Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

That and simply supply-demand. Wolves are after all hard pressed though I understand they are recovering in places. But there are more coyotes to go around.

A car for a character --
 

In '88 I bought a 1981 Plymouth (i.e., Mitsubishi with an American-made name plate) Champ. Paid $850 for it. Loved that car. Easy on the gas (measured 35 mpg on the highway, perhaps 25-27 in the city), easy to fix, easy to park. It had a 5-speed manual plus an "economy-power" lever -- basically gave me a half-gear ratio between the main gears. (You could change on the fly-- just use the clutch as for an ordinary manual).

So I had 10 forward and two reverse gears. I could almost always pick the right gear for any road. Car had a rusted body and sounded like a sewing machine but in the right gear I could pass Mercedes on the hills. How those rich [deleted]s would glare!

While I was nowhere near Maine some of its attributes would be of value. Front wheel drive, a light vehicle, and those 10+ gears would make it a fairly good candidate for moving on dirt roads and not getting stuck. Not as good as a real SUV but a LOT cheaper.

So a poor to lower-middle-class character might have one of these -- and surprise some snooty SUV owner with how well this Champ could do in relatively bad going . . .

IIRC through the 1970s the Land Cruiser was at least thought to be sturdier -- a real off-road more than a suburban accessory for "wanna-be" outdoorsmen. Also though it was much simpler and hence easier to fix than the American counterparts.[/quote]

Wagoneer should be more powerful & will have higher ground clearance. But for most going the Eagle should work as long as the driver had good judgment and didn't try to get too heroic. [For example, going too fast and skidding into a deep ditch -- or ravine.] I'd suggest the skill of the driver matters more than the technology of the vehicle.

Sorel boots --
 

I know that the Maine Hunting Shoe and its associates (L.L. Bean) are sacraments Down East but a idiosyncratic character might well have Sorel boots. Made from 1959 to 2005 in Canada. Some kind of durable composite lower, leather uppers, felt lining. Would keep your feet warm in close to 40 below or more.

In Western Minnesota the conventional view four decades ago was that a farmer working 80-100 hours a week from age 15 to death would go through two pairs of Sorels in his lifetime.

The current owners, Columbia Sportswear, make Sorel boots in China or Vietnam. I have no knowledge regarding the quality of the current manufacture.

Re: A car for a character --
 

I Googled the Plymouth Champ/Dodge Colt (Mitsubishi Mirage). It looks wretched. :-)

Ok, cool.

Follow-up question, will a 1987 Grand Wagoneer outperform a 1988 Range Rover in more than a foot of snow, over rough terrain and a road deliberately not improved beyond what is necessary for specialised vehicles to go there?

How high can you reasonably push the ground clearance of the Grand Wagoneer without making it some sort of Frankentruck? And how does that compare with the cars I had as other options, i.e. such cars as the Chevrolet K5 Blazer, GMC/Chevrolet Suburban, Dodge Ramcharger, Ford Bronco or a converted Ford Econoline?

Would all of these be massively inferior to a Chevrolet C/K pickup truck for the role?

Assuming we'd always have to have space for five people and a lot of gear, in relative luxury, so those vehicles with smaller passenger space would need an optional upgrade, like an extended or crew cab, for that.

If you're rich and successful at your job, you rarely have the time to train extensively enough at hobbies to improve your skills at them, at least not once you reach a certain age.*

But you can buy, rent or borrow the right tools, what amounts to, in GURPS terms, a +1 or +2 for equipment rather than an unmodified or penalised roll.

Also, for certain specialised tasks, you're just not going to be able to drive a car through snow that's deeper than its ground clearance.

*And maybe have a number of different hobbies.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Looks a bit like a Twin Peaks vibe going. Interesting.

re: gun laws.

Pretty much any kind of firearm except automatic weapons, short barreled rifles and shotguns under 18 inches) and suppressors could be had easily in the US, especially Maine in 1988. This includes semi automatic rifles. California wouldn't have its assault weapon bill for another year till after a school shooting.

Concealed weapon permits were fairly rare and few people carried.

Hunting rifles for the rich would either by a Weatherby as mentioned or possibly something European and snobbish, a Mauser, Sako or Blaser or the like. A tweaked out Remington is also possible but it would have "Fine" quality and "Fine" appearance in functional in GURPS terms

Gun registration is non existent though stores may have a record of a Federal form 4473 if bought from a licensed dealer . It won't help much if the weapon isn't local, is stolen or bought from a private party.

I'm not sure how long the retention requirement was in the 80's if its gone up but its currently 20 years.

People in Maine did not dress flashy though. I doubt the "New Wave" culture or anything else was common

lastly re: Agent Estevez will stick out like a sore thumb. A Hispanic Californian Woman would be very unusual. I wouldn't require any kind of disadvantage for it but she will get a bit of a run around. In the popular stereotype of the time most Mainers have the quirk "Mild Intolerance Non Mainers."

AR 15's were much less tacticool in 1988, a laser tube would be a big bulky thing (see Terminator and Cobra ) and fragile not for rifles but a techy person could have one or more likely an Aimpoint reflex sight . They were expensive and rare but did exist.

IIRC most of the period tacticool was around magazines and slings

lastly re: FBI phones. They did not have cell phones till the mid 90's . Mulder and Skully had them before the real FBI did. They'd have hand radios, range around 3-5 miles. A police radio in the vehicle would I guess have a range of 20 miles

Here is an article on 80's gadgets , 80 of the best you might like. You can also Google 80's Sharper Image

also re: the FBI in the 80's. It was still driven much by old methods, Hoover era techniques and while they had started to modernize, the clash between New and Old will be a big thing.

One way to show this is with issue handguns. Older agents would have .357 magnum revolvers , Model 13 S&W with a 3 inch barrel , newer ones S&W model 459 9mm and a very few with some pulling strings or from the field SWAT teams might have a Sig P228

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Twin Peaks is probably the major inspiration, yes. Other inspirations include the X-Files, True Detective, Storm of the Century, Fargo, The Revenant, The Shining, The Thing, Pet Sematary, Ravenous and Silence of the Lambs.

Of course, some of these were inspirational only in that they provided fictional tropes for players to leap on, which may were well be red herrings.

More importantly for firearm availability, the law changes of 1984 and 1986 were recent enough so that pre-ban weapons had not risen as astronomically in prices and the 1989 Executive Order banning importation of a wide range of firearms had not been issued.

I've had three people carry concealed firearms so far. One of them lives in Baltimore and got his licence when he moved there and two of them are wealthy investors who may have ill-wishers.

One NPC also openly carries a handgun in his belt, but Courtney Allen is widely known for imitating action movies and Miami Vice, so everyone just tries to ignore his antics. In any case, he may be reckless, but he has not so far been seen to ignore any of his father's lessons on firearms safety and discipline.

I've gone with Weatherby for Clayborn Allen, but I don't think they are made in any calibers that suit Dr. Harvey Allen, as he prefers a .243 Winchester even for deer and would like a maximum of .22 Hornet for predators. Not a fan of heavy recoil.

