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Old 11-01-2015, 07:10 PM   #41
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Default Re: [GURPS Lite] TL8 Time Travelers Go to WW2

If you weren't in a major city there might not be a bookstore at all. Even in the late 60s when I was in Jr High school books were either a trip into Baltimore or the selection of a few tens of titles at the department store for hardbacks. Paperbacks there were a couple of racks in drug stores or grocery stores. So only books that they expected to be widely wanted. WW II you had newsstands with lots of pulp magazines for pleasure reading but paper shortages rapidly thinned that out. Penguin Books started paperbacks in 1935 in the UK, Pocket Books in the US in 1938.
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Old 11-01-2015, 09:29 PM   #42
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Default Re: [GURPS Lite] TL8 Time Travelers Go to WW2

I'd also like to note that the plan is to drop off the party in England some time in 1940.
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Old 11-01-2015, 10:41 PM   #43
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Default Re: [GURPS Lite] TL8 Time Travelers Go to WW2

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I'd also like to note that the plan is to drop off the party in England some time in 1940.
Note that a lot of that was a really paranoid time, once Germans had occupied France in may-june, everyone in England was sure they would be next. So anyone who did not seem to belong was questioned by the home guards and every other busybody for the possibility of being German spies. Thus as expample people who fled to England from Poland after the occupation were harassed often for having a strange accent.

Before that the paranoia about spies was there too, but was on a much lower scale.
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Old 11-01-2015, 11:10 PM   #44
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Default Re: [GURPS Lite] TL8 Time Travelers Go to WW2

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Are most coffee makers in homes today drip coffee makers?
From personal experience: Yes. Even most homes with espresso machines have automatic drip makers*.





* I have an espresso maker, camp percolator**, french press, automatic drip, single cup drip, and a steeping ball for coffee. But I've gone out of my way to to acquire different coffee making methods to see which makes the best coffee, and for some you really just need to correct machine.

** When camping I just boil water in it and pour it into a separate carafe with a drip filter attachment. Only heathens boil the coffee itself.
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Old 11-01-2015, 11:21 PM   #45
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Default Re: [GURPS Lite] TL8 Time Travelers Go to WW2

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From personal experience: Yes. Even most homes with espresso machines have automatic drip makers*.





* I have an espresso maker, camp percolator**, french press, automatic drip, single cup drip, and a steeping ball for coffee. But I've gone out of my way to to acquire different coffee making methods to see which makes the best coffee, and for some you really just need to correct machine.

** When camping I just boil water in it and pour it into a separate carafe with a drip filter attachment. Only heathens boil the coffee itself.
Evil, in your opinion what coffee making devices should a serious coffee drinking household possess?
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Old 11-02-2015, 12:08 AM   #46
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Default Re: [GURPS Lite] TL8 Time Travelers Go to WW2

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I'd also like to note that the plan is to drop off the party in England some time in 1940.
Don't forget that culture has changed alot in 75 years and some of the attitudes of 1940 England might shock someone that was unaware of the differences. You don't need to constantly remind your players about this, but it should come up.
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Old 11-02-2015, 05:03 AM   #47
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Default Re: [GURPS Lite] TL8 Time Travelers Go to WW2

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I'd also like to note that the plan is to drop off the party in England some time in 1940.
Where in England? And do you mean England or Britain?

A rural area will have a different reaction from a big city and London different from all the other big cities.

And what is the ethnic/religious/gender mix of your group? People are even more firmly slotted into categories by the mind of people in the 1940s than now. And the British obsession with class and status has mellowed a lot since then. (No, really! It really, really has.)

You have time to come up with cover for these people: who do they tell strangers they are? What ID cards are they carrying? Do they have their gas masks?
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Old 11-02-2015, 06:45 AM   #48
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Default Re: [GURPS Lite] TL8 Time Travelers Go to WW2

What, no mention of vacuum coffee makers? :) That's what we use. They've been around since the 19th century and make great coffee.
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Old 11-02-2015, 07:31 AM   #49
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Default Re: [GURPS Lite] TL8 Time Travelers Go to WW2

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Originally Posted by Minuteman37 View Post
I'd also like to note that the plan is to drop off the party in England some time in 1940.
Quote:
Originally Posted by weby View Post
Note that a lot of that was a really paranoid time, once Germans had occupied France in may-june, everyone in England was sure they would be next. So anyone who did not seem to belong was questioned by the home guards and every other busybody for the possibility of being German spies. Thus as expample people who fled to England from Poland after the occupation were harassed often for having a strange accent.

Before that the paranoia about spies was there too, but was on a much lower scale.
Showing up in 1940 will give them a very high probability of getting picked up by one of the various security services England used during the war.

Reputedly, all German spies were caught. Assuming that was propaganda, they did catch most of them, based on known operational planing of the Germans.
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Old 11-02-2015, 08:10 AM   #50
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Default Re: [GURPS Lite] TL8 Time Travelers Go to WW2

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Reputedly, all German spies were caught. Assuming that was propaganda, they did catch most of them, based on known operational planing of the Germans.
Some of that was because of bizarre and incompetent management of agents by the Germans, which this thread is not the right place to discuss, but the very paranoid attitude to strangers was significant.

If the campaign is being realistic about this, time travellers will need significant amounts of voice training to sound right: a modern British accent would sound somewhat "off", and a modern American accent wildly so. It was a very insular time, which is why Dutchmen, Norwegians, Poles, and lots of other nationalities might be suspected by people in the street of having a German accent.

Identity papers are important, and intrusive. You have to have an ID card to rent a room, and a ration card to buy food. Good forgeries will work for a few days, but the numbers will be given to the police for checking, and will get shown up as duplicates, or never existing. This isn't completely reliable, because it's a system worked by humans on paper, but if several people show up in the same place, the odds of escaping notice are minuscule.

A significant number of German agents were caught because their papers used numbers that had been arranged by a "German agent in place in the UK" - who was actually working for the British, so the numbers were on the police watch list.

The best method of putting time travellers in is for them to assume the identities of real people, from somewhere else in the UK, who have a good reason for being in the area.

Edit: The Wikipedia article has a decent overview, and links to more information.

Last edited by johndallman; 11-02-2015 at 08:17 AM.
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