03-21-2016, 08:17 PM | #31 | |
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: between keyboard and chair
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Re: Clothes
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During a blizzard, one normally stays indoors if at all possible; it's far too easy to lose your way in the whiteout conditions and die of exposure, even in suburbia. It isn't always possible to stay home, of course - one wants sturdy, warm boots and warm clothing (including a winter coat with a hood) if one absolutely must venture outside in a blizzard.
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Rob Kelk “Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” – Bernard Baruch, Deming (New Mexico) Headlight, 6 January 1950 No longer reading these forums regularly. |
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03-21-2016, 08:36 PM | #32 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Austin, TX
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Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
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7-and-seven (Seagram's 7 and Seven-up as a slightly sugary gin-and-tonic) would an uncommon but not unknown cocktail in 1980s. Or simple gin and tonics or sloe gin fizzes.
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Read my GURPS blog: http://noschoolgrognard.blogspot.com |
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03-21-2016, 08:38 PM | #33 | ||||||
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: The plutonium rich regions of Washington State
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Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
I haven't read all the other replies yet, so these are still undiluted by other opinions ...
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Personal computer, either IBM or Apple. Don't forget the 5 1/2" floppies, holding a whole 1.2 MB! Boom box. Also for tape cassettes. Atari. Quote:
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Luke |
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03-21-2016, 09:21 PM | #34 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Republic of Texas; FOS
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Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
Maine local soda I saw someone mention and wanted to concir: Moxie. It's like the Dr Pepper of Maine. And it's been around forever.
Rich rural folk loved Chevy Suburbans , you could get some really nice interiors if you opted for them. A low-income off-road vehicle you'd often see were Baja bugs: 1960-1974 VW beetles with their fenders chopped and suspensions tweaked up. While they had anemic heaters for Maine winters, the cool summers let their aircooled engines run for many years. They were definitely prone to rust and not many survived to the late 90s and beyond. in 1988 you'll find many VW enthusiasts proud to show that they can make it as deep into the terrain as the heavy expensive 4x4 boys...
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Our decades-old & rarely updated CarWars blog & Hotwheel conversion tutorial: North Texas Autoduel Association |
03-21-2016, 09:35 PM | #35 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: MO, U.S.A.
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Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
Gun records. Before the Instant Background Check system was introduced in 1998, you could go into a Wal*Mart or local sporting goods store in most of the U.S. and pay cash for a rifle and go home with it without any record of who bought it.
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Xenophilia is Dr. Who. Plus Lecherous is Jack Harkness.- Anaraxes |
03-21-2016, 09:49 PM | #36 | |||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Background for Clayborn Allen (mill owner) and Courtney Allen (preppie son)
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Clayborn Allen (mill owner) is a local Allagash-Dickey, Aroostook County Mainian, born and bred, but he did go to McGill and Harvard Business School before taking over his father's mill. Married a girl from a good family in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1960 and has in the past three decades turned a modestly successful local logging operation in a tiny town into a powerhouse that has concerns all over northern Maine, and even further. He still owns the Allen Sawmill and Allagash Wood Products in Allagash, but they are completely overshadowed by his extensive North Woods Logging Company, which has operations all over northwest Aroostook County and sell lumber to many other mills. He also owns a part of several paper mills in both US and Canada. According to Sheriff Edgar Wheeler, Allen makes even more money on real estate speculation than his logging and manufacturing bring in. The family own luxury apartments/condos in Montréal* and Boston (Back Bay, close to his brother) and a vacation home in Bridgeport, Connecticut near the wife's family. North Woods Logging Company also has executive suites with offices meant for Mr. Allen's use in Portland, Augusta, Bangor, Houlton and Presque Isle (all ME); cabins in several areas in Maine, such as by Eagle Lake, seveal in the Highlands, one near Mt. Katahdin and another near the headwaters of the St. John River; and a house with ground floor offices and a nice bachelor apartment on the second floor in Madawska, ME. Clayborn also has a brother, Dr. Harvey Allen, who lives in Back Bay, Boston, Massachusetts, but has a very remote hunting cabin in northwest Aroostook County, Maine. So, while a pick-up truck might do for certain job-related things, he'll want to own at least one fancy car that can nevertheless get up to his brother's hunting cabin an hour northwest of Allagash, through some very rough terrain. And if he has a pick-up truck, it has to be a very powerful model, with extremely good handling. Clayborn is usually past the need to show off for the purposes of stroking his own ego, at least as blatantly as his son, but he will not hesitate to do so far business advanage. A rugged outdoorsy image might be good for much of his business, but there are a lot of potential partners from urban areas that constantly need to be reassured that behind the ruggedness, there are obscene amounts of money. *Someone please suggest a part of town for one, I don't know the first thing about Montréal. 3) Quote:
Incidentally, is the Ford F-350 not an option in 1988? I can never understand these types, but I think that's the more powerful version of the F-150. 1), 2) and 3) Quote:
Thanks, I never would have thought of that. Empathically not a car guy, never really driven anything but late 1990s and later cars, where everything is electric, really simple and easy to use.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 03-21-2016 at 10:27 PM. |
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03-21-2016, 10:00 PM | #37 | ||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
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Uh, now I sound like an idiot, but what is it good for? I basically have no idea what computers did, beyond word processing, before they had Internet. For programmers, scientists or database administrators, I can make a fair guess, but what can more active, adventuring-type people, like FBI agents, use theirs for? What could an FBI agent use one of those for while on assignment? Also, what game stats are we looking at here? Quote:
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She worked summers as an intern with the FBI, working on something computery, and did her thesis on the use of computers in law enforcement. She's supposed to have a good grasp of whatever the FBI are using computers for in the 80s, about which, I admit, I have no idea. What can you use computers for in law enforcement in 1988? What was the FBI doing with them?