What would be a nice semi-automatic available with a fancy finish and decorations, chambered in .22 WMR, .22 Hornet, .218 Bee, .221 Fireball or .22-250, in the 1980s?

In other words, the PCs will not have any information on the firearms at the house they are going to or the weaponry that might be carried by any of their suspects. Beyond the fact that all of them have hunting licences for the current season and thus, presumably, a firearm.

Agent Estevez is meant to stick out, poor darling. Fortunately, her movie-star looks and weaponised cuteness mean that she can easily overcome a -1 or -2 Reaction modifier from xenophobes or conservative dressers.

I've done some pretty heavy-duty Googling on the subject and mostly finished the write-up of the many, many weapons that the dozen enthusiastic hunters are lugging along.

Among them are four Bushmaster rifles, a Ruger Mini-14 and exactly one Colt AR-15. There are also newly bought imported guns in .223/5.56mm, a Beretta AR-70 Sporter, a H&K HK93A2 and three Steyr AUG SA 'Special Receiver' rifles (w/spare 16" barrels).

It's quite important for me to find out exactly how long the range is on their car radio. Ranges of 15, 20, 25 and 35 miles all have different impacts on the adventure. Of course, 35 miles away is the nearest 'Large Radio', in GURPS terms, so range is magnified when calling there, but on the other hand, I think some topography might be in the way.

Thank you very much for this!

There is plenty of intra-generational tension among the PCs. :-)

For one thing, Agent Corelli has TL7, as opposed to the two younger agents. And it is absolutely reflected in their guns.

Agent Corelli is old enough for the S&W Model 13 to be a new issue that he didn't want or need. He had the butt of his short-barrelled S&W Model 19 rounded and certified by a Bureau armourer, allowing him to keep carrying it even after the mid-70s issue of the S&W Model 10-6, a .38 Spl. with a 2½-inch barrel and a round butt and the 1980 issue of the Model 13. He carries his 'Combat Magnum' in a shoulder holster, along with four speed-loaders on the off side. When he was assigned to bank robberies at the Boston field office, he bought himself a Bureau-authorised S&W Model 586 with a 6" barrel as well, which he'll carry in a belt holster when he's openly advertising his status as a lawman.

Agent Ledoux qualified for the local FBI SWAT team during his assignment to Miami and carries a SIG-Sauer P226 which he got at the end of 1987. During his undercover work in Miami, Agent Ledoux also got authorisation to carry a personally owned S&W Model 39 that he had modified by Armament Systems and Procedures for concealed carry. Now that he is not assigned to undercover work, no one has actually revoked the authorisation, but they might. At any rate, he would be well-advised not to draw any other gun than his official FBI-issue P226 if he is involved in a firearm incident, in order to avoid making the subsequent investigation any more awkward than it has to be.

Agents Corelli and Ledoux both own other personal firearms, but obviously do not carry them while on duty. They did both draw a Remington 870 shotgun from their respective armouries, both of them taking any chance to sign one out. In the case of Agent Corelli, he has had his Remington 870 Wingmaster Riot shotgun permanently signed out since 1981 and even added rifle sights, an extended magazine tube and made other small adjustments to it himself (aiming to replicate the feel of the USMC Remington 870 Mark 1), after getting authorisation from the armourer in Boston. Agent Corelli carries the gun in a case with 8 extra shells of 00 buck and keeps a personally owned box of 25 shells of 00 buckshot with it. The morning after the PCs got to Allagash, he also bought two 5-packs of 12G shotgun deer slugs, of whatever brand one would be most likely to find in a small store catering mostly to hikers, canoers and hunters.

Agent Ledoux's shotgun is a standard 1970s to 1980s FBI-issue Remington 870 Wingmaster, with a bead-sighted 14" barrel, which was one of his three options from the armoury (the others were 18" and 20"). Such a gun does not please him and he will likely attempt to get authorisation to add a +1 magazine extension, ghost ring sights and possibly even a new composite stock and forend, in tactical black, along with a carry sling. Agent Ledoux did manage to draw some slugs from the armoury and has the shotgun loaded with alternating 00 Buck and slugs, as well as carrying 2 extra shells of each type in the shell carrier he attached to it. He also has 4 extra shells of each type in the case he keeps the gun. I haven't been able to find out what brand of slugs law enforcement in general or the FBI in particular would be most likely to use in the 1980s.

Agent Estevez carries a brand-new Bureau issue S&W Model 439. She had never used a firearm before Quantico and owns no personal firearms.

Re: Sorel boots --
 

For that matter, one of the Canadians on the Allen hunting party might be wearing such boots. Granted, three of them are young men raised in cities who have never been on a hunting trip before and Brian Corcoran is an extremely urban blue-collar Canadian-Irish bar-owner originally from Griffin Point (old Montréal slum), whose yearly hunting trip with Clayborn Allen is the sum extent of his rural experiences, but tobacco executive Harold Martin would probably select durable boots for a hunting trip and he'd certainly prefer good Canadian-made ones over locally-popular ones in Maine.

Corcoran will wear either Sorel or Maine Hunting Shoe, depending on whether Allen or Martin was more convincing the year Corcoran finally gave up on wearing whatever steel-toed construction boots his idea of 'practical footwear' consisted of.

Games (Computer Games) in the 1980s
 

Unbelievably geeky question, but how broad should Games (Computer Games) skill be in the 1980s?

Would Games (NES Games) be a valid speciality? Or would it have to be Games (NES Platformers)/(NES Action-Adventure Games)/(NES Roleplaying Games)/etc.?

Could you instead take Games (Computer Platformers)/(Computer Action-Adventure Games)/(Computer RPGs) and treat the console or computer system as a familiarity?

What kind of default should there be between platformer games like Super Mario Bros and Megaman and action-adventure games like Legend of Zelda or Metal Gear? At what penalty would RPGs like Dragon Warrior default to either?

Maria Lucia Estevez will spend ca 1-2 points, maybe by just taking one Games speciality, maybe using the Dabbler perk to improve defaults at multiple ones, to be good at computer games.

Should Computer Operations at IQ+3 give a higher default to Games ([insert computer game]) than just IQ-4?

Re: Games (Computer Games) in the 1980s
 

I'd leave it as a single skill*, perhaps with familiarity penalties (Platformer, FPS, RPG, Strategy, Puzzle...)

I'd say no. "Operations" is deeper than just knowing how to type or click mouse buttons; it involves the concepts about the system components, few if any of which transfer to the concepts about game objects.

For Ops, I'd use familiarity penalties based on the OS, possibly the types of components (once upon a time, networking hardware wasn't ubiqtuitous) and definitely TL penalties.

--
* unless it were a game where the distinctions were a key part of the setting, like Ready Player One: the RPG, or serving as Area Knowledge for Tron.

Re: Games (Computer Games) in the 1980s
 

That would have been a skill mostly possessed by teenagers at the time. Also it was still the age of the arcade; the PC game had not displaced it. Most arcades were dark rooms filled with flashing lights and noise that the uninitiated would swear was a KGB torture chamber. In retrospect one wonders why someone did not try to design a more friendly looking place although maybe teenagers being teenagers wanted to make sure their parents preferred waiting outside. In small shops it was often common to see a single arcade game in the corner. Pac-man was a favorite for that.

