[Paladin Xe] Masonic Snipers

[James_Nostack]

(this is crossposted from the Indie Netgaming Yahoo Group)

We're going with a secret order of Gnostic heretics operating under the shadow of the Church and the Monarchy during the French Enlightenment that Never Was.  

We've got:

* Christopher Wren encoding messages in his archetecture

* Duelling rapiers

* Flintlock pistols

* Philosophes like Diderot, Voltaire, Goethe, Mozart and Euler are part of the secret society

* The Church has its own order of knighthood; perhaps holy shock troops defending the orders of the blind creator-god Ialdaboath.  These dudes will be scary.

* Flintlock pistols with crazy-elaborate sights and in-lays

* The State has secret police and spies throughout the city

* The Guillotine

* The Tennis Court Oath

* Did I mention Blake, Byron, and Percy & Mary Shelley?

* The secret society--based on the Masons/Rosicrucians--is having a generational conflict; the old guard wants to preserve the mystical knowledge and keep it hidden, while the newer generation yearns to "Ecrasez l'infame!" and take the fight to the tyrannous king and his high priest.

* Robespierre?  Check.

* Cardinal Richelieu?  Check.

* Alchemy?  Check.

* Benjamin goddam Franklin, fool!  Better recognize!

I want to point out that the French Revolution, or something similar, would work very well for a Paladin game.  Idealism led political absolutists to make real progress in some areas... but in a very reprehensible manner.

[James_Nostack]

Okay -- those Holy Roman Empire shock troopers?  The "original" paladins?  The Church worships the Creator-God (who, according to Gnostic traditions, is distinct from the true Godhead, but arrogantly insists that He's the Real Deal).  

The Creator-God is blind, which is why Creation is so flawed.  Cancer?  Tidal waves that kill tens of thousands of people?  Misery?  All of that comes from the fact that this celestial bastard is insane and unable to see.  And you have to worship Him.

So, these shock trooper anti-paladins are initiated by stabbing out both their eyes.  They see through a special effect of Dark Animus.

[Joshua Tompkins]

So, these shock trooper anti-paladins are initiated by stabbing out both their eyes. They see through a special effect of Dark Animus.

Very nice.  I was thinking about this myself this morning (I was one of the folks hashing this whole thing out in #indierpgs last night), and I think that if we want some additional Color in this, we could try and ground this group into the structure of the actual Church.

The way I see it, these guys are part of a secret (of course) organization withing the Church called the "Congregation for the Preservation of the Remnant" (or something similar).  In this version of history, these guys are the ones charged with putting down heresies and generally keeping the believers in line.  Nominally they are unknown, but with the Church attempting to fight off the lingering effects of the Reformation (rather then undergoing a Counter Reformation of it's own), they've come much more into the open.

I'm thinking we should work up a Code for them, too, to help contrast the one we create for our "Enlightened" Paladins.

[Joshua Tompkins]

If I can, I'd like to fill in a little of the background for the setting.  This is pretty much directly from the notes I managed to scribble down after the IRC session last night, so if they're a little choppy, please be gentle. :)  Remember that these are just my ideas, they aren't set in stone, and we should feel free to discard them if they don't seem to work with the overall feel of the game or if you guys just think I'm off my rocker.

The story is set during the Enlightenment, probably in Europe.  Why?  Mostly because there tended to be a lot of exciting and interesting stuff going on, but also because the genre conventions of Paladin mesh well with the political and social climate of the time (with a little help from us, of course).

As I see it, the basic idea of the setting is that the world is essentially controlled by a corrupt, much darker Roman Catholic Church.  In this timeline, the Church worships (whether knowingly or not) the Gnostic Demiurge, a pseudo-deity who is largely responsible for the sad shape the world finds itself in (suffering, poverty, natural disasters, etc).  The Church managed to weather the storms of the Reformation with very little damage (there was no Counter Reformation), largely thanks to the efforts of an ancient group of dark Paladins called the Order of St. Jerome.  This group is a part of the Congregation for the Preservation of the Remnant, a secret body within the Church whose duties, generally speaking, consist of putting down heresies and keeping the Flock in line.