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 03-21-2016 at 10:31 PM. |
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03-21-2016, 10:44 PM | #38 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Denver, CO
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Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
Another option for the car is the AMC Eagle. It's a station wagon with off-road capability. It was not uncommon to see them retro-fitted with luxury. The wooden side-paneling was almost always left intact, though.
As mentioned, to switch to 4-wheel drive, one had to go out and manually turn a dial in the middle of the front hubs. This was easy in good conditions, but could be difficult when wet, weathery, or on bad ground. It was also common to have to back up a few feet to get the transfer case (secondary transmission) to switch into 4-wheel drive. FBI agents of the era would have a pager to tell them when to call in for orders. Possibly with a set of memorized numeric codes so the instructions could be given directly. Reception outside of cities was a bit sketchy, though interstate highways were all covered. Candy: Pop rocks were popular. They were a very sweet fake-fruit flavored candy. They came in a packet like vegetable seeds are commonly sold in today, and were a bunch of small (2mm diameter) irregularly shaped lumps of brightly colored sugar. They would fizz in one's mouth creating a unique feeling. Think about grinding up alka-seltzer and pouring it into your mouth. There was a persistent urban legend that eating those and then drinking soda would make your stomach rupture. Gum: Bubble tape. It came in a container very similar in size and shape to what contains chewing tobacco, and dispensed similar to scotch tape. It was more than 6 feet of continuous bubble-gum stick. The flavor was pretty standard bubble-gum, and lasted no longer than cheap gum. A few flavor notes: Recreational off-roading was called "Jeeping" no matter what brand of vehicle one drove. There were no "mobile phones" or "cell phones," only "car phones." The handset was connected to the main unit by a curly cord. Expensive ones could be used on battery power, and the unit could be carried like a satchel. Handheld devices like the Motorola "brick" were still fairly rare, very expensive, and had terrible reception in comparison to ones with a large box. Car Phones would be best used by pulling over. One couldn't drive more than a mile or two without loosing the call due to getting out of range of the tower. Phones didn't start smoothly switching from one tower to another until the 90s, so you were stuck with whatever cell you were in when you picked up the phone. Reception on these was mostly limited to urban areas, and the major highways had major dark areas especially in less-populated areas. A successful business could pay for towers to be installed at their facility or near the home of their CEO, but doing more than one or two was prohibitively expensive. T.V. was in a weird flux state. With cable becoming ubiquitous in urban areas, the era of the time-based TV show was ending, but not over yet. Kids cartoons were on Saturday mornings. Shows for teens were in the early afternoon, with the most popular shows being saved for "prime time" Daytime TV was an odd mix of old reruns and soap operas. A few cable networks were starting to offer cartoons all the time, or soap operas non-stop, but it was rare. An odd government program at this time (which was not common knowledge) had every major show run one "very special episode" which departed from whatever its regular theme was to hammer home a "drugs are bad" message. This was near the height of the D&D scare. It was believed by the mainstream, and some at the FBI, that D&D made people crazy. It was linked to suicides, murders, and devil worship by politicians and pop psychologists. Note that the mainstream was totally unaware of the existence of any other role-playing games, and would only refer to them as "like D&D." Devil worshipers were often cited as the cause of disappearances and murders by the uneducated public, particularly the more religious. It was common (though false) knowledge that there was an epidemic of young people being recruited into satanic cults and then brainwashed into killing their family and friends. Long distance telephone companies were advertising aggressively. Calling outside your state cost a per-minute rate. Plans changed constantly and were far more complicated than the service warranted. Much like cell-phone plans in the 90s, they could take "per minute" and "free minutes" and spin them into an incomprehensible mess. One would expect to see billboards, TV commercials, radio ads, and telemarketers all in the regular course of a day. Last edited by khorboth; 03-21-2016 at 11:10 PM. |
03-22-2016, 12:03 AM | #39 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Music
On the subject of music choices, here is a Spotify playlist for background and mood music for the game (Cold Night in Maine). Note that by the latter half of the playlist, I'm assuming we'll be into action-adventure stuff, with a strong horror bent.
Then I made another playlist for music likely to be heard in local diners and from the radios of local truckers. This one is meant to be played on shuffle. The third Spotify playlist for this game are the personal choices of Special Agent Maria Lucia Estevez. She's the PCs' representative of everything that is 80s, being a perky young California girl who has made MTV and other television her guide to fashion and lifestyle in her 20s, as she never learned to be a teen while she actually was one, being too busy being a piano-playing gymnast math wunderkind with loving, but demanding parents. This one can be played as is, to represent her using her CDs or tapes, or put on shuffle to represent a mix-tape. I'll be adding to these and cuing up the primary list to better match expected events in the next session. I'd welcome comments.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 03-22-2016 at 01:37 AM. |
03-22-2016, 12:13 AM | #40 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Photo Album of Characters, Locations, Equipment and Other Things
In case anyone is interested in the game itself, I've made a Dropbox folder with pictures of PCs and NPCs in my adventure, Cold Night in Maine, mostly portrayed by actors*; as well as locations, local animals and equipment* carried by the PCs.**
*I do not own the rights to any of these pictures, they are used for fantasy casting and visual aid purposes only, in a non-commercial leisure activity, and all credits is still due to whomever owns the rights to each photo. **So far, only guns, knives and cars, but I mean to add to it.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! |
Tags |
1980s, high-tech, monster hunters |
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