Re: Games (Computer Games) in the 1980s
 

Maria Lucia Estevez (PC) grew up in the home of a an engineer at Fairchild who founded his own wildly succesful company programming guidance chips for missiles. They were Early Adopters. She's probably one of the oldest people in the campaign world who could play with computers ever since she was a toddler, part of the first generation raised on digital toys. There would have been terminals and minicomputers in the house when she was born and microcomputers from her fifth year.

Her older brothers would have been programming/jury-rigging obsolete hardware (i.e. stuff her father brought home a year or two before) to play Spacewar! and Pong basically ever since she remembers. There would have been gaming consoles in her home from her seventh year onwards. And while her mother wanted to raise her to be an elegant and perfect princess who combined academic and extra-curricular success with future marital eligibility, all her best memories of her father involve playing around with various technical hardware with him on the rare occasions he was home and not busy. In a sense, Pong and later, more complex computer games, were her 'playing catch in the backyard'.

Ironically, she would probably have been ill-at-ease in an arcade, being sheltered and not having friends her own age. Skipping grades due to academic excellence and having a very full schedule of 'hobbies' that impress Deans of Admissions and super-moms are not conductive to having loads of friends to hang out with in high school. And while she did attend an exclusive Beverly Hills school, where her background was not glaringly out of place, her family was about a level of Status and two or three of Wealth above even that inflated norm. Being chauffeured to school in a limo can be cool for a cool kid, but for someone already feeling like an outsider, it sets one further apart.

Re: Games (Computer Games) in the 1980s
 

Wouldn't someone from a family rich enough to afford a chauffer also be rich enough to send the kid to a school where all the kids were rich and hence didn't care diddly that someone else happened to be rich?

Re: Games (Computer Games) in the 1980s
 

Degrees of wealth. Even in a Beverly Hills private school, most of the children come from upper middle class families, not the upper 1% of the 1% of the 1%.

High school kids generally find a way to divide into tightly regimented class-based system based on arbitrary distinctions.

Re: Games (Computer Games) in the 1980s
 

Unless, of course, the game is Core Wars, whose objective is to write a code in assembly language that overwrites your opponent's code in the register.

Luke

Re: Games (Computer Games) in the 1980s
 

But Core Wars is machine-independent, and the virtual machine has no access to the systems that Ops covers. The platform is identical regardless of the machine you use, so Ops can't be involved there :)

Re: Games (Computer Games) in the 1980s
 

That's Computer Programming.

Note that the reason I mentioned Computer Operations affecting the default of Games ([insert computer game]) is that among the tasks listed under the skill in GURPS Basic Set: Characters is playing games.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Here's something that might not be obvious to people not from the U.S.A. The Migratory Bird Treaty with Canada gave the federal government the right and obligation to regulate hunting of all native migratory bird species. One of these regulations is that you can only hunt migratory birds with shotguns or archery, and if you are using a shotgun, that shotgun cannot hold more than three shells, including the one in the chamber. As a consequence, bird hunters usually put a dowel (or other similar device) in their shotgun's magazine in order to limit its capacity to two shells. This dowel is rarely removed, so a civilian hunter's shotgun will usually only have three shots. Now, there is no law against having a shotgun with a higher magazine capacity, you just can't hunt game birds or waterfowl with it.

Luke

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

And it will come from the factory plugged to two unless it is a fighting shotgun.

Mossbergs with a dowel, Remingtons with a plastic doohickey [and sometimes a crimped magazine tube].

Also various states may regulate magazine capacity while hunting for particular critters.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

I actually did realise this, as we have similar rules in Iceland. I didn't know the source of the law was originally a treaty, though, which is interesting (yes, I know, lawyers find the weirdest stuff interesting).

I know removing the doohicky is simple, having seen it done on an automatic Browning, Benelli and a pump Remington. I'm assuming that reinserting it is equally simple?

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Industrial harvesting of birds for the meat market was taking a heavy toll, with hunters wiping out entire flocks at once with boat-mounted punt guns and other methods. In addition, milliners were rapidly wiping out egrets for decorating ladies hats. This was causing substantial public outrage. Since protecting migratory birds required an international solution, the U.S. and Canada signed a treaty to protect the birds in 1916.

I'm most familiar with Benelli shotguns, since that's what I've got. The plug is inserted or removed from the top of the magazine, which is held closed with a split-ring clamp. In principle, you can remove the split-ring clamp with a pair of needle-nosed pliers, but that leads to lots of slipping, gouging your shotgun, and ungentlemanly words. You can get a special pair of split-ring pliers, which makes the procedure much easier, but then you still need to worry about the magazine spring which is under significant compression and has a frustrating tendency to explode the plug or ring clamp back out and fling it around the room, which leads to more ungentlemanly words. If you did this a lot, you would probably get more skilled at it and it would become easier. Since I've only had to do it a handful of times, I'm not at that level yet.

Luke

Luke

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

The reason I was told that it required a treaty was that Federal authority to regulate hunting of migratory birds was considered weak without one. A bill regulating this as Interstate Commerce had ben enacted but in those long ago days the Chief Justice used to play poker with the Senate majority leader.....

As a general principle be prepared for odd limits on Federal authority and improbable sounding circumventions of those limits.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

That makes a lot of sense. The constitutional justification for federal authority over the states seems rather lacking as far as birds go. But then, they somehow managed to get the EPA and Endangered Species Act working, so I'll just go back to doing physics and stop trying to understand law.

Luke

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Interpretation of the Interstate Commerce clause has gotten a lot broader in the last century. to the point where the concept appears to approach infinite elasticity.

......and yes, I'm certain physics is a lot more logical. :)

Time of death determination in the 1980s
 

I've written up the dates when the known and suspected victims of the 'Werewolf of the Village', the serial killer for whose investigation which the PCs are providing support.

I still don't know how precisely the ME could date the time of death in the 1980s. Most of the bodies were found more than three months after death, after having been submerged in water for much of that time. They may have been kept in a freezer before being disposed of in water.

A minority of the suspected victims were found on dry land, but all except one had been dead for at least three weeks before discovery.

I know that most of the standard time-of-death determinators depend on biological indicators that just aren't present in bodies that have been in water for months. Judging from the level of decomposition seems, from Googling, to be pretty imprecise, especially if you cannot be certain that the body has spent all the time since death in the same environment.

That leaves, what, forensic entomology? Which was fairly new as a legal-scientific discipline in American law enforcement in the 1980s and nowhere near as effective as today. Also, submerged cadavers stymie most early efforts in the field, as forensic underwater entomology lagged (and still does) far behind land-based forensic entomology.

Forensic botany, specifically forensic palynology, was effective at narrowing down the season of death for mass graves discovered in the 90s and 00s. I'm not sure whether it would yield relevant information from a cadaver submerged for months.

The precise scientific methods used to determine the time of death would be interesting, but probably not all that relevant to my PCs, who are not expected to check crime scenes investigated by other agencies or investigators and who will not be involved in the prosecution of the suspect in custody.

