Kayfabe Confidential
Dec. 16th, 2004 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotnik2004So the "five games I'd like to run" post has mutated, X-Men style, into the "five games I'd like you to run" post, a far more virulent meme, because you can post it without even pretending you'll do the work of running the games you suggest. That's evolution, baby! Let's not argue about who suggested this variation first, let's just get down to it.
The rest of the gang seems to have approached this from the "what would I like to play?" angle, which is interesting, and will be useful data for future games, especially if anyone could isolate and then synthesize the hidden elements that make a game appealing to Brant and Jeremiah and Jeff and Ivan and... Why, you'd have some kind of unstoppable super game! But I thought of it more like "what do I think you should be running?" because clearly, who knows what each of you should do with your own time and imagination better than me? So these are tailor-made game ideas, not that off-the-rack stuff, and here's hoping I get to everybody who wants one before I get tired of this.
We'll start with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bryant, since he's meeting up with me tonight to teach me about magnets. Here are the specs: it's got to involve wrestling. I've been wanting Bryant to run a wrestling game ever since I left wrestling out of Unknown USA in deference to his encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. His proposed UA wrestling game sounds excellent, but it's cheating for me to just ditto an idea somebody else has already proposed. And it would be great if we could also leverage Bryant's equally encyclopedic knowledge of the movies, and his passion for American politics, particularly their seamier side. And this game ought to be set in California, since I've never played in a game of Bryant's that wasn't. All of which brings me to:
Kayfabe Confidential
Los Angeles. 1950.
The city is exploding. It's an age of paranoia and bebop jazz. Mickey Cohen's mob is muscling in on Hollywood while Hoover's G-Men root for Commies under every bed. They're testing atomic terrors out in the desert—don't worry, all those crazy Nazi scientists work for Uncle Sam now—and did we mention that Joe Stalin has the bomb? But none of that matters for forty-five minutes on Saturday night, when Gorgeous George Wagner steps in front of the cameras and into the ring. The crowd goes wild—hissing, booing, and spitting. Gorgeous George gets a dozen marriage proposals a week... and thirty or forty death threats. He's the first true star of a new medium called television, and he's more despised in America than Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs combined.
There are others like him. Classy Freddie Blassie, known as both the Vampire and the Hollywood Fashion Plate, and almost as widely hated as Gorgeous George. The masked luchadore Blue Demon, a hero in his native land, forced to play a heel to wrestle in El Norte. Maybe the crowd knows the wrestling is fake. Does it matter? Everything's fake in this town, except the money and the stink of fear.
But what the crowd doesn't know is that when the heels finish their phony matches, they leave the ring and the TV lights, and they wrestle for real, against the hidden terrors of the atomic age. In this secret war, they are not heels but heroes: Young Alexander Moreno donned the mask of the Blue Demon when his parents were gunned down by criminals and he vowed to devote his life to bodyslamming crime. Nobody knows the source of Gorgeous George's prodigious strength, but his golden locks shine with the rays of Earth's yellow sun...
Tangent: Did anyone ever notice that James Ellroy has virtually the same secret origin as Batman?
Yes, there are zombies to pin, and the vampiric women of Aztec myth, and maybe even alien invaders with pod people and robots and mind-control rays. But there are more prosaic terrors under the California sun. Gangland intrigue, sick serial killers, Hollywood sleaze, and a relentless HUAC investigator determined to expose our wrestling heroes as a gang of Commies, fruits, and reefer-smoking wetbacks.
This is James Ellroy's secret Mexican wrestling movie. It's the story of a city in thrall to two uncanny inventions: television and the atom bomb. It's Red Scare atomic horror but it's not played for laughs. It's weird-tinged, hard-boiled, L.A. noir.
The key motifs are masks and lies. The fakery in the ring, where our heroes are hated heels, conceals their real heroism, which in turn masks the real secrets they must hide in an age of unreasoning fear. If I were a player in this game, I'd be tempted to make George and the Blue Demon lovers, a kind of Golden Age Apollo and the Midnighter. Homophobia was so clearly the source of Gorgeous George's infamy and his appeal. If he actually was gay, well, the layers of defiance and self-denial that would go into constructing a persona like that just make my head spin.
"Forget it, Jake. It's lucha-town."
(I better do some work now. More to come.)
The rest of the gang seems to have approached this from the "what would I like to play?" angle, which is interesting, and will be useful data for future games, especially if anyone could isolate and then synthesize the hidden elements that make a game appealing to Brant and Jeremiah and Jeff and Ivan and... Why, you'd have some kind of unstoppable super game! But I thought of it more like "what do I think you should be running?" because clearly, who knows what each of you should do with your own time and imagination better than me? So these are tailor-made game ideas, not that off-the-rack stuff, and here's hoping I get to everybody who wants one before I get tired of this.
