Help me introduce psionics into my WWII campaign.

[iwatt]

My current campaign consists of an alternate reality set in early 1948. Everybody has the bomb, so there is a 4 way cold war, with most superpowers becoming very isolationists. The player's are a team composed of an MI-6 operative who works with Czeck mobsters with partisan ties. Through extorsion, bribes, and the fact that the lead criminal is a persecuted minority (gypsy), the "team" has somehow managed to work together. I've been playing a Return to Castle Wolfenstein plot (can't have Nazis without some plans to run Uber Soldadts ). Thery currently are returning to Prague after infiltrating one of the Uber Soldadt research facilities.

The thing is, one of my players told me he felt his character was developing on lines too similar to another players. I had just reread the Agents of Psi portion of the rulebook, and foolishly reccomended him to play a Telepath. I've never played with Psi rules, but I'm not to worried about them. I'm just a litlle hung up on how to bring in the psionic powers into play. My player and I agreed that his character's near death experience (made the FORT save to satabilize at -9 hp), awakened his latent telepathic powers. He was already an empath (damn gypsy Charismatic heroes with high Diplo, bluff, Gather Info, Criminal backgrounds) with those +15 checks, so we decided that his abilty to manipulate others was really an aspect of his powers. His wild talent is going to be Missive

What I need is:

1) A way to bring in his telepathic powers in to play a "believable" manner.
2) Further plot hooks I can use. Maybe a Nazi Psi-corps?

And I also need your help on this:

I kinda want to have Mind-Flayers as Alien Overlords, but I don't see how to tie them up with a 4-pronged cold war. Any ideas on how to bring this into play would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

Remember, in the real cold war, the U.S., Britain, and the USSR all engaged in experimentation in using psychics for espionage. You've already got an MI-6 character involved. German psi-spies wouldn't even need an excuse to exist, given Hitler's interest in the occult.

As for bringing in the PC's psi power, just start with a moment of death communication. The Pc's lover had an instant in which she knew the PC was about to die, and in his mind, as he balanced on the edge of death, heard her screams of anguish in his mind.

Then build from there, with the PC able to "overhear" other traumatic events, first involving those close to him (good excuse to kill off some of the PC's potentially troublesome relatives or clan members), then the power expands to hear any nearby traumatic events, then grows further to hearstrong throughts without trauma, etc.

As for alien overlords, the cold war is a game to them. They are connected to all 4 superpowers, and when one starts losing, they share the means to rebalance things with them.Let the aliens keep this up for a few decades before they manipulate enough situations to orchestrate the destruction of the planet by human hands.

 

[iwatt]

illithid wargaming

I like it!
So I can bring Roswell and Tunguska into play. The Soviet illithid has to have the most advanced Psi efforts (Command and Conquer )? The American Mind Flayer is playing with more advanced Tech from the crash site? The German Mind-flayer is a believer in building an army of thralls? What about the Japanese?

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

The Japanese? Have that Illithid take advantage of the god complex over there, where the emporer is considered a god and ancestors are holy spirits to be worshipped for their guidance and help. Maybe start a dark, secret cult worshipping him, or make the emporer his puppet.

 

[iwatt]

I like that about the cult, probably will have each mind-flayer with a sect following. But how long do you think these aliens have been toying with our history. It be cool to come up with some historic events I could tie to "alien" intervention.

i.e.

1) The "american" mind flayer broke up his arrangement with the British counterpart, leading to the creation of the U.S.A.

2) rumors of another space crash led to the european pressure to discover America.

Also, since they're wargaming, there should be rules. I'm thinking no direct technology transfers to the primitives (us). But recovery of other alien equipment (Roswell) is permitted. Breeding programs as well (i.e. the European Illithid has been grooming his master race for centuries, while the Russian mind-flayer has bred mentalists). The attacks against rival programs has led to some "freed" specimens (a couple of my PCs will be descendants of these).

So what I need now are:
A) the rules of engagement for the wargame
B) Further "historic" events I can blame on the Aliens.

By the way, thanks for the good ideas so far. Anybody else feel free to add to these.

 

[Bran Blackbyrd]

Hehe. Interesting; I have been planning on running a D20 Modern campaign that will start in the present and end up in WW2 era Europe. The PCs will have to try to stop the Axis' attempts to successfully develop super-weapons made using technology recovered from the Tunguska incident.

Dana_Jorgensen right on the money about psionics. It's a natural for any campaign involving WW2 or the cold war. Hitler was extremely into the occult, and if Germany was trying to develop psychic-weapons the other countries pretty much had to research it. Just in case...

 

[Bran Blackbyrd]

B) Further "historic" events I can blame on the Aliens.

By the way, thanks for the good ideas so far. Anybody else feel free to add to these.

Nothing shakes things up like calling religion into question. Maybe an illithid manipulated Joan of Arc, or was directly responsible for the "Our Lady of Fatima" incidents.
Assassinations, the Inquisition, the rise of Napoleon.
Maybe the puritans were aware of rampant illithid influence in Europe and fled to America in part to escape them. Years later the Salem Witch Trials take place because of the fear that Illithids are controlling people among them, not because they suspect witchcraft.

 

[iwatt]

This is good stuff. I'd been toying with the religion aspect as well. I'm still not sure if I want to go full hog and say theat the whole christian religion is an ilithid plot though . In any case, for a very long time all of the memebers of the curia have been dominated by mind-flayers, don't doubt it.

So maybe I could have the brits encourage further investigations into the Nazi occult and uber soldadt research. Because the MI-6 guy just screwed up and got IDed, now he'll need unlikely allies. The Vatican always had a very effective spy service. A straetgic alliance is not out of the question.

Keep the ideas coming, I specially liked the witch hunt trial thing. Of course the Inquisition was a mind-flayer sponsored program to get rid of agents of other alien powers who did not agree with the wargaming going on.

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

Argh! Since the last time the boards went down, this server has run like a dog! A dog with no legs! Took 6 minutes for the reply page to load, and I'm on a connection way faster than 56K...

Anyway, going with Christianity as a mindflayer plot, remember that Christianity sprouted from Judiasm and Islam sprouted from Christianity. Islam could have started under one of a number of circumstances:
1.) A human uncovered the truth and started his own religion as a way to wage war against the aliens and those who follow those aliens.
2.) One of the other illithids duped a number of Christians into forming a competing religion.
3.) One of the underlings of the illithid using Christiantiy started Islam as a means to eventually overthrow his boss, providing yet another layer of conspiracy for your game.

Second you could go with the Hebrew secretly knowing the truth, being one of the few human-created religions. They engaged in a campaign of terrorism between 1939 and 1948 in order to gain independence for Israel. Until September 11, 2001, the Feb 1942 sinking of the SS Struma at the hands of Jewish terrorists was the single act of terrorism with the highest death toll to date, having killed 769 people illegally immigrating to Palestine. In your game, all of this could be turned into an effort to kick the alien-worshipping nonbelievers out of holy lands.

 

[iwatt]

Yup, I'm gonna go with the whole religion shtick. I'm gonna get them to work for the Vatican, That'll make them believe they're on the good side, until they finally discover they've been helping the main bad guy.

Thanx