Sewer, Gas, Electric Role, Playing, Game
A purely notional RPG based on the novel Sewer, Gas, Electric by Matt Ruff, beloved (the book, not the dude) of Nick and Andrew
SGE RPG
h2. Archetypes:
  • Joan&co (May Teamsters)
  • Gant (Capitalists)
  • Kite (Misc. Anachronisms)
  • Maxwell, Penzias, Stone Monk, etc. (Veterans)
  • Vanna, Clayton, Amberson Teaneck, Bart Frum, Fouad Nassif, etc. (Suits)
  • The Kazensteins (eclectic jewish inventors)
  • Philo, Serafina, Rabi (green-eyed survivors)
  • 29 Words
  • The YDD Crew
  • Lexa, Ellen, Dan, Walter (the media)
  • The Mankillers (disposessed Indians out to kick ass)
  • Meisterbrau & co. (alternatie environment-adapted fauna)
  • Ernest Vogelsang & co. (FBI)
  • GAS, The Eye of Africa (maniacal AIs)
  • Lots of electric negroes
  • Also, the BRER’s
  • Ayn Rand
  • Betsy Ross
    h2. Affiliations
  • Gant Industries
  • Other corporations
  • Department of Sewers
  • The Daily Call, CNN, etc.
  • Ecopiracy groups and other pseudo-terrorists
  • GAS
  • The Eye of Africa
  • The Queen
  • US Army
  • FBI Un-Un-American Activities something
    h2. Abilities, qualities, attributes
  • Skills
    • “neat” ideas
    • Force of personality
    • electronics, mechanics, and high technology
    • theology and logic
    • bioengineering
    • journalism (mediafy them!)
    • Abnormal seratonin generation
    • stripping
      h2. Weapons and combat
  • Melee weapons (saber, machete)
  • Pistols—low tech (Kite’s colt and derringer)
  • Pistols—high tech (Joan’s .70’s, the gun that killed John Lennon
  • Rifles—precision (James Earl Ray’s rifle)
  • Rifles—automatic (Maxwell &co.)
  • Shotgun (Joan &co.)
  • Grenade Launcher (Joan &co.)
  • Crossbow (swiss guard)
  • Stunbunnies (Morris/29 Words)
  • Kurdish martial arts
  • Small unit tactics
  • Submarine warfare and ASW
  • Tank combat
    h2. Settings—actual and implied
  • The NYC sewers
  • Gant Pheonix and Bable
  • The open sea
  • New Jersey Covenant Primeval Wilderness Zone
  • Colorado
  • Africa
  • Antarctica
    h2. Character Generation
    h3. Types
    First off, there’s the question of whether to use canonical characters are only invented ones. The latter is more systematic, and thus preferred for the nonce.
    Characters in SGE are not defined by easily quantifiable skills, and especially not by developed ones. Their important characteristics are functions of innate nature, raw will, and vast quantities of quirkiness. So it would be best to adopt a simplified character creation model. Abilities may still function, but they should be automatic outgrowths of genuine character traits. Individual variation should be according to user-selectable specific traits, like choosing a lame leg over a lost arm, or parnoia over agoraphobia:
    A Veteran should be physically tough but disabled in some way, able to operate various weapons systems, and suffering from at least one serious psychological disorder.
    A May Teamster should be well-trained for modern firearms and small explosives, equipped to handle diverse biochemical environments, possessed of a drastically reduced sense of self-preservation and naturally unlucky.
    A Suit should be physically fit but not accustomed to utilizing this fitness for any particular purpose, intelligent, vicious, skilled at scheming, and wealthy enough to pay others to fight for them.
    A Kazenstein should be a typical addle-brained genius, capable of fixing any problem through technology, given enough time and equipment. Also a general source of useful knowledge. No special combat skills, other than constructing weapons and distraction devices.
    A crewwoman of the Dread Virago should be a proper Royal naval officer—grim, efficient, well-trained, but cursed with state-of-the-art equipment that wasn’t tested in warm waters. This has an effect not wholly unlike the May Teamsters’ bad luck.
    YDD {ex-?}crew and other eco-warriors may be widely varying. Politically left, and thus somewhat ineffectual, and given to needless kibbitzing. Should be specialists, and thus balance a strength against several weaknesses.
    The FBI should be well-funded but incredibly stupid. It may be acceptable to throw in the occasional competent for variety.
    Artificial entities—Electric Negroes are too minor, on the whole, to be playable. AI’s are too major. Intermediate entities such as Betsy Ross and the BRER family may be acceptable, with obvious corresponding abilities and disabilities, and also a check on originality in thinking. Ayn Rand: suggestions: Gant Industries gets the plans to the Ayn Rand hurricane lamp and develops a line of personality-swappable illumination devices including Ayn Rand and other celebrities and historical figures.
    Plague survivors should be somewhere between a Fanonian revolutionary and a Montana survivalist. Distrustful, withdrawn, etc. May have other genetic abnormalities (cf. Serafina). Obviously cannot operate in plain sight.
    Re-use or copying of characters: 29 words-Re-use or propose alternate post-SEG school of Kurdish-fighting-trained Innuit Eco-Ninjas. Kite-assume bizarre anachronisms are more common than is suggested in SEG, and populate terrain with Cival War survivors.
    Inducing Attributes
  • Luck
  • Will
  • Outlook—optimism/pessimism, courage/cowardice,etc.
  • Creativity
  • Wealth
  • Infrastructure
  • Skills
  • Quirks, deformities, etc.
    h2. See also:
    SGERPG table
    h2. Combat?
    Should be free-form, and should take into account as much a reasoned judgment of what would happen in the novel as it does of the skills brought to bear…
    category:in-joke book