like trying to open the back door is either impossible, or when trying to leave through the back door all you can see is the dark wasteland.

Another idea, but mostly for the aesthetic of the train. Should the train, viewed from the outside, be an infinite rolling mass, or a single cabin, the reality of it's inside space distorted?

>>30163080

It never stopped, dingus. Whiners will be on in an hour to post about 'TG NEVER DOES NUFFIN' once this thread is gone. Rose-coloured glasses abound.

>>30161181
Why not have the train travelling on a bridge only 1 foot wider than the actual carriages? That way, it can literally be endless black void anywhere but on the train. . .

>>30162994
I dunno.

I just worked out the math and the floor area per car is about 10,000 square meters. That's a pretty respectable area. I could actually see a culture developing here.

What would be an oddity of a one-dimensional kingdom, though? News would travel slower, because it would have to go through everything instead of around things. "Borders" would be easier - every nation would border exactly two other nations, and no two nations would have exactly the same borders. The only things worth fighting over would be more space - and there are only two directions to fight in.

For the proponents of the train stopping at any point:
If it's truly infinite, that would mathematically mean that it's _always_ stopped.
Both can not be true, and one would disprove the other.

>>30163137
I doubt it's truly infinite. There are only so many possible 20-foot carriages before they start to repeat, just as there are only so many sequences of letters you can print in a book.

>>30163136
>"Borders" would be easier - every nation would border exactly two other nations, and no two nations would have exactly the same borders. The only things worth fighting over would be more space - and there are only two directions to fight in.

This is exactly why I like the idea of Arrival - because it enables social upheaval and establishing new factions, changing old borders and the like. Otherwise the setting will get stale.

>>30163145
You travel downtrain. You meet yourself.

>>30163145
The actual issue is, that you can't even think that it's infinite if it stopped even once.
This takes away a lot of the mystery.

This might give people too much freedom of movement and knowledge of the world, but could it be possible to map out the twists and turns in the track to an extent that at certain points people could get off, go to the tracks on the other side and board the train on a car that would normally take days or months or even years to walk to normally? It feels weird to me that people could only go backwards, but this might rob the mysticism from the front of the train and the conductor.

>>30163043
>>30163145
>>30163074

Just worked it out. In order to contain every possible carriage (assuming a mass-energy up to and including a train filled with solid lead), you'd need about a googolplex of train cars.

If the stewardesses take care of all the food, and procuring anything you need, then what do the humans do in the meantime?

What would a normal day of a train villager look like?

How would it differ from car to car?

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Carriage assaults are horrific and bloody affairs, where lethal weaponry is discharged by dozens of combatants at frighteningly close quarters. As such, their occurrence is fortunately very seldom, only when the major powers are driven to an uncompromisable stalemate over territory and resources. But when they do occur, the results are horrific, and hundreds, perhaps even thousands of lives are at stake when war is brokered between the major factions. The battle between Vektan and Cormaryn forces at the Porsan Observation Carriage left hundreds dead and changed the course of both societies politics for many years to come.

>>30163202

The Stewardesses are pretty scarce. There are many carriages where the Pantry's broken down and no Stewardesses service it, forcing said carriage to scavenge supplies from neighboring carriages and/or expend some space on cultivating food.

>>30163178
Inner peace through traveling, is this a religion?

>>30163249
It is now.

>>30163202
And more questions:

What is childhood like for a passenger? Do they celebrate birthdays? How does dating work in the cars, and are there taboos about dating someone a certain number of cars away? How is birth handled?

Do passengers keep a calendar? How do they measure the passing of time, if they are constantly moving and don't see much?

Do passengers have jobs on the train? Are there crafters that make things out of the items the stewardesses can give them? Scientists? Foragers? Entertainers? What kind of societies do these passengers build?

Does science exist? Is there a profession devoted to figuring out how items from the stewardesses work?

Do books exist? What kind of information do books have? Recipes? Dictionaries? Encyclopedias of items you can get from the stewardesses?

How is knowledge passed from person to person? Orally? Through writings?

What do passengers do for fun? What kind of games do they play? What kind of games do children play, and what kind of games to adults enjoy? Is storytelling a big deal, or do they prefer to play board games?

How often to passengers have to defend themselves? Does everyone learn how to defend themselves? What about children?

How many cars does the average person go to in a lifetime? Do they stay in their birth car, or do they move about? How frequently?

Is there sickness on the train? If so, how is it dealt with?

>>30163249

Potential train religions:

>travel through all the cars until you meet yourself/encounter God/find enlightenment

>Stewardess fetishism/worship as perfect clockwork angels doing the Engineer's will

>Destinationism: several holy books describe what will happen when the train finally reaches its final destination. They all differ, causing schisms and wars among followers

He worries me, you know? Isn't much to do in a carriage like this, I know. You can read the magazines, you can sing and play songs. We get the pacers coming up and down carriage who tell stories for a hot meal cooked from the cigarette lighters in the chairs. But he just looks out the window. Every day, right their in the window seat. There's nothing but sand, right? That awful, black sand and the black, bruised sky above it. He doesn't say a thing, hasn't for a while, so I tried watching the sands with him.

I stopped that soon enough. You look at the sands close enough to blur as the train goes past, you see things in the smears of color. And whatever it said, I ain't having any of it.

Just stay away from the windows.

>>30163268
I imagine a religion would require their followers to journey out into the wastes and return, spreading their religion in the carts they have to travel through to return home. Once arriving are accepted as full members of the church. I imagine this would make a lot of the members older.

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>>30161181

I just thought of a reason people might get off the train: motion sickness. Some people get so queasy just being on the train they literally go "stop the world I want to get off" and throw themselves out of the train car just for a moment's respite. claustrophobia could also be a reason.

Saw the stewardess. A stewardess, I mean. Went two carts up the train with ma to pick up more sandwiches. They ain't right to look at. Looking at them feels like touching grease for your eyes. No, I don't remember what it looked like. Slid right out of my memory. Two legs, two arms, fine enough for me to remember. It asked what I needed and I got what I asked, sandwich with eggs and cheese. Brought back a sack worth, so all of you little ones take what you can.

>>30163291

>pacers

Love that name. "Pacerism", the name for the religion whose followers seek enlightenment by traveling the length of the train, telling stories and sharing knowledge. Of course, there are demented pacers, saboteurs or madmen that disrupt the orderly life of carriages with lies and deceit. One never knows whether to welcome a pacer or shoot him in the doorway.

>>30163260
What is childhood like for a passenger?
Analogous to Earth children's superstitions regarding Santa Claus, Train children often grow up thinking of the Stewardesses as living beings that love them as their surrogate mothers. The adults go out of their way to avoid scrapping the Stewardesses in front of children.

Do they celebrate birthdays?
yes.

How does dating work in the cars, and are there taboos about dating someone a certain number of cars away? How is birth handled?

You can build tents out of clothing if you need a little privacy. Privacy in general is in short supply, however. If you are dating someone, expect everybody in the same car to know about it.

It is taboo to date in your carriage, and people are squeamish about dating in up to three carriages, depending on local culture. Stewardesses are skilled at births.


