Dieselpunk Shadows Options

[Koekepan]

A thought to add to the magic steps: Astral Perception must be engaged.

In SR our spells lock onto the 'aura' of the target and we just do this instinctively and it's up and over so fast the casting is just a blip on the astral radar.

But what if the magic process required you to be properly shifting your perception to see the various auras/threads/mana itself to really manipulate it into spells or even providing defense like counterspell and similar?

So you would start off the process with a simple action (like the adept ability) to switch to Astral Perception and one could handwave the -2 penalty for magical actions like casting / counterspell (doesn't make sense to penalize that since its a requirement) while normal physical actions like shooting or other would still be affected.

Perception stays up until turned off by a free action, so it would mean casters are open to the astral on combat rounds they are casting as well as maintaining spell defences.

While a bit more work, it also makes the Astral a bit busier place with mages and spirits sniping one another and would tie in well with your bringing back Grounding.

Excellent. Makes sense, and easy to apply as a rule. Consistent. Two thumbs up.

Edit: Adepts will have to be considered and raises a few issues. Missions allows adepts to turn off their adept abilities which is useful when crossing high Background count areas, so maybe this could be used here as well.
A 'powered down' adept is one who has his abilities turned off and could easily pass for a normal joe astrally as well as to most scrutiny though an Assessing could reveal this of course. Powering up the abilities bumps him into dual nature status which can prove hazardous to one's health, but then they probably won't keep the powers going long.
Astral Perception is not required for the majority of their abilities as they are mostly internalized, though many probably will grab this given the change and one should consider either cutting the cost or even making it automatic to all Awakened types.

If you read the thread you'll see that I'm pretty much in favour of broad-based access to at least basic sensitivity, so no problem there. I expect that for a lot of adepts the default position will be unpowered to keep them stealthy.

I realize many probably won't like it, it smacks too much of WizFi, but it is not too far a stretch to consider.

As for your idea on Adepts being able to rearrange PP, I like it but a week per point effectively kills it as they would probably not realistically be able to change it within a single session or even a couple depending on circumstances. Maybe shortening the time a bit and also include a test with each success cutting that time further. Even with the best rolls it should still be several minutes for even the most minor change, so no shifting on the fly in combat, but between fights should be possible.

I was thinking of a week per PP because it really is a shift in focus, but what if it's a week base time, reduced by successes on a refocus roll? Or at least a day per PP, reduced per roll result?

[Beta]

I was thinking of a week per PP because it really is a shift in focus, but what if it's a week base time, reduced by successes on a refocus roll? Or at least a day per PP, reduced per roll result?

I would say try to make the time align with what it takes magicians to set up a new spell. i.e. if the mission is take what you have and charge in, then there is no time for new spells or for adepts to adjust their build. But if the mission is going to involve more time (and many will, due to slower travel and communications) players could make planning out their magic part of their preparation. It would feel unfair, I think, if one type of magic user could make such adjustments, and another couldn't.

And probably similar time for any sort of alchemy/enchanting of consumables sort of work. (maybe it takes aurichulum tipped bullets to hurt supernatural beings, and these are something that somebody with low magic can cast? Things like that make use of lesser talent levels) (and yes, I have just been re-reading "Harlequin's Back" and am totally thinking of the 'Silverpoint' bullets used in the 'western' metaplane)

[Koekepan]

So, we have sorcery, we have summoning, we have assensing, some outlines of metaphysics, we have spirits, we have the idea of Devotion (as opposed to Essence), we have grounding and watchers and adepts ...

Here is what I'm thinking in terms of initiation:

It works pretty much in similar terms to what we see in the rules for 3rd Ed. Metamagic remains broadly the same, with centering, quickening, dispelling, shielding, and masking looking pretty much the same. Anchoring is sort of written into the dieselrun approach already, so that seems redundant, and I suggest getting rid of Metaplanes on the principle that there's no clear context for their existence in the metaphysics as currently described.

I also propose that initiates can boost their Devotion over 6 by their initiation level.

