Ooooo. Interesting!

(Trying not to ask about Protocol, because I love '30s Pulp Adventure!)

So, this Chambers guy -- would I know anything else he's written?

(I kid. I listen to the Ken & Robin Talk About Stuff podcast, so I hear a LOT about Robert W. Chambers!)
 

Last edited by CaptAdventure (5/23/2024 4:36 pm)

Because Paul asked...

The Lady Daisy St Clair games are about amateur spies in the 1930s who work for an organisation called ‘The Protocol’. They are called on to help MI6, MI5 and even Scotland Yard when their experience of society outside of the usual run of the mill sub-cultures can help.
 
Daisy is an aristocrat who floats around the upper crust scene of London, keeping her eyes and ears open. Her intelligence mentor is Reggie Fairfax, a Great War veteran and one of those modern artists who paints pictures most people don’t like - and who is well known in Europe’s avant-garde arts scene. Daisy’s lover Pete Masters is the third member of the team, and a naturalised Englishman. He is a White Russian exile who was raised mostly in Paris and now works as a photographer for fashion magazines and also in advertising.
 
Daisy is my wife Alison’s PC, while Reggie and Pete are what I call Allied NPCs. These are built just like PCs but do not have Hero Points. I run these as NPCs but Alison make tactical decisions for Reggie and Pete when it comes to combat, and Daisy takes the lead role in the team. Daisy’s career started in 1935 and after 19 games we are now up to 1937.
 
We have also gone back in time, and Alison runs games with Reggie Fairfax as my PC in Protocol games set in the 1920s. (In these games Reggie has Hero Points.) This works well, and we haven’t had any disconnect between the two time periods so far.
 
The idea for Protocol isn’t mine but comes from a Call of Cthulhu article by Italian gamer Davide Mana. In his article Davide put forward the idea of ‘Avengers Protocol’ – a swinging sixties unorthodox intelligence service inspired by the 1960s British tv show, The Avengers. This was very campy and tongue in cheek, a bit like Man From UNCLE but if anything even weirder and sillier. Davide’s set-up was that the original idea was dreamed up by Lord Peter Whimsey in 1927 (Whimsey was a gentleman detective in a series of novels by Dorothy L Sayers). However, in Davide's set-up the idea wasn’t taken up until the early 1960s.
 
I thought the idea of such an organisation would be a lot more fun if Whimsey’s suggestion had actually been taken up by British intelligence in the 20s. Protocol agents are given cash and then just allowed to get on with their lives. But they keep their eyes and ears open and are also given assignments by ‘Mother’ (their control - the current 1937 Mother is a grumpy, fat, semi-alcoholic man who appears to live in a dirty office at Admiralty Arch).

The agents unorthodox contacts and talents allow them to investigate things where the usual intelligence agents or police detectives would be out of their depth or stick out like sore thumbs.

Last edited by Gruntfuttock (5/24/2024 10:26 am)