A change of plans

[ffutures]

Since I began thinking about the immortality RPG setting (see my post a couple of days ago) I've had a slightly bad feeling about it. Last night I realised what it was.

My mother died in 1995. Yesterday would have been her 85th birthday. and on the night she died I came home from the hospital, feeling very sad, and put on the first video that came to hand to take my mind off things. As it happens the video was Highlander, which of course has a deathbed scene in it one point. To say that it was a bad choice of video would be putting it very mildly.

I wasn't planning to say anything about this but today, as I was heading out to work, I heard that my only living uncle (who is about the same age) has had a fall and is in hospital. It may not be too bad, since they're letting him go home this morning, but he hurt his head, he's frail (he lost an arm and most of his shoulder during WW2, and now has osteoporosis) and any injury is serious at that age anyway. My sister is going to travel with him to make sure he's OK, and he has a daily helper, but it's worrying.

Anyway, the upshot is that I think I'm going to shelve this idea again. I'm not sure I believe in omens, but I'm not going to take chances.

So the search for inspiration continues. Anyone that feels like making suggestions, bearing in mind that the source has to be out of Euro copyright (e.g. the author died before 1935) please let me know.

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Gilbert & Sullivan.... Interesting thought, very interesting indeed. Not sure I have the poetry in me to write all the songs for the adventures though - one G&S parody in the original FF release was hard enough work - but certainly worth thinking about.

Don't knoe Mors, or Merrit for that matter - somehow never came my way, and I think I've already written quite a few future war things, really don't feel like doing another unless I can get hold of the book I mentioned a few months ago, The Struggle for Empire, which is the Terran space navy versus Alpha Centauri.

My uncle was a classics scholar pre WW2, served in the army in WW2, stationed in Malaya, injured his arm, and was evacuated to India for treatment. Unfortunately it was pre-antibiotics and he got an infection which eventually resulted in him losing the arm and shoulder. After that he was in South Africa for a while, returned to Britain where he worked for the Gas Board, eventually as a COBOL programmer. He's one of the few people who can genuinly claim to have seen the 1950s LEO computer in action (wasn't impressed with the demo), and the only other member of my family that's a published author (of computer articles). He's getting on a bit now, but still has all his wits around him.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

From my POV you don't -need- to write lyrics for the G&S game: you can just use the existing stuff in new ways. But it would be fun to write new ones!

Captain Mors, Der Luftpirat: http://www.geocities.com/jessnevins/mors.html
It has a couple of translated stories... I'd buy English translations in a second, so if you do find any, please let me know.

Abraham Merritt was a giant of SF back in the day... he even had his own pulp for awhile. There's a brief summary here:

http://www.sfhomeworld.org/exhibits/homeworld/scifi_hof.asp?articleID=87

You can usually find his stuff in most used bookstores, and some is available as e-texts. You could easily do three games complete based on his stuff: Lost Race/Cosmic Horror, The Ship of Ishtar (fantasy), and Witch Detectives.

It's all worth a read. I really like all his stuff. If you can get through Griffith you'll have no problems with Merritt.

G&S

[soren-nyrond.livejournal.com]

Marcus -- Zander does passable G&S pastiche, and could probably be induced to run you up things if told what was needed. I remember him doing a page of cod-Nostradamus once when I was writing a Captain Scarlet fic, and it took me two goes to realise they weren't authentic.
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