RPG systems frozen in time

[Bohandas]

I find it hard to believe that texts that give you magic powers and/or drive you insane would be freely available via google search but...

Even if not by google search than eventually someone would end up emailing it around like the tape in Rings or reading it out loud over the air like in Fistful of Boomstick or Scary Movie 3

 

[payn]

Even if not by google search than eventually someone would end up emailing it around like the tape in Rings or reading it out loud over the air like in Fistful of Boomstick or Scary Movie 3

Looking back it begs the question then if any tech will simply disseminate mythos? Why did the printing press not get copies in every library or even newspapers? The radio has been widely around since the 1920's. Why wasn't anything read aloud over the air waves back then? I find this tech argument dog doesnt hunt.

 

[MGibster]

It occurs to me that Call of Cthulhu would have to work a lot differently in a modern setting since there's not really such a thing as a rare or esoteric book anymore. You're one google search away from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Popul Vuh, the Gospel of Judas, the Enuma Elish, the Book of the Subgenius, the Zohar, the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegestus, Revolt in the Stars, the Ars Goetia - whatever you want - and I'm pretty sure the Necronomicon and the Book of Eibon would be no different if they were real

I remember the Dead Sea Scrolls being big news in the 1990s when they were using new imagery techology to examin them. The thing about the scrolls is there are millions and millions of people interested in them for both religious and historical reasons. Most people, even experts in the occult, have no idea the Necronomicon exists. And those who have copies of the book are unlikely to share it with the rest of the world either because they're aware of the danger or because they don't want to share power with anyone else.

Delta Green, which is a descendent of Call of Cthulhu, explains why the mythos hasn't been exposed even in the modern era with digitization and everyone walking around with a camera in their pocket. Encounters with the mythos are vanishingly rare, brief, and typically destructive. We don't tend to see it that way because we're playing a game where we engage with the mythos, but how many copies of the Necronomicon even exist? You've got the original 8th century manuscript, the 10th century Greek translation, the 13th century Latin translation, and maybe there are others.

 

[GrimCo]

In my games, magic/supernatural and tech don't really love each other. So all those mystic books, when scanned or photocopied or photographed, they miss something, something that's perceived only by human eye and brain directly reading from manuscript. Same with some of the eldritch horror, they just don't bounce light in a way needed to be properly captured on film/video. Call it aura or energy that interacts directly with human one and causes Sanity loss. Ones that do show on film/video, those are dismissed as CGI or VFX.

I ran adventure where players investigated cult. They went trough lot's of trouble finding out about cult, where it is, what they try to do (summon eldricht horror), only to find out in the end that cult used scanned copy of Necronomicon found on internet whose incantations lacked crucial chants that don't show on scans so both investigators and cult spent lot's of time and resources for - nothing.

 

[aramis erak]

I still run d20modern and it was created and published back during the early 2000s and you can see it in the gear/item list. To keep my sanity and not having to worry about introducing more recent tech and figuring out the purchasing DCs, I tell the players that join before we officially start the game that it's set in 2004 unless i use the d20future book in which case it's the future!

Do any other GMs do this kind of thing or do you chose to work out modern advances into your games that set in the current year/tech setting?

I do it with both Traveller and Judge Dredd. And to a small bit with T2K...
Traveller — the original, GDW, old school "Classic" Traveller — made some spectacularly bad predictions on information tech... And DGP didn't update them much when writing MegaTraveller under contract to GDW. And GDW didn't update them at all for TNE...
I'll note: Mongoose subtly updated the information tech - it's still unlikely-level slow progress, but not nearly as bad as CT.

Judge Dredd likewise lacks the portable comms and computers we now hold (literally) in our hands every day. Sure, it adds full AI... but it gets the tech access so low... but adding cell phones to MC1 would change the tone severely... MC1 is all about the terminals...

T2K - when I ran it last year, I did let PCs have some cell phones and PDAs... but assumed the majority of service was absent. Previously (2021 - 4e Beta), I didn't. It was just easier to ignore the late 90's PDAs (I had a newton by 1998)... and definitely the "candy-bar" form factor cell-phones.

 

[Aldarc]

I find it hard to believe that texts that give you magic powers and/or drive you insane would be freely available via google search but...

Of course not Google, but on ChatGPT?

 

[payn]

Of course not Google, but on ChatGPT?

I immediately thought social media after typing that but yeah…

 

[Laurefindel]

Ones that do show on film/video, those are dismissed as CGI or VFX.

« Totally AI. Look, it’s foot is phasing through the car before it explodes, and this guy is standing in the background unafraid and unconcerned. Mom, you’ve got to stop believing in this AI slop… »

 

[Micah Sweet]

The next time I run FASERIP, it'll be Marvel circa 1987-1993, as intended.