thoughtpile

===== stuff ====== alcatraz proclamation

gold­en­gate-­ex­po­si­tion.gif in­di­an al­ca­traz.jpg

but­ter­fly pic­s/ char­ac­ter cre­ation/ map­s/ play­er­s/ Playaides/ Re­sources/ Rules/

===== oth­er buffy punk­ish set­tings that did­n’t get ex­pand­ed ===== – New Or­leans - Mu­cho ca­jun cul­ture, voo-­doo, and cayenne pep­per. Cen­ter of the Nex­t-New-New Econ­o­my, bio-engi­neer­ing. What hor­rors are evolv­ing in the bay­ous out of the es­caped and aban­doned bio-engi­neer­ing R&D? Got­ta stake some new de­mon/­vamp hy­brid? Stop by the EZ-Qwik and pick up a home­-s­plice kit. Grow & graft on new gill­s, al­ter your ears and larnyx for echo-lo­ca­tion, bulk up with Cor­don­Tek’s Moun­tain Go­ril­la Genes(T­M) and get me­dieval “hair­less ape from the black la­goon style” ;)

– Chica­go Ar­chol­o­gy - The good stay in­sid­e. The bad stay out­side. The ug­ly come out at night. Huge, en­closed build­ing com­plex con­tain­ing school­s, hous­ing, mall­s, ev­ery­thing a small­ish town need­s. Ev­ery­thing is clean, neat, whole­some. Un­til, one peels up the veen­er of nor­mal­cy, looks past the fake smiles on ev­ery­one’s faces, or sneaks in­to the main­te­nance lev­el­s.

==== In the Buffy Style ===== (If you just want to have a vam­pire butt kick­ing good time that can be done any­how. But, “In the Buffy style” re­lies alot on be­ing in school and angsty teen-age stuff. Some­one made a list of five things:

– Jux­ta­pos­ing su­per­nat­u­ral threats and nor­mal life - A con­stant theme in Buffy is hav­ing a su­per­nat­u­ral hor­ror re­flect some as­pect of teen life, such as the moth­er-­daugh­ter con­flict in “The Witch” re­flect­ed in the su­per­nat­u­ral pos­ses­sion and curs­es. A cam­paign where the PC’s are com­man­does, pro­fes­sion­al agents, or sea­soned Watch­ers will lack this.

– Em­pow­er­ing what is nor­mal­ly the fe­male vic­tim - The core con­cept of Buffy is tak­ing the girl who is the typ­i­cal vic­tim in vam­pire hor­ror film­s, and mak­ing her a tough su­per­hero. I think the fe­male­ness of the hero is pret­ty im­por­tan­t, and I was dis­ap­point­ed that 3 out of 4 of the Hero archetypes in the core rule­book are male.

– Teenage prob­lems - While Buffy even­tu­al­ly grew out of teen-­hood, I think that school and oth­er is­sues of teens is cen­tral to the se­ries. Teen is­sues like ca­reer day, steroid use, moth­er-­daugh­ter re­la­tion­s, dat­ing, prom, and so forth are fre­quent themes. With the lat­est sea­son, this has be­come even more ex­plic­it as Buffy re­turns to high school as a coun­selor.

– A new twist on old mon­sters - The show takes a lot of old mon­ster movie premis­es and puts a new twist on them. Be­sides vam­pires, there have been were­wolves, killer an­droid­s, snake-demon­s, mind-­con­trol­ling par­a­sites, and more. Many if not most of these ref­er­ence clas­sic hor­ror movies (like the man-­fish which re­sem­ble the “Crea­ture from the Black La­goon”).

– Cir­cles around a cen­tral char­ac­ter - Some se­ries have a sta­ble of char­ac­ters who are switched be­tween. BtVS is in­stead or­ga­nized with a sin­gle char­ac­ter. This does­n’t mean that all the sto­ries are about Buffy. Rather, the sto­ries re­volve around Buffy as the cen­ter. If any­thing, oth­er char­ac­ters are more de­vel­oped than Buffy is (i.e. per­haps more of a donut than a cook­ie :-). But Buffy is the cen­ter which or­ga­nizes their sto­ries.