Do passengers keep a calendar? How do they measure the passing of time, if they are constantly moving and don't see much?
The lights in the carriages dim for ten hours out of every twenty-four. Time is kept in this way. A year is every 365 'days'. this is so because it is the convention used in the calendars and watches Stewardesses bring.

i dont think you realize just how limiting a 20meters wide line is for well.. everything
first of all if your "home" remains the same few carts than you are physically limited to explore up to maybe a quarter of a lifetime in every direction
somewhat more if you trade information with someone coming from the other direction
secondly theres no way to bybass carts so as soon as you reach a blocked or hostile cart thats it

1 dimension is -incredibly- limiting

a way to fix that is to have a number pad on every door of every cart (or every few carts) and depending on the combination you enter going through the door will take you to a different section in the infinite train
-every cart has an address so people can get back
-there are an infinite number of possible combinations
-people are constantly exploring and "mapping" the locations and trading maps with other societies (and other trades)
-allows bypassing hostile carts \ invading locations further than a walking distance away
-allows stumbling upon weird non cart locations when fucking with the pad

>>30162526
That's kind of backwards.
Generally speaking, the higher-class cars were placed nearer to the end of the train.

This was only really reversed with Amtrak in the 80's onward. The decades-old head-end heat units were starting to fall apart, and they figured if they couldn't heat the entire train, they could at least keep the higher-paying passengers warm.

>>30163291

>I heard tell of a terrible heretic, a Watcher, few dozen cars down. I know, I know. Keep your voice down. "Not to open shutters, that is the law." But he looks, and maybe he sees.

Meanwhile, a hundred cars away:

>She is perfection, she is the True Mother. The crone that carried you was blessed by Her. She is nourishment. She is light. There are infidels that hurt Her, that tear her apart because they are selfish. They do not love Her. You will practice, and you will go to the other cars, you will open their veins, and you will anoint them with their blood, that they might know the eternal love of the Stewardess.

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The Cormaryan Collective was founded upon a strict (some would say inane) doctrine of Gaussian Destinationism. Their founders were viewed as a radical and dangerous sect by Mercurian authorities, and they were expelled from their home carriages some centuries ago. They returned to their original lands many years later, radically changed from the times of old. Now they acted not as a group of disheveled outcasts, but as a fanatical, vengeful cult that would stop at nothing to spread its faith across the train and beyond.

>>30163421

Where'd they get the ram head?

>>30163424

Few cars back are full of cattle.

>>30163421
That picture kind of looks like he's in the middle of a funky dance.

>>30163424
One of the carriages obviously

>>30163421
Ridiculous. The Train is All. The Train turns in on itself. It is the ouroboros. There is no good or evil, no Caboose and Engine. Only balance. Ride in peace, my friend.

>The Engineer, Brakeman, and Conductor as an analog for God, Satan, and some sort of Ticket-collecting Grim Reaper.

Here's the thing though.
In typical railroading operation, the Engineer doesn't have a whole lot of say in how the train is run. Nor is he the one ultimately responsible for it and its well being.
That's the Conductor's job.
What I'm saying is, it's the Conductor's train. The Engineer just drives it.

>>30163436

The Cyclical Heresy! You will not sway me with your lies, blasphemer.

>>30163260

>Does science exist? Is there a profession devoted to figuring out how items from the stewardesses work?
absolutely. it's practically all that there is to do in the quieter carriages.

>Do books exist? What kind of information do books have? Recipes? Dictionaries? Encyclopedias of items you can get from the stewardesses?
There is about ten thousand books that form the Train's standard library (at least, you haven't figured out how to ask for other books yet). You've read and memorized them all, as most do. Pens, Ink and blank books are available from Stewardesses, so there are some worn-down, handwritten volumes being passed around. The ones from faraway lands are irreplaceable treasures.

How is knowledge passed from person to person? Orally? Through writings?
Both. (except for those societies that figured out how to construct a wifi network...)

>What do passengers do for fun? What kind of games do they play? What kind of games do children play, and what kind of games to adults enjoy? Is storytelling a big deal, or do they prefer to play board games?
"let's ask for nonsensical things from the Stewardess" is fun for all ages (and occasionally very rewarding). there is the standard complement of chess, backgammon, checkers, etc. available from the Stewardesses. then there is the games you and your friends invent for yourselves out of scrap material. there are travellers who make it their profession to trade those homebrew games amongst the carriages.

>How often to passengers have to defend themselves? Does everyone learn how to defend themselves? What about children?

Every once in a great while (decades?), the carriage in front/behind you will have somehow switched for a different one. this can cause great bloodshed.

>>30163470
>How many cars does the average person go to in a lifetime? Do they stay in their birth car, or do they move about? How frequently?
it's unsafe to venture too far, in some places. In other, more friendly places, you can walk a thousand carriages either direction and feel at home. It depends.

And sometimes, you will return from a great trip to find that your home carriage has been replaced with a different one.

>Is there sickness on the train? If so, how is it dealt with?

The stewardesses are competent doctors, but competent doctors are not enough to prevent all sickness. Some times, the living infected has to be disposed of, just like corpses.

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>>30163436
"The heretic will not persuade us with his lies, brothers. He has forsaken his chance at eternal destination, and he shall be dealt with accordingly."

>>30163461
But in this scenario, the engineer is the one who made the train. Or at least makes the stewardess's.
The Engineer just wants his paradise turned abomination to stop. The Brake-man wants it to keep going. The conductor is little more than a shell of his former self, and only cares that the rules (Tickets) Are obeyed.

>>30163461
That actually still works. This is an existential nightmare scenario where god (the Engineer) has lost all control. He made a plan, and it didn't work. The Conductor is in charge. The Brakeman refuses to do his job. God is trapped in a world he carelessly made. All he can do is keep it running; the devil won't let him stop.

>>30163461
It's kind of fitting actually, the engineer started the show, and the brakeman can end it at any time, but the Conductor calls the shots.
So, if the PCs ever do meet the engineer, the guy they think is controlling the train. He'll just tell them he has no say, it was the conductor all along? That's a bit of a twist.

>>30163465
Heed my words, lest our crusaders deny you death, and throw you from The Train. You will walk the wasteland, and we will soak the seats of your carriage with your children's blood.

>>30163496
I would gladly read a book with this premise.

>>30163347
Just don't shoot Old Clem! He's a pacer who visits my car once a year with stories and goods from Up and Down. He says his whole Pace takes him through thirty cars, but then he also says he was born one car back of the Engine.

Anyway, don't shoot him; he's a harmless kind of crazy, and he promised to bring my boy a "harmony-ka".

>>30163518

http://kinnareads.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/the-yellow-arrow-victor-pelevin/

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>>30163522
... you know the rules. Failing to present ID to a prefect at any given time is a capital offense.

So, if this should be a setting instead of a story, it has to be made clear whether the train is infinite or not. Otherwise, the players can just stand around and wait for some weeks, get back on the train and repeat this process, theoretically getting worse and worse scenarios in the carriages if all becomes more evil

I think that it should be a giant loop, and from the outside, there is no first or last carriage. It is said that you can reach those by walking through the train, and this might be true, but no one has reached either yet.