Two questions:

What else are we missing?

Maybe it's time for someone to try a test run and see how it goes. Kick the wheels, see what falls off?

Any volunteer GMs/groups for playtesting?

[Koekepan]

Alternative background vision.

Basic outline
[*] The Great War happened just the way the history books said.
[*] The Great Influenza of 1918 was, in fact, VITAS.
[*] 1919 is the Year of Chaos, with the Black Tide hitting the North Atlantic shores, and Ryumyo appearing on Fuji-yama.
[*] 1925 is the Great Ghost Dance.
[*] 1929 is Goblinisation
[*] 1930 is Vitas II.
[*] Current date of play: 1958

Global outline:

WWI happened.

WWII might have happened, but instead the Sixth World came.

The Roaring Twenties roared - and the whole world trembled. The confusion and slaughter of the Great Ghost Dance, the massive return of nature, UGE and all the other confusions and convulsions changed the world to a strange, twilight place. The USA was rent asunder into the Yankees and the South, the Midwest and the mountains were lost (mere years after attaining statehood, in many cases) and Hawaii and Alaska were left largely to their own devices. The pacific coast states lost any cohesive identity save for a corner near Canada, incorporating Seattle, and a strip down the California coast. In the Appalachians old greybeards who still remembered the humiliations and the destruction of the War of Northern Aggression mumbled their wishes to their still-vigorous sons, and these founded the Confederated States of America - a challenge a weakened and confused USA could not stave off.

Canada remained a british colony, and happy for whatever support the british could offer - buying their existence as a few provinces in the east with the bulk of the land to the West. Quebec is an independent rump of what it once was, but the bulk of the rest finds safety with the global wounded lion of Mother England. Mexico dissolved into chaos (not a far step in those days) and rose again as Aztlan. South America, mostly insulated from the conflicts of Europe, nonetheless was shaken to its core by the changes, and Amazonia took shape as a new land.

Germany, staggering under the burdens of war and a staggering, impossible debt is given a body blow by the rise of dragons who divide it anew - economically a strengthening move, since a reformed Bavaria, Prussia, Saxony and other demesnes under draconic control now all repudiate a war debt they are quite unable to pay. France, with her own problems, is mollified to see the apparent dissolution and humiliation of a unified Germany, even as a recently unified Italy crumbles once more under disaster after disaster, and the Pope becomes once more a potentate of great temporal as well as moral authority.

Colonial properties around the world might have been expected to rise up and snatch freedom, but in the wake of all these changes, most are far too enervated to do more than beg for aid, or turn on each other as UGE and goblinisation rend the fabrics of their societies.

The greatest change, perhaps, comes in China with the re-establishment of imperial authority. Dragons, cunning enough to see the benefits of declaring the Mandate of Heaven, bring stability to a sick country, and China is rising in authority and strength even as the nascent USSR struggles with the implications of a magically shaped world for the ideology behind their workers' paradise. Smaller states with a history of chinese hegemony waver between supporting colonial masters, and turning back to chinese protectionism. Korea brought in China to evict the loathed japanese, but Hong Kong remains a british colony for now.

Technologies:

Computers are rare, slow, limited, and huge. Transistors are in use, but integrated circuits are still a laboratory dream. However, the era of paper tape, punched cards and microfiches is well under way. Most information technologies are written, typed, printed or possibly photographed. It is the jet age, with screaming passenger jets moving the jet set from city to city, trying not to anger dragons. For the less well-heeled, trains and buses must suffice where roads and rails lead - and boats, where they do not. In many hinterlands which are taken over by the resurgent powers of nature, superhighways never penetratedand roads can dwindle to dirt, dusty tracks and eventually nothing.

Cybernetics and the Matrix are a long, long way off because the miniaturisation technology simply has not made them possible. The ruling technologies are high precision machinery, chemistry, and macro-scale electronics. The radio, telex, telegraph, telephone and physical mail rule the roost, where the infrastructure exists. Elsewhere it might still be a runner with a cleft stick, or a swifter spirit for those with the means.