The exact times of death, however, or as near exact as possible, are of considerable importance to them in the search for a possible accomplice, as they determine the dates for which alibis must be checked.

I'd like to avoid giving either too precise or too imprecise ranges for those times of death. Does anyone have a clue about how well top forensic labs could determine time of death of a months old submerged cadaver in the 1980s?

Does a margin of error of about 3.5 days per month since death took place sound preposterous? Assuming that all of the cadavers in question have been frozen before disposal?

Edit: Of course it sounds preposterous, it's far too accurate. +/-25% is the rule at far too many labs even today, when the cadaver is more than 16 hours old.

The most precise method for estimating time of death used today was first discovered in 1991, so does not apply for my purposes. In any case, I doubt very much any vitreous humour can be recovered from a body that has spent three months submerged in water, being nibbled at by aquatic scavengers.

I suspect that no scientific method available in the 1980s could give an answer more precise than questioning people who may have known the victim and determining when he or she was last seen alive. As most of the victims had no fixed address and/or limited social ties that investigators can discover*, that might not yield very precise answers.

It may be that for some victims, they may be limited to an estimate of 'last seen by casual acquintance some time around Thanksgiving, probably died during winter, no later than February'.

*Those who weren't homeless or prostitutes appear to have been living in squatters' communes in Alphabet City, NYC, where police has not had much success getting cooperation. It isn't that close friends of the deceased are unwilling to help if found and approached, it's that few people are willingly stepping forward and declaring an acquintance with the victims.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Given your scenario is set during winter, corpses on land or in a shallow stream may well have been frozen there, which would likely obscure any signs of having been in a freezer.

The season(s) for which the bodies have been out may offer clues. A corpse that was in a river during fish spawning season may be mostly de-fleshed. If I was an investigator trying to date such an event, I'd ask the local fishermen if the fish had been in different places in the last few months. A body is basically a load of ground bait.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Uh huh, freezing basically stops both forensic entomology and botany in their tracks. Insects can't do anything with a frozen food source and plants go dormant when it gets too cold.

You wouldn't be able to get anything except "in my experience" estimates from NPCs who might or might not know what they were talking about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_farm

.....only goes back to 1981 anyway so all this was in its' infancy. All the facilities existing at your time were also far from Maine (Tennessee mostly). There still doesn't appear to be anything closer than Illinois. Different flora and fauna with different temperature ranges and times. nope, I don't think you're getting any hard data that way.

Your best bet for hard data in any form would be from weather service temperature data. That existed and was kept going back for many years.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

The 19 bodies were found during 1985-1988, in Chicago (5), Boston (1) and New York City (13). Most were found in spring, at least for those fished from rivers. The investigation of the suspected serial killer Victor Jude Dufresne, dubbed 'The Werewolf of the Village' by the media, is what brought the PCs to the adventure area. They are checking various aspects of his testimony in preparation for trial and there is a chance that he may have had an accomplice.

Odds are that such an accomplice would be a part of his life after leaving his home township, someone from Chicago or New York, but given some of his testimony (self-serving, far-fetched and self-contradictory though it may be), checking alibis for his father and uncles, along with the closest friends of his father and uncle, is not unreasonable. And Agent Corelli (PC), who has Empathy, looked into the eyes of Dr. Pinault, best friend and likely homosexual partner of Dufresne's uncle, and felt very strongly that the man was a ruthless killer. So the working theory among the PCs is that Dr. Pinault might be the man who shaped young Dufresne into a serial killer, as well as his accomplice for several of the murders. Discovering when the murders took place is vital for proving or disproving that theory.

It's very plausible that neither Dufresne nor a hypothetical accomplice may be responsible for all 19 murders, as they were assigned to the task force investigating the suspected serial slayings based on perceived similarities in MO, before there was any suspect. Principally, the bodies all show evidence of butchering and bite marks. Some of these, however, may be post-mortem, caused by scavengers. With badly decomposed bodies, distinguishing human bite marks from feral dogs or rats may be difficult, especially if investigators are looking for human bite marks. Some of the bodies may therefore be false positives. The lead FBI investigator in New York City considers it unlikely that the six male victims are authentic, for example.

On the other hand, two of the victims were found almost immediately and wounds on their bodies have been matched to Dufresne's knives and the bite marks match his dentures. Five other victims are very strong probabilities as having been the work of the same killer, with the ME having found suggestive similarities in the wounding and the disposal method. Unfortunately, there are also important differences from the two confirmed victims, primarily in that the bodies of previous victims were disposed of into the Hudson or East Rivers, but the last two, the confirmed victims, were displayed in Central Park.

By the same token, there is every reason to assume that the bodies recovered from the rivers and bay are not the only bodies disposed of that way. The submerged bodies floated to the surface in spring, in some cases after maceration and sloughing of skin had loosened some form of ties or weight on the legs meant to prevent resurfacing. Bodies in deeper water or less exposed to current may still lie on the bottom. There is an awful lot of water to search.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

The ME in New York City strongly suspects that the bodies have been kept in a freezer before disposal. Evidence that leads him to that conclusion includes: a) that one of the victims, Patricia L. Hall, was found in an abandoned deep freezer in a trash heap on Avenue B, off Tomkins Square Park; b) that Tammy Wilson, another victim, had started the process of adipocere in an unnatural position for a submerged body unless that body were disposed of in a container the approxiate size and shape of a garage deep freezer and under the adipocere layer had post-mortem lacerations consistent with having been forced into such a container.

For the dead bodies in question, the investigation was a joint task force including the FBI, the NYPD, Chicago PD, Boston PD and New Jersey State Police. The task force was formed in spring 1987, once it had begun to look plausible that highly publicised murders in New York City and Chicago had a connection. Granted, the homeless and prostitutes rarely excite much police attention, but the first documented murder was a co-ed at the University of Chicago and two of the women murdered in NYC had apartments in the Village and part-time jobs.

And the media latched onto aspects of the murders, primarily bite marks and evidence that parts of the bodies were neatly butchered, as if for meat.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Butchering leaves distinctive marks on the bones, such that anthropologists can determine whether ancient humans had been present tens of thousands of years ago by examining the bones of animals that have been hunted, and can identify cases of cannibalism among, for example, the Anasazi. Also, for bites which penetrate to the bone it is straightforward to determine the species (or at least genus) that caused the injury. Paleontologists do this frequently. Determining the individual doing the biting may also be possible, but I've not actually heard of this being done.

Luke

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Removal of cuts of meat from certain places does not necessarily mean cutting into bones. None of the bodies was extensively butchered, it appears that choice cuts were selected from them. In cases where butchery is confirmed, it was mostly confined to the lower-back, what would be loin or rump cuts.

Most human bites would not penetrate to the bone, especially not if biting around knife wounds to tear flesh. As many scavengers are likely to concentrate initially on areas around wounds as well, it may not be straight-forward to tell the difference, especially not with badly decomposed bodies.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Was there anything such as the presence or absense of totemic objects to suggest whether it was ritual cannibalism or just a bad year for food?

