Friday, August 21, 2020

The Frightening OSR Fifties - Monsters,Madmen, Mutants & Megadungeons

Tonight's deep dive into the alternative 'OSR Popcultural history' setting with the start of a slew of mutating & muarading monsters starting with Gojira himself. The 'Gojira incident' marks the first time that the world would see the use of the 'oxygen destoryer' invented by Daisuke Serizawa whose ground breaking work is still being felt today.  
The Fifties also brought on several unique challenges with the advent of mutation taking the world on by storm. The advent of Gojira & many of his ilk led the way for incredible strives in the fields of medicine,military applications, & even into space exploration. 



But it was the ground breaking work of Professor Xavier that really lead to the breaking of the X gene which led into the fields of modern gene works & even telepathic devices. Fifty four would also mark the first appearances of the so called 'Magneto' & his brotherhood.  Several minor incidents lead to veiled connections to Xavier but nothing was ever proven. This also marked the appearance of one of several Mr.Hyde's a possible mutant criminal or family of criminals. 



Professor Richards & Wernher von Braun had access to be German Vril drives, the Roswell crash materials, & even several hyperdrives through very unusual circumstances. Von Braun concluded that these drives were very risky & dangerous to his vision of a interstellar humanity. Richards didn't share his opinion & started working on his own system several of YoYo Dyne Propulsion's patients. This caused a bit of a breech in the relationship between Von Braun & Richards. Richards made incredible strides using the 'over thruster' a key  of the hyperdrive &  warp drive technologies respectively. 



The Fifties were the same era when the discovery of the 'hallow earth' areas marked the appearance of several 'lost world' monsters throughout the world.These monsters have terrorized farming communities out in Midwest for decades. 




The sudden appearances of 'lost worlds' throughout the Fifties often saw the increase in 'Mythos terrorism' incidents. These incidents including the 'Cyprus hills' affair marked a turning point when the US military was brought in. This also marked the return of the Gillman species to the world again. The Gillman is a powerful & highly dangerous subspecies of the Lovecraftian Deep Ones. 



The Mythos incidents led to the push back of the alien Abeloth in Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands. This led to the so called 'The Castle Romeo nuclear test explosion' which wasn't a test at all but a sealing of the war between mankind & the so called 'Abominations'. 



Alright so this is part of the back part of my Alternative Seventies campaign. I've been quietly working my way through the Fifties. Going from there using the timeline campaign method I learned from my uncle all of those years ago. So how would I go about running this campaign?! Part of my brain wants to use Raiders of the Lost Artifacts by Night Owl Workshop. 



But part of me is really interested in Eldritch Tales: Lovecraftian White Box Role-Playing By Raven God Games now bare in mind I grabbed it. Hmm its been interesting to say the least. I'd actually combined Raiders of the Lost Artifacts &  Eldritch Tales: Lovecraftian White Box Role-Playing into a hybrid OSR system. 



Eldritch Tales: Lovecraftian White Box Role-Playing seems a bit too concise to me in places. The game is great but I like my PC's to have a fighting chance & these are some of the most dangerous mythos monsters out there..  So what megadungeon might I run with this?! Possibly one of my stranger choices might be 
Operation Unfathomable by Jason Sholtis for this leg of the campaign. 

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