Messages for my housemates and for my Delta Green players
Housemates:
Considering the arsey way Rose spoke to me last night, if she does the same again this evening, I'm strongly tempted to tell her I'll be moving out at the end of August.
We are her customers, after all, and I've been a pretty damn good customer at that.
If I move out at the end of August, but lose my deposit, I'm actually in profit, insofar as paying the rent on two houses for that month goes.
Hell, I may bring it up with her anyway - my deposit's more or less doomed thanks to the damage I've caused to the carpet anyway.
Just thought I'd give you the heads up - I'll keep you informed as to how it goes.
Delta Green Players:
I hope this doesn't clash with character concepts too much, but I've decided to shift the setting of the campaign back to the more canonical (for Delta Green) year of 1997.
That puts us in the Bill Clinton presidency, with all that that brings. We're just a few years post-Waco, post-fall of the Eastern Bloc, but also a few years pre-9/11, pre-Patriot Act, pre-Department of Homeland Security, pre-Iraq War.
But yeah, the reasons for the shift are various:
1) The Delta Green setting is written for the period circa 1995-7. Several canon NPCs are veterans of the Cold War, Vietnam and even World War II, and that can't be altered, as they did things then that shaped the world now. Others are younger, but still shaped by those events, and also can't be aged 10 years and still work as characters.
2) The makeup, responsibilities and powers of federal agencies have changed significantly since 9/11, and Delta Green predates that. It's simpler for me, basically. (Yeah, Moradrel - sorry about that, you might have to shift from ICE to either DEA or INS or something.)
3) Technology, potentially the bane of modern-day roleplaying, was at a more interesting (to me) and restricted level in the 90s. The internet was popular, but still an emerging technology. Nowadays we have WAP phones, Youtube, text messaging, none of which was widespread in the mid-90s. (The average text message user in 1995 sent 0.4 messages a month - it was a technology designed for deaf people to use on the phone.)
4) Today, the biggest perceived threat in the US is foreign: Al Qaeda. In the 1990s, the biggest issues the US is facing are actually domestic - the old enemy's gone, and Al Qaeda haven't yet developed into a genuine threat to US national security. The Oklahoma bombing and the siege at Waco have highlighted a new threat: that of heavily-armed anti-government militias, some of them racist groups, some of them demagogic cults, some of them simply anti-federalists and tax-dodgers.
5) If anyone gets shot or is forced to take convalescent leave for... other reasons... we can have a few months of downtime and still not have caught up with the modern day. It also lets me flex my historical-GMing muscles: "Between cases, the USS Cole was bombed in port in Yemen, leading to the bombing of several sights in Africa and Afghanistan. Critics of the retaliation say that President Clinton was trying to divert attention away from his impending impeachment hearings."
6) The X-Files was at its strongest during the mid-90s. Fight The Future.
Also, I'll be putting up an equipment post later today as well - I think I still have the one I made for the abortive RPG.net incarnation of this plot, saved in my Projects folder somewhere.
Considering the arsey way Rose spoke to me last night, if she does the same again this evening, I'm strongly tempted to tell her I'll be moving out at the end of August.
We are her customers, after all, and I've been a pretty damn good customer at that.
If I move out at the end of August, but lose my deposit, I'm actually in profit, insofar as paying the rent on two houses for that month goes.
Hell, I may bring it up with her anyway - my deposit's more or less doomed thanks to the damage I've caused to the carpet anyway.
Just thought I'd give you the heads up - I'll keep you informed as to how it goes.
Delta Green Players:
I hope this doesn't clash with character concepts too much, but I've decided to shift the setting of the campaign back to the more canonical (for Delta Green) year of 1997.
That puts us in the Bill Clinton presidency, with all that that brings. We're just a few years post-Waco, post-fall of the Eastern Bloc, but also a few years pre-9/11, pre-Patriot Act, pre-Department of Homeland Security, pre-Iraq War.
But yeah, the reasons for the shift are various:
1) The Delta Green setting is written for the period circa 1995-7. Several canon NPCs are veterans of the Cold War, Vietnam and even World War II, and that can't be altered, as they did things then that shaped the world now. Others are younger, but still shaped by those events, and also can't be aged 10 years and still work as characters.
2) The makeup, responsibilities and powers of federal agencies have changed significantly since 9/11, and Delta Green predates that. It's simpler for me, basically. (Yeah, Moradrel - sorry about that, you might have to shift from ICE to either DEA or INS or something.)
3) Technology, potentially the bane of modern-day roleplaying, was at a more interesting (to me) and restricted level in the 90s. The internet was popular, but still an emerging technology. Nowadays we have WAP phones, Youtube, text messaging, none of which was widespread in the mid-90s. (The average text message user in 1995 sent 0.4 messages a month - it was a technology designed for deaf people to use on the phone.)
4) Today, the biggest perceived threat in the US is foreign: Al Qaeda. In the 1990s, the biggest issues the US is facing are actually domestic - the old enemy's gone, and Al Qaeda haven't yet developed into a genuine threat to US national security. The Oklahoma bombing and the siege at Waco have highlighted a new threat: that of heavily-armed anti-government militias, some of them racist groups, some of them demagogic cults, some of them simply anti-federalists and tax-dodgers.
5) If anyone gets shot or is forced to take convalescent leave for... other reasons... we can have a few months of downtime and still not have caught up with the modern day. It also lets me flex my historical-GMing muscles: "Between cases, the USS Cole was bombed in port in Yemen, leading to the bombing of several sights in Africa and Afghanistan. Critics of the retaliation say that President Clinton was trying to divert attention away from his impending impeachment hearings."
6) The X-Files was at its strongest during the mid-90s. Fight The Future.
Also, I'll be putting up an equipment post later today as well - I think I still have the one I made for the abortive RPG.net incarnation of this plot, saved in my Projects folder somewhere.