the BrikWars universe

[Rayhawk]

Looking back at BW1998's chapter about the StarShip Civilizations yesterday, I started thinking about the fact that modern-day BrikWars hasn't got a whole lot of setting material. There's some bits in there about Dimmies and Dungan Jaw-Jaws, and of course the SpaceMan and the NegaBloktrix towards the front, but otherwise there isn't a lot of background material for the BrikWars universe.

Is there a solution for this? New BW Civilizations from across time? More iconic characters? A history of combat spanning the arrival of the first Lego minifigs in the 70s to the rise of the clone brands and Bionicle?

[Carda]

Well, you could develop a basic backstory concept for each (non-licensed) theme, and then come up with a way to make all those worlds COLLIDE, causing tension and strife throughout the BrikWars universe (and opening up a couple of odd gateways to the licensed realities like Star Wars while you're at it).

Granted, most of us make up our own reasons for pitting minifigs against each other, but for those with less innate imagination, a setting to work within helps. I mean, look at Warhammer players; they put a LOT of work into building and painting stuff that isn't even their own original creation.

[Stormzen]

Well here's an idea. What if the minifigs were once peaceful, and they all kept to their little theme worlds for a long time. The end of this disgusting period of pacifism came when a wizard opened a portal to make his little Castle world a better, deadlier place. He underestimated the power of such a spell, and brought all of the worlds together, resulting in beautiful bloodshed and mayhem. The universe was now in perpetual chaos, but the minifigs didn't mind. Seeing the bloodshed and how hilarious it was made them all see the light. So the minifigs organized themselves into armies with ever changing alliances, and those who couldn't join an army just killed whoever they could.
Heroes eventually emerged, and the slaughter began anew, with dead minifigs being put back together. It is in this era we play.

Well, there's my attempt. Love it, hate it, criticize, or whatever.

[Atomsk]

In all LEGO themes, there are iconic Good Guys and Bad Guys. Blacktron vs. the Space Police... Forestmen vs. Knights... Cowboys vs. peaceful native american hunter-gatherers... I think the Brik Wars historical timeline should reflect this duality. Stormzen's magical portal plot device is one way to travel through time, but you could make one one for every era if you wanted, ie, Redbeard's ship gets lost in a storm in the Bermuda Triangle and shows up to battle a Viking Longship.

[Tzan]

You made fun of the GURPS source books recently.
You seem to be awfully close to saying you might want a source page or two on each time period. Which is cool.

With my brikwarrior dude I've been thinking up a BrikWorld that might go along with it. If I made a computer rpg/strategy style game the players might start in the Stone Age then thru technological advances progress thru Bronze, Iron, Medieval... Space. Then a players group might have a few Stone age guards in a castle with a WWII tank in front of the keep with a space ship sitting on a landing pad on the roof.

Thats all accomplished with no time travel.

But the time travel idea is good. Just depends what you are shooting for. I was making up something that was not a skirmish game and more of a long term advancement rpg.

[Almighty Benny]

Why not just make a BrikWars history Wiki and let all of us come up with the whole story? It could be like a big, retarded book written for the BrikWars community, by the BrikWars community, about the origins of Brikwars and the history of the BrikWars universe. Then once we've amassed a giant steaming pile of awesome, we can condense it into a screenplay. Once that becomes a movie, we can make a TV series loosely based on the movie. Then we can film a behind-the-scenes documentary about the TV series, and it will be so amazing that someone will write an article about it in a newspaper somewhere, and Mike can briefly summarize that article for use in the rulebook.

We'd probably end up with something like:

In the beginning, The Dread Pirate 2x2 created the Baseplates. Now the Baseplates were flat and empty, and forged of the finest ABS plastic. And the Dread Pirate 2x2 said, "let there be studs!" And there were studs. And the Dread Pirate 2x2 saw that they were good.

And the Dread Pirate 2x2 said "let there be Space! And let there also be Castle, and let Space and Castle be the greatest of the themes! Let each of them bear Minifigs so that one day brave heroes will arise that they may wage glorious battle on the Baseplates that I have made! And it was so.

And The Dread Pirate 2x2 made the multitudes of Minifigs that would roam the Baseplates and He made vast kingdoms for them to live in. And they were awesome. And He saw that they were awesome, and there was much rejoicing.

And He said "And I will take all of my creation and separate them according to their kinds, and place them in bags. And the bags I will place in cardboard boxes, and the boxes I will call Sets. And the Sets will be far too expensive, and no Wal Mart from this day forth shall have them. And He cursed the Wal Marts, and the ground shook their very foundations, and the Wal Mart customers trembled with fear, and there was terror in their hearts, and the sentence continued to run on.

