[SG] [LNH] [ASH] [META] [POSSIBLY OTHERS] Dvandiverses?

[Dave Van Domelen]

In article <3t4jt49knkamna14mnbi6e5396j769kvsi at 4ax.com>,
Andrew Perron  <pwerdna at gmail.com> wrote:
>So, while researching for the RACCies (they're coming along nicely!),
>I noticed that many of Dave's stories seem to have picked up Dvandom
>Force plot elements; at least two members of the New Exarchs are
>former members (depending how you count Skysabre), the RoboMACs seem
>to have cropped up in the ASH universe at some point... so, my
>question is, how many of these links are there, and what order should
>I read the series in question in?

     The key here is that I mine old RPG campaigns a LOT.  My series in the
Patrol universe, for instance, is based on the first Champions campaign I ran
back in high school, while ASH is based mostly on the setting of my college
Champions mega-campaign (mega because it spawned franchise campaigns run by
other GMs but set in the same world), with modifications made during the
development of my Modern Knights RPG.
     For instance, Constellation started as Flood, who was originally a
member of They Might Be Villains in the Tick-Universe game I ran in my final
semester of college (shelving ASH to take a break from it), who then got
imported into the Raiders campaign I ran for Modern Knights.  Over a year
before I decided to make 2020s ASH, I mined the Raiders campaign extensively
for Constellation, although I later had to retcon a lot of that into being
alternate timelines or even mini-universes created by Constellation, since it
contradicted where I later went with ASH.
     Other times, it's not so much a crossover as reuse of ideas.  Peter
David's Hannukah story as told by Doc Samson had Antiochus IV portrayed by
Ultron, and I was amused by the idea of an evil robot calling himself
Antiochus V.  So not only did I work it into my original Transformers-ripoff
RoboMACs setting as the Megatron analogue, I also went full circle and
replaced Mechanon (an Ultron ripoff) in the Raiders setting with Antiochus V
(I was stripping out all the Hero-owned stuff from the original ASH and
either totally abandoning it, or finding replacements).  So, the Antiochus V
in ASH is NOT the RoboMACs version...as far as I can recall, there's been no
direct crossover between ASH and RoboMACs, just the common link of
Constellation.
     And, yeah, it doesn't help matters that one or another version of
Constellation has cropped up in all my universes.  The main one was from the
proto-ASH, traveled to Patrol and fought RoboMACs.  An alternate one ended up
in Exarchs over in Superguy.  Only the fact that I don't have a single
Transforemrs fanfic universe has kept it from being tied in somehow.  :)

     All that said, I try to make sure out-of-universe stuff in ASH stories
is explained in the relevant stories, rather than making people go look up
old LNH or Patrol.  Exarchs wallows in old cross-continuity a bit more often,
but it's unabashedly self-indulgent in a lot of ways.  And to follow
Constellation/Dvandom Force requires more than just following my own work,
what with all the crossovers and my tendency to homage or outright rip off
whatever caught my eye.

     Dave Van Domelen, keeping LNHers fictional within ASH...Paper Tigers was
a fun goof, but not something to repeat now that ASH is actually developed in
its own right rather than simply a bit of source material.