[UA] Campaign help - or sanity - needed

[Dean Reilly]

And who's to say that the PCs are the only Dead Presidents in play?  Where
are the other 40-odd former presidents in all this?  Are the other
presidents sympathetic to the PC's goals?  Antagonistic?  Out for
themselves?  Are they resentful of the PCs famous legacies?  Will William
Henry Harrison come gunning for them ("You sons of bitches!  It should have
been ME!")?

On 1/24/08, Mike Lake <mdlake at well.com> wrote:
>
> Gareth Hanrahan wrote:
>
> > The upshot of it all is that the PCs are all former American
> > Presidents, raised from the dead by a mysterious cult in order to save
> > the soul of the USA. We've got Washington, Kennedy, JFK, Nixon and the
> > real George Bush Jr (the guy in the White House at the moment is an
> > evil imposter).
> >
> > I have absolutely no idea where this came from, or where to go with it
> > yet. Ideas?
>
> Is it too late to talk Bush, Jr. into playing Bush, Sr. instead?  I ran
> a two-session Warehouse 23 adventure once, and used Bush the elder as a
> back-up character: if anyone died in part 1, the team would find him in
> a life-suspension tube, mad as hell to have been replaced by a double
> designed to sabotage his presidency--some arcane calculation about how a
> single term would better serve the cause of a hereditary, imperial
> presidency.  It explains why someone so apparently hyper-competent
> before taking office (look at his resume!) looked so impotent
> afterwards.  It also explains some of the really, really weird stuff
> that came out of his mouth.
>
> But anyway.
>
> Here's some broad campaign brush-strokes, since I'd recommend getting
> your overarching purpose clear first.
>
> Idea one: in a tragic twist, the soul of the USA is no longer viable.
> The pioneering frontiersman ethic is, contrary to our dearest community
> beliefs, poison to a large, unified nation.  At the very least, American
> hegemony over the world lies directly counter to its own anti-monarchist
> roots, and the country must surrender its crown to preserve its soul;
> more sharply, saving America's soul would mean returning it to its
> separate, squabbling components, citizens loyal to their separate
> states, each jealous of the others.  The dead presidents need to kill
> the patient in order to save it.
>
> Idea two: the presidents cannot save anything directly; their time has
> symbolically passed, and with it their capacity to lead.  What they can
> do is find and engineer the election of the person who can (quite
> possibly an avatar of the True King).  The kid can speak for himself,
> but he needs to be noticed first, and the presidents' main purpose is
> getting him in front of a camera.  When you need some action, they'll
> also need to protect him from a persistent maniac trying to follow the
> path of the Lone Assassin (which path doesn't exist, but you won't
> convince HIM of that).
>
> Idea three: the soul of the USA is not a national quality, but a small
> town off the beaten path, a microcosm of the nation.  (Resist the
> temptation to make this a Norman Rockwell town; that's not the soul of
> the country I've seen in any history.)  The country as a whole will
> never be an ideal; it is filled with humans, and all the messy
> interactions of human aspirations and shortcomings.  (It's all just
> people, after all: You did it!)  As long as this town runs on its own
> clockwork, the nation remains fundamentally healthy, or at least capable
> of saving itself from its failures.  If something happens to it,
> however, the nation withers and dies as a world figure.  Naturally,
> someone is planning to do just that.  Anarchists opposed to communities
> of law of any kind?  Imperialists eager to exploit American power for
> personal profit?
> Catholics/Jews/Communists/Bankers/your-favorite-conspiracy-theory-here?
> Homegrown authoritarians, possibly with a theological bent?  Pick one.
> The presidents have to save the town; you could add a certain amount of
> searching for it, too.
>
> Idea four: Or make the search for this town the whole campaign.
> Ex-presidents gone to look for America, ideally in a beat-up VW
> minivan.  By ritually experiencing the whole country--all of it--they
> regenerate its soul.  On second thought, this could be a little too
> passive for your players, since the basic pattern is to witness, not to
> fix.  Maybe it'd be better to ride into towns across the country and set
> things right according to American ideals of fair play, free enterprise,
> and individualism.  A libertarian version of Topper, Quantum Leap, and
> Touched by an Angel.  Once enough situations are fixed, the soul of the
> nation is saved.
>
> I like the fact that not all your presidents are revered.  The soul of
> the USA isn't lily-white, either, and the country has prospered on dirty
> tricks as much as egalitarianism and a work ethic.
>
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