The space age has not yet dawned, because the particular impetus to rocket technologies of WWII never materialised, but aircraft are flying higher, balloons are probing the upper atmosphere, and hungry eyes are looking every upward.

Society:

Fascism as such never took proper hold, although many of its lines of thought did. The revulsion created by the horrors of WWII never hit, so institutionalised racism is easy to find in many places. The USSR is a haven of relative openmindedness - up to a point. The union regards magic as an elitist aberration to be co-opted, controlled or driven out. Still, this heavily depends on where one is, and the context. Agents with the wrong skin or teeth can often pass as servants of luckier ones, and there are havens of comparative open-mindedness and even-handedness. The remainder of the USA is surprisingly open-minded, in self-conscious contrast to the CAS. England, consciously continuing a tradition of philanthropy is often racist, but egalitarian as far as the common people are concerned.

There is no UN. The League of Nations never dissolved, but it is a truly toothless talking shop. The USSR exists as a largely stable organisation, but in actual fact vast areas of it are not under the supreme soviet's functional control. Most of Africa nominally exists under somebody's control, but in reality those authorities have more theoretical than real power. India agitates for independence, but VITAS was pitiless, the famines were worse, and the confusion wrought by UGE and goblinisation dissipated a lot of energies which would otherwise have gone to the fight. The northwest frontier is a perennial source of trouble.

Israel never was created, and in the current climate there is no prospect of it being created despite the machinations of a zionist minority. The area is Palestine, still under british control.

Finance and Corporate life:

The Almighty Dollar is wrestling for pre-eminence with the Pound Sterling, but in the wake of the division of the USA the pound is still ahead. The massive industrial power and energy of the USA, even in its reduced form, gives the dollar a lot of credibility, but the pound is still the currency of a (wobbly, creaking) empire.

The exigencies of the world situation have given rise to the supranational corporation. No longer merely multinationals, these titans of the scene have become the organisational tools of governments too constrained to run their own ambitions. The supranational is the reacreation of the great chartered company, and wields similar powers. They have soldiers of their own, navies of their own and now air forces of their own. They step into troubled, confused and chaotic environments and arrange for the extraction of minerals and other valuables to feed the hunger of industries worldwide. There is no corporate court, and companies have to contend with the jurisdictions of nations, but they create their own countries in which their jurisdiction is final, and even wage ugly wars on each other.

And in the diesel-scented shadows of the great corporate railyards and harbours, Free Agents count their bullets for the coming raids.

[Koekepan]

We huddled against the warm side of the train. Well, it was warm, but it was also pinging the song of cooling metal. We were on the shady side, and the breeze was much cooler than the black metal that had been in the sun most of the day.

I glanced over at Mathilda. She was the new guy, the untried team member, inevitably the weak link, but she was necessary. Nobody else knew the systems we were aiming for, and she hated the New India Company more than anyone I knew. She seemed calm enough in her boiler suit, squatting down next to Gurog. No knowing why he called himself that, but for a troll the size of a motorcycle, sidecar, and trailer, it made sense.

Up ahead, the clanking footsteps of the railway policeman moved along the railcars, and the connecting doors slammed one by one. Two cars away, one car away ... count to ten, nod at Gurog.

There was no need. Gurog wasn't even looking at me, but his punch slammed the railway cop into the door he had just opened so hard that he just sagged, and slumped.

"OK, Mathilda. Door's open. Let's get inside."

She averted her eyes from the guard, but stepped right on his hand so hard I heard bones break. The guard didn't even twitch. I stepped in behind her, and said: "Is this what we're looking for?"

She whipped out a magnifying glass, and looked at a microfiche she pulled from one of the hundreds of boxes that filled the railcar. It took a moment, and then she nodded. "It's in here somewhere. Now I just have to find it."

[Koekepan]

Kenneth looked across the table at Mister Johnson. This worthy swirled the brandy in his glass, admiring the play of light on the surface.

