New Beginnings: 1001 Interesting Nights

I am in the preliminary stages of our next Interesting Times arc, tentatively called 1001 Interesting Nights. The inspiration for this game draws heavily from the middle east. All of the 1001 Nights stories, historical figures like Saladin, and themes from the era are in play.

Since I'm so early in development for the story, I thought I'd share with everyone as things develop. Right now the campaign is in its earliest stage. As things develop I'll share them here.

To get everything started, I thought I'd share a short piece I wrote for the gaming group's Facebook page. This is a short explanation of the Medjai, which I'd like to use as a nascent version of the men in black, the government organizations in IT that deal with supernatural and extranormal threats to humanity.

1001 Interesting Nights – The Medjai:

Once the Medjai (Or Medjay) were the court guards of the pharaohs of Egypt. Drawn from the Nubian peoples of Egypt's northern lands, the warriors of the Medjai trained to become the an elite paramilitary force.

By the 20th Dynasty of the Egyptian Empire, the Medjai were erased from the history of the empire. Their erasure was due, not to any sin of the Medjai chiefs, but of a higher purpose. During the 19th Dynasty, the vizier of the Pharaoh, a man named Imhotep, defied the deity Seti I. Imhotep desired the Pharaoh's wife and defied the will of heaven for her.

When he was discovered, Imhotep was mummified alive and sustained by the magic of Seti's most powerful sorcerers. The Medjai transformed to become the stewards of Imhotep. They guarded the faithless vizier's resting place. In doing so, the chieftains of the Medjai instructed their tribes to learn more about the world beneath the world of the living. In a few generations, the Medjai became as committed to the understanding of greater mysteries as they once were to the sword and spear alone.

Now, the Medjai are a secret order. They study the mysterious forces that act upon the world. They alone stand ready to resist them. Clad in the black robes and turbans of their order, every Medjai warrior understands that there are forces beyond the understanding of mankind. That there are entities who envy the world of the living and that wish to destroy it. On the edge of their scimitars countless djinn have been destroyed. Through their wisdom countless more are tracked, studied, and selected for destruction.

Centuries later, the numbers of the Medjai have waned, but they are more committed to their purpose than ever. Their hidden agents dwell among every city of the empire, each individual tasked with the protection of countless acres of desert. Wandering members of their order serve their many masters, hiding among the common populace. There is no more pharoah to protect them; the mystical secrets of their order are forbidden by the laws of the Prophet.

They are the first, last, and only line of defense protecting our world from the danger of any other. They are the men and women swathed in black. They are the Medjai.

Games Gone By: Villains

It's been many years since I ran the Great War game, but I still remember one of the chief antagonists: Georges Ernest Boulanger.

Based on a historical figure, Boulanger occupied a special place in the world of Interesting Times. We started from the presumption that his military accolades earned him political clout, eventually elevating him to the position of supreme authority in France. The real world Boulanger's philosophy, coupled with my need for a nefarious villain, transformed Boulanger into a prototype of the early fascists. Boulanger's popularity in the real world reached an apex at the end of the 19th century, and it didn't take a huge stretch to push him into the early 20th.

I loved using Boulanger as a bad guy. His policy of restitution and revenge was so Hitlerian that it made him impossible to pass up. It allowed me, in Interesting Times, to draw on the themes and imagery of a Nazi-occupied France decades prior to the occupation of that nation. Using his Revanche party as the villains of our Great War game also allowed me to drive home the point that the world of IT was not the world as we knew it. Once players understood that France was a fascist dictatorship everything else fell into place.

The final battle against Boulanger took place in the heart of Paris, hitting most of the traditional set pieces of that city. Of course, no battle would be complete without a high-stakes conflict that had at least one PC fighting atop the Eiffel Tower. Still, poor old Georges couldn't take on our WW1 characters all alone, so I spent some time drafting up some NPCs to throw their hats into the ring.

Sure are a lot of cobwebs in here.

Lord. It has been several years since I've added anything to the old Interesting Times blog. Since then, I've run multiple campaigns in the ever-expanding universe of IT, adding to the lore of the setting and the crazy characters that are a part of it. Since my last post on this deeply neglected blog, we've run through some of the following games. I'll give everyone a quick rundown of each arc, but it's been far, far too many years for me to remember specifics. So, in the last several years, our players have been through the following:

The Great War The Great War game took place in 1917–1918. The characters worked together against a conspiracy of supernatural agents that were trying to utilize the mass slaughter of men in the war effort as a sacrifice to liberate ancient and powerful entities. The Great War game introduced to Interesting Times the dogfighting rules and a host of new vehicles and equipment. Special equipment was created for Manfred von Richthofen, our resident German pilot. As always, special Edges were created for every player character that referenced the fiction, history, or inspiration for that character.

The 1930s

The follow-up to the Great War game, the 1930s game put the player characters in a world on the cusp of a second world war. Rather than jumping into WW2, I wanted everyone to play in a world where there was tons of uncertainty, a time when their rivals could be allied with foreign powers set on world domination or simply be selfish men interested in their own personal gain. The 30s game also introduced the Men in Gray, a group of supernatural entities that would become recurring antagonists in the IT games. The Men in Gray, also called Auditors, work to stabilize the universe, attempting to slow the chaos of existence into perfect stasis and stability. The 30s game introduced its own rules for traditional car chases, inspired heavily by those produced for the Adventure! ruleset, new rules for purchasing equipment and a list of new gear, era appropriate weapons, and of course new Edges for the 30s characters.

1966
After the 30s game, there was a long hiatus. When we picked up the story of IT again, we jumped forward in time to the 1960s. Set in Las Vegas and its environs, the new story focused on a series of strange heroes working to save the world against a capitalist madman; Howard Hughes. Inspired by the real-world Hughes purchase of vast swathes of the Vegas strip, the 60s game was based around the eccentric entrepreneur's deal with the Men in Gray. They gave Hughes the plan to build the city into a massive Lemarchand device that would keep the strip separate from the universe and give the Gray Men the ability to enact stasis on the rest of the world. I spent some time reading up on the casinos of Vegas in the era to give the game a decent sense of place. This game included some of the weirder characters we've seen so far, including Forrest Gump and Black Betty, a vampire-hunting vigilante inspired by the Ram Jam song. This game included a special guest appearance by Charles Manson as a vampire and his Family of flower-child thralls.

Rome: Part One
Following the '66 game, I chose to throw us back. Way back. Our next game took place during the twilight of the Roman Republic. There were few fictional characters to draw from for this game, so nearly everyone chose a historical figure to play. The game followed a strike force led by Pompey Magnus that headed into Gaul, investigating a falling star that landed in the hinterlands of Gaul. The meteor was inspired by kryptonite, the Color Out of Space, and the warpstone of Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy setting. This series of IT games not only gave me the chance to design new Edges for historical characters, but also allowed me to create an all new set of weapons, armor, and defensive measures. By far the game focused on melee combat, which required me to reevaluate how the close combat system of IT worked. There we go! To my knowledge that brings everyone up to speed with our IT games so far. There will be more in the near future (1760s, Rome: Part 2, 1944, I'm looking at you). Check back in a few years and I'm sure I'll have added more.