03-17-2016, 10:03 PM | #71 | |
Join Date: Nov 2012
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Re: [Horror/Monster Hunters] American Small Town Mystery
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Pet Semetary (Fred Gwynne is, as always, delicious), The Mist, Dolores Claiborne... any good adaptation of Stephen King will have some Maine in it, at least residually. |
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03-17-2016, 10:33 PM | #72 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: [Horror/Monster Hunters] American Small Town Mystery
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03-18-2016, 07:51 AM | #73 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: One Mile Up
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Re: [Horror/Monster Hunters] American Small Town Mystery
I'm not going to say that it isn't exaggerated for humor in places, but the Chevy Chase fish-out-of-water comedy Funny Farm at least depicts how most other Americans see non-coastal Maine. The comedy career of Marshall Dodge should also help with the accent.
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03-18-2016, 11:38 AM | #74 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Horror/Monster Hunters] American Small Town Mystery
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Add to that the professional judgment of the BSU shrinks who mostly agree that the suspect might very plausibly have strong psychological motives in constructing a self-serving narrative where he justifies or excuses his own deeds by imputing similar anti-social tendencies as his own to authority figures from his youth, like his father. So, while the players might be predisposed to suspect Lt. Abel Dufresne of being the villain of the piece, their PCs are ready to give him every benefit of the doubt and even like him. Obviously, the fact that the suspect in custody is his son makes it inadvisable from a legal standpoint that he be involved in the investigation in any official way, but unofficially, he has extended the FBI every courtesy and not made any attempt to hinder their efforts or even make them feel awkward in pursuing inquiries about the childhood of his son. The players enjoy a healty paranoia, but their PCs still have normal social contact with one of the major player in the mystery, who is among the possible villains. Of course, there are other strong candidates for possible villains, so the players have to consider whether the fictional trope of the small town sheriff covering up a dark secret is being set up specifically in order to subvert their expectations. The solitary hunting guide who lives just outside of town, Joe Greybear, is another strong candidate for villain, what with young Victor Dufresne having specifically mentioned him repeatedly and even suggested that the police: "Ask him about what happened to his wife and daughters? How come he lives all alone now? And no one has seen Mary or little Emily and Lunette for how many years now?" While Greybear was never formally married, he did cohabit with a Mary Tomah and they had two daughters, Emily and Lunette Greybear. Neither Mary nor the children are listed as missing and inquiries with the Maine State Police and Aroostook County Sheriff's Office indicate that they simply moved away from Maine with a man named George Wahaki in 1980. As far as Sheriff Edgar Wheeler can recall, it was pretty well known to her circle of friends that she had been having an affair with Wahaki and once Wahaki received a significant monetary settlement from his place of employment after an accident, they moved away together, he thinks to Florida. Other people that the PCs like for villain are a powerful local businessman named Clayborn Allen, the maternal uncle of suspect Victor Dufresne, and/or his son, Courtney Allen. Their name has come up in relation to several key incidents and apparently young Dufresne spent more time with them than his father in the last few years before he moved away from home. There is also another uncle, Dr. Harvey Allen, who lives out of state, but has a vacation home about an hour away from Allagash. One of the reasons why investigators believe that an accomplice might have been involved in the murders attributed to Victor Dufresne is that in several cases, some of the wounds are precise, surgical and methological, in stark contrast to other wounds on the same body that are ripping tears made with a brutal flensing knife and even with teeth. The owner-operator of the cabin rental where the characters are staying also features in some of the players' theories. So does the simple-minded janitor/librarian/dogsbody of the local school. In both cases, the PCs have no reason to suspect them and no evidence or even rumour actually links them to anything, but the players felt that they looked and acted 'weird'. Shades of Norman Bates with the cabin rental guy and immediately when the players heard that there was a simple-minded janitor at the school, they leapt to an assumption out of True Detective. Ideally, the players will suspect half the population of the area at some point. That way, we get the real Twin Peaks vibe.
