Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post

Phil Masters · 09-04-2014, 11:08 AM

If you aren't tweaking the timeline to bring the UK and US branches together twenty years early, I'd probably go for a Duncorne Foundation, British Empire-based campaign, rather than an American, SAO-based game. The Foundation has a fairly good idea what's going on, and a lot of colourful field agents scattered round the globe, while the SAO is mostly researching linguistics and group psychology, and is presumably getting a creeping, horrible feeling that somebody out there already knows about this stuff, and is better at it than them. The flavour text for chapter 1 suggests that there were Americans getting some more actively useful ideas, but they were pretty clueless overall, and took serious casualties accordingly.

But either way, I think you'll end up shifting the focus away from the clinical, professional mad science and efficient commando ops of modern day games to something more amateurish. The SAO are officially in the private sector; the Duncorne Foundation reeks of a very British gentleman-adventurer attitude. Both groups would mostly be about investigation, with only occasional desperate confrontations with scorpion-men, those involving lots of dynamite and some friendly fire NPC casualties. The primary opposition would perhaps be seemingly human cults, unknowingly providing the Anunnakku with ways to re-infiltrate human consciousness.

However, these shouldn't, mostly, be Lovecraft-style capering, decadent, non-European primitives. The Anunnakku are all about control and hierarchy; the cults they use as puppets in the 1920s could be terribly genteel, not at all primitive, and quite prepared to agree with the good chaps in the government about the white man's burden and the need for strong leadership. I wouldn't make the Anunnakku responsible for the Nazis, but the Nazis all too willingly moved towards Anunnakku modes of thought as they employed third-hand Anunnakku psychological methods. And those British Union of Fascists members and Silver Shirts who go in for seances in the evenings may sometimes find their ouija boards spelling out words dredged up from the depths of the human unconscious.

But that's maybe getting too far into the 1930s. In the '20s, everything is still to play for. There's new iconography everywhere, and some of it derives from the sort of stuff that the likes of Arthur Evans and Howard Carter keep getting into the papers. Keeping a lid on the deadly dangerous stuff, and sorting it out from the meaningless junk jewellery, is hard work.

More to follow...

09-04-2014, 11:08 AM	#5
Phil Masters Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: U.K.	Re: Madness Dossier in the 1920s If you aren't tweaking the timeline to bring the UK and US branches together twenty years early, I'd probably go for a Duncorne Foundation, British Empire-based campaign, rather than an American, SAO-based game. The Foundation has a fairly good idea what's going on, and a lot of colourful field agents scattered round the globe, while the SAO is mostly researching linguistics and group psychology, and is presumably getting a creeping, horrible feeling that somebody out there already knows about this stuff, and is better at it than them. The flavour text for chapter 1 suggests that there were Americans getting some more actively useful ideas, but they were pretty clueless overall, and took serious casualties accordingly. But either way, I think you'll end up shifting the focus away from the clinical, professional mad science and efficient commando ops of modern day games to something more amateurish. The SAO are officially in the private sector; the Duncorne Foundation reeks of a very British gentleman-adventurer attitude. Both groups would mostly be about investigation, with only occasional desperate confrontations with scorpion-men, those involving lots of dynamite and some friendly fire NPC casualties. The primary opposition would perhaps be seemingly human cults, unknowingly providing the Anunnakku with ways to re-infiltrate human consciousness. However, these shouldn't, mostly, be Lovecraft-style capering, decadent, non-European primitives. The Anunnakku are all about control and hierarchy; the cults they use as puppets in the 1920s could be terribly genteel, not at all primitive, and quite prepared to agree with the good chaps in the government about the white man's burden and the need for strong leadership. I wouldn't make the Anunnakku responsible for the Nazis, but the Nazis all too willingly moved towards Anunnakku modes of thought as they employed third-hand Anunnakku psychological methods. And those British Union of Fascists members and Silver Shirts who go in for seances in the evenings may sometimes find their ouija boards spelling out words dredged up from the depths of the human unconscious. But that's maybe getting too far into the 1930s. In the '20s, everything is still to play for. There's new iconography everywhere, and some of it derives from the sort of stuff that the likes of Arthur Evans and Howard Carter keep getting into the papers. Keeping a lid on the deadly dangerous stuff, and sorting it out from the meaningless junk jewellery, is hard work. More to follow... __________________ -- Phil Masters My Home Page. My Self-Publications: On Warehouse 23 and On DriveThruRPG.