I told you, I did! Little Lou wandered out into the next carriage, and we never saw her again! Nobody in there said she left Down-train, and they're trustworthy folk. Not a bad soul among 'em, and I'd know!

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I hereby seal this thread with my approval.

It shall be saved for posterity and the enjoyment of future /tg/ generations.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=the+archivist

>>30163574

Could be that there's some Hare Krishna types who move through every car. But they're worn down; they've been going up-train for four or five generations now, they're so far from anything they've ever known, and the Engine is still nowhere in sight. Yet, they believe.

I've always wondered... you ever see the way TG scrolls past with new threads being made and old threads forgotten? It feels like a train. Pick a direction and Wander is what my dad told me. I've seen worlds expand before me. I just keep wandering, maybe I wander the other way, but more or less I pick a direction and stick with it.

I see the same concepts, but with new words, new people. It's all just a little bit different as you go Up-carriage, just different enough to keep things interesting.

Why, one carriage I saw was nothing but twenty men discussing how many spiders they could fit into a woman's vagina. I wandered on fast as I could through that carriage.

Guys.

Guys.

This is super railroading.

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>>30163654

>>30163648
I see what you did there anon....

>>30163574
The Train is effectively infinite for those traveling along it. Doesn't matter if you're using the interior corridors or climbing across the exterior, there's always one more car.

The only way to get to the Beginning or the End is if it's the Train that is moving, not you.

You can jump off and get left behind.
If you wait long enough, it'll come back around and meet you again.
You can jump off, get back on immediately, and end up an infinite distance from where you started.
Or, if you time it just right...

>>30163648
I see you wandering, you wanderer, maybe one day you'll find the answers you seek.

What happens when a train goes through a tunnel?

>>30163665
Caaaaaaaarlooooooos

>>30163648
I see what you're doing, and I'm enjoying it.

>>30163360
Do you really think they would let stewardesses handle births?

More than three carriages away is 'too far' to date? What about those locations where you can explore thousands of carriages away and still be safe?

>>30163470
Is it safe to ask for random things from the stewardess? I'd think that in certain cultures, kids would be told not to ask a stewardess for anything other than what was in their book.

Imagine a bunch of little boys trying to one-up each other:
I want a fart bomb!
Yeah, well, I want a SMART bomb!

And that was how cars 1254 and 1255 were destroyed. Don't play with the stewardesses, children.

Do stewardesses even listen to children? Maybe there's a certain age when they'll start listening to them. And that's when they have their coming of age ceremony, the first time they ask a stewardess for something. Maybe something particular.

A wifi network? Do some civilizations have this technology? Are there power plugs in the cars? Where are they getting power?

The carriage switching thing doesn't sound very plausible.

>>30163479
That reminds me of another question. How are the dead taken care of? Are there funerals? What ideas to people have of the afterlife? Of how your actions determine your eternity?

>>30163783
>Do you really think they would let stewardesses handle births?
well, they're good at it, and the average carriage doesn't have midwives, so...

>More than three carriages away is 'too far' to date? What about those locations where you can explore thousands of carriages away and still be safe?

less than three carriages is slightly incestuous, like first cousins.

incidentally, some pacers are in it just to sow their wild oats. people from far away carry no risk of incest, you see.

>>30163470
Is it safe to ask for random things from the stewardess?
The stewardesses in general doesn't carry anything that can be dangerous right away. It usually take a bit of ingenuity to process things into weapons. It's more likely that the kids have a list of items they're not allowed to ask for - the parents give this list to the stewardesses, who obeys it.

there is always the risk of asking for something that does unexpected things, but this is usually a windfall situation, so the prevaling view is that it's a risk worth taking.

>Do stewardesses even listen to children?

children below the age of 16 can have their orders overridden by their parents. this is to say, the parents can give a blacklist of things they're not allowed to have.

>A wifi network? Do some civilizations have this technology?
yep.

>Are there power plugs in the cars? Where are they getting power?
taking advantage of the fact that a moving car generates friction. for example, windmills sticking out the side of the car.

>The carriage switching thing doesn't sound very plausible.
neither does infinitely stocking pantries. I present it as an alternative to Arrival.


>How are the dead taken care of?
in short: dumped out the window by the Stewardesses.

Are there funerals? What ideas to people have of the afterlife? Of how your actions determine your eternity?
depends on the religion. scroll up for examples.

Maddy walked across the cap from 250A to 250B, nodding to the man standing guard as she did. He shook his head as she passed by - no candy for her today. Looking straight ahead, she opened the door to 250B and entered the Dining Area of Layfeyette Cluster.

"There you are, Madeline." Her father called to her. "Hurry over before you food gets cold."

She trotted down the small hallway in the middle, passing a few of her friends' families on the way, before coming to a stop at her family's designated table. Her younger brother had already begun to dig into his mashed potatoes, destroying their perfectly spherical surface. Maddy licked her lips and took a seat. Her father did the same.

He put his hands together and closed his eyes. "Thank you for this meal."

"Thank you for this meal." Maddy echoed, before grabbing her fork and beginning to eat.

Mondays meant steak, potatoes, and broccoli. Tuesday was pasta with meat sauce, spinach, and bread. Wednesday and Thursday were fish, and Friday always had cake as a dessert. On Saturdays and Sundays the Stewardess would let them order anything.

But no matter what day of the week it was, the meals were always served on the same white-and-blue metal, the phrase "Believe in God's good fortune" inscribed around the edge.

Maddy liked the phrase. Everyone in Layfayette did. It was God's good fortune that kept them safe, that kept their community different from the so many others that had fallen to the Carless.

>>30163874
>>The carriage switching thing doesn't sound very plausible.
>neither does infinitely stocking pantries. I present it as an alternative to Arrival.

both ideas (switching and arrival) are pretty "meh". however, of the two switching is worse. So far, the train has been a consistent entity. Its one thing, one infallible thing is the consistency - constant movement, and constant undefinability of its length. Making some cars switch randomly or let you telwport with number pad IMO throws that cold harshness out the window - with it you could arguably always have a chance of salvation from the farthest reaches of the train with a lucky switch. Nah, i dont like it. Also it would completely fuck up any kinds of multicar organizations. While Arrival would greatly change the dynamics, it wouldnt make them irrelevant.

>>30164315
I agree.

I actually kind of like the idea that children can't speak to the stewardesses until they're 18.

I always like to think about how children grow up in a setting, since that can determine what makes a hero or a villain.

While I'm sure there are varying levels of technology and whatnot on the Train, I thought of a more low-technology community's lifetime:

The female friends of the mother-to-be assist with the birth, along with the community's midwife. Bringing a new life into the world doesn't happen all the time, and it's a special event. The stewardesses either show no interest, or are kept away. Perhaps the men are in charge of getting the stewardesses to bring things like blankets, or hot water.

A big deal is made when a baby goes from drinking breast milk to eating food brought by the stewardesses. Luckily they understand 'baby food', and bring out different flavors each time.