We'll start with
bryant, since he's meeting up with me tonight to teach me about magnets. Here are the specs: it's got to involve wrestling. I've been wanting Bryant to run a wrestling game ever since I left wrestling out of Unknown USA in deference to his encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. His proposed UA wrestling game sounds excellent, but it's cheating for me to just ditto an idea somebody else has already proposed. And it would be great if we could also leverage Bryant's equally encyclopedic knowledge of the movies, and his passion for American politics, particularly their seamier side. And this game ought to be set in California, since I've never played in a game of Bryant's that wasn't. All of which brings me to:Kayfabe Confidential Los Angeles. 1950.
The city is exploding. It's an age of paranoia and bebop jazz. Mickey Cohen's mob is muscling in on Hollywood while Hoover's G-Men root for Commies under every bed. They're testing atomic terrors out in the desert—don't worry, all those crazy Nazi scientists work for Uncle Sam now—and did we mention that Joe Stalin has the bomb? But none of that matters for forty-five minutes on Saturday night, when Gorgeous George Wagner steps in front of the cameras and into the ring. The crowd goes wild—hissing, booing, and spitting. Gorgeous George gets a dozen marriage proposals a week... and thirty or forty death threats. He's the first true star of a new medium called television, and he's more despised in America than Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs combined.
There are others like him. Classy Freddie Blassie, known as both the Vampire and the Hollywood Fashion Plate, and almost as widely hated as Gorgeous George. The masked luchadore Blue Demon, a hero in his native land, forced to play a heel to wrestle in El Norte. Maybe the crowd knows the wrestling is fake. Does it matter? Everything's fake in this town, except the money and the stink of fear.
But what the crowd doesn't know is that when the heels finish their phony matches, they leave the ring and the TV lights, and they wrestle for real, against the hidden terrors of the atomic age. In this secret war, they are not heels but heroes: Young Alexander Moreno donned the mask of the Blue Demon when his parents were gunned down by criminals and he vowed to devote his life to bodyslamming crime. Nobody knows the source of Gorgeous George's prodigious strength, but his golden locks shine with the rays of Earth's yellow sun...
Tangent: Did anyone ever notice that James Ellroy has virtually the same secret origin as Batman?
Yes, there are zombies to pin, and the vampiric women of Aztec myth, and maybe even alien invaders with pod people and robots and mind-control rays. But there are more prosaic terrors under the California sun. Gangland intrigue, sick serial killers, Hollywood sleaze, and a relentless HUAC investigator determined to expose our wrestling heroes as a gang of Commies, fruits, and reefer-smoking wetbacks.
This is James Ellroy's secret Mexican wrestling movie. It's the story of a city in thrall to two uncanny inventions: television and the atom bomb. It's Red Scare atomic horror but it's not played for laughs. It's weird-tinged, hard-boiled, L.A. noir.
The key motifs are masks and lies. The fakery in the ring, where our heroes are hated heels, conceals their real heroism, which in turn masks the real secrets they must hide in an age of unreasoning fear. If I were a player in this game, I'd be tempted to make George and the Blue Demon lovers, a kind of Golden Age Apollo and the Midnighter. Homophobia was so clearly the source of Gorgeous George's infamy and his appeal. If he actually was gay, well, the layers of defiance and self-denial that would go into constructing a persona like that just make my head spin.
"Forget it, Jake. It's lucha-town."
(I better do some work now. More to come.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 07:33 am (UTC)<--- desperately seeking egoboo :)
no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 07:39 am (UTC)Re: Five or "If this is anyone but Hagbard Celine, you're stealing my bit!"
Date: 2004-12-16 07:40 am (UTC)Re: Five or "If this is anyone but Hagbard Celine, you're stealing my bit!"
Date: 2004-12-16 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 07:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 07:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 07:53 am (UTC)("I want a party, with tons and tons of ice-creeeeaaaaaaam!")
no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 08:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 10:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 11:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 12:05 pm (UTC)Yeah, there's lots you could do with the heroes-who-must-pose-as-heels thing. Like if the PC had a girlfriend, or a kid, to whom they could not tell the truth. Classic Peter Parker angst set up.
I dunno about system. Something fun to model wrestling with is the only requirement.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 12:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 08:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 01:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 01:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 01:52 pm (UTC)*bat bat* <-- eyelashes
no subject
Date: 2004-12-17 07:57 am (UTC)As to the design skills ... if you ever want or need help in that area, seriously, let me know. I'll be happy to take on a project like that, wherever I'm living at the time.