Quote from: Hubert Farnsworth;3414061.5 out of 3 on that one.

Fahrenheit 451 was written by an American and clearly satirises American society of the 1950s - it was first serialised in Playboy Magazine for fuck's sake...

Of course the very poor 1966 film adaptation was directed by a Frenchman, starred a German, an Irishman and an Englishwoman and was shot in Britain - so you may be remembering that rather than the book itself.

My bad on that one, for some reason I was thinking Clarke did 451, partly as you suspect, because I was remembering the accents in the film version.

Not sure simple nationality is enough - for instance Arthur C Clarke was indeed the owner of a British passport but buggered off to warmer climes as soon as he could afford it and wrote fiction that tends to have American protagonists and is very closely modelled on US Golden Age SF.

Can easily name half a dozen or more other British SF and fantasy writers who you would be hard put to identify as such without checking their biographies.

Bizarre nobody's mentioned Pratchett who is about as English as they come and whose finest creations are modelled very closely on English archetypes (Arcane University, the Watch, the Witches, funny foreign cultures based deliberately on the depictions of them to be found in English childrens books of 50 or 100 years ago etc).

Would also recommend China Mieville whose dystopian fantasies could only be written by a Londoner - a whole issue of Dragon was devoted to his world of Bas-Lag and he is actively collaborating on a new RPG in that setting.

Similarly I can't imagine Iain M Banks's SF being written by anyone who is not from this side of the Atlantic - and the Culture setting would work very well with a rules light narrativistic system like HeroQuest.

Ken McLeod and Charles Stross have also written very British (or Scottish) SF that would convert very well into near future RPGs themed around cybercrime, terrorism etc.    

Stross actually has written RPG material (he created the Githyanki for an early White Dwarf frex) and although he's said he'll never write any more as he actually has to make a living from his work, his Laundry books would make a great basis for a British equivalent of Delta Green.

Quote from: Pelorus;341386I started working on a game that I variously called either "6" or "CONTROL" which was essentially "The Sandbaggers" in RPG form.

If you've not seen The Sandbaggers, I urge you to. Intelligent conversation in the guide of a spy thriller series.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandbaggers

I would be all about this!

I would love to see an RPG based on some of John le Carré work. But I dont think that would be for everyone.

Quote from: Lord Rocket;341401So. Question. What makes things British today? Presumably things have changed since the Thatcherian malaise.

Not really considering New Labour were basically Thatcherites with the decency to wring their hands over it. The whole social 'vibe' over here at the present reminds me very much of the 80s, strikes, money problems, high unemployment. It's Thatcher's Britain all over again.

Quote from: GRIM;341439Not really considering New Labour were basically Thatcherites with the decency to wring their hands over it. The whole social 'vibe' over here at the present reminds me very much of the 80s, strikes, money problems, high unemployment. It's Thatcher's Britain all over again.

QFT - although You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet....

Quote from: Ronin;341429I would love to see an RPG based on some of John le Carré work. But I dont think that would be for everyone.

This would be very cool IMO, even though it probably wouldn't be for everyone.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;341450This would be very cool IMO, even though it probably wouldn't be for everyone.

Regards,
David R

IMO Le Carre would work better in almost any format than a TTRPG - a board or card or LARP game could all capture the double-bluffing and triple-crossing well but can't see a traditional RPG doing it unless you have some really outstanding players.

Quote from: Hubert Farnsworth;341457IMO Le Carre would work better in almost any format than a TTRPG - a board or card or LARP game could all capture the double-bluffing and triple-crossing well but can't see a traditional RPG doing it unless you have some really outstanding players.

Very interesting. Well, it so happens that I do have an outstanding group and LARP doesn't really interest me. But a card game. That sounds cool. A card game with a role playing element.....

Regards,
David R

Britishness these days is pretty much entirely defined by "Things aren't what they were/the country is going to the dogs/it weren't like that in my day/what's the world coming to?" type sentiments. The entire atmosphere is one of relentless pessimism, fuelled by a horrendously cynical and powerful media and a breakdown of any sort of moral authority in society.

