D20 and Prohibition: Ideas?

[Guildenstern]

Hey guys, it's been a while since I've run a campaign, my last successful venture being documented in a campaign log here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=238547). Since then I've been preoccupied with work and haven't had the time to go very in depth with a new adventure. But recently I've had a particular idea bouncing around in my head. What I want to do is run a game set during Prohibition in the United States. The players will be rum-runners for a local speakeasy, to make adventure hooks and missions more organized, and carry out jobs ranging from shipment pick-ups to strongarm operations. If you read the campaign setup in the linked forum above, you'll get an idea of what I'm looking to do setting-wise: stick Earth into the Great Wheel cosmology of the Planes and have a ton of fun with culture shock. Last time I set things in the future where seeing an elf in Manhattan would be more or less normal, but I'm looking to set things up this time circa 1926, where dwarves, elves, and the like would largely be on the receiving end of prejudices that would have at the time been reserved for Irish Catholics or Chinese immigrants. I've also given some thought to bumping the time forward again so we can have cybernetics and other tech but re-introducing a prohibition mandate. Essentially do for the 1920s what Fallout did for the 1950s. I haven't totally decided yet.

I've got a lot of the tone and setting stewing in my brain right now, but every time I go to write specifics I tend to get hung up. I tend to like big spectacle, as my previous adventure can attest, so writing the ins and outs of regular missions can sometimes be taxing. Since I like to hear what people on these forums can come up with, I thought I'd throw this current idea out there and see if any of you have any ideas or hooks that I could use for regular adventures. If you were in a game like this, what's something you'd really like to do? Rob a whiskey shipment on a riverboat outside New Orleans? Shake a tail sent out by that high-and-mighty Eladrin agent from the Department of the Treasury? Blow up a rival gin joint's distillery hidden in the border towns of the Outlands?

Hit me, folks, let me see what you've got.

[hemming]

Well, the first big decision (although it not be mutually exclusive) is are these city or country boys?

The city based, distribution network controlling gangs of the metropolitan area are a well of inspiration to draw from (St. Valentines day massacre, Italian vs. Irish gangs from the old world, etc.)

But so to are the 'rural gangsters' who control production and are responsible for transportation (hide or move a still from searching coppers, car chases on country back roads, moonshine auctions, wars with enemy rural producers). "The Wettest County in the World" by Matt Bondurant is a great bloody tale of rural roughneck bootleggers in Virginia

[Guildenstern]

Like you said, I'm not looking to make it mutually exclusive. Chicago or Manhattan might be the most prominent examples of Prohibition cities in America at the time, but I'm a resident of Portland, Oregon and I'm looking to set the game right here. Apart from implementing its own state-level Prohibition a full four years before National Prohibition, giving it a pretty lengthy history, we've got not just a downtown metropolitan area (though admittedly much smaller at the time, and I might blow it up a little bit given that historical accuracy isn't huge in a setting involving the Planes) but we're also in the middle of logging country, giving us plenty of backwoods to play with. Add in the fact that the Willamette Valley produces some of the best hops in the country just begging to be turned into illegal beers and we're on our way to something.

[Brookshw]

The door opens to the back room of the speak easy. An Orange skinned creature is seated before a desk. Standing on the desk holding is a foot and a half tall psuedo dragon in a well tailored suite is holding the Orange skinned creature by its collar and repeatedly punching it in the face, the sound is sickening like wet meat being thrown against a wall. With a final blow the chair toppled backward and you see the pulverized remains of a hobgoblin. The psuedo dragon walks back across the top of the desk and leaps into the chair behind it. Pulling out a cigar and lighting it he looks the group over.

"git im out o my sight" he snarled to the ogre that had let you in. The ogre obediently drags the remains of the hobgoblin out. The psuedo dragon blows a smoke ring and goes back to studying the group.
"i hear you're looking for work. Well, thanks to numb nuts der it just so happens I'm in need of a few extra hands. Seems do'es green skins managed to jack a shipment of raw ingredient we need to keep the stills flowing. I need someone to get em back. Can't be anyone associated with my crew or they'll see em coming a mile away. Interested?"

Various ideas: recover raw ingredients, recover finished product, protect shipment, expand/defend territory, negotiate deals, get the law to lay off.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Guildenstern
...my last successful venture being documented in a campaign log here.

Sadly, while the link to the thread is still good, the links to your journal itself seem to be kaput.

:smallfrown:

[Guildenstern]

Well. I think that pseudo dragon just became my first minor villain. Nice description, I dig it.


Sadly, while the link to the thread is still good, the links to your journal itself seem to be kaput.

:smallfrown:

Whoops, sorry about that, man. My domain name expired a little while ago and the links direct to the old URL. Should be fixed now, give it a try.

[hemming]

Elliot Ness and the untouchables should be a group of Inevitables

A great Gatsby type character could be great to work in - there are a lot of things you can do with an elusive, party throwing millionaire

A few things I personally would want to do:

-outbluff the cops looking for the secret entrance to a speakeasy

-develop a network of corruption within the police/local politics - use this to defend myself and harass competitors

-fire a machine gun out of a car window at pursuing cars, call shots on the tires

[Sith_Happens]

Just watch out for police Wizards.:smallamused:

[Joe the Rat]

It's the Private Investigator Wizards that are the real headache.