Young children are taught not to play with the stewardesses, to keep away from the doors at each end of the car, and to beware of any dangerous machinery or items around them. The community makes play spaces or nurseries for small children so safely explore.

Mothers tell their children stories about cars where magic reigns, where communities clash and come together, where children are in control of their world.

Children are schooled either by their family or by a community-designated teacher. Once they can read, a whole new world of knowledge opens up to them.

>>30164730

You would think that people generally marry younger, since higher education isn't necessary to have a job and serve the community. Job training is probably done with apprenticeships that start when a child is very young, or when they express interest in a certain craft or science. Children that have not become an apprentice by a certain age are looked upon unfavorably.

Dating probably starts at a young age. About half will date and marry someone from their community; about half will reach out to those outside their cars and marry into another community, or bring another into theirs.

The stewardesses pay no attention to a child at all. They avoid bumping into them, but do not respond to requests. Then, on the day of their 16th birthday, the stewardess begins listening, and filling orders. This is usually commemorated by a small ceremony, where the child will order a small cake for their birthday. Children generally study the Order Books for a year or two before they turn 16, and continue studying it after coming-of-age to help with their profession.

Marriage is celebrated with parties and the ordering of wedding rings from the stewardess. For some reason, each pair of matching rings is unique from all others made.

Divorce is unfathomable. If there are problems with a relationship, the community steps in to take care of things.

Each family unit has their own small space in the car. Newlyweds share the space their family uses.

>>30164799
One thing that bugs me about the age thing, how do they know how old they are? Or is it just a case of "the stewardess suddenly begins listening"?

>>30164799

Most families have between 1-3 children. It's rare for a couple to have more than that. In some communities, it's frowned upon - there's only so much space for everyone to share.

Parents are in charge of teaching their children morals, the rules of the community, and the history of the community. The community watches after children as a whole, so if a child gets in trouble, it's not upon the parent - it's upon the people near the child that did not stop them.

Some communities endorse corporal punishment. Others shun it. Others shame the children in front of the community to teach them a lesson.

Older adults can retire from their profession once they deem their apprentice skilled enough, but most continue working until they no longer can.

Depending on the medicine each community knows how to access, and the living conditions, people can live to be anywhere from 50 to 70 years old.

Illness usually takes the elderly from the land of the living. Rarely do people fall asleep and never wake up.

Some communities believe the stewardesses control who lives and dies - one old man received medicine in a few minutes, but when his wife requested the medicine, it took three days for the stewardess to return with it, and by then, she was dead.

>>30164820
Clocks

>>30164860

When someone dies, the community comes together. Like before, they keep the stewardesses from taking the body by busying them with requests. Each person in the community is allowed to say goodbye, starting with the people who knew them the least, and ending with their loved ones. Then, the body is entrusted to the stewardess, which lifts the body from the bed, and walks out the door.

Nobody is sure what happens to the body. It's taboo to follow the stewardess as she takes the dead away.

>>30164820
One of the anons mentioned that there were clocks and calendars given out by the stewardesses, and the day was cut into 10-12 hour day cycles by the lights on the Train.

Maybe if there was one 'dark' day a year. That could define things a little, too. "Can't work tomorrow. It's Dark Day. Gotta get the candles out, tell some stories, and wait to see glowing eyes of the stewardess through the door window."

Well, what if you have a random table of cars (for sake of example say 1000) and each time the PCs travel to a new car roll 1d20 or whatever you want, to see if the car behind them changes. This way the more the players travel the more lost they get, they might have an area they know for quite some time, but one day they travel through a car and they find themselves suddenly cut off.

>>30165045

see

>>30164315

>>30163627
Fuck that, it's much more enjoyable to have Jehova's witnesses

>>30164860
Might be too grimdark, but maybe every person on the train needs their ticket. So, when a child is born, an old person has to give up his or her ticket for when the Conductor comes, he doesn't care about age, he only wants to see the ticket of a person. And he knows if you're cheating, I've heard this story about a family trying to use the same ticket for their two children...

So, what happens if a child finds themselves alone in a stretch of carts? Do they starve to death?

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>>30162526

“Praise the Engineer for granting us his Angels. For they care for us in the day, and in this night this one will provide us with what she cannot bring us.”
After these words Jebediah, the priest of the engine, nodded to me. I had already disabled the Hole Stewardess, but now the rite had been done, I could dismantle her. As I carefully started taking her apart piece by piece, Jebediah and his acolytes murmured a short prayer for every part I took from the Angel’s body. It took me several hours to fully dismantle her and sort the harvested pieces of her body in my corner of the carriage, and afterwards, when he had dismissed his acolytes to bed, Jebediah approached me.
“Yet another successful Dismantling. Truly the Engineer provides for us by guiding you to us on that fateful day. It is a shame you do not have a son to take over your work when you grow old.”
He had approached me on this topic several times already, and I knew what he would follow up with.
“My daughter Isabella is of a ripe and fertile age. She would sire you many sons.
“I’m sorry Father, but memory still weighs heavily on me. I admit your daughter is a beauty, but I do not think I could do her justice as a husband.”
He stil tried to sway me for a while longer, but when it became clear I would not budge, he bid me goodnight and went to his private compartiment.
You see, I’m not from these parts. I used to live much much further up ahead. I was a successfully mechanic. People brought me scrap from dismantled Stewardesses or from the goods they provided, and I made new things. I was happy there. I had a wife, and a daughter.
[1/3]

>>30165566
Until my sweet little Dora’s curiosity got the better of her and ignored the Law of our carriage. She opened the shutters and peered out into the black nothing. She went even further and opened the window, wondering what the air out there would smell like. My wife caught the final glimpse of her form as she fell out of the window, and I couldn’t act fast enough to stop her. She jumped after her daughter. Our daughter. Into that terrible black void, with no Station in sight.
I couldn’t bare it. For weeks, my work degraded, people stopped coming to me, and I was just a nobody just two months later. That’s when I took my decision. This life had no more for me. I started working again, but not for others, for myself this time. I opened the windows many times then, and let me tell you, the air out there smells of nothing. It smells of so much nothingness that it is terrifying. I measured and calculated. I heard it had been done before. A few carriages behind us there was an old man who claimed he did it as an adventurous youth.
Finally, when all preparations were ready, all I needed was a Station. I sat leaning out of the window day and night, looking for one. By then the people I once had called friends now called me a dangerous lunatic and shunned me.
When I finally saw the station approaching, I quickly got everything ready and jumped. I landed only a few hundred metres away from the Station, and as I approached it, I saw that it was everything the old man had told me. Deserted, boarded up, with nothing but a ticket dispenser. And the ticket dispenser had a hole in it, shaped just like the little doll I had brought with me. It had been Dora’s favourite, her constant companion. I had known this moment would come, but I dreaded it nonetheless. If I put in the doll, I would have nothing left to remind me of my previous life, nothing more to remember the sweet smell of my daughter’s hair…

