laundry?

[ghostman]

I am a huge Charles Stross fan. I want to run a Laundry sort of game, but I don't want to use Cubical 7 rpg, but AoE. I am looking at getting the "black bag jobs" supplement and savaging it.

Comments? Discuss.

[Operator#5]

I'm no expert (I've only read Atrocity Archives and Concrete Jungle and those only because of AoO pointing me in their direction), but I think this is doable but is going to move the focus of AoO just a bit.

AoO seems to be pretty amazingly well funded and the horror elements are actually treated like horror. The Laundry seems to languish in bureaucracy, low to no budget, and the horror is horrific but a calculated kind of horror, like an atom bomb or mustard gas.

So, to me, the most interesting bits of using AoO as Laundry would be an internal struggle with your bosses or between your bosses (red tape is just as much your enemy as Great Old Ones) and your equipment is always kinda crap and hard to come by.

The bosses thing might need the Red Tape skill from earlier versions of the game. Resource Points aren't immediately given, they have to be rolled for with the Red Tape skill. Just maneuvering through your job might require extended skill checks. All equipment that isn't guns and flack jackets should be treated as experimental and prone to breaking or malfunction.

It does move AoO's cheese a little bit to think of them as the Laundry, but it's probably doable with some extra work. Whatcha think?

[ghostman]

I see your point on the calculated horror not being horrific in the books, and I think that is one aspect as to what makes the books funny. The bureaucracy calculating out the level of bad, regardless of the outcome. but we all know that bad is bad, and it should be stopped. The bureaucracy makes the books funny in between outings and jaunts, but could be glossed over in a game situation. That being said, I was going to mostly ignore the inter-office stuff - except if a character took an 'enemy' hindrance, it'd be someone in HR or something.

I was mostly thinking of the computational summoning aspect. Cthulhu (or whatever) via heavy math, brought upon at high speeds via computer processing. Math is the new Magic.

And I think Stross does a lot of what Lovecraft did - you don't get descriptions of creatures, he keeps it vague. But the world-coming-to-an-end-unless-we-stop-the-big-bad aspect is there in most of the stories.

This is the crux of the AoE, to me, getting the big-bad. Or rather, preventing it. Almost all RPG's have this aspect, maybe not earth destruction as an outcome, but some big bad thing - bomb, plague, Tribbles (oh, said plague already), etc.

Additionally, I like the spin on devices - like the Smart phone protection fields and what not. Easily brought into AoE as equipment, just a humorous flavor by using the iPhone - I need an anti-dimensional dampener! oh, Brains wrote an app for that. Shiny!

I think that Stross was influenced by Bond and Q (Iain Fleming) for some of these items..

[Operator#5]

Like I said, I'm no expert, and maybe they get very different after Concrete Jungle. But especially after CJ, which is basically "bullshit office politics that can cause the apocalypse" I think you'd be missing a huge opportunity leaving out the office stuff.

Enemies as people inside the Laundry, for instance, is a brilliant move. Make an obtuse organizational chart so that they have three bosses with competing agendas. Hell, make them really like two of them but the one that they hate is the one with missions that should take priority. Force them to make the hard decisions before they even go out to fight nameless horrors. Then when they get back, covered in Deep One muck and barely breathing, have the "nice boss" explain how disappointed he is in them that they didn't get his listening post job done, sign their timecards, and walk away, shoulders slumped. They saved the world and still feel like the office is against them. Have them do it enough and maybe the nice boss doesn't stay so nice.

Man, I sorta want to run this now...

[ghostman]

Wow, that's a great insight. I like the org chart idea, and compeating offices. I was on a similar tack with the HR enemy.

I need to flesh this out a bit. Thanks for some ideas.