===== foo ===== Karl Ochi, shop teacher, dis­a­pears he made legs has se­cret con­trol switch shows up lat­er.

have the SCA sword fight­ers

net­work dar­k­n­odes do not trans­mit/not con­nect­ed to net

books as sources of pow­er, hold the spir­its

tarot cards as mag­ic have mag­ic, find old deck, get to cast spells

Mon­ey most use Handy cred­it trans­fer which is in GBA cred­its a pure­ly vir­tu­al de­nom­i­na­tion Barter is al­so com­mon, esp on the lo­cal lev­el and be­tween GBA and non-G­BA.

Red­chip­s, ex Chi­nese plas­tic coin­s. Hard to fab­ri­cate and no longer in pro­duc­tion So they are ac­cept­ed as cur­ren­cy with a fixed val­ue through­out the GBA and most of NW North Amer­i­ca. Al­though, no of­fi­cial source will con­vert them in­to some oth­er cur­ren­cy such as GBA cred­it­s.

Ang­ie vi­sion pic­ture of old sf shore line for ang­ie vi­sion of old in­di­an and span­ish ar­rival “I’m sor­ry you have to live in these sor­row fill times”

Es­to­ni­an at HIBH is corp spy

Handy¶

chord­ing or speech in­put will dis­play in cor­ti­cal im­plant but those are very rare in GBA as the lack the tech. will dis­play in glass­es clear or shad­ed. GBA has tech for these. will project small screen on dark or light sur­face in low-­light con­di­tion­s. Al­so trans­mits to dis­plays, speak­er­s, head­phones etc.

phone, ra­dio, com­put­er,

con­nects with blimp net­work, pick up oth­er elec­tro ra­di­a­tion with prop­er an­te­nea.

Wendy and Del­ga­to do not car­ry them due to track­ing fears

Can sum­mon mili­ta for emer­gen­cies. Of­ten jammed by vamps “Not this time sweet­e” “Too many guest spoil the par­ty” If not mili­tia shows up af­ter badies flee, play­ers are ac­cused of cry wolf.

Blimp net­work wire­less 7 blimps an­chored around SFDist sumpli­mant­ed by nu­mer­ous so­lar pow­ered ground re­peaters and in­door an­ten­nea sinks

Ev­ery GBA cit­i­zen is pro­vid­ed with Handy to con­nec to this net­work

No land­li­nes/­phones (ex­cept cus­tom hack job­s)

Few hard­wired net a few ma­jor trunk­s, most things are wire­less

Transpo¶

mo­tor­ized hu­man op­er­at­ed ground ve­hi­cles are not al­lowed

bikes are very com­mon, very strong and light mtn bikes made of aer­at­ed al­lu­mi­n­un

hov­er bikes/flit­ters are rare

Blimps hov­er craft used for car­go trans­port, some barges on bay aswell

exo skele­tons and 6 legged walk­ers used by mili­tia and car­go han­dlers

Lev

Economy¶

most jobs are room and board hand craft­s, art, some cus­tom stuff are ex­ports food, wa­ter, elec­tri­ciy all lo­cal­ly pro­duced most hard­ware (bikes, ve­hi­cles, tool­s, ma­chi­nes) lo­cal­ly pro­duced most elec­tron­ics im­port­ed

Books¶

The book of Bal­ance & Har­mony: From the School of Com­plete Re­al­i­ty - Tao

Flow­er Or­na­ment Scrip­ture

Bris­tow’s De­mon In­dex: Oc­cult ref­er­ence books be­long­ing to Giles. Humes Para­nor­mal En­cy­clo­pe­di­a: Gwen­dolyn Post point­ed out that Giles did not have this book. Tar­nis, The Book of: book be­long­ing to Giles.

