Japan, Merlin-1, and Infinite Worlds

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by maximara

I have already pointed out the whole Antarctica thing make no blasted sense no matter how you look at it and to quote Wally West regarding fighting Killer Penguins: "..what has to be the STUPIDEST case in the history of superheroes" (Justice League International Annual #4 Page 52 panel 4). It was a really silly idea in 1990 when the Annual came out and was even dumber when Technomancer came out in 1998.

Actually, Killer Penguins come from Swords & Sorcery, SPI 1978.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2464

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Pomphis

Actually, Killer Penguins come from Swords & Sorcery, SPI 1978.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2464

The good old days ;) Lotta silly fun just reading everything in the box.

[capnq]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

The good old days ;) Lotta silly fun just reading everything in the box.

Reading the rules was sometimes more fun than actually playing the game. Some of the scenarios didn't seem to have even been playtested, AFIcouldT from trying to play them.

On that BoardGameGeek page, I already own all but seven of the Recommendations, and for two or three of the ones I don't have, I've been unable to find copies of them because they're so long out of print.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Pomphis

Actually, Killer Penguins come from Swords & Sorcery, SPI 1978.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2464

Which in turn probably came from the the giant electric penguin in Scott of the Sahara by Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1970.

(Unfortunately that video cuts off right before the battle with the penguin.)

[oldgringo2001]

Hard Candy and Little Boys

Either inflict a Reality Quake on Merlin 1, or create a Merlin-4 this way:

A lighting strike damages the device on the morning of the Trinity test. The device will have to be completely rebuilt. A small nuclear reaction does take place, but only enough to open a small portal which closes minutes later.

(There was a big thunderstorm at the site on the morning of the test. John Toland used a lightning strike as a way to abort the test and allow an invasion of Japan to take place in a novel.)

Japan uses its two giant submarine aircraft carriers to launch strikes against the Los Angeles area using a particularly virulant strain of pneumonic plague developed by Unit 731 on October 31, Halloween night. Los Angeles is chosen as the target because it has no water barriers like Puget sound or San Francisco Bay, is judged by local observers (the Argentine Consulate) to have lax defenses, seems to be particularly prone to civil disorder after the Zoot Suit riots of 1943, and had very important military targets in the Lockheed and Douglas plants (one of them was right next to Walt Disney Studios.) And, yes, it had Hollywood, which was turning out despicable propaganda about the Japanese race, sometimes with the connivance of actual Japanese such as Hayakawa Sesue!!

The attack seems to end as a farce, at first. The pilots have been ordered not to kamikaze anything. They are not carrying bombs; instead, they have canisters built to scatter tiny hard candies with delicious syrup inside.

Five of the pilots are captured (one aircraft disappears.) The public is outraged that the wreckage of the planes proves they were painted with American markings, but since no one was killed and only one of the planes did any damage (it crashed into the Hollywood sign) the Fearless Five become the instant butt of jokes. Sensing the opportunity for some good publicity, J. Edgar Hoover personally takes custody of the prisoners for transport to Washington DC where they will appear before a joint House-Senate special committee including Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson and both Senators from Mississippi, John Rankin and Theodore Bilbo.

The pilots are also part of the delivery system. They have been injected with cultures just before takeoff. The strain usually takes a week to ten days for debilitating symptoms to appear, but it becomes contagious through skin contact within hours, and through breath in two or three days.

Little Boy is dropped not on Hiroshima but on Kyoto, where it can kill the maximum number of "those Jap bastards," in the words of the dying President. The Trinity test finally takes place later that day--with no news from the Kyoto strike as yet. Oppenheimer recited the same passage, and somehow the effects of the Kyoto detonation and the earlier undetected portal opening combined to merge with another Trinity shot on another parallel. The respective Oppenheimers and several other notables present "castled," exchanging places with their otherworld counterparts. It isn't known exactly what happened on the other world.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by ardashir

I have a question here that's been bugging me for some time.

Now, in the original Technomancer book, we're told that Japan surrendered in 1945 without being either bombed or invaded when some of their representatives saw what had happened at Trinity, i.e. the Hellstorm.

Just how likely would Japanese acceptance of a negotiated surrender have been? From what I've read of Japanese attitudes in WW2, it seems unlikely.

Don't believe the hype. Russia entering into the war alone would have been enough to convince Hirohito that there wasn't much hope. And by that point a negotiated peace was what they were fighting for, anyway (as opposed to a total surrender).

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by ardashir

I have a question here that's been bugging me for some time.

Now, in the original Technomancer book, we're told that Japan surrendered in 1945 without being either bombed or invaded when some of their representatives saw what had happened at Trinity, i.e. the Hellstorm.

Just how likely would Japanese acceptance of a negotiated surrender have been? From what I've read of Japanese attitudes in WW2, it seems unlikely. (Or did someone learn how to use Mind Control magic, and use it on the Japanese to convince them to give up? Maybe they were using it all through the war? We are told in the book that magic existed before the Hellstorm, it just wasn't as powerful.)

And what effect might a negotiated surrender have on Japanese militarism after the war? IRL it was discredited by the fact that the war was a total failure, but if a 'stab in the back' legend got going in Japan things might be different. If nothing else I get the idea that pacifism might not be as popular in Japanese culture in Merlin-1 as it is in reality (and on Homeline Japan).

Thanks for any help.

What I've read doesn't agree with what you read. In the spring and summer of '45 particularly after Germany fell, Japan was sending out diplomatic feelers to bring some sort of armistice about. Truman didn't apparently want it and he found ONE high muckety muck in his administration who also felt this way, so he overrode the rest of his advisors and held out for total surrender. In the final weeks this attitude gave the Soviets the chance to declare war on Japan and thus sieze a lot of territory.

I would posit that in Merlin, the immediate effects of random magic were far closer to being catastophic than helpful. My guess is that Truman would have been very concerned that the homefront needed troops back here to deal with invading demons and the like. Thus he'd be willing to let Japan end the war with some face saving agreement to end hostilities.

[tantric]

So, just for fun, how would a non-close parallel Merlin go? A logical continuation of events?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by tantric

So, just for fun, how would a non-close parallel Merlin go? A logical continuation of events?

Well one difference is that the United States and Russia don't spend nearly so much on their nuclear arsenals during the Cold War. Keeping one or two world destroying weapons around should be sufficient. The Japanese were willing to negotiate a peace treaty and the United States would have the upper hand, but probably no occupation of Japan, and maybe no war crimes trials. The discovery that spells exist which can read or control minds much less summon demons would be very agitating. The 1950s "witchhunts" are liable to become rather literal. Governments try to monopolize magic for national security purposes, so integrating it into society at large is liable to much slower. There would be a dedicated part of the FBI which hunts down people accused of using unlicensed magic. I

[vitruvian]

How about - the superpowers don't entirely abandon atomic testing after the Trinity and Antarctica incidents, and there's at least one test on a Pacific island not too far from Japan that produces not only a Hellstorm (smaller than the one in Antarctica, for some reason) that produces not only the usual region of enhanced mana, but also either vomits forth or transforms indigenous wildlife into all forms of giant monsters, daikaiju. Luckily, the Japanese population has a fair number of defenders for whom traditional Shinto and Buddhist magic work very well (leave it up to you whether any of them wear naval-looking school girl outfits), and also becomes highly advanced in the construction of gigantic driveable techno-golems that can engage with the creatures from Monster Island on their own scale....