>>30165577

Four days later, once my provisions had been exhausted, I got back on the train. The hook I had made to attach to passing shutters to pull me aboard had worked wonderfully. After only two tries I managed to climb on board. I was greeted by suspicious but not unfriendly eyes. After some talking, I learned that I had ended up with the Order of the Engine, who revered the Engineer as the maker of all. I had always figured it was just a fairy tale, but to these people it was hope, it was a way of life. Once they found out I was a tinkerer, they quickly accepted me as their own, and I was given a small spot of my own in their middle carriage, Jebediah’s temple carriage. He quickly developed proper rites and prayers to say while I did my work, so that the Engineer would not be offended and that the Brakeman could not sabotage or interfere with my work.
When finally the Conductor came, I had almost forgotten that I had had a previous life. It came in the middle of the night as it entered my compartiment, shaking me awake in a way that was not malevolent, but contained a certain determination. I will never forget its voice, though even right after it happened I had trouble describing it. Its only words were “Can I see your Ticket please?” and a short “Thank you” when it had taken it. The following day Jebediah said I was truly blessed to have the Conductor visit me and not take me away. I don’t know. At least I have a place again. A purpose.
[3/3]

>>30165566
>I had already disabled the Holy Stewardess
Dammit, I should really learn to proof-read better.

As to the "infinite or not" thing, how about it's infinite on the inside but, from the outside, merely appears rather long? Otherwise, it would occupy the entire track at once.

>>30163191

What are you setting as the volume of a carriage? A googolplex seems far too small even if you limit yourself to such a low energy

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First, how had no one brought up the Adventure Time Infinity Train yet? Unless I missed something, that is.

Anyway, I think a couple of things need to get ironed out with the 'official' setting if we're going to create one.

1) What's the most common length, width, and height of the carriages? 20 meters wide seems to be the consensus, but the other dimensions are just as important, as well as determining the rough ratio of single/double/triple decker carriages.

2) How common are the different technological levels you'd expect to find on the train? Are 'barbarian' cultures more common than 'advanced' cultures? What level of civilization can players expect to make characters for?

3) Are the inhabitants of the train strictly human, or do they include other humanoids? Do they include other sentient creatures that may not be like humans? If so, what do their Stewardesses look like? Do their Stewardesses operate by the same rules as ours?

4) How common are animals in the Train? Are they restricted to specific carriages (i.e. this carriage is just filled with cows, this one is filled with snakes, etc)?

5) Is magic going to be a part of this system? This includes things like Psi powers as well. Personally I'm against it, I think it should be strictly mundane, but it's a potential possibility.

6) What system are we going to make this for? I advocate for Savage Worlds or the Cortex system.

>>30164882
>dark day is tunnel that's hundreds of miles long
>it's announced a few days in advance

>>30165374
The stewardess attempts to bring a child back to it's parents, but if they can't be found (or are known to be dead), the stewardess leaves them with the first person who will accept them.

Perhaps there's a car full of feral children who work together to fight off weekly assaults by the stewardesses, who are trying to return them to their parents?

Has anyone considered that there might be cars where something like those freaky mouse experiments take place, with people?

I mean, there's little impetus to work, so if you're not constantly occupied by defending your turf and jockying for position... things could get weird.

>>30165609
Damn, I shouldn't write when I'm tired, all these typos are killing me.

In some cars, the dead are consumed because people think the stewardess are using the corpses to power the engine.
They throw the dead via the pantries.

Naturally these people are trying to force their way onto the other carriages, even if it means having to kill everyone who opposes them.

A couple thoughts after reading through this thread:

Having cars that don't like visitors doesn't make travel up-train impossible past them. You just need to get creative and climb up on top of them. Doing this is pretty clearly dangerous. The train is moving pretty quickly and there isn't much to hold onto up there. If you stay up too long, with the wind in your eyes, you'll start to see things...

The closest thing there are to "borders" between cultures are the stewardess' supply cars. Passengers are not permitted inside the supply cars themselves, though there is a walkway around the perimeter for travelers. The doors that the stewardesses use to go into the supply car won't open unless a stewerdess is present and each supply car has a mural painted along the walkway. Moreso than specific family, people generally identify themselves by the two supply cars they were born between.

This is just The Wall all over again. At least this way the party can't say they aren't being railroaded.

THE CARRIAGE AHEAD OF YOU IS FULL OF BARBARIANS

THE CARRIAGE BEHIND YOU IS BARRICADED BY ASSHOLES

ISN'T THIS FUN ROLEPLAYING GUYS

>>30166869
Or negotiate their toll, or fight your way through...

I imagine most cars would at least consider letting peaceful travelers pass through. Perhaps they have a narrow hallway build down the center of their car, to let travelers pass through single file without seeing anyone but the person who opens the door for them.

Who knows if someday you will have to flee your carriage?

I assume the doors are just flimsy sheet metal things anyways, and there's no reason to believe that people who have every material need provided for will figure out how to weld or construct sturdier barricades.

>>30167108
>assumptions
I can imagine running this for a medium length campaign. It would get old eventually.

I mean, people still play Paranoia, and it's been out of print for decades. That premise is far more restrictive.

>>30167260
Paranoia allows for so much freedom that GMs FORGET many of the factors that they don't use.

This game literally only allows two options, forward or back.

>>30167303
Only two directions in space. You could run any variety of games in a cluster of cars, or in an epic journey.

Though Paranoia has many, many choices, the game is written around the premise that most of them will lead to an amusing madcap death scene.

I mean, a journey/exploration game in TrainWorld would get tiresome if you never reached a satisfying conclusion (ie, reaching the end. And it would be a rare group that would use this setting as a default for every game (ie, film noir, pulp action, ERP, exploration, domain sim). But you certainly *could*.

I mean, unless you face resistance, what's the difference between saying "we march to the City of Nightvale to speak with Joe the Wizard" and saying "We walk three cars up to speak with Joe the Sage".

My point is just that restrictions (even bizarre, arbitrary ones) do not equal a bad game. Tastes notwithstanding. I mean, I know basically good players who say stuff like "I don't like science fiction... it's boring".

>>30162516
Inside the compass goes crazy. But outside no matter what the compass points to the train

What were to happen if you were to try to derail the train?

New arrivals add new carts. Going forward/backward a lot, you can see the style of carts change ever so slightly.If you move away far enough the designs get more primitive/futuristic. Also the time might pass faster or slower, depending on cart, but not by much.

How about drink dispensers built into the walls? Maybe with language changing menus. You must say out loud the language you want them to be in taught, and it only works with liquids. You can ether type in, or scroll taught a list of liquids you might want.(Or would that interfere with the stewardesses?)
There should be special carts, that have something more in them. Like pool tables, gambling machines or something. You could gamble Away your memories, or something they want(Maybe i gives you currency usable in the drink machines, and it can be traded for some sort of reward at a booth, or other machine(I am thinking extra year of lifespan, regrowth of limbs, slightly increased strength(up to a point),reactions,exc stat increases, mechanical eye implant kits, exc). You can trade for gambling tokens(they show up as a number on your machine) in exchange for similar tings. You rarely, if ever win taught. You get a free roll every "year" , and every time you buy a ticket. Rewards are usually pretty low if you win, taught every once in blue moon someone hits the jackpot. Usually they are used only when the moon is blue, as it's rumored to bring good luck (spoiler- it doesn't). Tokens are not tradable, taught some rewards are. You always loose at it taught. And even if you win, the rewards are pretty expensive.