FlavaFla¶

Para­phrase of Nieztche “When fight­ing mon­sters one must take care not to be­come one him­self.”

Quotes from Much Aso about Noth­ing The gen­tle­man is not in your books Some of us will smart for it. Quotes from Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream I’ll speak in a mon­strous lit­tle voice. A li­on among ladies is a most dread­ful thing. The iron tongue of mid­night hath told twelve.

I get paid week­ly. Very Week­ly! Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most

Fad/Craze - quiz game over hand­ie’s

Places¶

Mu­ni bar 15th har­ri­son

Ran­dall muse­un on hill

Ar­mory in mis­sion

The club is “The Coffe house”

Rich­mond San Rafael Bridge, and the San Ma­teo Bridge

Cal­trans prop­er­ty off lim­it­s, fromt for mil­i­tary/­gov

sweat lodge at stow lake

The Junk Bud­dha - Large 100ft long re­clin­ing Bud­dah make from bld­ing and oth­er sal­vage/junk

Laser sculp­ture light show thing

Park over­grown, peo­ple say druids live there

ArtSpace - GBA chain of com­mu­ni­ty places, more for mak­ing art shows it too, has we­b­cams and linked to­geth­er so can tele-learn and view art.

Wind tur­bines on beach - egg­beat­er va­ri­ety

Laser tag are­na

Trip Bar - Chill­out drup up any­one over 14

Events¶

World Cul­tur­al Fair: A mul­ti cul­tur­al event that Tara at­tend­ed alone af­ter ar­gu­ing with Wil­low. Glo­ry found her there and sucked her brain.

Con­spir­a­cy con

Watch­ers Re­treat: An event held an­nu­al­ly in The Cotswold­s. There are lec­tures and oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ing rid­ing, hik­ing, punt­ing, and kayak­ing. It is a great hon­our to be in­vit­ed to the Re­treat. Giles has nev­er been, but would dear­ly like to.

Love Pa­rade - rave like ger­many

Engrish¶

FRUST (n) The small line of de­bris that re­fus­es to be swept on­to the dust pan and keeps back­ing a per­son across the room un­til he fi­nal­ly de­cides to give up and sweep it un­der the rug.

SPEED IS OF THE SE­RI­OUS ESSENCE: We need to hur­ry.

UN­SCHED­ULED SLAYAGE: Un­ex­pect­ed­ly hav­ing to fight vam­pires.

THROW­ING DOWN: “I’m throw­ing down.” ie. throw­ing down the gaunt­let. Chal­leng­ing some­one to a fight.

KAISER SOSAYED: Tricked in­to be­liev­ing the bad guy is re­al­ly a good guy, and on your side!

Arashma­ha: “The place where demons are spawned.” Home of D’Hof­fryn.

More Things¶

Miss Edith (n) Drusil­la’s dol­l.

Claddagh ring: Giv­en to Buffy by An­gel on her 17th birth­day. A tra­di­tion­al Irish to­ken of love and friend­ship. The hands rep­re­sent friend­ship, the crown loy­al­ty, and the heart love. You wear the heart point­ing to­ward you if you be­long to some­one. Scott al­so tried to give Buffy a Claddagh ring, but it made her freak out be­cause she as­so­ci­at­ed it with An­gel.

Scapu­la: pouch of herb­s, etc worn around the neck as pro­tec­tion against evil spir­it­s. Smells pret­ty bad.

Storlines plots¶

house of cards with tarot like deck of many things ad­ven­ture

Clone of cy­ro slay­er has wood stake for im­plants in each fore­arm she re­me­bers be­ing in tank (clone tube) and cor­po­rate raid from which she es­capes lab. Scene - naked girl wash­ses up on shore. Two vamps Clee­tus and no­name come strolling along “What have we here?” “A sea food snack” ha­ha no­name grabs and hauls her up, just as he is aobut to feast, wood stake ex­tends and dusts him, clee­tus runs away, she won­ders off throught the tur­bines to­wards city part­s.