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

I'll start with the disclaimer that I am not an archaeologist. That said, most of what I've read about the conditions leading to the demise of the ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) culture has it that around the 12th to 14th centuries, they faced extreme drought conditions, agriculture failed, society collapsed, and people started eating each other (or at least, they ate each other a lot more frequently than they had before, if they had before). The studies I've read were from remains originating during this time of collapse. I've not heard much about ritual cannibalism among the ancestral Puebloans, but then I have never conducted an in-depth study of this culture, either, so I can't say either way. A quick read of Wikipedia suggests there are alternate interpretations as well (such as the ancestral Puebloans were attacked, butchered, and eaten by invading non-Puebloans, possibly ancestors of the Shoshone or Utes, rather than the ancestral Puebloans eating each other). Regardless, everyone agrees that some people were clearly butchered and eaten by other people.

Luke

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Semi Auto ?

I don't think semi auto rifles were common in any of those cartridges at that time, most of them were old blackpowder cartridges and .221 fireball was used in a bolt action handgun

Hmm , you can get the Weatherby in .22-250 as early as 1980 I think and of course it could always have been rechambered

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

"Choice cuts" would be filet mignon or tenderloin, which is the psoas major muscle, in the back and pelvis.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Just so. 'Tenderloin' being a subset of 'loin' cuts.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

If you were the kid whose dad drank Crown Royal, you were very popular with the gamer kids for the velvet bags to use for dice bags.

The Reading Material of One Suspect for the Big Bad Wolf
 

Due to PC-like Disadvantages and player recklessness, the PCs are at present uninvited guests in the hunting cabin of Drs. Harvey Allen and William Pinault, along with a bevy of locally important men, County Commissioner, town selectmen and local millionaires who go there annually to night hunt predators, such as wolves and coyotes.

The PCs are trapped in there due to a storm with pretty much every suspect the players have as the 'Big Bad Wolf', the hypothetical older man who might have acted as Victor Dufresne's mentor as a serial killer. Naturally, their car radio cannot reach anyone, the phone in the cabin is down and the radio in the cabin seems to be broke. The hospitable hunters in the cabin blame the storm and weight of snow on the phone lines for the lack of dial tone, but the damage to the radio is unexplained.

In any event, Special Agent Frank Corelli has a powerful hunch about Dr. William Pinault, a Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon who owns this luxury cabin in Maine with his close personal friend, Dr. Harvey Allen (brother of local big-wig Clayborn Allen and uncle to suspect-in-custody Victor Dufresne). Corelli believes Pinault to be a ruthless killer, a belief largely derived from looking into his eyes and seeing nothing staring back, just the vast emptiness of a sterile vessel without a soul. Also, Corelli is pretty sure that Dr. Pinault and Dr. Allen are homosexual lovers, which not only makes them more suspicious in general, but also connects with a theory that Victor Dufresne may be homosexual or bisexual and that he might have suffered sexual trauma of some sort in his youth.

Dr. Pinault is precise, poised, methodological and calm. He is also cosmopolitan, erudite and effeminate. At the moment, he is in the kitchen, wearing an apron with a purple flower print and a hairnet, decorating a cake for dessert. He moves with a gliding grace that appears languid, but is deceptively swift, and Corelli cannot help but notice how preternaturally aware Dr. Pinault seems to be of his surroundings and his own body at all times. While it is only Corelli who has this powerful hunch, the other two PCs admit that they have no trouble imagining Dr. Pinault's long, well-manicured surgeon's fingers making what investigators remarked upon as very workmanlike, competent surgical incisions on several of Dufresne's alleged victims to remove choice cuts of meat.

Agent Corelli is in the study of the cabin, presumably used either by Dr. Allen or Dr. Pinault (or possible shared by both). The book cases contain both literature and medical books, but with an unusual focus on true crime in the case of literature and forensics, pathology and abnormal physchology in the case of the scientific textbooks. On the desk, Corelli can see five books, apparently the last five that were being used, read or consulted:

Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives by Robert Ressler et al.
Spitz and Fisher's Medicolegal Investigation of Death: Guidelines for the Application of Pathology to Crime Investigation. 2nd edition.
Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris.
Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris.

Re: The Reading Material of One Suspect for the Big Bad Wolf
 

If the "good" doctor is consulting the latter three he has a sense of humor.

Dracula is far too fantastic & fictional (IMHO) to provide any use for a 1980s psychokiller. While Silence . . . is fun, it's not terribly authentic (again, IMHO) an account of investigative methodology. (Note that Lecter in the both has maroon eyes and twelve fingers, which makes going incognito rather difficult. Again, IMHO, more to the point in Red Dragon.

Re: The Reading Material of One Suspect for the Big Bad Wolf
 

The cabin is his vacation home. As far as the PCs know, he has been on vacation from at least Friday the 16th of December (it's Tuesday the 20th in play). According to everything the PCs have heard, Dr. Pinault comes to his Maine cabin for recreation only and he has no practice in any nearby hospital.

As a neurosurgeon, he has no obvious professional reason to consult pathology textbooks, anyway. Even the abnormal psychology is a stretch for anything directly related to his work as a neurosurgeon, though it may be of some interest to his co-owner, neurologist Dr. Harvey Allen.

Of course, the fact that Dr. Harvey Allen's nephew was arrested on the 14th of December, just six days ago, and is suspected of killing up to nineteen people, mostly with knives, is a pretty good reason for Dr. Allen and the man who might be his domestic partner to sit up in their study, drink Scotch and try to figure out whether such a shocking thing could be true, what the news reports about the murders mean, if the evidence really does point to the young man and, just possibly, if he really did it, if there were signs that they should have seen while he was a regular guest in their home all through his childhood.

Of course, this doesn't really answer why Dracula, Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs were on top of the two textbooks. Unless Dr. Pinault decided that having his pseudo-nephew accused of being a serial killer reminded him of favourite books he'd like to re-read.

Or maybe Pinault had already been planning to read the new Thomas Harris book when his next vacation came up and simply decided to stick with his plan despite the shocking news. And maybe he re-read Red Dragon first. Dracula might have been there for a while or maybe there was some connection between this specific copy of the book to Victor Dufresne that led to them taking out it out while discussing his arrest.

Re: The Reading Material of One Suspect for the Big Bad Wolf
 

In the spring of this year, I emerged from the guest room in a couple of friends' house carrying that book.

"Oh," they said, "Maybe we shouldn't leave that in the guest bedroom, it might upset some people."

"Eh? This is my own copy, I didn't notice yours in there."

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Whose idea was it to carry an ASP? Yours or the players and where did he hear of it?

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

It was my idea. I don't know where I first heard of it, probably some interview in the 90s where someone related to a Bond movie in some way was asked what gun James Bond would carry if he lived today.

FBI profile of Victor Jude Dufresne?
 

Agent Maria Lucia Estevez (PC) worked on the coding and design of ViCAP as a graduate student at Stanford and later as an FBI employee at Quantico, working in the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. Pierce R. Brooks was a mentor to her and strongly supported her decision to become a Special Agent instead of remaining technical support staff. She'll at least have known of Ressler since 1982-1983 and worked with him as part of a small staff (less than 12) for almost three years, from 1985 until earlier in the current year of play, 1988.