"Mister Johnson, you must understand that the team are specialists. They can do the amazing, but they do not do so for free - or cheaply. Now, if you could increase the remuneration, we'd have something to discuss, but right now I don't see it."

Johnson put the brandy down on the polished mahogany table, and leaned forward. His tie stayed neatly pinned in place, but his suit jacket swayed over the creaking leather of his seat. "What if I told you that the vault in question also contains the blueprints of Tadellos Incorporated's HQ?"

Kenneth stared back coolly at Johnson, eyeing the tan, the crow's feet, the slight hint of five-o'-clock shadow on the chin. Inside his mind raced. He took a sip of his sherry, partly to stall and partly to keep Johnson waiting. "Fine, what if it does? And more importantly, what if it does not?"

Johnson nodded firmly. "It does. I'm sure."

"Magnificent. Then you won't mind putting up security."

[Beta]

I love your thoughts on these settings. As usually I’ll toss a few thoughts your way, use or not as you see fit.

War often leads to making big leaps in innovation – taking chances that lead to entirely new ways of doing things, rather than incremental improvements in existing technologies.

Taking WWII out of the equation, this could mean things like:

- Jet planes are still an experimental new technology, but large propeller driven airliners are connecting the world (albeit more slowly that jets were doing in our world at that time).
- Radar is known and used for some applications, but the large networks for defense purposes have never been funded (so planes are harder to detect, making aerial smuggling much easier)
- Highly sophisticated mechanical calculating machines may be the most common form of ‘computer’ (most frequently seen in places like cash registers or large clunky ‘calculators’ used in accounting departments. Electronic computer could still be fairly exotic.
- ‘Atomic energy’ and the ‘A-bomb’ may still be well into the future, things people are still speculating about and studying the principles of, with uranium still be very rare.

Some thoughts about the fate of parts of North America.
- The dustbowl in much of the prairies in the 1930s could be seen as an effect of the Great Ghost Dance?
- In the Canadian west the natives were mostly pushed off the prairies, but the settlement of those lands would have only just reached its peak when things changed. There were a lot of Ukrainian immigrants, who in times of such stress might have turned to those who shared a language and culture with them to help protect their new lands. This could result in some states in the norther prairies that are non-native, ethnicity-based states of some sort (The Republic of New Kiev or something). Half a million or so farmers working together are hard to kick off their land … (there would have been far more farmers then, than in the standard SR timeline)
- Canada was formally independent from 1967, and the first world war led to much more independence on the ground (and I believe it had a similar impact on Australia). Neither is apt to have returned to being a British colony, but I could certainly imagine them taking on a stronger British affiliation.
- Quebec at the time had not undergone the ‘Quiet Revolution’ which overturned the authority of the Catholic Church and English business owners, and which released the independence movement of our timeline. It could still have become independent, or more independent – it generally had strong objections to the country-wide sacrifices made to help Britain in the first world war, which given the subsequent turmoil could have resulted in it becoming at least quasi-independent. But it would be a far more church dominated society.

Elsewhere in the world:
- Japan was modernizing and militarizing even before WWI, so without WWII happening it could well be a very imperialistic state, and probably a rival of the USA and UK for domination of SE Asia and the Pacific Islands.
- With dragons strengthening China, Japan probably never would have invaded Manchuria, so more of their focus on resources may have gone elsewhere. Perhaps they are an economic and military influence on parts of South America? (I think there is anyway quite a large ethnically Japanese population in Peru?)
- If Italy splintered, I wonder what happens to its colony of Libya? The oil fields there are valuable – perhaps it becomes one of the first purely corporate states, with Standard Oil or the like ‘restoring order’ and then running the place?
- Perhaps control of the Suez canal could likewise have fallen into corporate hands, becoming a valuable point of intrigue as various companies try to get their hands on this most key transportation link.

