Scenario doctors: "The Matter of Britain"

[RogerBW]

@Agemegos

Is Rugby the right school for Gonville and Arthur Wychurst to have been chums at? Or should it have been Harrow or Winchester?

What were the weapons and cars issued to the Sweeney in 1939?

Rugby should do. There’s plenty of commonality in culture between the various schools.

Incidentally both High and Low Church tendencies regard themselves as Protestant.

I suspect the few armed police have Webley revolvers, probably relatively old ones since there’s been desperate rearmament in the last few months.

@Agemegos

I think they could fly low down the Severn and Bristol Channel then turn south over west Somerset and East Devon.

Marginal, but they didn’t join up to be safe.

Ooh, if they have some sympathisers in southern Ireland, that might be a good place to aim for, by air or by fishing boat.

[MichaelCule]

1. I didn’t go to that posh a school so I dunno.
2. It isn’t a wrong college: I’m getting the impression Urban was fairly Low Church before his unwelcome miracle which fits Wadham.
3. Pass.
4. A Freudian is more mainstream but a Jungian is liable to be cooler with and more knowledgeable of the mythical and mystical stuff.
5. Does your chewing gum lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight?

[MichaelCule]

All right. I was going to ask where she gets the gall to think she qualifies for the sacred rulership but you’ve got that covered.

[JGD]

@RogerBW

I suspect the few armed police have Webley revolvers, probably relatively old ones since there’s been desperate rearmament in the last few months.

Yup, they’ll have old gate-loading revolvers in .442 Webley.

Boat to and from Ireland seems a lot more viable than aircraft, for that location. If they’re being creative about their cover, they’ll use a horse-drawn cart rather than a lorry, given the state of petrol rationing.

[JGD]

@Agemegos

On the 1st of August 1919 she bore a son whom she named Arthur Postumus. In 1927 he went to school at Winchester; Elaine “Charette” enrolled in the medical school at the University of London.

There is no hint of how she had the means to send her son to an expensive school, or to go to medical school herself. Nurses were not well-paid at the time, and there were no university grants.

[Agemegos]

@JGD

@Agemegos

On the 1st of August 1919 she bore a son whom she named Arthur Postumus. In 1927 he went to school at Winchester; Elaine “Charette” enrolled in the medical school at the University of London.

There is no hint of how she had the means to send her son to an expensive school, or to go to medical school herself. Nurses were not well-paid at the time, and there were no university grants.

Inherited money. Keswick did wartime service in the military nursing service out of a sense of patriotic duty, not because she needed the salary.

[JGD]

Fine, although it’s worth mentioning in her character description.

[Agemegos]

Should I mention Jardine Matheson explicitly, or just allude to family wealth?

[JGD]

I’d mention “Her family co-owns one of Hong Kong’s major trading companies.” or something like that. They aren’t so famous that one can assume people have heard of them, and they might conceivably object to their name being used for something fictional.

[Agemegos]

@JGD

I’d mention “Her family co-owns one of Hong Kong’s major trading companies.” or something like that. They aren’t so famous that one can assume people have heard of them, and they might conceivably object to their name being used for something fictional.

I doubt that they will have an informant in my friend Frank’s house on the Australia Day long weekend, but I suppose that it is in poor taste. I shall have to change Dr Charette’s maiden name. On the same grounds I suppose I ought to make Lady Alice the sister of some fictional duke and a descendant of a fictional branch of the Plantagenets.

[JGD]

It’s easier to get these things clean at the start than to have to revise them when they go up on the web.

[Agemegos]

True.

Would it be alright if I made Lady Alice sister of the Duke of Barchester, but still made her a Beaufort? I don’t think any of my players have read Trollope, but I know they have played Kingmaker.

[JGD]

Sounds good to me; the fictional infrastructure of England is always worth adding to.

[RogerBW]

If in doubt, there are plenty of nonexistent titles in Georgette Heyer…

[Agemegos]

Yes, but at least two and probably three of my players have read quite a bit of Georgette Heyer, and would recognise them.