Sea­son Sto­ry Arc­s: - Sac­ri­fice - Du­al­i­ties ala twin­peaks

be­tray­al what is “hu­man” piske fairy fan­ta­sy kill some save many “Choic­es” been done

teas­er set­up turn­ing point cli­max

Big Bad­s: - AI

Sub­plots - Find the slay­er - A new slay­er

Episodes: - Wendin­go - slav­ic myths - Al­ter­nate world ala Star Trek - X-­files FBI agenst show up keep them from learn­ing about vamps - “Of Em­per­or’s and Urchin­s”

My Bad

some­one kilt in­to spir­it switch bod­ies w/ vam­pire

---

Buffy episodes are fre­quent­ly based on tak­ing a old hor­ror movie mon­ster or plot, and twist­ing it in­to high school life. To help come up with ideas, here is a list of clas­sic hor­ror movies with some com­ments on pos­si­ble Buffy us­age.

The Abom­inable Dr. Phibes (1971) A evil ge­nius kills his vic­tims by campy-po­et­ic mean­s. The Abom­inable Snow­man of the Hi­malayas (1957) A low-bud­get mon­ster-hunt. Alien (1979) A clas­sic old mon­ster-hor­ror movie done with new glitz. Al­tered States (1980) A mod­ern twist on an old mad sci­en­tist plot: a sci­en­tist us­es hal­lu­cino­genic drugs and sen­so­ry de­pri­va­tion which trans­form him to ear­li­er evo­lu­tion­ary states. This was clear­ly the ba­sis for the cursed beer episode (4.5 “Beer Bad”). An Amer­i­can Were­wolf in Lon­don (1981) Were­wolves have been done many times, but this one is rather unique – es­pe­cial­ly for its mix of com­e­dy and hor­ror, and the dream se­quence where the were­wolf is vis­it­ed by his dead friend. At­tack of the 50 foot Wom­an (1958) A bizarre film about a wom­an who turns in­to a fifty-­foot gi­ant fol­low­ing con­tact with alien­s. She de­cides to take re­venge up­on those who wronged her us­ing her new pow­er. At­tack of the Pup­pet Peo­ple (1958) A de­ranged pup­pet mas­ter shrinks re­al peo­ple to play parts in his troupe. The Blob (1958) A campy mon­ster fight fea­tur­ing the rebel teenag­er try­ing to save stupid adult­s. The Brain That Would­n’t Die (1962) A psy­chot­ic sur­geon keeps his fi­ancee’s brain alive af­ter she is de­cap­i­tat­ed in a car crash. He tries to find a donor body for her, with at­ten­dent prob­lems from the failed ex­per­i­ments. Car­ni­val of Souls (1962) An eerie dream-­like ride por­tray­ing the pas­sage of the soul of a girl who died. It has a lot of ma­te­ri­al for spooky dream se­quences. Cat Peo­ple (1942,1982) Here ly­can­thropy is a fam­i­ly curse rather than a dis­ease, and brought on by sex­u­al arousal rather than the phase of the moon. There was a 1982 re­make with Nas­tas­sia Kin­s­ki with rather less sub­tle­ty than the orig­i­nal. Crea­ture From the Black La­goon () This was clear­ly the ba­sis for the swim­mer­s-on-s­teroids Buffy episode (2.20 “Go Fish”). An RPG sce­nario could fo­cus on what hap­pened to the trans­formed ath­letes, or where the drug came from. Curse of the De­mon (1956) De­mon-­sum­mon­ing scrolls and sa­tan­ic cults in Eng­land. This was a sem­i­nal film in the genre which forms the ba­sis for a num­ber of Buffy episodes. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) An alien and his mighty ro­bot land and try to con­vince the Earth to come to peace, with at­ten­dant prob­lem­s. While dif­fi­cult to adapt out­right, one can eas­i­ly use ref­er­ences to this and the theme of the good emis­sary with a de­struc­tive ser­van­t. The Dis­em­bod­ied (1957) A pho­tog­ra­pher on an ex­pe­di­tion in the jun­gle runs afoul of a voodoo cult. Dr. ­Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920, 1932, 1941) A clas­sic of hor­ror fea­tur­ing a du­al iden­ti­ty. This has been the ba­sis for count­less plot­s. A bit of mag­ic or mag­i­cal po­tion could eas­i­ly al­low a high school stu­dent to have an al­ter-ego. The Ex­or­cist (1973) A clas­sic of a lit­tle girl pos­sessed by a de­mon. Buffy episodes tend to be about crea­tures you can hit, while the hor­ror here is try­ing to save the girl be­ing pos­sessed. The Fly (1958 and 1986) The orig­i­nal was sil­ly but un­set­tling, while the re­make was gori­er but less ef­fec­tive. Franken­stein (1931) The pro­to­typ­i­cal mad-­sci­en­tist/­con­struct film. This was clear­ly the ba­sis of the res­ur­rect­ed foot­bal­l-­play­ing broth­er episode (2.02 “Some As­sem­bly Re­quired”). From Be­yond A loose adap­ta­tion of Love­craft which ex­plores the idea of an­oth­er world all around us that we sim­ply can­not see. But when we can see it, things in it can see us! Grem­lins (1984) The orig­i­nal of a rather sil­ly theme of lit­tle mis­chievous crea­tures as dead­ly an­tag­o­nist­s. It is set in a Capra-esque small town, where ev­ery­one seems to mis­judge the small but dead­ly threat. The Haunt­ing (1963 and 1999) A clas­sic haunt­ed house film, fea­tur­ing a sci­en­tist try­ing to prove the ex­is­tence of ghost­s. Hor­ror of Drac­u­la (1958) The first and best in a long se­ries pit­ting Christo­pher Lee’s Count Drac­u­la against Pe­ter Cush­ing’s Van Hels­ing. It is their per­son­al clash which is in­ter­est­ing. This was a ba­sis for the Drac­u­la episode (5.01 “Buffy vs Drac­u­la”). The Howl­ing (1981) A pop­u­lar mod­ern take on the were­wolf myth, based on the Stephen King book. Were­wolves fea­tured in sev­er­al Buffy episodes, start­ing when Oz first dis­cov­ered his curse (2.15 “Phas­es”). The In­cred­i­ble Shrink­ing Man A man at first be­comes sullen and de­pressed as he be­comes small­er, then in the sec­ond half fights for his life in his own cel­lar. A mag­i­cal or sci­en­tif­ic curse could eas­i­ly be the ba­sis of a Buffy episode – with the scoo­bies rush­ing to find a way to re­verse the process as the hero shrinks. In­vaders From Mars (1953) A mi­nor clas­sic which per­fect­ly trans­fered the para­noia of the 50’s in­to a sci­ence fic­tion night­mare. This, along with “In­va­sion of the Body Snatch­er­s” was one of the ba­sis of the mind-­con­trol­ling-bazors episode (2.12 “Bad Eggs”). In­va­sion of the Body Snatch­ers (1956 and 1979) The orig­i­nal was far more sub­tle – the hor­ror be­ing of go­ing to sleep and chang­ing. Is­land of Lost Souls (1932 and 1996) An adap­ta­tion of “The Is­land of Dr. ­More­au” about a sci­en­tist who sets him­self up as god over a race of man-beasts he has cre­at­ed. It! The Ter­ror From Be­yond Space (1958) A campy fight with an alien crea­ture on board a space­ship. The crew try in­creas­ing­ly out­landish at­tacks (poi­son gas, flamethrow­er­s, etc.) in a