[Koekepan]

- Jet planes are still an experimental new technology, but large propeller driven airliners are connecting the world (albeit more slowly that jets were doing in our world at that time).
- Radar is known and used for some applications, but the large networks for defense purposes have never been funded (so planes are harder to detect, making aerial smuggling much easier)

Jets would have been developed, because of the need and desire to match dragons in the air, and in consideration of the fact that jets were under active development before WWII. I'd say that radar never developed much, and is still in development.

- Highly sophisticated mechanical calculating machines may be the most common form of *computer* (most frequently seen in places like cash registers or large clunky *calculators* used in accounting departments. Electronic computer could still be fairly exotic.

Yes and no. They were anyway, but the development of computers came from other concerns than simply wartime decoding and calculation, so given the invention of the transistor, the business and civilian government applications are large enough that I think it would have developed.

- *Atomic energy* and the *A-bomb* may still be well into the future, things people are still speculating about and studying the principles of, with uranium still be very rare.

I agree. No prospect of it at this point, because the same pressures weren't there.

Some thoughts about the fate of parts of North America.
- The dustbowl in much of the prairies in the 1930s could be seen as an effect of the Great Ghost Dance?
- In the Canadian west the natives were mostly pushed off the prairies, but the settlement of those lands would have only just reached its peak when things changed. There were a lot of Ukrainian immigrants, who in times of such stress might have turned to those who shared a language and culture with them to help protect their new lands. This could result in some states in the norther prairies that are non-native, ethnicity-based states of some sort (The Republic of New Kiev or something). Half a million or so farmers working together are hard to kick off their land * (there would have been far more farmers then, than in the standard SR timeline)

Agreed on the dust bowl - the Great Ghost Dance makes a lot of sense there. Agreed also on the rural developments in Canada, but those would be small and beleaguered groups. The various first nations would have been able to grab a lot of the land back with the help of the rewilding that came with the return of magic.

- Canada was formally independent from 1967, and the first world war led to much more independence on the ground (and I believe it had a similar impact on Australia). Neither is apt to have returned to being a British colony, but I could certainly imagine them taking on a stronger British affiliation.

A lot of the impetus behind independence would have been blunted by the advantages of being in a commonwealth which were pulling together in the teeth of a world gone mad. I think that the decolonisation of the '50s and '60s would have been greatly reduced, if it had happened at all. Spain and Portugal alike would have tried to hang on to what they had - the question is how tenable that would have been.

- Quebec at the time had not undergone the *Quiet Revolution* which overturned the authority of the Catholic Church and English business owners, and which released the independence movement of our timeline. It could still have become independent, or more independent * it generally had strong objections to the country-wide sacrifices made to help Britain in the first world war, which given the subsequent turmoil could have resulted in it becoming at least quasi-independent. But it would be a far more church dominated society.

I agree on that front. And Mummy England would have lacked the ability as well as the will to claw Quebec back.

Elsewhere in the world:
- Japan was modernizing and militarizing even before WWI, so without WWII happening it could well be a very imperialistic state, and probably a rival of the USA and UK for domination of SE Asia and the Pacific Islands.

Yes, no question. Japan had gone entirely through the Meiji Restoration at this point, and was taking advantage of the weakness and confusion of Russia at the time.

- With dragons strengthening China, Japan probably never would have invaded Manchuria, so more of their focus on resources may have gone elsewhere. Perhaps they are an economic and military influence on parts of South America? (I think there is anyway quite a large ethnically Japanese population in Peru?)

I don't know that Japan wouldn't have invaded. In fact, dragons would have strengthened Japan at least as much as China (which was very chaotic at the time) and so would magic. I see little reason Japan wouldn't have tried to attack a weaker China at the time.

- If Italy splintered, I wonder what happens to its colony of Libya? The oil fields there are valuable * perhaps it becomes one of the first purely corporate states, with Standard Oil or the like *restoring order* and then running the place?

I would go with the corporate state idea, but I would have gone with a french one, since the french were quite prominent in North Africa at the time.

- Perhaps control of the Suez canal could likewise have fallen into corporate hands, becoming a valuable point of intrigue as various companies try to get their hands on this most key transportation link.

