[UA] Circle of Friends -- Sounds of 70s Campaign Ideas

[Timothy Toner]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Royal Minister of Stuff" <yokeltania at yahoo.com>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2001 1:40 PM
Subject: Re: [UA] Circle of Friends -- Sounds of 70s Campaign Ideas


>
> --- Stuart Anderson <stuartanderson at qwest.net> wrote:
> > Eric wrote:
> >
> > > Hey --
> > >     Does anyone have any thoughts on running a
> > circle of friends campaign
> > > focusing on a rock band trying to make it in early
> > 70s?  Specifially:
> >
>
> If I was you, I'd vilifiy disco, both because it
> already has no soul and because it was to the 70s what
> boy groups (Backstreet Boys,et. al.) are to the 90s
> and the aughts (that's a damn good name for this
> decade.)

I prefer "Naughties," myself.  Makes people look back and wonder what that
was all about--sorta like the 'Roaring Twenties.'  Tho, would the twenties
really have been that roaring if the thirties didn't suck ass?

>
> The punk movement is also going on in the 70s,
> although it won't really have much momentum until
> later on in the decade.  You could play with time a
> little bit and have the players meet some people
> who've recently died, for instance, or even Sid &
> Nancy.

There's an OK Vertigo miniseries called "The Sandman Presents:  Love
Street."  As an attempt to provide a prequel for a few of the characters in
the Vertigo universe, it's exceedingly lame, but some of the ideas click
right.  It actually takes place in 1969, but it uses foreshadowing to show
how these abuses of mystical power then have impact now.  Given how crazy
things were--the paradoxical nature of the peace protesters ("set off a bomb
to get peace") and the war ("to save the village, we had to destroy the
village"), there's a lot of magickal energy muckng about, looking for a
cause.  There might be a lot of ticking bombs out there, just waiting to
explode.

I'm currently leafing through my copy of The Big Book of the '70s, by
Vertigo Press.  Here's the table of contents, to stir the pot a little:

1.    Freaky Fads
            70s Sexplosion
            Partying in the 70s (Drugs)
            Style, 70s Style
            70s Lingo (Focusing on the California Valley cant)
            The Short, Happy Life of Disco (This offers a rather sympathetic
view of disco--it was the fusion of urban, gay, and Euro nightclub
culture.  When I finished reading it, I realized that I  never 'got' disco,
until now.)
            Studio 54
            Kung Fu
            Streaking
            Pet Rocks!
            The smiley face
            Mood rings (there's a few artifacts right there--put on a ring,
and adopt a mood)
            Space Food (everything dehydrated)
            Running Fixx
            10-4, Back Door (CB Radios)
            Bootleg LPs
            Useless Crap (Billy Beer, Green Slime, Pop Rocks, etc.)

2.    The Players
            John Lennon
            "Hanoi" Jane
            Kissinger
            "This is Howard Cosell!"
            The Greatest (Muhammed Ali)
            Governor Moonbeam (Jerry Brown)
            Chuck Barris (creator of 'The Gong Show,' and a fascinating
character in his own right. Read "Confessions of A Dangerous Mind," his
autobiography)
            The Decade of Evel
            Burt Reynolds
            Fonziemania
            Jimmy Carter
            Gary Gilmore

3.    "And that's the way it was..."
            Women's Liberation
            The Fall of Nixon
            Patty Hearst:  Trials of Tania
            The End of the Vietnam War
            Life Without Meat:  the Meat Shortage (I was born in 1971, and
thus do not remember it at all, but it's FASCINATING!)
            The Bicentennial
            Energy Crisis
            The Moonies
            A Time of Terror (The rise of terrorism, it recounts one of the
first major acts of modern terrorism, the May 30, 1972 attack of the
Japanese Red Army (three japanese guys with grenades and machinegums) in an
Israeli Airport.  The damn thing reads like an RPG scenario involving botch
rolls, with one terrorist shooting his buddy, and the other blowing his own
head off with a grenade))
            Girls, Guns, and Gerry Ford
            The Skylab is Falling!
            Blackout!
            Son of Sam
            America Held Hostage

4.    Entertainment Explosion
            Silver Screen 70s
            McDonaldLand (Here's a quote, "Though McDonaldLand was
ostensibly a 'happy place,' it seemed overrun by crime.  Hamburglar, the
evil Grimace and Captain Crook the Filet of Fish Pirate forever eluded the
long arm of the law, personified by Chief Big Mac and Mayor McCheese.")
            The Brady Bunch (Good analyisis of why this show was so popular)
            TV catch phrases
            The ABA
            Baseball in the 70s
            Sesame Street
            "Jiggle" shows
            "...it's Saturday Night"  (Imagine the potential involved with
your group of players being scheduled to perform on the first season of SNL,
and something, as it always does, goes horribly wrong.)
            The Bay City Rollers
            Glam Rock
            Monsters of Rock
            Stadium Concerts
            Punk Rock
            Punk Rules!


There's a fairly extensive bibliography in the back, as well.




>
> I was pretty young during the seventies and the only
> thing I took away from it was that I hated "doing the
> hustle" and that "Popcorn" is the only disco song
> worth listening to.

Actually, anything by Barry White kicks ass.

What we need is a time machine--no, not to go to back to the 70s.  We need
to jump forward in time to a point after Hogshead has published, "Get Your
Trousers On, You're Nicked!", the 70s cop show RPG (well, more an
interactive storytelling game than RPG, but in a pinch...)


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