And finally, the Dread Pirate 2x2 said "Let there be the Dealdly Spacemen. And it is he that shall rule over the Baseplates and the Sets and the great armies of Minifigs that I have made, and never shall there be a Stat Card of him. And the Dread Pirate 2x2 saw what He had made. And it was good.

On second thought, we should probably just make Boomer write the whole thing.

[Tzan]

Haha awesome quote.

[Almighty Benny]

Thanks, I figured putting it in a quote would make it look more official. And so it was written.
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to the Dread Pirate 2x2!

[piltogg]

well, I have already made up this hudge background story for my brikwars battles but it is very specific to my colection and heros.
it has a lot to do with legoland being the center of the earth. and the moon being a badly constructed megablox construct nutch like the death star. pieces of the blox moon sometimes fall off it takeing with them megaminnifigs resulting in wars between lego and megablox. and there are also civil wars in lego land. please not that is just a very broad overline.

[Korwinblue]

Why not just make a BrikWars history Wiki and let all of us come up with the whole story? It could be like a big, retarded book written for the BrikWars community, by the BrikWars community, about the origins of Brikwars and the history of the BrikWars universe. Then once we've amassed a giant steaming pile of awesome, we can condense it into a screenplay. Once that becomes a movie, we can make a TV series loosely based on the movie. Then we can film a behind-the-scenes documentary about the TV series, and it will be so amazing that someone will write an article about it in a newspaper somewhere, and Mike can briefly summarize that article for use in the rulebook.

We'd probably end up with something like:

In the beginning, The Dread Pirate 2x2 created the Baseplates. Now the Baseplates were flat and empty, and forged of the finest ABS plastic. And the Dread Pirate 2x2 said, "let there be studs!" And there were studs. And the Dread Pirate 2x2 saw that they were good.

And the Dread Pirate 2x2 said "let there be Space! And let there also be Castle, and let Space and Castle be the greatest of the themes! Let each of them bear Minifigs so that one day brave heroes will arise that they may wage glorious battle on the Baseplates that I have made! And it was so.

And The Dread Pirate 2x2 made the multitudes of Minifigs that would roam the Baseplates and He made vast kingdoms for them to live in. And they were awesome. And He saw that they were awesome, and there was much rejoicing.

And He said "And I will take all of my creation and separate them according to their kinds, and place them in bags. And the bags I will place in cardboard boxes, and the boxes I will call Sets. And the Sets will be far too expensive, and no Wal Mart from this day forth shall have them. And He cursed the Wal Marts, and the ground shook their very foundations, and the Wal Mart customers trembled with fear, and there was terror in their hearts, and the sentence continued to run on.

And finally, the Dread Pirate 2x2 said "Let there be the Dealdly Spacemen. And it is he that shall rule over the Baseplates and the Sets and the great armies of Minifigs that I have made, and never shall there be a Stat Card of him. And the Dread Pirate 2x2 saw what He had made. And it was good.

On second thought, we should probably just make Boomer write the whole thing.

Good begining!

[IVhorseman]

you know, i actually liked that the newest version of brikwars didn't have background fluff.

the way i see it, brikwars is a wargaming engine for a car the player constructs. the old stories (while they were very amusing) took away a lot of the creativity brikwarriors should pride themselves on. even the 2001 rules, with the amazon and synthetik classes seemed a bit imposing on players and constricting of creativity. why think about pre-made stories when we can write our own in blood?

[Tzan]

and no Wal Mart from this day forth shall have them. And He cursed the Wal Marts, and the ground shook their very foundations, and the Wal Mart customers trembled with fear, and there was terror in their hearts, and the sentence continued to run on.

So if Wal-Mart existed at the begining of time. Maybe it is one of the old gods like BrikThulhu which has existing before the begining of time.

An entity which no one can comprehend. Feared by all except the devout acolytes which make sacrifices to Wal-Mart. Sacrifices generally involve credit cards and of course the great Wal-Mart is not above devouring the odd acolyte or two. Especially if one has run out of credit.

[Timedude]

Looking back at BW1998's chapter about the StarShip Civilizations yesterday, I started thinking about the fact that modern-day BrikWars hasn't got a whole lot of setting material. There's some bits in there about Dimmies and Dungan Jaw-Jaws, and of course the SpaceMan and the NegaBloktrix towards the front, but otherwise there isn't a lot of background material for the BrikWars universe.