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03-18-2016, 04:13 PM | #75 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Horror/Monster Hunters] American Small Town Mystery
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Within the region my adventure is set, around half the people speak Acadian French at home, even if they attend school in English. There are close cultural ties with Canada and smuggling (in both directions) over the border used to be rampant pre-9/11.* The tiny town of Allagash even has its own Scots-Irish/Acadian French accent, which is apparently unique to it. *To the point that priests would preach sermons distinguishing between smuggling and actual sins and even in the 2000s, public sentiment was overwhelmingly against increased border control, with locals even organising a letter-writing campaign against an attempt to prosecute a native for smuggling drugs over the border. I don't know him. What would be the best way for me to get a quickly-digested sample? Was he in any movies?
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03-18-2016, 05:26 PM | #76 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: [Horror/Monster Hunters] American Small Town Mystery
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Bert & I "Campaign ads" with Dodge as candidate Virgil Bliss |
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03-18-2016, 05:41 PM | #77 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: [Horror/Monster Hunters] American Small Town Mystery
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Another influence you didn't mention was Scottish Highlanders, both emigrants and exiled Loyalists. There were many of those in Canada, possibly just over the border from Maine and of course there would be plenty of ethnic mix by now. If I had to hazard a guess, though, I should think most Maine folk are descended from the stereotypical black-hat-blunderbuss-and-turkey Puritans.
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03-18-2016, 05:48 PM | #78 |
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: The Land of Enchantment
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Re: [Horror/Monster Hunters] American Small Town Mystery
The Blackfoot, Cheyenne and Arapahoe all speak Algonquian languages. So if you want isolation and insular locals in an environment that can turn deadly and attracts hikers, gentlemen, I give you Wyoming. A population of less than 600,000 in a state just slightly smaller than Germany. The Wind River Range is a hiking Mecca- if it's any indication that's where disillusioned Denverites go when they get sick of the crowded trails in the Front Range.
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03-18-2016, 06:55 PM | #79 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: One Mile Up
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Re: [Horror/Monster Hunters] American Small Town Mystery
The depiction of Vermont in Funny Farm is so unlike actual Vermont (where I lived while attending college) and so like stereotypical Maine (where I have spent many summers) that I actually forgot that it is nominally set in Vermont, and suspect that it was written by a New Yorker who was only passingly-familiar with either and didn't care about the distinction. Apologies for unintentionally misleading you.
Last edited by Gold & Appel Inc; 03-18-2016 at 07:00 PM. |
03-19-2016, 01:38 PM | #80 | ||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Horror/Monster Hunters] American Small Town Mystery
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The Acadian French of the region have stoutly resisted assimilation. School was taught in French until 1919 and it wasn't until the 1970s that English-speaking television stations had any presence in the area.* In the current era, you'll still hear the people in diners and gas stations speaking together in Acadian French more often than English and French newspapers outsell English ones by a considerable margin at the time my game is set. Resisting cultural assimilation seems to be a feature of this part of Maine, incidentally. There are enclaves of Swedish-speakers within driving distance and I found a fascinating story about a family that spoke Yiddish at home until the 1980s. *Since my game is set in 1988, that means that US-television has been in the area for just over ten years. During the 50s and the 60s, when many of the NPCs were growing up, everyone watched French Canadian television. Quote:
The majority of the townspeople are descended in some way from these four sisters. Two of them were already married by the time they arrived, to men of Loyalist families named John Gardner and John Henderson. One of them married a fellow who travelled with them, William Mullins, and the last sister married a George Moir who arrived in the area at the same time. Allagash is known for being a tiny little Scots-Irish enclave. Local families of prominence include the McBreairty, Hughes, Jackson, Kelly, O’Leary, Walker, Hafford, Pelletier, Savage, McKinnon, Jalbert, Bolton, Castoguay, Ouellette, Bishop, Taggett, Connors, and Aegan. Mostly Scots-Irish names, with a few Acadian French mixed in. St. Francis and St. John Plantation, the two neighbouring towns that are also part of the adventure, not to mention the tiny townships northwest of Allagash, are almost entirely Acadian French, however. Well, in northern Aroostook County, any descendants of Puritans would have been immigrants into an Acadian French culture that had been already established there for centuries. And it seems that most non-French immigrants who arrived in Aroostook County the 19th century were Scots-Irish or Swedish, not English Puritans.
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federal agencies, high-tech, horror, monster hunters |
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