Would open up more options for getting cool stuff, and explanation where it comes from.

The machines should be few, and far between taught. Also one machine would take one type of tradable currency (memories of x), years of life, or whatever and other ting tradable for spin tokens, which can be put in machines to get reward tokens. Takes most of your lifetime to get anything good.

Is this thread in autosage yet?

If not--
>new premise: the car is finite, but it is immensely huge

What happens if you reach the end?

What happens if you reach the front?

Obviously, this is just a thought experiment--to suggest such a thing as fact would be heresy.

>>30167950
How? I think it's established that the tracks and the superstructure of the cars is unbreakable by any means known.

>>30168057
Sorry,
*the train is finite, but immensely LONG. ie, a million cars, and you were born somewhere in the middle.

>>30162347
This negates much of the identity of the train setting and there's not much point to it. The train is going past infinitely, the noise would therefore be infinitely occurring and there couldn't be any sense of it going the other way.

>>30162871
This may possibly be a moot point given that the train is infinite in the first place and therefore already has transcendent/physics-defying qualities; its existence would be "impossible" as well

>>30163137
>If it's truly infinite, that would mathematically mean that it's _always_ stopped.

That doesn't mean individual carriages are stopped.

>>30162147
You can only ask for provisions available to a train passenger remember? Not tools, weapons or theoretical energy sources. And why warriors? Not everything has to come down to hitting a thing until it dies, if you think about it very few times in your life have required that.

>>30169511
>Energy Sources

The Train is massive and contains aliens. If you can think of an energy source, someone, somewhere, on some carriage, eats it.

You just have to know what they call it, so you can ask for it.

>>30162571
Many expeditions have been known to be extremely dangerous. Over time, technologically advanced nations and factions, out of curiosity for obtaining information about the Outside, have developed an ambitious alternative: out-rigging structures from the sides of the train; widening carriage, further and further to see what is Beyond even whilst the train is moving. Sometimes ill-devised constructions have been disastrous, with the wrong engineering/materials or expanding too far many of these structures could break off, possibly with the car, but never removing the underlying Substance from the Tracks. The material which composes the foundations of a car and which composes the track appear to be the same Substance which cannot be manipulated or broken under any known force, and no known force can separate the underlying construction of a car made of the Substance from the track (or at least, by any force the Passengers can produce).

It is rumored that one technocracy reached a point where they could fabricate the unbreakable Substance, "growing" a framework from the original underlying structure of their cars to create massively unprecedented widenings that would appear impossible, if not for the "impossible"material properties of the Substance.

They could effectively extend from the sides of the cars as far as they had fabricated their framework of Substance, so the only constraint on the distance is the time it takes for them to grow extensions from the car.

However, no one has been able to locate this nation of Wide Cars; it is also rumored that they disappeared...

Some Passenger religions have incorporated these fables, often using the story to warn against profane hubris of trying to rival the Maker(s) of the train, or in not being content with a more virtuous, simple train life that has no need of such wild engineering.

>>30169511
>You can only ask for provisions available to a train passenger remember?

No, I don't. Because 1) that piece of fluff was not established when I wrote >>30162147 and 2) it's neither set in stone as canon, nor terribly fun to use.

Ever think the Train's not going to somewhere, but it's running away from something? You adventure-types always like to search for the Front, but what about the Back?

>>30162774

I know the thread is getting old, but what if it's a property of the wasteland itself which takes care of this?

I.e., things that are forgotten out there just start sinking into the black sand after a few minutes.

This includes corpses and/or human beings who fall asleep.

And you can forget about finding any traces of anything out there, no candy bar wrappers from other expeditions, no ruins, just a big fat nothing.

>>30169671

Ha ha, love the way you think man.

This isn't info you should give out lightly though, the PCs shouldn't necessarily know that cars farther and farther away are occupied by increasingly alien lifeforms, they should have to speculate or figure it out for themselves.

>>30169918
it shouldn't totally inhospitable
maybe there are old derelict cars on forgotten sections of the track where people make a living?
also, stories of a paradise outside the train, far beyond the tracks

>>30169996

This is the kind of disagreement that has been a constant all thread, but,

It really SHOULD be totally inhospitable, and totally empty.

Designers and storytellers resist this idea, it 'feels wrong', they want to put SOMETHING out there. But that 'wrong' feeling is a feature, not a flaw.

Here's the thing, PCs will also resist the idea that it's empty, they won't believe it. They will think there must be SOMETHING and they'll keep looking for it. Part of it is the expectation that any "region" of a campaign setting ought to have things to do in it (i.e. metagame expectations), but part of it is also their imaginations imposing meaning onto the place, and there's a deep sort of existential horror to be found in denying them that.

Have you ever read House of Leaves?

>>30162430
Or you could have getting a ticket cost one or a few small pieces of your body. Though when you get back on in a car full of uninjured strangers you may find that they tend to distrust and ostracize those who have segments of their fingers missing. You'll just have to get used to being an outcast, forever marked by your re-admittance. Of course, you could always hop off again and try your luck on another car further down the line. What's another finger or two?

>>30169994
youre forgetting that there isnt anything to be farther away on infinitely long line. Theres simply parts where inhabitants of the train are human and lenghts where theyre nonhuman, and they vary, too. There's no "further back or front" besides from a specific carriage, and ypu cannot tell where it is on infinite plane except compared to other carriages.

>>30170428
The thing is, it's not brigning you to a foreign country, you're basically trading your fingers for a train ride whcih lasts only as long as you can stand the freezing cold.

The train travels 1440 miles per day, let's say a human trecking from car to car can at least make it 50 miles in a day without causing too much of a ruckus, assuming no serious roadblocks (like isolationist cars) that means that a day's trainhop is equivalent to a month's treck.

I mean, it's faster, but if you have to pay for a new ticket every time and you're serious about going down-train you might as well hoof it.

(this, of course, ignores what happens to a cramped living space when lots of people up- and down-train want to treat it like a road, even just to visit relatives or whatever).

I think I just like the idea that you either have a ticket or you don't, people with tickets can be a different class of people then, and the ability to car-hop at will (assuming they get used to getting on and off, a prospect which would make most passengers sick) sets them further apart from normal people.

The thing you gave up to get your first ticket should hurt like hell for the rest of your life. It can't be something minor or iterative, it should be a cost you pay every day by its absence.

>>30170521

Don't think you understand infinity, on an infinite train there can still be a region of cars 2,008,823 trains down with one kind of inhabitant and a distinct region 434,280,002 trains up with another kind of inhabitant, neither of which are remotely human

>>30170428
Losing a finger wouldn't be that bad. You have to lose something you love.
Maybe you have a locket. It's the only thing you have left of your mother.
Or maybe you have the last love letter your husband ever gave you before he was killed in a car-assault.

These are your price to get back on.