Egypt was effectively a client state of a combination of the British and Ottoman empires at the time, and post-WWI the Ottoman empire was effectively torn apart by internal strains. I would bet on an english chartered company getting that job.

Africa would be a complete mess, but a hideously dangerous mess. The caribbean might actually be something of a free zone, because while large parts of it are colonised (and still are today), the enforcement would likely be very relaxed.

[Koekepan]

Clarence had had just about enough.

He had listened to the purring whispers of Cat since the earliest days of his adolescence, and gained much. Then this silver-tongued bastard had persuaded him to join the research laboratories of Andalene Cosmetics, hoping for some sort of infinite stream of magical face creams or other fripperies.

The first days were fine. After the fashion of a cat, he had poked and peered, sniffed and inspected, but gradually, day after day, Witherspoon had become an increasingly greater pain. "Why is Brylcreem still on the market? Why haven't we destroyed them? What have you done that's worth your salary, Clarence?"

Now Witherspoon came striding into the lab with a forehead like a thundercloud, and an expense report in his hand. Some clerk somewhere had misfiled it, but now Witherspoon was shoving it in Clarence's face and roaring about fraud. Clarence backed away, and again, and again, until his back was hard against the lab bench, and Witherspoon advanced step by step, shouting while the lab techs desperately left on any pretext or buried their faces in microscopes.

In the back of his head Clarence heard the rising snarl, and at first he tried to bury it, but finally the snarl turned into the feral scream of a cat defending her litter, and Clarence welcomed her into his body.

It was a blur, how his claws sank into Witherspoon's face, shredding flesh from bone, splitting eyes in their sockets. It was a blur, how his fangs rent Witherspoon's throat, guided not by eyesight but the feel of his whiskers, and then it was a blur as he dove over the bench and out of the wide french doors of the lab, across the trimmed lawns and into the streets.

Goodbye, career. Goodbye, normal life. Clarence listened for Cat, and heard the grumbling growl of anger still rumbling through his head. Cat was ready for Clarence to follow, and find a new den.

[Koekepan]

Alexander was a strange old man. The stories about him suggested he used to be a nobleman in the old Russia, but then he might just as easily have been a nobody who wove nonsense about himself. Weaving stories was certainly something he did all the time. Decades away from the old country had softened his accent out, but he still wore a precisely waxed moustache and van dyke beard.

Right now, Alexander was waving a strip of card with holes in it. "This is your key. This key will unlock the combination on the bomber's computer until the end of this week, when they change it. Friday evening, six is when they change it. To the left of that is a tape. You replace that tape with this one here." He slapped a reel of tape sitting on the desk.

Harvey lifted a hand. "Yeah, we got that. That part isn't the problem. Why are we being paid in french oil company scrip? What's the problem with pounds, or even francs?"

Alexander shrugged. "You don't want job, you don't need job. Walk out, and I speak with someone else." He plonked the card onto the tape and walked back around his desk to his chair. "Maybe someone who understands modern miracle of money changing, eh?"

Harvey was about to speak again, but he felt Jack's hand on his shoulder. Mild in tone, impeccably turned out, Jack smiled. "Of course, we'd love to do the job for you, Alex old friend. But we'd just feel better about it if the money were in a more readily changed form. I read the newspaper this morning, and the scrip in question has tumbled on the official markets, and tumbled far further in the black markets. If it's oil company scrip you have, how about offering us instead the equivalent in refined diesel? That always has a market somewhere, and is so much less politically volatile."

[Koekepan]

"All right, boys, grab your coffee mugs and settle down. We have here Inspector Van Houten here to help us with policing in cases where magic may be involved. The inspector is a licensed magician with a degree from Yale who now works with the FBI, so we'll be getting the best, latest information.

"All yours, Inspector."

"Thank you, sheriff. Could someone get the lights for the slide projector? Thanks.

