Just Imagine...

[robotnik2004]

Random idea I'm too busy/lazy to work up into a series of posts:

Anyone remember that "Just Imagine" series of comics where a wondering world "finally" got to see how Stan Lee would "re-imagine" the classic DC Heroes? So you had "Just Imagine... Stan Lee creating Superman," "Just Imagine... Stan Lee creates Batman," and so on. Insert Stan-bashing joke here, except it's just too easy, so instead I'll link to "Just Imagine... Stan Lee creating the Watchmen."

So I was thinking about how, in both good ways and bad, Gary Gygax was like the Stan Lee of gaming. And I started to amuse myself by "just imagining" Gary Gygax's Dogs in the Vineyard, or Gary Gygax's Unknown Armies, or any fairly non-Gygaxian game you have an affinity for, with all kinds of Gygaxian verbiage and random tables and anagrams of Gygax for all the place names.

And then jeffwik  and bryant  both posted postmortems on recent games they've run (and let me just say that you two may not be entirely happy with everything about them, but I'd have knifed a moderately-sized orangutan to play in either one) and that got me thinking about old games I've played in and old games I wish I'd played in, and that turned the Just Imagine idea into something where I'd mix and match the names of classic games from our circle onto the interests and obsessions of game masters from same.  In other words:

• Just Imagine... jeffwik's Orlando Trash! (you know, because of Jeff's Disney thing)
• Just Imagine... bryant's Airportation! (no idea what this would be - it's just a name with potential)
• Just Imagine... robotnik's Uncanny Valley! (no idea what that would be about either - robots, presumably - I've just always been jealous of that as a name for a game)
• Just Imagine... jeregenest's Through the Delbruek Gate! (dunno - the name just sounds like it could be Jeremiah's), that or else jeregenest's Unknown USA (that I'd dig).
• Just Imagine... mgrasso 's Pantellos! (faeries, natch)

(I'm missing lots of key people, I know, but I'm coming up with these games off the top of my head. And the names of most of the cool head58 games I can remember reading about take the form "[adjective] Star Wars.")

So anyway: just imagine... I finished and fleshed out this post!

Comments

[head58.livejournal.com]

Hey! I'm a binary GM - I either do Star Wars or superhero games (and for the record, I'd love to Just Imagine...robotnik's Teen Justice!)

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

Or Rolemaster.

[head58.livejournal.com]

Dude, that is *so* a thinly-veiled Star Wars game. Chaos Lords=Mandalorians. Undead Elf Prince=Dark Lord of the Sith.

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

So what am I, a well-spoken, shaved wookie?

[head58.livejournal.com]

I'm just glad I'm not the one who had to say it.

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

You are so dead.

[allegedly.livejournal.com]

"[adjective] Star Wars."

"Zany Star Wars!" -jazz hands-

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

"Romantic Comedy Star Wars!" -montage-

[allegedly.livejournal.com]

-laughs- Nice.

[bryant]

Sure, I'll write that sucker up. :)

Also: that_cad's Inquisitor's Library, plz.

[head58.livejournal.com]

No. that_cad's Starchildren

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Steampunk Starchildren!
No, Starpunk Steamchildren.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's a good one. I almost gave him Steampunk Star Wars, with the stipulation that it couldn't actually involve Star Wars, but that seemed a little baroque.

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

That wouldn't be too difficult for me given that I've only seen the "first" Star Wars movie and Return of the JedI and the last twenty minutes of the last prequel.

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

In the grim future of that_cad's Inquisitor's Library, everyone wears castle turrets as armor everywhere they go.

[peaseblossom.livejournal.com]

On their legs! We all wear castle turret pants.

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

"WHY DO YOU KEEP SHOOTING US IN THE RIGHT LEG?! WHAT DO YOU MANIACS WANT FROM US!?!"

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

I also want to see jeffwik's Dungeon Majesty. Or editswithlonghair's Dungeon Majesty.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Nice. You could also mash up titles: So-and-so's World's Largest Dungeon Majesty.

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

head58's Orlando Sleeps Tonight.