Is there a solution for this? New BW Civilizations from across time? More iconic characters? A history of combat spanning the arrival of the first Lego minifigs in the 70s to the rise of the clone brands and Bionicle?

It's about time you remembered! I'm a big fan of the old BW1998 StarShip Civilizations, ever since you posted a wayward link about a year ago. Definitely good stuff. The old backstory is priceless too:

By the turn of the thirty-sixth century, humankind's scientific progress had turned the earth into a utopia, free of poverty, hunger, and vice. The year 3500 brought two amazing scientific discoveries: The first was the Really Fast Drive, which opened the entire galaxy to exploration and colonization. This was a lucky break, since the second discovery was that the Earth was going to blow up in a few years.

The entire industrial output of humankind was then dedicated to building fifty great StarShips, each the size of the moon, and custom-fitted with Really Fast Drives. As the planet began to disintegrate behind them, the StarShips launched in all different directions, to find new homes for the human race. Thus began The Time When Nobody Saw Anybody Else. For millenia, the StarShips plunged the depths of space, and constant exposure to Really Fast Waves caused the humans to develop stumpy limbs, mittenlike hands, and bright yellow skin.

No two StarShips crossed paths until over eleven thousand years later, in 14745. The two StarCivilizations Proxima and Moola, whose ships had each grown to over 2500 times the size of the Earth, met over Arcturus VIII. After a brief period of reacquaintance and celebration, they went to war over the rich mineral resources of the planet. The fighting was so fierce that it attracted the attention of the forty-eight other Civilizations, and they began arriving and joining in the battle. When the last Civilization arrived, thirteen years later, Arcturus VII had been desolated, and three Civilizations had been destroyed utterly. Fighting continued regardless.

But for some reason, the Civilizations were not able to find the satisfaction one expects from perpetual warfare. There was something missing. There followed a series of short-lived truces and armistices, starting with the Let's Not Fight For Awhile Agreement of 14800. During these brief periods of peace, the Civilizations engaged in intense research and planetary colonization campaigns, in preparation for wars to come. In 14989, the Ralans' most secret research project finally bore fruit - the genetically engineered, cybernetically enhanced, bloodthirsty and deathdealing ultimate soldier: the SpaceMan. The first SpaceMen were immediately deployed against the Aldonian Civilization, which suffered a tremendous butt-kicking as their forces gibbered in fear before the SpaceMen's ominous and unrelenting smiley-faces.

Within months, the other 46 Civilizations genetically engineered their own versions of the Ralan Spaceman. Though the Ralans won the resulting copyright infringement suits, they suffered a grievous defeat shortly afterwards against the combined forces of all the other Civilizations.

The SpaceMan proved to be a tremendous success. Never again would Civilizations suffer months of boredom under peace treaties and demilitarizations. The SpaceMen never suffered from demoralization, never got tired of fighting, and were unfazed by impossible odds. No Civilization ever again felt the need to interrupt the fighting for any reason, and full-scale war erupted across the galaxy.

The year is now 17250, over two thousand years since the introduction of the SpaceMan. Galactic Empires have risen and fallen, none lasting more than a few centuries. Wars rage over planets, solar systems, and entire arms of galaxies. Alliances are forged and broken like so many buildings made of plastic bricks. Now the task of commanding the armies of one of these great Civilizations falls to you. Don't screw it up.

I could have hunted up the even older one, but I can't seem remember where you hid it. Anyway, anyone who watches Stargate or Star Trek knows the whole universe doesn't have to be at the same level of technological advancement. So, you combine the following assumptions with the previous backstory:

1. Not everyone is a the same level of technological advancement.
2. Mega Bloks are invaders form the 5th Dimension!
3. Any wacky powers you want are attributed to pacts with 'Brkthulhu'!
4. Being many years latter, there may now be more than 38 starship civilizations.

And you're good to go! Plus, Mike, you can have lots more fun making new StarShip civilization based on whatever you want. If you want a WW2 era battle, then it takes place on some isolated planet.

Oh, and just so you know, the StarShip civilizations were impressive enough to warrant a Rios Secret Agent base in my brothers room. It's not done up in the old wacky colors, it's just a converted police base with rooms filled with gadgets and stuff, and plenty of agents too. Just so you know...

Timedude

[Joetrillion]

I think there should be more races we can use as cannon fodder(dimmys,peachs,jaw jaws etc).

[Rayhawk]

Nooooo!!! Lego Universe is trying to steal my thunder:

http://kotaku.com/387049/lego-universes ... y-unveiled

The origins of the minifig revealed? Plastic used as currency? Those bastards! I have to get my universal backstory out first, before they mess everything up.