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>>30161181
THE RIDE NEVER ENDS

>>30170734

It can also cost you your sight, your voice, your ability to remember people or friends, your ability to love, things like that.

>>30170653
That's true, I suppose. I think it would be neat to make leaving the train and getting back on a huge transition, however. I just can't see life on the train as being anything other than being cramped and stagnant. Leaving the train could get you some breathing room and some other possibilities, but it comes at irreversible cost and almost completely disconnects you from where you were. It would add to the mood, having claustrophobia and cold isolation being your only options. Maybe the train could have some weird supernatural thing where you get back on at a point much much further down the line than you should.

I haven't even read a third of the thread, though, so you guys could have already agreed to take the setting in a completely different direction.

Just asking about the entire train thing.

I don't like that each carriage is the same. That's a terrible idea. I want the suggestion someone made a while back about how some are larger on the inside.

The idea is, there are some repeating carriages. The meal cart, for example. Rich civilizations fight crazily over these, because for all that stewardesses can bring you what you want, the meal cart can feed anyone quickly and easily.

Open air carts allowing you to see to the world outside. These carts can be targeted by people who want to get back on the train easily.

And the few train carts that instead of the usual frayed carpet instead have rolling plains, the walls the only sign that something is very wrong with these rolling plains.

Whatcha think?

>>30170899
And there's the point of the different carriages. Claustrophobia isn't necessary. You just need to find the rare few carts.

>>30170734
Yeah, but the idea I was going for was that you'd always be instantly recognizable as someone from far away, and you would rarely end up somewhere preferable to where you left. You'd start out thinking that you're not giving up that much, but you end up leaving again and again, becoming more and more mutilated each time. Nearer the caboose (if there is one) are travellers who are severely disabled and patched together out of ad-hoc prostheses, bandages and scar tissue, barely recognizable as human. Maybe the amount of tissue you have to give up to get back on increases each time or something, I don't know.

>>30170946
I think someone suggested that in one of the earlier threads.

I think it works ok, as long as there's not *much* variation.

If there are cars with a supernaturally large interior space (bigger on the inside than the outside) then, in an infinite train, there might be cars with the interior area of Rhode Island.

Or a car with a whole universe inside of it.

>and like, it's like just ONE SNOWFLAKE in, like, God's snowglobe... and like there's a BILLION snowglobes... and they're all, like, inside one molecule in a whole OTHER universe

so you can walk alongside the top of the train to cross cars that might be in the middle of a war, but you won't see the tunnel the train's going into, so it's not always safe

maybe there could be a way to travel under the train, considered incredibly dangerous, but if you've got the proper gear and know what you're doing it's much safer than the other ways of travel, if slower

>>30171078
There would be a limit, of course. But having that variance would really allow for more scenery than a depressing sandy outside and red velvet carpets.

>>30170973
Yeeeah, no. Claustrophobia IS necessary. To me, at least. For this setting I'm thinking minimalistic psychological horror, but you seem to be thinking ADVENTURE! ... but confined to a train.

Again, if that's what you've settled on, that's what you've settled on. I'm just throwing out ideas from reading the first bit of the thread.

>>30171159
No, ideas are good. But still, the choice between claustrophobia and cold is too binary (of course it is)

You can adventure. The adventure is whatever you want. But you can't rely only on the characters for a setting, you need the carriage! It must get annoying describing the stained carpet for the nth time.

>>30171226
Of course staind carpet gets old. That's the point. Most of the variety comes from the other people on the train. Having the PCs continually try to blend or assimilate with several wildly different groups of people would be the meat of the sort of thing I'm thinking of. Occasionally, there could be groups that aren't even human, disturbing and alien but similar in that they're similarly stagnant with similarly restless individuals itching to get off and get back on again.

Basically, existential hobos is what I'm getting at, with some aliens and monsters.

>>30161181
Trainworld, I like this.
Read the Riverworld novels, they might give you ideas. It's about people of all times being resurrected in a world at once, with basic commodities provided by machinery. Every time they die, they get reincarnated at one machine at a random point. One only has a limited number of reincarnations that they don't know about

I'm interested in this as a way to maybe revisit an old party if you wanted to treat it as a kind of afterlife.

Adapt the old characters and hand them out to your players, let them figure out who they are alongside the mysteries of where they are and how they got there.

I think the best way to experience this scenario is one not too long campaign with regular human characters. If you have read Metro 2033, that would be my idea of the setting. Gritty, dark, many unknown places, and nowhere else to go. It gets old after some time, of course, since you can't even choose left or right, but for one overarching mission like "Get a special kind of medicine/flower/person from a carriage far away" with some subplots, this seems perfect. The players should feel vulnerable, not almighty.

>>30172228
>you can't even choose left or right
that's part of why I thought up this possibility:
>>30169690
but if there isn't anything Outside it might not necessarily be a point to anyone doing it; unless it gives some sort of advantage with consolidating space... or just be something that people do because they can, breaking the limits of the original confines of a car would definitely have some appeal

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made this quickly for the thread, hope it gets the feeling across

So what constitutes getting off the train. Could you, say, parachute down-train?

>>30171422
Had this thread open since last night, so no idea if anyone is still posting in it.

Anyway, this is what we should focus on the next time this thread comes around. We've pretty well established the major features of the train, and the nothingness beyond. What we need to do now is start coming up with religions, cultures, and not-quite-human to inhuman passengers.

>>30173691
I really want run this as a horror game, beyond the close quarters and chilly wastes what creepy sickening shiver-inducing things could I throw at my players? Do you think this setting could work in an unknown armies game? what about as part of a don't rest your head game?

>>30173949

Ghosts. Ghost coming from the infinite blackness, or horrors that want to raid it. The hungry ones have been trying to eat everything in existence for all eternity, but they will never get all of it, because the constant movement makes it difficult for them to attack it.

There could be carraigges taken over by the hunger, perfectly designed to eat everyone and everything that enters. Or the fuel for the train is something got only from the passengers.

>>30161181

>Above

"Above" is a settlement built atop a few of the cars. People here are the liveliest, and most daring. Stewardesses cannot climb up here, so they get out of the train, and back in through open windows from the carts under them. Those cars are filled with guardsmen that keep Above safe.

>>30163260
>Do passengers have jobs on the train?

This is an important question. If the stewardesses can provide anything, then we've created a post-scarcity society and the only reason for someone to work would be personal gratification ala Star Trek.

>>30174308
Also, especially adventurous societies sometimes invent alternate methods of travelling quickly between carts. Wheeled carts towed from struts built onto the platforms between traincarts can be used to travel through the Outside for as long as the chains or ropes that ties it to home allows, but must always be used with care, lest a tunnel appears on the horizon...
Legends also tell of tribes mastering technologies to create self propelled carts that somehow leech power off the train to travel beside it. Some say these people managed to drive out into the Outside and find some paradise of their own, while others claim they became mad from exposure to the Outside and turned into bloodthirsty reavers.

>>30175592
I personally think this would lead to a hyper dysfunctional society in some cars.

Some might be occupied with defense, science, expansion, or some other important pursuit--but some could go completely off the rails (ha!)--you could have a whole society of people who are functionally children.