Granted, she would have been doing data entry, coding, database design and such tasks, while he was a renowned investigator, profiler and consultant. But she should at least be very familiar with his work and able to provide atmospheric commentary.

What would early FBI commentators have to say about the suspect in custody, Victor Jude Dufresne (some notes on his crimes), and the possibility of an accomplice or a mentor, Dufresne's cryptic 'Big Bad Wolf'?

Victor Jude Dufresne (23), dubbed the 'Werewolf of the Village' by sensationalist press, was born on the 22nd December, 1965, in Allagash, Maine. He was a quiet, introverted kid, very smart, religious and bookish. All sources agree that as a child, Victor was likable, if a bit quiet, handsome, kind, courteous and respectful. Despite spending most of his time with his nose buried in a book, Victor never lacked for friends and when he was older, girls with a crush on him. Investigators have only turned up reports of one early girlfriend in Aroostook County (and that one may have been merely a crush and not a relationship) and one short relationship in Chicago, but it is still early days of the investigation into Victor's background.

Unlike his father, Abel Dufresne, who is a decorated Marine veteran, the local lawman and used to be the most avid hunter in the county, Victor was not all that fond of sport, the outdoors or hunting. As a result, he did not share many activities with his father and from all accounts, they appear to have been rather distant. His mother died when he was five. Victor spent a lot of his childhood with his paternal grandmother, Celeste Dufresne, until she died when he was twelve. After that, he was probably closest to his two maternal uncles, Clayborn and Harvey Allen. All through childhood, Victor's most intimate friend near his own age was probably Clayborn's son, his cousin Courtney.

Victor was also very attached to Father Jerome Prudhomme, the priest of St. Charles Catholic Church in neighbouring St. Francis, and briefly considered becoming a priest, even attending a seminary for some months. Father Prudhomme is respected in the area, but not liked, as he is strongly against hunting for sport and condemns it frequently from the pulpit as a 'violent and vicious vanity'. Victor's father and uncles attend the smaller St. Paul's Mission Church in Allagash itself, with Father Andrew Hughes, a more easy-going and comfortable clergyman than his superior, as evidenced by Father Hughes' hobbies of deer hunting, fishing and convival dining with his parishioners.

After deciding that he did not have a religious vocation, Victor Dufresne was accepted into the University of Chicago as an anthropology major. He dropped out after a year and as far as his family knew, he went to New York City in order to pursue a career as an artist. After three years in New York, Dufresne was arrested for murder in Central Park and quickly became the lead suspect in the 'Werewolf of the Village' case, especially after his teeth conclusively matched bite marks on the last victim and appeared to match several others.

Cocaine poisoning
 

In our day, the trendy hazardous cutting or lacing agent in illicit cocaine is levamisole, which has caused several deaths. Of course, a famous one which is almost as old as drug legislation is strychnine, rat poison, which has been and is used to adulterate cocaine.

What chemicals might there be in 1988 cocaine from Florida, Montréal, Massaschuttes or New York that might cause dangerous side-effects to an otherwise healthy person?

Obviously, cocaine is not healthy even uncut, but assuming a habitual user, it's something he has survived so far. I'm looking for something more dangerous than a habitual couple of grams combined with heavy drinking. On the other hand, it can't hurt to get ideas on how cocaine (maybe laced with something) could plausibly accidentally kill a new user almost immediately, perhaps someone drunk who tries a single snort.

Are there any common household drugs or frequently used medications in the 80s which react violently to cocaine and/or common adulterants in it?

Hypothermia victim first aid and treatment
 

Does anyone know if the recommended treatment in the 1980s of serious hypothermia, in cases where immediate hospitalisation isn't possible, would differ from modern best practice?

If one should have access to it, would one want to make use of a sauna, steam room or hot tub?

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Hm. A pretty technical question outside my area of expertise.

But most of the research on hypothermia treatment was done from the 60s to the 80s, so I suspect state-of-the-art practices in 1980 were about the same as the routine practices today.

Use of a temperature-controlled water bath is useful, but only if it's merely warm to the touch (40-45 C max), rather than hot. Keeping the limbs out of the water may be useful, because they can warm up too fast, and it's really the core temperature that you're after. The hot tub could be useful; the sauna and steam room are probably too much. (At least as they're usually used; if they have thermostats to set the heat to only a little above body temperature, it's a least a warm place to stay.) Too much heat, too fast, is actually detrimental.

Re: Hypothermia victim first aid and treatment
 

After a recent experience with hypothermia (and a big thanks to the Franklin County Sheriff Department and Franklin County Fire Department), you want to get the victim out of any wet clothes, wrap them up in warm blankets (heated, if possible - and nowadays they have heated beds and forced hot-air-heated blankets, but those might not be available in the 1980's), and put hot packs on their neck. Heating the neck heats the carotid arteries and jugular veins, so that the heat can be efficiently and quickly distributed to the body core. Put in an IV and drip warmer than body temperature fluid into their veins.

That's pretty much what I got right now.

Luke

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

I was trained by the Boy Scouts or America for treating hypothermia in the field in the late '80s and early '90s. In the '80s, they recommended a non-hypothermic person strip to underwear and crawl into the sleeping bag/bed/blankets with the hypothermic person to share body heat. This recommendation has since been removed because of the danger of the second person succumbing to hypothermia as well.

As far as I know the recommendations to use a heated car or building remain unchanged. We were consistently told to run a warm, but not hot bath if that was an option. This was to be only a last resort, however, because there were (anecdotal) stories of people dying of shock if the water was too warm.

Re: Hypothermia victim first aid and treatment
 

To reiterate - absolutely not.

A sauna might be handy as a tool, but only for warming blankets, towels, sheets, etc that are then brought out to wrap around the patient, never ever for putting the patient in.

A hypothermic patient's ability to temperature regulate is broken, and putting them in an environment warmer than "warm" can kill them faster than leaving them somewhere cool-but-not-cold.

I presume some hot tubs can be dialed down to "warm" but I know some don't for hygenic reasons. Even those that can be brought down to merely "warm", they're still deep and generally have jets - and your hypothermic patient is not in any condition to support their head reliably above water nor manage their position against water currents.

A steam room would be difficult to use even to heat blankets as things would become damp, and that's bad for someone who's struggling with temperature regulation.

Re: Hypothermia victim first aid and treatment
 

The sauna and steam room are the same room, with adjustable temperature and humidity.

It can explicitly be set to any desired humidity and warm temperature, slightly over the desired body temperature.

In 1988, getting another warm body mostly unclad and wrapped around the patient was almost certainly taught everywhere. I learned it in the 90s, after all. And it's clearly the movie/TV/RPG friendly treatment, providing reasons for sexual tension and/or almost defenceless protagonists.

Having a healthy, naked person cradle the patient in a warm hot tub* or bath actually seems like it would be very effective in a case where it was fairly clear that the patient was likely to die much faster than any help could get there if her core temperature was not elevated.

Of course, Agent Estevez's ritual has hopefully accomplished that, but in case Agent Corelli is not relying solely on a miracle, getting Ms. Danzig into a warm bath might appeal to him.

