mcroft | Con Game...

Before we began talking about Glowing Truck Balls,

prince_corwin and I were discussing what became a convention round I'd like to run at some point. It's pretty sketchy, but here goes:

JMC:It'd be a cross-genre game where everyone is an actor, filming on a remote location, something goes horribly wrong, and every single one of them is some sort of special in disguise.

While the players might (depending on the con) be encouraged to create their own characters, the basic framework supports simple, iconic, pre-generated ones:
the actor who is the Prince of another dimension but who enjoys theater, which he can't do at home
the wisecracking stuntman who is really Britain's best (and best known) secret agent
the trombone playing casanova who is really the 2nd in command of an orbiting starship
the screenwriter who's a time-travelling soldier from the future who came back to avert a cataclysmic war, then didn't have a home to go back to
the fight choreographer who is a scotsman from the 18th century travelled with an alien time-traveller for years
the PA who is secretly a girl reporter in disguise to get the big scoop, she channels an ancient warrior princess when in danger
The PCs would not know that anyone else was exceptional. The circumstance that they're faced with would need to require exceptional actions, so the players would need to use their mighty powers.

There are some serious unknowns:
System: It would have to allow for a lot of variation. Probably something light, like Everway, PTA, or SotC.
Obstacle: It has to be big. Cthulhu big. Chased down by the X-Files big.
Setting: Taking a cue from Call of Cthulhu, the game doesn't have to be modern, and isolation often works better in the 1930s or earlier. This does eliminate (or at least change drastically) some of the character options.

The point of the game is to be larger than life. Even if the players have to run from MC 400 foot Cthulhu, they should do so in a big way...