[UA] Unknown 50s

[Mike Lake]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lassi Seppälä" <lassi.seppala at tkk.fi>
To: "The Unknown Armies RPG Mailing List" <ua at lists.unknown-armies.com>
Sent: Monday, November 20, 2006 1:01 PM
Subject: [UA] Unknown 50s

> I'm thinking about setting an UA game in the 50s.
> So, what do I need to consider?

    Caution: when I started this post, it was tidy and direct.  As I 
continued adding thoughts, it mutated into a shapeless pile of points to 
consider.  It also inadvertantly assumes the game will be set in the US, in 
part because that's what I'm most familiar with, in part because UA is an 
Amerocentric game (largely because that's what the authors are most familiar 
with).

    America in the 50s was thick with symbolic tension, even paradox, thanks 
to the bomb.  Soldiers returning from WWII wanted to settle into a quiet, 
normal, predictable lifestyle.  That urge was redoubled when we began to 
understand just how close we were to nuclear annihilation.  And because 
thinking about nuclear weapons was so scary, a lot of healthy 
self-examination got suppressed, and bubbled out as semi-rational, or even 
positively irrational, urges.  Regarding madness meters: helplessness checks 
are the order of the day.
    Normality, or the desire for normality, was the keystone of American 
culture.  Fear of the unfamiliar was strong, especially if the unfamiliar 
could be connected, however distantly, with the Communist Menace. 
Socialists, beatniks (and later, hippies), homosexuals, the civil rights 
movement, Elvis Presley's pelvis--all these were threatening to the status 
quo, and thus to those with a half-conscious hope that, if everything were 
just NORMAL, then the bomb would go away.
    That puts the typical UA player character in a head-on collision with 
society at large.
    With all this repression around, you might want to play up cryptomancy; 
if so, check out the Cambridge Five spy ring.
    Cliomancers might get a boost through a sudden burst of historically 
significant sites.  Historic events don't come any faster than they have in 
earlier eras, but the events might produce more charges by virtue of being 
more significant.  You can probably list a dozen spots leading to the 
potential End of the World.  Heck, with a little historic revision, maybe 
nukes usher in the actual End of the World, and the Comte is arriving by jet 
next Thursday.
    The symbolic tensions of Mutually Assured Destruction could form the 
root of a short-lived school of magic--short-lived because a generation 
later, society at large decided the superpowers weren't really going to drop 
the bomb after all.  MAD also feeds right into the UA theme of what you will 
do for power.  Check out Dr. Strangelove for tips, but also the serious 
Fail-Safe, starring Henry Fonda.
    The 50s also marked a rising tide in America's cultural impact on the 
world.  Hollywood and Rock-and-roll pumped American icons into the front of 
the world stage, while American economic-political-military power pretty 
much guaranteed its leaders, government or otherwise, were better known 
outside the US than vice versa.  Personamancers will want to cut themselves 
in an American mold, to maximize their options if nothing else.
    The realization that the commies weren't the Good Guys, despite helping 
beat the Nazis, came as a real surprise to a lot of people.  The irony of 
recruiting Germans like von Braun to combat Russians could be built into a 
campaign.  (Again, what will you do for power?) You might combine Project 
Paperclip with artifacts recovered from magic-rich Europe during the war and 
transported to storage in the younger, less mystically sophisticated US. 
Refer to GURPS Warehouse 23.
    The Twilight Zone succeeded largely because of its willingness to talk 
about the unspeakable.  How many episodes revolve around imminent nuclear 
war or its aftermath?  The pulp sci-fi mags of the 50s, upon which the 
Twilight Zone drew, are great sources, though you'll probably find it easier 
to get those stories from book anthologies nowadays.
    The KKK and the John Birch Society make fine bad guys for your PCs to 
combat, especially if the PCs are created not as the usual petty grifter 
with weird magic, but as ordinary, decent folk in a world gone mad.  Give 
the magical powers to the creeps, instead.


***SPOILER ALERT***
    Todd Furler has a convention game, "Web of Lies," from which you might 
crib.  I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so don't read further if you 
fear it will ruin your chance to play.


















    In the adventure, the PCs learn of an artifact called "The Web of Lies," 
a net woven of strips cut from the tongues of people who made a living of 
lying to people--con artists primarily, but really corrupt politicians, 
tobacco industry "scientific experts," and others could fit the bill.  The 
web gives a whopping bonus for telling lies, but more to the point: when the 
web grows large enough, it can make lies *true*.  The NPC who controls the 
web in Todd's adventure has used it to make the Cuban Missile Crisis a 
fizzle, rather than the apocalypse it really was, and he is old and tired. 
Do the PCs take it upon themselves to kill dirtbags and maintain the web 
with fresh tongues, or do they walk away and risk everything slipping back 
into nuclear annihilation?