I suppose Agent Estevez would be in favour of warm baths or a sauna. She knows that the ritual should have restored Ms. Danzig's ability to regulate her body temperature, but that she and the three agents are all still pretty cold.

*Ironically, the small indoor one was established last session as being without massage jets or bubble-generating devices, hence Dr. Allen's and Dr. Pinault's possesion of marketing brochures for top-of-the-line jacuzzis.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

From a private message, posted in thread because I'm more likely to remember it if it's found here:

Cocaine poisoning in the 1980s
 

Have we no older forumites who, for reasons which no one needs to inquire in if that is not desired, have some information about the dangers of American cocaine in the 1980s, the great cocaine decade?

I tried asking before, but no answer. As I'd really like to get in some discussion about this before the next session, I'll try again.

In our day, the trendy hazardous cutting or lacing agent in illicit cocaine is levamisole, which has caused several deaths. Of course, a famous one which is almost as old as drug legislation is strychnine, rat poison, which has been and is used to adulterate cocaine.

What chemicals might there be in 1988 cocaine from Florida, Montréal, Massaschuttes or New York that might cause dangerous side-effects to an otherwise healthy person?

Obviously, cocaine is not healthy even uncut, but assuming a habitual user, it's something he has survived so far. I'm looking for something more dangerous than a habitual couple of grams combined with heavy drinking. On the other hand, it can't hurt to get ideas on how cocaine (maybe laced with something) could plausibly accidentally kill a new user almost immediately, perhaps someone drunk who tries a single snort.

Are there any common household drugs or frequently used medications in the 80s which react violently to cocaine and/or common adulterants in it?

Re: Cocaine poisoning in the 1980s
 

Lactose is commonly used to cut cocaine and if a user has a severe dairy allergy there might be enough in a single line of cocaine to trigger a fatal allergenic reaction.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

I thought meth is the big drug that was/is ****ing over rural people in the US?

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

It is and has been for a while. In modern Aroostook County, there is allegedly a lot of meth being cooked.

I don't know how it was in the 80s, though. I think that methamphetamine wasn't a part of the drug world until 1980 or so and that originally, it was confined to California and the Mexico border.

And the 80s are a time of cocaine. That's the drug that Special Agent Rene Ledoux (PC) encountered most often in his undercover work in Miami and the PCs have reason to believe that cocaine is the favourite drug of Jackie Flowers, the Montréal-based felon that they arrested in the process of beating up attorney Ricky Sommiers.

Re: Cocaine poisoning in the 1980s
 

That's interesting. Good one.

Keep the ideas coming, I need a range of possibilities. My players read the forums and their characters are red-hot investigators, one of whom has fairly extensive knowledge of the East Coast drug world, so it would be good if their skills would yield a number of possibilities.

Also, as I won't reveal which, if any, suggestions from the forumites I do use, reading them won't reveal damaging spoilers for the game.

Musical Instruments
 

Using the rules for Musical Instruments from LTC1, there are a few TL5+ instruments which aren't accounted for there.*

Ought the simple harmonica fall under the Sheng skill or should it be its own skill?

What ought to be the defaults between a harmonica and a saxophone? Or any other wind instrument, for that matter?

What instruments would you learn as a hobbyist, amateur musician and later academic/connoisseur studying blues, jazz and cajun music in Louisiana and New Orleans?

*Which is understandable, as Low-Tech should only cover TL0-4.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Harmonicas don't have fingering, so it's not really a close match for Sheng as described in LTC1. Closer to panpipes, as you select different pitches with horizontal motion of the instrument. But it's still a bit different as you've got the internal reed rather than having to form a stream of air to split across the flute opening. I might just make it its own skill, since it doesn't really match the characteristics listed for the other categories.

Default to saxophone? Looking at the existing ones, probably -6. It's as different from a sax as is a flute, and not nearly as close as the horns are to each other at -4.

Classic blues instrumentation includes the guitar and piano, as well as the harmonica and drums.

Dixieland jazz will bring in trumpets and trombones, clarinet, tuba and/or string bass, and maybe the banjo.

Cajun folk music will throw in the fiddle (violin) and accordion.

Re: Musical Instruments
 

What would the defaults from Musical Instrument (Harmonica) be?

He's got Musical Instrument (Fiddle) and, I guess, Musical Instrument (Harmonica). Fiddle gives him banjo and guitar at a decent default, only -3 from his Musical Instrument (Fiddle) skill. We've got around 2 more points to play with. A point in Piano and another in Single Reed (isn't that what covers the saxophone?)?

Dogs that suit the owner's personality
 

Two characters will have dogs that are present in the luxury cabin. I want breeds that suit the characters in question, even to the point that they may be considered archtypical of aspects of their personality or their role in the story. At the same time, I want it to be possible for these dog breeds to be kept in 1988 Maine.

1) For Dr. Harvey Allen, I was thinking a Chocolate Lab. Dr. Allen was raised in rural Maine, by a rugged outdoorsy kind of father, a lumber magnate, but Harvey was a continual disappointment to his harsh father. The upbringing succeeded in instilling a fondness for nature walks and at least a modest interest in shooting sports, but instead of becoming a lawyer from a local college on a football scholarship, working summers in the logging camps, Harvey went to Harvard on an academic scholarship and ended up a neurologist.

Dr. Allen was and remains 'soft', nervous around violence and blood, but appears to be both intelligent and capable of great affection. He is loyal to his family and friends, as well as having been in the same loving relationship for all of his adult life. Harvey might be perceived as slightly feminine, at least by the standards of 20th century manhood, in that he has a strong home-making, nesting aspect to his personality. He is the sort to provide accessorized lavender bath towels, robes and hand towels for his guest bathrooms, he wears flowery aprons and stylish eyeglasses with mother-of-pearl frames.

Physically, he is an inch or two above average height and neither weak nor unhealthy. Considering his healthy hobbies, generally happy disposition and attention to a good diet, his physical health is probably exceptional for a man in his late forties in a high-stress occupation, but he is in no way, shape or form any kind of action man.

Any suggestions for a breed which might be better suited?

2) Phil Willette is a burly man's man, 6'2", 240 lbs., hirsute and strongly built. He looks like Powers Boothe and he wears jeans, plaid shirts and working boots. The PCs aren't sure if he's a good guy or not, but if he's a bad guy, he's a Big Bad Wolf, whereas if he is a good guy, he's the kind of dog who keeps the wolves from the door. He fought in Korea all those many decades ago, likes to hunt and has a lot of outdoorsy hobbies.

What kind of dog should he own?

Re: Dogs that suit the owner's personality
 

This or a Golden Retriever sounds good, an odd choice might be a Standard Poodle, they are hunting dogs.

For some reason this guy sounds like he owns a Newfoundland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland_(dog)

Re: Dogs that suit the owner's personality
 

I'm concerned that it might not send an ambigious message of powerful ally or scary threat, for Willette, anymore. Newfoundlands seem friendly and goofy, rather than scary. At least to me. But, then again, St. Bernards seem goofy and friendly to me too, and yet Cujo was a thing...

Would a Newfoundland be more or less imposing than an Irish wolfhound?