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

Oh! Oh! bryant's Teen Justice.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

For the second year in a row, the fabled Northwest Passage has opened in the Arctic--thanks to a sea-ice melt that has already shrunk the polar cap to the second smallest extent ever recorded. And with a few more weeks to go in the summer thaw season, 2008 could surpass 2007 as the smallest amount of sea ice on record, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

There was a lot of tongue and cheek commentary about the Northwest passage when people started becoming aware of the melting of the artic ice. There was even more commentary about the dangers of a new geopolitical “cold” war. Well things were much weirder, and dire than most commentators could imagine.
Buried beneath the artic ice was an ancient gateway, that now freed became active and strange things started coming through, prowling the northern oceans. This made a bad geopolitical situation worse and soon Russia, the US, Canada and the Scandinavian countries were just about at war with each other. A situation that only continues to degrade.

And while it degrades the dreams of people continue to grow strange, dark and decadent a new era of fear and superstition seems to be dawning.

The players are a band of misfits assembled by the type of scientist who seems to belong more to fiction than reality. Their mission, understand this strange gate she’s found in the artic. Doing so while dodging crazed submarines and battle groups, and beyond…well beyond lurks all of humanities hopes and fears.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

That's what I'm talking about! The rest of you get to work!

(Look, he even mixed in some intentional typos so it really looks like a jeregenest post.)

[ratmmjess.livejournal.com]

Ha ha! I'm not named, so I don't have to get to work!

Instead I get to...go through hundreds of pages of Indian filmography searching for films I can actually find usable information on.

*sob*

[head58.livejournal.com]

ratmmjess's Battle Without Honor or Humanity

(and since we're doing out-of-towners, apparently: princeofcairo's Tentanae Animis Caelestibus Irae)

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

The internets are sadly devoid of much specific source material on Pantellos, but from what I remember hearing in the immediate aftermath/during the Age of Paranoia period, it already sounds like a game I'd run, or want to run.

But you want faeries and geopolitical spy goodness? Okay, I'll give it a shot.

---

The world's best operatives do their grad work at Domdaniel.

One day you'll get a green rose: at your desk, in your car, on your hotel room service cart, in the drawer where you keep your sidearm. That's the invitation.

Finding Domdaniel, the legendary School for Spies, is much harder.

It's a legend to most old spies, the retired chaps living out their last years with lucrative sinecures on the boards of shadowy multinationals... but wasn't that Agent OBERON with a green carnation in his lapel in that photo?

You won't remember being taken to Domdaniel.

Some say the cabal that runs Domdaniel watched too many reruns of The Prisoner and made their "training village" intentionally weird and unearthly to inculcate focus and loyalty. Others remember older stories, those of the hashashim, given pleasures and then trained to kill so that they could return to the Mountain of their order.

The spies who come back from Domdaniel are... changed.

They can change their appearance at will, or discover an enemy agent's greatest desires... or fears. They can produce weapons from seemingly nowhere. They are the Perfected Agents.

Of course, someone else is doing your job at the Agency. They look just like you, and talk and act like you, but they're not you. They're there to make sure you can go on the missions you're paid handsomely for.

---

Changeling: the Lost and espionage go quite well together, actually. Hmm.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Sweet!

"But why is it called 'Pantellos'?"

"'Pantellos' are those little curly toed shoes they wear."

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Oh, so *this* doesn't get posted on "Old is the New New; Comments Welcome"? What are we? Chopped liver? You ashamed of us? ;p

Personally, I'd like to see head58's 'vs. The Red Madness' because I've been jonzing for some pulp lately. ;)

[head58.livejournal.com]

It's a big galaxy out there. And old. And there are a lot of things that the Republic and the Order don't want you to know about. Things that entire planetary economies are built around making you forget about. Things you won't see on the Holonet and that you'll never see in the shops on Bespin. Things older than the Sith - and I'm talking the *real* Sith here, not these guys with red lightsabers. You didn't know about them, did you? The Infinite Empire? What about back when Tatooine was lush and green, and Kashyyyk was a desert. And what do the Tuskens really look like under those bandages? That, you already know; you just don't want to admit it.

Yeah, there's a lot you don't know. We'll see if we can fix that.

Unknown Star Wars

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

This post is made of win.