New Concept
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I have been debating for some time on starting to work on a 1920’s noir Cthulu-inspired game with a hint of steampunk. Going to use ares to do this, the goal would be several mysterious events with a heavy amount of story-told plot.
Players would be mortals, delving by accident or choice into the mysterious of the old gods and the dark forces of the world.
I would be running it as seasons or chapters but right now it’s a very vague concept. More seeing if I build it would they come so to speak.
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Been on such a Cthulu want for a while that I’ve got desperate enough to scour online tabletop games for it.
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@BloodAngel Holy cow. I want a 1920s game SO BAD, and adding cosmic horror and some occult shenanigans to it is EVEN BETTER. Ares is just the lovely frosting on the cake.
Would play. Would play so hard.
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So the current plan is to do NYC 1915 focused on the five points, with a series of odd things going on after the arrival of a ship arriving after a long journey to Antarctica packed with objects for a newly opening oddity exhibit run by a group of wealthy socialites.
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Lovecraftian Horror is my jam! And the roaring 20s is a neat era.
Color out of space me intrigued.
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@BloodAngel Sounds promising, but my first worry between the time period and the source material is, how will the game setting treat various minorities? Will gay people have to live in the closet, will black people be an impoverished underclass, etc?
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@STD said in New Concept:
Color out of space me intrigued.
I wish I could upvote this multiple times.
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@GF Great question, as a person of color not that this places me as an authority. But, I gave I was going to be working with HP Lovecraft, was going to go with its existence but not allow concepts that this is the basis of the core of a character. Also, it’s hard to deny such things have happened in the past or historically, but why laser focus on something that is still an issue today, so the answer is no I don’t way gay people living in the closet or just cause you’re a minority society hates you, that is the horrors of the world.
Does that make sense, this is a fresh concept working on it as of two hours ago in earnest.
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@BloodAngel Could also just make a custom theme that doesn’t have to be based on anything historical while still retaining the 1920s aesthetic and eldritch horror trappings.
I don't know what I'm doing. Poke at Seven Nations sevennations.aresmush.com port 2021
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@Testament That most likely will be the route I go, thank you for the suggestion.
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@BloodAngel I wish you luck.
I would love to do an 1880s-set game, but I fear anything not modern day is going to be niche as heck.
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@BloodAngel said in New Concept:
@Testament That most likely will be the route I go, thank you for the suggestion.
I would really suggest against this. Selfishly, because it would kill my interest in the project.
Instead, I’d suggest researching and considering what your themes are and work with them WITHIN the historical era. Set it in a city with thriving minority subcultures and activism. These things were not unknown in the 1910s and 1920s, and Prohibition helped create a lot of opportunity for ‘outsiders’ of various sorts to grab pieces of the pie that the mainstream wanted to deny them. Organized crime and vibrant, challenging art and political movements were BOTH fueled by the prejudice that immigrants, people of color, and LGBT people experienced. When you whitewash these eras, you lose the chance to highlight just how much of what was going on that was EXCITING in those times was centered in people who society was saying are ‘less than’ creating whole damn cultural movements that blew everything else out of the water, on every axis.
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@Pyrephox It’s more I don’t want to get that one asshole, I have seen on another 20’s game that makes being a prick his whole concept. But this is a valid point, and it’s that tight rope I’m debating on while building the concept out.
This is one of the reasons I posted here before setting things in stone, to get the view of other players and game runners, the community itself on the project!
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RULE 1: Don’t be a racist or sexist or elite asshole to other players even if it is the time frame. Unless, you are both okay with such RP, but if it bothers a third party shut the hell up and keep it to yourself.
Only half joking, I want very exact rules due to the setting, to let the world know exactly where I fucking stand on it.
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@BloodAngel This is partly why I suggested what I did. Because those people patently exist and in my experience, have tried to, subtly shoehorn that kind of antagonism in games. This is what mostly kills my drive to play in any historical based games is that you have those kind of purists who want to play it exactly how it presented. And sure, yeah, that kind of historical environment is rife with potential IC conflict and adversarial situations.
But I also think a certain level of respect needs to offered that not everyone wants to have to deal with that when they might already be dealing with it already in their own lives, but also when it comes to a game’s theme.
ETA: This has come up a lot for me in fantasy gene that’s one historical and the very low fantasy settings. By that’s just from my experience.
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@BloodAngel Yeah. I’d say build your setting to make it clear that - especially if you’re setting things on the underground/outsider side - that while society as a whole is prejudiced and that has meaningful effects on people, in THIS neighborhood, people feel empowered to punch bigots in the mouth and dump them in an alleyway.
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@Pyrephox Also, lots of better reasons to hate others than such a simple mind set.
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@Testament said in New Concept:
@BloodAngel Could also just make a custom theme that doesn’t have to be based on anything historical while still retaining the 1920s aesthetic and eldritch horror trappings.
I really support this, because the idea of playing in an era where my character will be sent to a sanitarium for the mental illness of being gay, and where my character has no finances because women need men to cosign financial documents, is not at all appealing.
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@GF Right that is my issue with it, but I like the outsider theme RP. It works well with the Cosmic horror, but I don’t want to punish you in theme for being you or what you wish to play based on sexuality.