So any RPG which sets out to capture the tone of modern Britain is probably going to have to be a cyberpunk game, or (even better) post-apocalyptic - so as to properly reflect the bleak outlook of the natives.

Quote from: noisms;341462Britishness these days is pretty much entirely defined by "Things aren't what they were/the country is going to the dogs/it weren't like that in my day/what's the world coming to?" type sentiments. The entire atmosphere is one of relentless pessimism, fuelled by a horrendously cynical and powerful media and a breakdown of any sort of moral authority in society.

So any RPG which sets out to capture the tone of modern Britain is probably going to have to be a cyberpunk game, or (even better) post-apocalyptic - so as to properly reflect the bleak outlook of the natives.

So SLA Industries second edition then

Quote from: Hubert Farnsworth;3414061.5 out of 3 on that one.

Fahrenheit 451 was written by an American and clearly satirises American society of the 1950s - it was first serialised in Playboy Magazine for fuck's sake...

Of course the very poor 1966 film adaptation was directed by a Frenchman, starred an Austrian, an Irishman and an Englishwoman and was shot in Britain - so you may be remembering that rather than the book itself.

And of course while there are details of 1984 that are direct satire of Austerity Britain in 1948 its main political target is Russian Stalinism and German Nazism and the book would hardly read that differently if you changed the location of Airstrip One to Minnesota and altered the personal and place names accordingly - after all its fundamental horror is that the totalitarian system it describes is triumphant everywhere on earth and by eliminating all forms of national and cultural diversity and the very linguistic ability to form and express oppositional thoughts was ensuring that it would truly last for ever.  

You are of course right on V for Vendetta though.

Games like these can't really work as once the status quo changes, which is what the players would be struggling for, that's game over.

Of course true dystopias can never have truly happy endings - the very best a hero can manage is to escape themselves - leaving everyone else trapped in hell.

This is why IMO Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 and Brave New World are vastly superior to V for Vendetta or Equilibrium or Demolition Man as fictions - and being no fun at all would make much worse games.

Quote from: noisms;341462Britishness these days is pretty much entirely defined by "Things aren't what they were/the country is going to the dogs/it weren't like that in my day/what's the world coming to?" type sentiments. The entire atmosphere is one of relentless pessimism, fuelled by a horrendously cynical and powerful media and a breakdown of any sort of moral authority in society.

So any RPG which sets out to capture the tone of modern Britain is probably going to have to be a cyberpunk game, or (even better) post-apocalyptic - so as to properly reflect the bleak outlook of the natives.

Interesting to get the view from Yokohama.

Living here every day I don't see relentless pessimism - just huge social, economic and cultural chasms and that the only thing uniting almost all
the fragmented shards of society is a shared refusal to face up to how deeply everything is fucked.

And so strong is this universal refusal to face unpalatable facts that somehow the wheels do keep on turning and it doesn't all collapse around our ears.

So although there is huge cynicism, unbounded selfishness and grotesque vulgarity everywhere you look, the modern English are way too shallow to be relentlessly anything - least of all pessimistic.

And that probably is the only thing that may delay the deluge long enough for us to limp into the next technological revolution and get ourselves undeservedly rescued by the rising long wave of global progress.

Quote from: Hubert Farnsworth;341480Interesting to get the view from Yokohama.

Living here every day I don't see relentless pessimism - just huge social, economic and cultural chasms and that the only thing uniting almost all
the fragmented shards of society is a shared refusal to face up to how deeply everything is fucked.

And so strong is this universal refusal to face unpalatable facts that somehow the wheels do keep on turning and it doesn't all collapse around our ears.

So although there is huge cynicism, unbounded selfishness and grotesque vulgarity everywhere you look, the modern English are way too shallow to be relentlessly anything - least of all pessimistic.

And that probably is the only thing that may delay the deluge long enough for us to limp into the next technological revolution and get ourselves undeservedly rescued by the rising long wave of global progress.

we call that X Factor (or anything featuring Simon Satan Cowell).