what a Pulp-Roaring 20's Planescape would look like

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Gerzel's picture
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what a Pulp-Roaring 20's Planescape would look like

Just thinking what a Pulp-Roaring 20's Planescape would look like. Here are a few ideas.

1. In order to have the mob families arise on the planes like they did in that era there needs to be some business for them to control. By bussines I mean something illegal for them to smuggle, make and sell over the planes. PS doesn't really have a wide spread enough government to make such bans far reaching enough if you want mobsters racing across the outlands with huge supplies of liquer.
2. Solution: Make the upper planes and coorisponding areas of the outlands land under the control of one government. Perhaps put Prohibition from Elysium on over around the ring to the Gray Waste. What started out as a crusade of ideals and good intentions has spread far beyond what it can stand. If you want to go a little less then say the new order covers Acheron through Bytopia. I like the wider spread myself because it gives Law outwardly more power, thus the chaos of gangland can really erupt to restore the balance (Did someone mention Rilmani?).
3. Sigil may fall under either side of wet or dry. I like to have it with one side trying to enforce the laws while the other side thumbs their noses at it. Think of it as Sigcago?
4. The Astral -- Dry when the authorities are around in greater numbers than those who want it wet.
5. The Inner Planes -- Groups are trying to bring prohibition to the elementals, but the elementals are curios what this alcohol is, except for the fire ones they like the burning.
6. The Etherial -- Some try to make the strongholds of the fey dry…It's rather amusing to watch.
7. The Primes -- As always with Primes it is a case by case basis.

8. Technology. Steam, internal combustion, tommy guns, dynamite and electricity, need I really go on at this point?

9. The Far Realm and Lovecraftian ideas -- There truly are things that man and planar was just not meant to know… and those things are waking up.

10. Dark Continents: Three oceans have been discovered on the outlands each about 7 days travel from their nearest gatetown away from the spire. Strange reports of dark continents with unknown horrors are filtering back. Reports of riches of coarse are rushing back.

11. Nazis -- The ultimate baddies for pulpgames. It just wouldn't be the same without an evil well-educated empire making moves towards world and planar domination. These guys have taken over a confederation of Prime Worlds and are starting to make theirselves known on the planes, espousing the virtures of racial purity and other ideals. Note: This is an early Nazi era where their role is uncertain to the outside world. Even good people might susscribe to their ideas believing that the bad things they might or might not have heard are just fiction.

Korimyr the Rat's picture
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what a Pulp-Roaring 20's Planescape would look like

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Originally posted by Gerzel 11. Nazis -- The ultimate baddies for pulpgames. It just wouldn't be the same without an evil well-educated empire making moves towards world and planar domination. These guys have taken over a confederation of Prime Worlds and are starting to make theirselves known on the planes, espousing the virtures of racial purity and other ideals. Note: This is an early Nazi era where their role is uncertain to the outside world. Even good people might subscribe to their ideas believing that the bad things they might or might not have heard are just fiction.

Hobgoblins. Maglubiyet's forces are temporarily winning in the constant wars of Acheron, and thus the goblins of the Prime are more powerful than ever. As they grow in power, they've sought out the advantages of civilization and technology to use against their Orcish enemies, and anyone with Orcish blood, and Orc sympathizers, and maybe a half-dozen other groups of "undesirables".

After all, it's pretty easy for most people to agree with getting rid of all Orcs, everywhere... and plenty of otherwise good people believe in killing orcs wherever they're found, even if they're just small Orc children. Of course, as the Hobgoblins' efforts branch out beyond their Orcish enemies, people will start to wonder when the slaughter will end...

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what a Pulp-Roaring 20's Planescape would look like

For a game like this, you might do things a bit light-heartedly only in the sense of having direct correspondences between Planescape figures and 20's figures. It can be just as serious as a normal game of mob wars and Nazis, but make it sort of... allegorical (maybe?) in the sense of have the hobgoblins be just like the Nazis, have yugoloth crime families that work just the same. It'd actually work better, in my opinion, than trying to come up with a legitimate extrapolation of Planescape into a 20's-level technology. If that were actually to happen, it'd be unbelievably unlikely that it would come out looking like the 20's-50's in America. So why not make is slightly parodic (though still entirely serious, in-game)?

eldersphinx's picture
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what a Pulp-Roaring 20's Planescape would look like

Banning alcohol in Planescape. Banning... alcohol... in Planescape. Banning... alcohol. In Planescape.

No way that's going to fly. The eladrins love their liquor, the modrons don't drink in the first place, and the fiends all jump at the chance to sell something really soul-destroying.

Now a ban or control on silver (in all forms) or maybe even raw magic itself... that could be a Prohibition worth talking about.

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what a Pulp-Roaring 20's Planescape would look like

Hmm... 20's mafia... bitterly competitive groups fighting, willing to kill and die in the streets for control over access to something violently contested... sounds like organized crime selling bootlegged alcohol... or the factions in the kriegstanz. What if the factions didn't leave after the Lady's Edict, but went underground? Nobody knows why the Lady hasn't taken them out permanently, and their rivalries have only gotten more extreme.

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what a Pulp-Roaring 20's Planescape would look like

Or maybe the fiends could have moved gangs into Sigil. The Blood War actually intensifies beyond what it was and they simply can't pass up Sigil's capacity to transport soldiers. The fiends' presence in Sigil is tolerated by the Lady as long as they don't break out into actual combat. But some celestials like to drive them out of hiding to provoke them to flaying-worthy violence. Some have even been known to enter into suicidal combat with fiend leaders in order to provoke the Lady into flaying them both. Fiends try to stay beneath her notice, but disrupt the others' presence in Sigil as much as possible.

Just to get the effect of gang warfare.

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what a Pulp-Roaring 20's Planescape would look like

"Rhys" wrote:
Some have even been known to enter into suicidal combat with fiend leaders in order to provoke the Lady into flaying them both. Fiends try to stay beneath her notice, but disrupt the others' presence in Sigil as much as possible.
Or perhaps she would continue to let them be. Fiends and celestials fighting one another makes them weaker and less attentive. Her Serenity could have an agenda all her own... or worse, is simply the "puppet" for some other criminal element looking to control Sigil and profit from the trade routes that pass through it. Keeping opposing forces occupied in a gangwars would keep such actions, discreet.

For all we know, the Rilmani are using the Lady of Pain in some bizarre interpretation of maintaining the Balance... by eliminating the threats to it.

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