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Monday Mashup #12: I Am Legend

Today’s Monday Mashup concept was contributed by Eric McErlain, who runs the excellent Off Wing Opinion. He suggested Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend some time ago, but I put off using it for a while because I thought it was a little close to Body Snatchers. But time has passed and here we are.

If you haven’t read I Am Legend, allow me to strongly recommend it. It’s the story of the last man on earth, beseiged by a horde of vampires. He defends himself, despite the fact that he has nothing to live for. In the end, he realizes that to the new society of vampires, he’s the legendary monster. My brief summary doesn’t do it justice, but it’s a start.

Mash!

I just picked up Skull and Bones, so I’m going to use that as my gaming element. In my alternate history, Sir Francis Drake did not die of the flux in 1596. Sick for many months, he nonetheless recovered. However, when his patron Queen Elizabeth died, he took keen notice of the fate of Sir Walter Raleigh. Never completely motivated by patriotism, Sir Drake quickly decided to strike out on his own and seek power and riches by freeing the New World from the Continental yoke.

Soon thereafter, he recruited the man who would seal the fate of the European maritime powers: Edward Teach. With Teach as his chief lieutenant, the aging Drake created a fleet of privateers to harry British and Spanish ships all up and down the eastern coast of North America. By 1615, no European state could effectively project power to the New World, and the Caribbean was a hive of pirate utopias.

The PCs are some of the few remaining representatives of British power in 1610. They are surrounded by buccaneers and rascals of every stripe. Their cause is perhaps futile, but as servants of His Majesty James I, they must fight on… until they realize that the society surrounding them is more just and rational than the one they serve.

It’d be a tricky campaign to pull off, since it’s always hard to switch PC goals in mid-stream, but I think the venue could be lots of fun.

8 Comments

  1. This week, Bryant gives us I Am Legend as his half of the Mashup. (He also helpfully explains what it…

  2. Mine is up. You can find it here. I give some short descriptions of mashing I Am Legend with the Amber DRPG and the soon-to-be-released Angel RPG, but main mash for I Am Legend is for Changeling: the Dreaming.

  3. Bryant’s Mashup this week is the Richard Matheson classic I AM LEGEND….

  4. Jeremiah Genest Jeremiah Genest

    I missed this mashup earleir in the wee, did it make it to your Livejournal?

    How is Skull & Bones?

  5. Oddly, nope, it didn’t. I’ll repush it…

    Skull and Bones has the goofiest line ever printed in a D20 product. I’ll review it sometime this weekend. I don’t dislike it but it’s… odd.

  6. Jeremiah Genest Jeremiah Genest

    Is it worth reading for non-D20 folks? I find the few D20 books I’ve tried to read to be utterly useless to me so I’ve elarned to steer away from them. They just don’t seem to have the stealibility of a GURPS book, for example. or maybe its just me.

  7. Nope. Furry Pirates is still much better as a pirate reference, IMHO.

    The problem with D20 books is the same thing which makes them sell so well — publishers have clued into the need to add lots of crunchy bits. “Oooh, new core class!” So less background.

    The new Atlas book on crime and punishment is pretty good as a general reference, but that’s the exception.

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