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

[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."