The attraction of using famous surnames such as “Beaufort”, “Somerset”, and “Keswick” is that they automatically invoke the Ken Hite advantages of setting your game in the real world. If a character’s name is “Keswick” and she can afford to send her son to Winchester College then with two tiny details you have defined her place in the world. Likewise, if an NPC can say “My name is Lady Alice Somerset. I am a Beaufort” in withering tones then you can get five centuries of snobbishness and dynastic pride into two short sentences, with a myriad of connections and allusions. But if you fictionalise her dynasty you borrow half a page of exposition and a certain insult to the suspension of disbelief. Whereas if you try it on with “Alastair” and “Avon” you risk a chuckle.

[Agemegos]

@MichaelCule

1. I didn’t go to that posh a school so I dunno.

Eton and Harrow are posh schools. Rugby is a railway junction.

2. It isn’t a wrong college: I’m getting the impression Urban was fairly Low Church before his unwelcome miracle which fits Wadham.

Indeed. I found it quite tricky to place Urban so that his sin and miracle would work out right. He is of course an echo of Pope Urban IV in the legend of Tännhauser, so he had to refuse absolution saying “I can no more absolve X than Y can happen”, Y being both clearly miraculous and connected with his priesthood. Which means of course him being of a denomination and faction for whom individual confession is possible, and he had to be (a) unreasonably cross at the time and (b) not used to people making some very strange confessions. Low church Anglican was the only solution I could think of. And it cost me quite some thought to get the circumstances of Arthur’s confession and the miracle just right. If, that is to say, that is what I’ve done.

4. A Freudian is more mainstream but a Jungian is liable to be cooler with and more knowledgeable of the mythical and mystical stuff.

Quite.

Who is going to deal better with betraying her fiancé with his own father?

5. Does your chewing gum lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight?

Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?

[Agemegos]

Ought I to account for Captain Gonville’s wealth? Sir Edwin’s? Or does it go without saying that male officers are wealthy?

[JGD]

@Agemegos

Ought I to account for Captain Gonville’s wealth? Sir Edwin’s? Or does it go without saying that male officers are wealthy?

You’ve accounted for Sir Edwin’s wealth in his biography; a line about Captain Godwin’s or the Rev Urban’s would not go amiss, but it’s not so necessary as that for a widow.

[Agemegos]

@RogerBW

But it’s tricky to set up, particularly in the span of a convention scenario.

Fortunately the plan now is only to run it for some friends at the long weekend. I could if I need to take a couple of five-hour sessions.

[Agemegos]

@Agemegos

The problem with all this is that it has two themes, and constantly threatens to fall apart into two stories — a story can no more have two themes than a man can ride two bicycles. There are two core conflicts: a politically-driven conflict between the PCs and Lady Alice; and a personal conflict between the PCs and Arthur over their betrayals and his despair.

First the PCs have to fight the Nazis and frustrate their plot, which is very exoteric, very concrete and procedural. Then they have to confront Arthur and the fairy king and queen of Wychbury Ring, atone for their betrayals, reconcile, persuade him to return etc. All of which is very esoteric, interpersonal, and dramatic. I’m afraid that Nazi-biffing will completely dominate the first two acts, leaving the Arthurian/Tännhauser stuff as a thematically unrelated coda, which means of course that the Chrêtien-de-Troyes-style betrayal and sin will not colour the first part, and have a mess of unrelated disparate elements in an adventure that stops with a clunk when one of its core conflicts is resolved and then has to be re-started with a new initiating incident.

One solution is to cut one of the conflicts out. That probably means the Ahnenerbe, because the PCs don’t make a great deal of sense without Arthur Wychurst. But it seems a lot to go all the way to 1939 and not end up with Nazis.

Another is to entirely embed one plot inside the other, Wizard of Oz -style. That is, start with the rescue of Arthur and introduce the Nazis as an obstacle that has to be overcome to get back to the main plot. Or start with the Nazis, and make rescuing Arthur a means to defeating them.

The best perhaps would be to make rescuing Arthur and defeating the Nazis somehow the same thing . Make it a race/contest between the PCs and the Ahnenerbe/BUF to secure the person of Arthur. But that only makes sense if Arthur is the Grail King, or if Lady Alice can’t supplant Sir Edwin while Arthur is alive.

So do I make Sir Edwin an NPC who can be treated as a McGuffin? And then what if (as is likely) I need a fifth PC?

I still don’t have a solution to this problem, and still haven’t run the adventure. I hope that perhaps one of our numerous and ingenious new members might have a suggestion to make.

Start your stethoscopes, scenario-doctors!