"Fellows, magic has changed the world, and nobody knows that better than I do, but the first thing you all have to remember is that while magic might bend the rules from time to time, the basic rules you all know do apply. A gun is a gun, a shiv is a shiv and murder is still murder. The sun rose this morning and kidnapping was illegal, and it'll still be illegal tonight. What's more, you all know as well as I do from experience in the street that most crooks are dumb as a bag of hammers. It's a thug too stupid to hold down a proper job who's holding up little old ladies, not some kind of criminal genius, and nine times out of ten those thugs know less than nothing about magic. So what I'm saying is that most of your jobs haven't changed at all.

"Another thing that hasn't changed one bit is basic police work. Taking statements. Reporting cases. A big mistake I often see is officers on the street, deciding to drop everything the moment someone makes a claim of magic - or just discounting every report because it doesn't make sense. Take the statement, just as people say it. It might not make sense to you at the time, but with the right help, detectives can make sense of it. What they need from you is a solid report.

"Collection of evidence is one thing that has changed a little. Most of the time, as I said, a shiv is a shiv, and if you see a trail of blood on the floor, you treat that just the same as always. However, if you have any reason to believe that something looks like magic - and you have to trust your instincts here - be careful of touching things. Think of it as risking fingerprints. Write up a precise description. If you have a camera, take a picture, or mark the area with chalk so that it's clear for a forensic team, but one of the most valuable forensic tools we have is the magical signature of things and that can fade with every time you touch something. So just bear that in mind.

"I have run into quite a few officers, and they're an asset to the force, who have the knack to see and talk to spirits. If you have the talent, great, but I want to add a warning: take a spirit's report, by all means, but you have to understand that while it's useful to you and me to piece things together, it's not admissable in court, and for some very good reasons. Sometimes anybody can talk to a spirit, but often times not everyone can, and top of the list of concerns is that spirits lie, a lot, and we have no real way of holding them to anything.

"On the other hand, just because they tell lies is no reason not to listen to them, so if a spirit does talk to you, the best thing you can do is ask the spirit to point you at some evidence. If you think a thief hid some jewels, maybe the spirit can show you where. A lot of bad boys who thought they got away with it are breaking rocks now because a spirit told the tale.

"Turning to magic for a moment, the fact is, you won't see much of it. Pretty crazy, but it's true. Think about it; the world has guns and a lot of people have them but outside of hunting season how often do you run into gunfire? Not a lot, huh? Well, way fewer people can use magic than have a gun, and most of them obey the law. I know I do.

"Another big factor is that magic is expensive. So let's say we have a crook, who wants to sneak into a warehouse unseen. Magic can help him do that, sure. Then he comes to a magician like me, and asks for the spell. Your typical magician will throw him out, but maybe the magician is less thoughtful, or less scrupulous, and quotes him a price. For five hundred dollars, he could be invisible all day? Your crook is going to go straight home and kick the dog, not pay five hundred dollars.

"So who uses magic? In a word, organised crime. The mafia have the will, the deep pockets and the long reach to turn magic to evil uses. Another thing you sometimes see is a backwoods kid who has talent, but no common sense but usually it's only a matter of time before the mafia reel them in. Otherwise, chances are some crooks begged or threatened or hoodwinked a magician into doing something for them, and the magician will, when approached, tell you exactly who bought what when. So don't jump to conclusions until and unless you find yourself being stonewalled.

"So let's say you have a case where you're sure magic is involved. Eyewitness reports tell you the same crazy story, maybe something is weird about the crime scene, it all just points in one direction. What do you do?

"The first thing is, you do your job. Just like I said before, it's down to basic police work. The next thing is, you let the sheriff know. I believe the sheriff is on the lookout for a detective who knows the score, but until then, the sheriff has my number. I will send help, or even come down myself. We have a whole team just waiting to bring miscreants to justice."

[Koekepan]

Behold the power of thread necro!

I've been working on this madness, and I'm starting to pull together a basic ruleset.

Anyone interested in playtesting?

I've also shamefully abused wikipedia to build a timeline and plausible outcomes, so editorial comment and frightful wrangling welcome.

Anyone?