Opposing the Church is a group (similar or possibly identical to the Freemasons, etc), which has, through the study of alchemy, natural philosophy, and ancient religious texts, discovered or rediscovered some soft of secret, ancient knowledge about the true nature of the universe, called "Gnosis", which can be used by members of the group to mold reality around the user.

As an aside, the actual nature and use of this power still needs to be defined.  Perhaps members of the Gnostic group are able to channel the energies of the Pleroma (the Gnostic realm of Fullness, where the power of the divine operates with full potency) to reshape the creation of the Demiurge into its true, unsullied form.  

Alternatively, it's possible that Gnosis can be called upon in the creation of technological objects far beyond what could normally be created using the methods of the period.  Think titanium rapiers or powerful sniper rifles with ornate optics (low tech steampunk, essentially).

In any case, this group of philosophers exists to preserve and protect the Gnosis against the machinations of the Church, not to actually use the Gnosis against other people.  Recently, however, there has arisen a group of young philosophers who want to not simply protect the Gnosis but to use it in an active resistance against the Church, to go out and spread the Word (or rather Words, plural) of the Enlightenment amount the varied people of the Earth.

So we have three groups, with considerable tension between and among themselves, and we're dropping them into one of the most politically and intellectually charged periods in the history of mankind.  Sounds like a lot of fun, to me.  We'd like to include some or all of what James mentioned into the game, either as part of the ongoing plot or simply as background Color.

As James said, this isn't merely play at world creation; we hope to run a session or a series of sessions in this setting very soon, starting with Code and character creation next Monday in the #indierpgs IRC channel at 9pm EST.  Any interested parties (especially if you're willing to GM a session or two) are welcome to come check it out.

Clinton was thinking about using this game to playtest Paladin 2nd Edition, but if he can't make it, we're still going to try and run the game under the 1st Edition rules.

[Roger]

Not to get terribly snotty over it, but setting is not Actual Play.


Cheers,
Roger

[LordSmerf]

Not to get terribly snotty over it, but setting is not Actual Play.

Actually, I think you're wrong about this one, Roger.  Not in all cases, but in this one.  The setting generation was part of actual play.  What I'd be interested in seeing is where the players saw the system impacting this setting generation.

The story is set during the Enlightenment, probably in Europe. Why? Mostly because there tended to be a lot of exciting and interesting stuff going on, but also because the genre conventions of Paladin mesh well with the political and social climate of the time (with a little help from us, of course).

This, for example.  Can we get some expansion on why you feel that the game's aesthetic meshes so well here?  Also, any discussion of how the system of the game influenced choices in the setting (i.e. Dark Paladins being blinded but using Dark Anima) would be excellent.

Thomas

[Joshua Tompkins]

This, for example.  Can we get some expansion on why you feel that the game's aesthetic meshes so well here?  Also, any discussion of how the system of the game influenced choices in the setting (i.e. Dark Paladins being blinded but using Dark Anima) would be excellent.

Sure.  Let me see if I can reconstruct our thought processes from last night.

To me, Paladin seems to be (at least, Paladin as I've played it) primarily about getting a chance to play a cool, fundamentalist asskicker.  The best thing about it is that you don't really have to work at it very hard, because Paladin enforces a rigid system of religious dualism.

On thing I've noticed about setting creation in Paladin is that the setting is really heavily informed by the role of the Paladin - in effect, you create the Paladin first, and then come up with a world to fit him into.

Perfect example:  Gnostic Mason Paladins!

We had been kicking around various setting ideas for a while when someone (I can't remember who) came up with the idea of playing a Gnostic Paladin.  Gnosticsm is fundamentally dualistic, to that fit like the proverbial glove.  The idea of using "secret knowledge" (gnosis) to fight against an evil, oppresive diety and his minions was a lot of fun, too, and in keeping with Paladin's tone.