mis­guid­ed fight against a crea­ture. It Came From Out­er Space (1953) A crashed space­ship caus­es mys­te­ri­ous dis­ap­pear­ances. An im­por­tant twist is that the prob­lem is re­solved peace­ful­ly (in con­trast to some of the oth­er Com­mu­nist-s­care alien-in­va­sion film­s). It Con­quered the World (1956) An alien teams up with a dis­grun­tled sci­en­tist to use mind-­con­trol de­vices in a plot for world dom­i­na­tion. Jaws (1975) A mod­ern clas­sic. The key with this film is how it slow­ly and sub­tle­ly builds from a fish­ing ex­pe­di­tion to a threat­en­ing hor­ror. King Kong (1933,1962,1976) An old clas­sic twice re­made. Sym­pa­thy with the gi­ant ape is the re­al key here. The Lost Boys (1987) Vam­pires as re­bel­lious youth in San­ta Cruz. The key to this is how the vam­pires re­cruit the old­er broth­er by the cool­ness of their gang. Not of this Earth (1957,1988,1995) An alien agent dis­guised as a hu­man ter­ror­izes South­ern Cal­i­for­nia in an at­tempt to ac­quire blood for his dy­ing race. The Mum­my (1933) The mum­my’s goal in this orig­i­nal is to find the princess he knew three thou­sand years ago and con­fer im­mor­tal­i­ty on her. The mum­my on­ly ap­pears briefly as such, as he can pose as a nor­mal man. This is sim­i­lar to the Buffy mum­my episode (2.04 “In­ca Mum­my Girl”). A Night­mare on Elm Street (1984) The first in a se­ries about a mon­ster which kills you in your dream­s. Night of the Liv­ing Dead (1968) A clas­sic and the first in a long se­ries. The to­tal­ly mind­less vi­o­lence of the zom­bies is key to the hor­ror. The Omen (1976) In­tro­duces the de­mon-child Damien as a clas­sic schtick. The “Anoint­ed One” of the first sea­son was a nod to this, but lit­tle was done with the con­cep­t. Pol­ter­geist (1982) A clas­sic ghost sto­ry, es­pe­cial­ly no­table for how it makes ev­ery­day ob­jects (TV set­s, toys, trees, steak­s) seem alive and malev­o­len­t. Re-An­i­ma­tor (1985) A loose adap­ta­tion of the Love­craft work, but al­so amus­ing and hor­rif­ic at the same time. Taran­tu­la (1955) Sci­en­tists are try­ing to per­fect a nu­tri­ent us­ing ra­dioac­tive iso­topes. Two as­sis­tants in­ject them­selves and be­come in­sane mu­tants, in­ject­ing lead sci­en­tist Car­roll and let­ting loose a gi­ant taran­tu­la. Late in the film he be­comes more and more mu­tat­ed as the crea­ture is hunt­ed down. The Thing (1951 and 1982) The orig­i­nal is no­table for the con­flict be­tween sci­en­tists who want to com­mu­ni­cate and sol­diers who want to kil­l. The re­make in­tro­duces the abil­i­ty to mim­ic the ap­pear­ance of any hu­man, adding mys­tery and para­noia to the plot. This Is­land Earth (1955) An alien in­va­sion plot with a twist. The aliens come to Earth in peace, and co­op­er­ate in re­search to save their dy­ing plan­et. How­ev­er, a plot is un­cov­ered of their covert in­ten­tion­s. The Un­earth­ly (1957) A mad sci­en­tist cre­ates grotesque zom­bies in his re­search to­wards the foun­tain of youth. The Wasp Wom­an (1960) Side-­ef­fects from an ex­per­i­men­tal cos­met­ics youth for­mu­la turn a wom­an in­to a mon­ster at night. This was pos­si­bly an in­flu­ence on the she-­man­tis episode (1.04 “Teacher’s Pet”).