An important question here is how integrated will the New Cosmology be to the world? The idea of these "immigrants" being all over the place already - at least in the US - is a minor shift in the slums and slurs. This is taking the idea that introduction to the Great Wheel is a recent thing, and that the fantasy races don't simply "spawn" everywhere at once, or do a Shadowrun-style Awakening. (Be aware of the inevitable comparisons to Shadowrun. Point out that's over a hundred years off and move on.) Picture massive Gates on Ellis Island, and in San Francisco (or if you want to concentrate your weirdness, make Portland a major Planar Port). Run it back to the 1880s, and you've got a decent amount of integration - sufficient that you have some stereotypical race-profession things going. Dwarf cops and the like.

Not only do you have to deal with bootleggers from up north, or the Rogue River bunch, but you've got the risk of interplanar bootlegging - bringing in alcohol, or unknown & unlicensed goods, forbidden magic, and dangerous monsters. There aren't Owlbears in the woods until someone accidentally releases them.

Make a note of where the non-humans pop up in the background.

Which brings the question of where the party fits in.

[Brookshw]

Devil run corporations seem like fun. They'll build the railroads and make the trains run on time. Maybe using souls to fuel the engines but that a separate matter. Demons of course run the stock market.

[Perturbulent]

Remember the fun of the FBI being introduced around now and the introduction of Hoover. I imagine the FBI would have some decent otherworldly things on their sides given the cosmos shift. Perhaps they've got dopplegangers or some telepathic baddies on their side.

If you wanted to, you could reverse it, the players are working to stamp out these bootleggers.

[Guildenstern]

This is some pretty good stuff so far. The idea of a soul-run railroad is almost definitely getting worked in, I love that.

It's safe to say that the FBI and some various Hoover dealings will get involved later (scrying and the like), though I'd want to escalate to that over time. Rival gangs > Treasury Department > other Federal troubles, or something like that.

I have no idea how I didn't think about a Jay Gatsby character before. A reclusive war hero throwing elaborate parties for the upper crust? Well, somebody like that is gonna need some libations, right? And that Gatsby always was a secretive fellow...

Untouchables as Inevitables. I love it. There is simply no way I *can't* have Sean Connery as a character in this. And there are way too many jokes about Kevin Costner hailing from a neutral, mechanized plane of existence where his personality is constantly being wiped away.

As for the Planar integration, most of the backstory I came up with can be found in the first half of the setting description I gave for my last game, here (http://www.nerdwatchshow.blogspot.com/2012/03/tales-from-tabletop-setting.html). I'm really not acquainted with Shadowrun at all, but the idea I had hinted at was there was a kind of mysticism surrounding stories: insofar as art imitates life so too can art influence it. The more people shared stories of fantastic creatures the closer we got to coming into contact with them. More stories = more planar portals = more confrontation with the Planes. The Enlightenment kinda messed up the normal progression for a time, but the ball had already gotten rolling at that point so it was really more of a stumbling block than a brick wall. The big shift started happening around the mid 1890s so pretty much everybody knows about the other races but they're still regarded with a lot of suspicion. You're more likely to find a dwarf shining your shoes than enforcing the law, let's say, though some other races did take part in the war.

But suffice to say, extraplanar smuggling of everything from Dwarven ales to hellhounds will be a common problem. The players are really more concerned with making sure that this stuff doesn't impede their own bootlegging operations as opposed to stopping them. Make no mistake, the players are criminals, but I'm hoping to make a distinction between "criminal" and "psychopath".

[Brookshw]

Hmmm.....Jay Gatsby as a retired blood war merc?

I'm chuckling at the idea of underground hellhound fighting rings now.

Are you familiar with http://www.lackadaisycats.com/? I'm kinda feeling like Rakshasa's need to get worked in somewhere (I probably misspelled that but still!)

[Socksy]

My first thought was "Well, the Drunken Master PrC is going to need a bunch of new abilities."

[Guildenstern]

Are you familiar with http://www.lackadaisycats.com/? I'm kinda feeling like Rakshasa's need to get worked in somewhere (I probably misspelled that but still!)

Lackadaisy is what prompted me to explore this setting. I found it a few months back and fell in love with it pretty much immediately. It's that kind of struggling underground tone that I want to convey here.

[hemming]

Even more stuff I would want to do in this game (bc the RP possibilities are awesome):

-Use the words dames, mugs and see as much as possible (As in "Heres the deal, see - You mugs need to the get those dames out of the gin joint")

-Acquire a gangster nickname (like pretty boy Floyd or Machine Gun Kelly)

-Take perform skills in jazz piano - skills in Craft (moonshine)

-Bank (or armored car) robbery as part of funding a small arms race with rival gangs

-Encounter a highly stylized, reoccurring noir detective NPC - be double crossed by an initially sympathetic, highly believable client

-Have to deal with annoying temperance societies - actually being prompted to find ways to discredit leaders of a teetotaler/temperance movement could be interesting (include Carrie Nation and her hatchetations for sure - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Nation

[Guildenstern]

Hah, I'm definitely feeling a society of Temperance Clerics. In the event that levity is ever required, I think something like that would make a good recurring "bumbling adversary" that could make for a more lighthearted session now and again.