The important point here, I think, is that we had been coming up with ideas for a setting, like historical fantasy or feudal Japan, but it wasn't until we came up with a working idea for a Paladin that things started coming together.

As to the Enlightenment part?  Well, as James pointed out, the period tended to produce a lot of absolutist philosophy.  The conflicts between democracy & monarchy, analytical reason & religious dogma, etc, all seemed to add up to a great environment to put a bunch of fundamentalist, superpowered timebombs into and see what happens.

The idea of casting the Church as the malevolent power came very naturally from the Gnostic base - much of Gnostic philosophy casts the creator-God as the evil screwup who is ruining the whole thing for everyone, and of course the Church (in all it's forms) has sort of a vested interest in holding the opposite view.

As to the whole blind Dark Paladin thing, I think I'll leave the explaination for that (creepy and very cool) idea to James. ;)

How's that for some expansion, Thomas?  A little justification for our setting, and a couple of key insights into the way Paladin works for my own edification.

Thanks for the interest, by the way.  This thread has already broken my previous record for most replies. *grin*

[Bob McNamee]

grrrr I missed it!

Darn Yahoo for losing my account again!!!

Darn You to Heck!!!!

Bob McNamee

PS: I'd love to try to jump in next session, the setting sounds great!

[LordSmerf]

Totally sweet, I'm eagerly waiting to see where you guys go with all of this...

Thomas

[James_Nostack]

Not to get terribly snotty over it, but setting is not Actual Play.

Maybe not, but Clinton said something about including advice and rules on creating worlds/holy orders/codes of conduct in 2e, so it might be helpful to have an evolving thread documenting the development as it occurs in actual play.

[James_Nostack]

What I'd be interested in seeing is where the players saw the system impacting this setting generation.

Because heroic Satanist paladins seem fairly transgressive for a game about saintly do-gooders.  We wanted to push the envelope.

Also, as I recall we did not start out with the "paladin" part: we started by tossing sample codes and ethical systems around.  The Code of the Pirate, the code of the Old West, the Code of Chivalry, the Code of Bushido... we probably could have included ethical systems from the early days of Communism, too, which might have been interesting.  But for whatever reason, the Gnostic thing stuck.  Then we came up with an Order of secretive alchemists and scholars, and then we came up with the world.  We're still chewing on the paladins themselves.

Can we get some expansion on why you feel that the game's aesthetic meshes so well [with revolutionary France]

Because even though I am all-man, I like the clothes.

But more seriously: Gnosticism implies that the material universe isn't just imperfect, but (possibly) evil, and ruled by an evil demi-god, with a secretive bunch of Enlightened Ones trying to survive.  In order to make this work, you need a very evil, very theocratic social order.  There are plenty of examples, but France in the 1780's is wonderfully theatrical.  Also, it turns out that once you drive off the Old Evil Order, the revolutionaries end up being almost as dangerous.  Too much zeal can lead to horrifying situations, which seems to be one of the emergent features of Paladin play.

The Dark Paladins are blind because it seemed like a cool touch.

[James_Nostack]

In any case, this group of philosophers exists to preserve and protect the Gnosis against the machinations of the Church, not to actually use the Gnosis against other people.  Recently, however, there has arisen a group of young philosophers who want to not simply protect the Gnosis but to use it in an active resistance...

In the real world Enlightenment reformers saw the American Revolution as a vindication of their ideas and philosophies, and a harbinger of greater changes that would sweep across Europe to create a republican utopia.  

If there's some kind of imaginary America in this setting, maybe its success has encouraged the younger generation of the Order to become more ambitious?  And of course, most of the American leaders were Masons...

[Joshua Tompkins]

FYI, if anyone is interested in this (prep is proceeding apace, with an actual play following hopefully as soon as next Monday), discussion was continued here and most recently here and here, over in the Anvilwerks forum.

We're still looking for additional players and a GM, so if you're interested, drop by and have a look.

Otherwise, this thread could probably be locked and archived.