Instead of cars randomly switching, about the fabled stops is to swap carts? Nobody knows when or why it happens, and unless you manage to slip out in the right time, the carts will be locked while the maintenance takes place. Then, once it is done and the train starts moving again, the doors unlocks, and the carts in front and back might no longer be the ones you knew.

Swerving more towards the grimdark side, what if the train is fueled by the bodies of the dead?

>>30175814
Nah, that raises too many questions about how the bodies get to the engine before they rot.

The train doesn't really seem to need fuel. In some places there will be huge, open-topped cars filled with the same black sand that covers the waste, but no-one has ever seen anything done with it. It doesn't burn, it barely melts, and when it sets the glass is pitch-dark and strangely heavy. Bottles made from it tend to give drinks a sour flavor, but they'll never quite go bad.

Other cars bear huge flameless boilers, constantly heating and streaming to and from pipes, stacks, and whistles, but to no purpose. The pipes lead nowhere. The stacks just spew out into the Outside and condense on the roofs of cars behind, where it's often collected. The whistles never sound, save when someone tinkers with them a bit. Boiler cars tend to become akin to spa resorts, with ones located near a dining car being especially prized. Some of them have been converted into giant steam organs, to be played accompanying songs of devotion to the Engineer.

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>>30170946

This. I'd much rather see clusters of passenger cars (cities, basically) separated by large areas of the "Freight Lands"; flatbeds, tank cars, box cars and hoppers with makeshift pathways constructed by the traders who rove between settlements.

These areas could also be the source of building materials for passenger "civilizations" which convert their home cars into large, linear settlements with platforms for extra buildings, and maybe even supports and stilts with tires so that they could expand Left and Right a bit.

>>30176251
It's not like they don't already have plenty of space to the sides. OP put it at 60 meters wide. That's almost two hundred feet. An ordinary train car has a length-width ratio of about 8-1, so that puts them at around 1600 feet long. That's 533 yards. One and two-thirds football fields long, each, sometimes with multiple decks.

This is a fucking huge train.

>>30176376

>60 meters

No no, it's 20. Still much wider than a normal car, but if you had a huge settlement/city of about 2000 people, even if you controlled some sixteen cars you'd need extra space for greenhouses, schools, stores, and hospitals. The stewardesses can't feed everyone in a group that large fast enough.

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>>30176452

In big places like this the original cars would kind of end up being the basement. Perhaps only visited to get supplies from the stewardess at the pantry.

There would be a lot of construction done to make sure travelers would have to walk through the whole city rather than straight through the cars. The stewardesses of such large settlements would be guarded like the fucking crown jewels.

Of course this would be impossible if the train ever curved too tightly or went through a tunnel. I was assuming from the description it was always on flat ground going straight.

>Rattle asupSle

The carriage is rattling again...

>>30162772

That's good.
The fact that the caboose and the engine are myths is fertile ground for a lot of ideas.

>>30176583
>I was assuming from the description it was always on flat ground going straight.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Some of the pacers claim they've seen the curve in the open doors of a hundred cars, or that you can see it if you stick your head out the window. You ask me, anybody who'd stick his head out like that's liable to see just about anything, if you catch my drift.

>>30162799

Yep, It only happens once every 40-50 generations. All the "facts" known about stopping are myth, warped by the passage of time and the values of the society.

>Stopping allows monsters on
Or is it just folk from down train?
>Flesh will be ripped from you body
Or do the waitresses just stop serving?
>Your eyes will boil
Or does the train just power down and turn off the lights?

>>30176583

Oh, and since the stations are all the same size, there would have to be a large gap for them before the first supports on the right side. Perhaps smaller "cities" can only expand to the Left until they find a freight car with the huge amount of materials needed to pull off Rightward expansion.

>>30162855

But, but my tribe believes that the train IS heaven and the brakeman is a demon who threatens to end heaven by stopping the train.

We must war.

>>30163184

No YOU can't think that its infinite if it has stopped once.
Science don't stop me from believin'.
Magic: I ain't gotta explain shit.

>>30162385
Maybe it doesn't feel like it stopped for the people on the train. Maybe from their perspective it never stops, but for the people getting on, the train clearly stopped for them. Or maybe, it stops from the perspective of the people whose carriage the new arrivals are getting on?

>>30163470

If the train is truly infinite, ANY vocalization will result in an object being delivered.

Now whether it's useful, or whether you can precisely mimic the sound ever again...

>>30163488

So says YOUR religion. We know the truth!

Soooo, what about climbing ontop of the carriages?

And, as this is a train based setting I have to ask if there will be boxcars and hoboes that inhabit them

>>30177550
You know, people have been talking about widening the carriages, but I don't think anyone has brought up building ONTOP of them.

It would be pretty easy too- strip floorboards, add to construction, wait for stewardess to replace them

Here's an idea: the train actually forms a continuous loop of cars, with no beginning or end. The train itself isn't moving, rather it's the earth spinning around underneath the tracks that creates the impression of movement

>>30177699
Came up in (what I believe was) the first thread.

If this were a campaign setting, I'd want about half a dozen explanations for the train and ideas for endgames. No canon explanation.

>>30177699
>The train itself isn't moving, rather it's the earth spinning around underneath the tracks that creates the impression of movement
Then the train is still moving. All motion is relative.

To the Earth, a rocket is leaving at 11km/s and the planet is still, but from the rocket's perspective, it's still and the Earth is moving away at 11km/s.

>>30177337
Ah, but who's to say that object isn't, say, air, or a minute wisp of flame, or a pinch of fine dust? An infinite number of languages would have an infinite number of sounds associated with materials that are commonly considered "nothing." Or how would you know your vocalization was indeed a noun in the first place?

Rolled 24, 23 = 47

>>30178193
Well... if we want to go there... the stewardess should bring you literally EVERYTHING. For EVERY request!

...including an exact duplicate of the train itself. And an infinite number of variants.
>or a ticket

Gold star for the first player who realizes they can ask a stewardess to bring them a valid ticket.

No one said the underlying rules had to be clear to the players/reader.

This reeks of SCP. Like, it would be great on there if it was on some moon in our solar system or something. But for a /tg/ thing it's iffy. The trouble to me is that it is literally railroaded as long as you stay on the train. If you get off the train, there's no definite setting, so you're still just going to be watching the GM's movie. It's not like you can reasonably call them out on bullshit, since you have no rules for the world to argue off of.

Personally, I'd run it with the train running almost all the way around a moon. It doesn't end but there's a cart that nobody leaves from. Then break the two halves of the moon up into fairly high-tech settings kept grounded by some dark god. That'd at least give you some definite things to base the game around.

The train is a fully realized Turing machine.

An infinite tape constructed to calculate the meaning of life.

Anything outside the calculation is discarded, but there is a small area where symbols are marked upon the tape. These symbols live and breathe, representing numbers not known in these dimensions. The symbols reference each other and shift among themselves, exchanging parts of the whole.

Your body, your actions, your very life, is all a complex representation of a higher form of computation.

Some day, the calculation will end, and what use will its symbols be then?