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Writing Steampunk

13:19 / 02.10.01

I'm at a loss whether to include the supernatural in the form of mediums and ESP or not.
Both were eagerly believed in by the Victorians and many respected and respectable people believed in the mediums etc.
So, there was paradox in the Victorian RL view, but how to approach it in fiction?!?

Its really blocking my thinking, any suggestions or just discussion would be good to help me figure out the best way to approach it.

13:24 / 02.10.01

The Theosophists and that crowd insisted there was a scientific explanation for the reality of this phenomena.
If you're writing it, why not handle it like the X-Files -- as a matter of characters believing or disbelieving what's going on?

13:33 / 02.10.01

Its partly for a personal writing project, and partly for an RPG.
If I was just writing it as creative fiction, then I could leave it as a maybe.
but for a game, it has to be known, because there are mechanics to be done as well.
Urgh...

13:37 / 02.10.01

Its partly for a personal writing project, and partly for an RPG.
If I was just writing it as creative fiction, then I could leave it as a maybe.
but for a game, it has to be known, because there are mechanics to be done as well.
Urgh...

We're The Great Old Ones Now

08:10 / 03.10.01

For a game, I'd suggest you include the trend, allow the hint of real ability in NPCs, but make it impossible for players. It's a mood thing they should be able to encounter, but unless you're prepared to segue into a somewhat Cthulhu-ish arena, I'd imagine they should only have access to it through others. Although, again, Conan Doyle's 'Professor Challenger' stories might help...

If they insist on entering that area, I'd fake the firs session, then write a new bit as needed...

08:10 / 03.10.01

I can't imagine adding it would be a serious problem, because it's not like mediums in a Victorian story are munchkinizable pyrokinetics.

I would suggest avoiding blatantly useful psychic abilities such as some sort of danger sense or telepathy, but I wouldn't think something on the order of a Seance or Medium skill would be too damaging. (I was about to add Psychometry as harmless, but that does make sitting room murder mysteries less fun if the murder weapon's around.) Unreliable information/misinformation which requires time, setting (maybe it only works at "haunted" locales), other people (perhaps they must be "believers" as well), et cetera.

That, perhaps with the addition of the boilerplate RPG text that I see when precognition comes up ("Is this the future which need be or is it one possible outcome?"). Or maybe that's not even necessary if the medium will only be talking to the departed through automatic writing... the dead don't have to know the future any better than the rest of us.

I say go for it, or your players lose out on too many Victorian haunted house stories.

PS - Nick's idea is valid, but I have a personal dislike of having NPCs upstaging PCs. But then, a PC who can Medium might try to do it every story, if there aren't pretty strict limits on when it can be useful... not every story should be a haunted house story.

[ 03-10-2001: Message edited by: doubting thomas ]

We're The Great Old Ones Now

08:10 / 03.10.01

Ahhh, but it's not about upstaging. It's about avoiding something which might unbalance the game and take you away from the core mood into a different arena.

And players will gravitate towards anything they think might give them an edge. Anything, in other words, which the majority of people don't have or can't do. Anything, in fact, which is dangerously close to fucking up the tone.

13:48 / 03.10.01

Fair enough. Back in my Champions days, I allowed psychics to take lots of precognitive clairvoyance, but it had to be with no conscious control, and usually put them into a trance in which they'd be defenseless. So, I got to pick the occasions that a precognitive flash seemed to serve the story.

I was thinking that if your medium can only speak with the Other Side in times and places where the veil between the living and the dead are thinner, the power sort of automatically serves the storyline: No spooky house, no lightning storms, no ouija for you!

But, my players weren't so very inclined to grab all the edges they could find. Um, okay, there were three that did, but I think more players behaved than didn't... ;D

17:50 / 03.10.01

I'd do some research into Harry Houdini's debunking of mediums (there's *plenty* of stuff online).
Then make both hucksterism and genuine talent open to players -- bearing in mind that spirits usually require a lot of ritual and time to make an appearance, if they do so at all.

I like the idea of NPCs or PCs manifesting ectoplasm. Or getting caught filling sheets with oatmeal, as the case may be.

12:37 / 04.10.01

Thanks for the idea muchachos.
Look like the game is going to be a bit more open to that sort of thing, but the fiction I'm thinking of doing will be a little harder