Of course, Phil's dog will most likely not be a registered purebred of any kind, it will be a homebred mutt, but it will probably resemble some breed which contributed heavily to its genetic make-up.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

I'd give him a Rottweiler. Big dog with a scary reputation, a good working breed, yet a lovable lap dog for those that treat them right. :)

Maybe a German Shepherd for that same feel if you think a Rottie is sending too much of a "Big Bad Wolf" vibe.

Re: Musical Instruments
 

Harmonica to sheng? Well, keeping in mind that I play neither, I can't really see that they're much alike. Sure, they're both free reed instruments, but that's just a classification based on technically how they make sound. It would be like saying a violin (pizzicato) and harp are the same thing. The sheng doesn't have the position, or blocking holes with your tongue or lips; the harmonica doesn't have fingering. On the positive side, learning breath support will help with any wind instrument, but they're probably not really any closer than a horn and a woodwind. LTC puts the Bagpipe default at -6, so that seems about right.

That's correct. Sounds reasonable to me. (Lots of musicians, especially composers, directors, and teachers, will pick up a bit of a lot of different instruments, so it wouldn't really be bizarre to have some skill in several.)

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

I had a neighbor with a Newfoundland, I would never think of it as friendly, or goofy, but that could be that specific dog, and not typical of the breed.

Wolfhounds could work, Russian Wolfhounds had a bout of popularity in the 1970's, another breed might be a Mastiff.

Rottweilers were still somewhat rare in the late 1970's early 1980's, at least in Southern California and Ozark regions I lived in then, he might not know enough about the breed to trust it, a Doberman or German Shepard would be more common for a "security" type dog. That said, a Rottweiler could work very well.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

The standard substance used to cut cocaine was "baby laxative", mannitol IIRC.

Re: Musical Instruments
 

Just Musical Instrument (Harmonica) to any skill, really. How much of a default would it give to any other Musical Instrument skill?

LTC makes Musical Instrument (Single Reed) one skill and Musical Instrument (Double Reed) another. Musical Instrument (Sheng) is another and Musical Instrument (Flute), (Horn), (Panpipes), (Recorder), (Serpent) and (Trombone) are yet others. And that's just some of the aerophones.

Re: Musical Instruments
 

The Musical Instrument skill and defaults seem to be entirely focused on actually playing the instruments. The rules don't talk about style, or general musical background, or the sorts of parts that you usually have (melodies, ornamental bits, harmony, bass, rhythm, etc) as the basis for similarity.

This is a bit different from the Hornbostel-Sachs classification scheme (aerophones, chordophones, etc), which is about the low-level physical mechanism that produces sound. A guitar (chordophone) and an electric guitar (electrophone) are in entirely different categories, but are played essentially the same way. (I hedge because of things like distortion knobs and external boxes operated by foot pedals that you often see with the electric guitar, but rarely used with the acoustic ones.)

And I'm having a hard time thinking of an instrument that you play like a harmonica. All those little holes produce individual pitches, sometimes different when you inhale and exhale (or "blow" and "draw", as Agent Ledoux would probably say, assuming that's the New Orleans Cajun that we were talking about). You need lip and tongue motion to cover up holes that you don't want to use, or sometimes deliberately leave multiple holes uncovered to produce chords.

The sheng is fingered, but not like a flute or clarinet. The holes in a sheng don't adjust the length of the resonant air column, and thus its pitch. The pitches come from the reeds in those tubes, and leaving the holes uncovered means the tube doesn't resonate and so no volume of sound is produced at that pitch. Close multiple tubes and you get a chord, rather than a different pitch. It's actually somewhat more like the mechanism of an accordion, though it doesn't have the bellows to push air over the reeds. Looking at a few YouTube videos, embouchure doesn't seem to be a thing for producing a sound, though I'd guess that's how the musicians are doing vibrato. At any rate, that and a harmonica are both free-reed aerophones, but I'd expect minimal skill transference between them. LTC mentions the harmonic in the sheng skill description just as an example of a "free reed" more hopefully familiar to its Western audience.

I'd completely agree with LTC's classification of "horns" as being all the same. With Trumpet skill (modest though that was), I had little trouble playing a French horn, baritone, or tuba, though there were some noticable differences in producing and maintaining a decent tone on the different instruments (having to do with breath control). Trombone is played exactly the same way, but it has the factor that it has the slide for pitch, rather than three valves to select different pipe lenghts. LTC gives those a -2 default, so that's our mark for "different fingering".

The other end of the scale is "pretty much completely different", at -6. The one step further than that is just "no default". We have -6s between Flute and Single/Double Reed, even though the fingering between the two is the same. The differences in embouchure and even the way you hold it (note the -3 between Single Reed and Recorder) seem to be considered more important than the fingering.

So, at great length, I'm still stuck on not being able to think of anything you hold and move and blow like a harmonica, or "finger" ("tongue"?) the same way. "No default" seems pretty reasonable to me, or possibly a -6 to other free reeds (sheng, bagpipes (at least the drones; the chanter is a single or double reed), accordion, concertina, melodica) if you think the HS categorization is important. Harmonica wouldn't default to piano or guitar or horns or sax at all. The only commonality I can come up with there is just breath control, and even there the harmonica has both blow and draw, unlike the horns and single/double reeds.

Re: Cocaine poisoning in the 1980s
 

According to this link, amphetamines and lactose: http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id332.htm

Also period appropriate, so may be useful context.

Anyway lactose, not so much. Amphetamines are kind of back to the same problem in that aside from the drug itself, it's more the impurities and/or cutting agents that are a concern.

Re: Cocaine poisoning in the 1980s
 

It's probably too late to help, but cocaine has a pretty strong link to heart attacks, and I've heard stories (unverified) of people who had a heart attack shortly after (within an hour) their first time using the substance. So you don't really need anything special, just someone with a possibly higher-than-normal risk of heart attack to maybe take a bit more than he should and, boom, dead of cardiac arrest.

Irish wolfhound seems too appropriate for the character to go with much else - according to Wikipedia at least, they were originally bred from war hounds, and are used for hunting and guarding. For someone who was a soldier at war and now is either hunting people ("Big Bad Wolf") or is a source of protection from those that are ("dog who keeps the wolves from the door"), that's just too close of a match to not go with. Shame they have nearly as good of a reputation as Newfoundlands, although there have been some pretty nasty attacks in New Zealand I ran across trying to find an imposing picture of one (I failed).

Re: Cocaine poisoning in the 1980s
 

Irish Wolfhounds are pretty rare. Not so rare as Irish wolves of course but not only are they huge they have a reputation as one of the "heartbreak" breeds i.e. big dogs with short lifespans.

I had an idiot neighbor in the 80s who had a Rottweiler. He kept it on a chain because it could almost step over the 4 foot high chain link fence. It managed to get over the fence once even with its' chain. It only barked with incredible ferocity and lunged at people because it was lonely and wanted you to come play. It was perfectly friendly once it got loose.

A Rottweiler may have been rare in the 70s but not the 80s. In the 70s you might have seen a Doberman in the same niche (which I fear might be "dog for idiots").