Rockets, Rayguns and Really Nice Tea For all queries and booking information, email
rocketlarp@gmail.com R,R&R is an event larp system that evokes the excitement of Dan Dare action stories and the creeping horror of Bernard Quatermass. It is a game of two-­‐fisted justice, rocket powered heroism, hidden horrors, lurking conspiracy and exploration. Square jawed heroes team up with brilliant academics and savvy politicians to unearth the wonders and horrors of a world still reeling from the Second World War. It is an alternate history larp that features very little steam, hardly any punks and a huge amount of fun. Sum m ary of the setting It is March, 1951. World War Two ended ten years ago with victory for the allies. A war fought mostly with rockets, lightning guns and eventually, atomic fire. In the aftermath of a terrible war, mankind finally looked to stars and began to explore. When mankind reached the stars, we discovered that the solar system was filled with treasure, history and a plethora of alien life. Navigating rocket ships across the channels of etheric energy that connect the planets of the solar system, the people of Earth began a new age, one of exploration. The remnants of the British Empire are in a race with Russia and America to see who can explore the furthest and learn the most about the stars. So far, the British are winning, but only just. In Great Britain, space exploration is controlled by The British Rocket Group, a quasi autonomous non-­‐governmental organisation which creates an open forum for would be space explorers to gather the resources and legal permissions required to explore space. Time Line March 1897: The world is amazed when a device of clearly alien construction crashes into Horsell Common. After some investigation by the military and some of the Empires finest minds, the contents are revealed to be pulped organic matter of non-­‐terrestrial origin and shattered machinery. Despite statistical evidence to contrary, it is believed to have come from the planet Mars. This begins an international fascination with the stars and flight. February 1899: Henry Provost Babbage patents the first commercial analytical engine and goes into business with the Frederick Gilbert Bourne, the President of the Singer Sewing Machine company. Within five years , Singer-­‐Babbage Calculating Engines can be found in the basement of every major business and in the hands of any government worthy of the name. April 1900: Gottlieb Daimler forms the Zeppelin Company with Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, providing lighter than air flight to those wealthy enough to afford it. Despite two world wars, various disasters and a legion of imitators, Zeppelin Company aircraft still dot the sky to this day. September 1902: First modern attempt at space flight made by Sir William Bedford and Doctor Richard Cavor, using the revolutionary Beford rocket engine and an aluminium-­‐like metal called Cavorite. Historians agree that the attempt was a disaster, ending in the death of test-­‐pilot Edwin Ransom. Designs based on the Bedford engine are still in use to this day, and Cavorite is used in the construction of most flight materials. November 1902: Scotsman Preston Watson beats the Wright Brothers to the claim of first sustained, controlled, powered heavier-­‐than-­‐air manned flight by 20 days. Despite this, the claim is still hotly contested. June 1903: Renowned scientist and father of electricity, Nikola Tesla, vanishes during a trip to Budapest. May 1905: Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David Windsor, the Prince of Wales, goes missing for 4 weeks, abducted by alleged Bolsheviks. The abductors are captured, but admit that the child prince escaped custody weeks ago. On the day that a national day of mourning is due to begin, Mrs Aelita Constance, the self-­‐styled Queen of the Tinkers arrives with a large entourage of Irish Travellers and delivers the child into the arms of a grateful King. October 1905: John William Dunne and Colonel John Capper develop the first airplane that can be easily mass produced. The first order is for the British Army. By 1907. Ownership of a personal aircraft is seen as a mark of great skill, bravery and wealth, at least in Europe. 1913-­‐ 1918: World War One. Historians speculate that the war was inevitable. World War One is fought in the air as much as it is in the ground. Lighter than air craft and the improved mathematics ofthe age make bombardment for faster and deadlier than anyone could have imagined. New technologies also allow for the rapid movement of troops, which many believe saved lives. Including civilian casualties, 17 million people die in this conflict. March 1920: John William Dunne develops the first jet aircraft, the Westland-­‐Hill Pterodactyl. Dunne takes his prototype craft with him on an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin of South America along with Professor Challenger as part of a task set by the Crimson Society. He, his companions, and his plane, are never seen again. His story is not unusual for the age, however. Still reeling from the devastation of the war, mankind begins to explore and improve the world as best he can. Exploration of Egypt is sent into frenzy when further artefacts are discovered, some of which are still believed to this day to be made of no earthly material. November 1921: Charles Howard-­‐Bury rocks the world with photographic evidence of the Abominable Snowman, taken during his expedition to the Himalaya. Notable eccentric Lord Arnold Wolfe-­‐Morris declares a reward of £1000 for the capture of a living yeti. To this date, no such creature has been found. December 1921: Albert Einstein receives the Nobel Prize for Physics. January 1923 : Expedition ship Quest found abandoned in the South Atlantic Ocean. Almost the entire crew are dead, but perfectly preserved, their flesh having turned into an unknown substance. Sir Ernest Shackleton is the only survivor, and is found to be near death from starvation and irretrievably insane. Multiple artefacts are recovered, mostly peculiar stone murals covered in an unknown language, but also the preserved body of an aquatic monkey like creature. June 1924 : The White Star Line Shipping company purchases 40 improved lighter than air cargo zeppelins from the French owned Michelin Aeronautics Company. These new design revolutionise international trade. Much press coverage is given to the race between the new zeppelin freighters and the slightly faster ocean liners. February 1925: The Babbage-­‐Singer “Tiny Telecom System” (TTS) is introduced. This combination telegraph and telephone is about the size of a breadbox, and allows text and voice messages to be transmitted around the world from the comfort of one’s own home. Homes around the world discover the world’s first printer jam as the paper element of the machine is alarmingly prone to failure. Despite this, the device is a moderate success and changes domestic and business affairs for ever. October 1925: German engineering firm, Scherbius & Ritter, develop an Improved Home Telecom machine, capable of receiving pictures (though they still have to be printed out.) Babbage-­‐Singer respond by producing a much cheaper version of their own machine, and a bitter rivalry between the two firms begins. January 1930: First Cyclotron constructed and activated. Physicist Ernest Lawrence is plagued by a run of terrible luck during the initial tests, and the press is filled with wild speculation about haunting and possible ‘end of the world’ scenarios. This month also see’s Albert Einstein meeting astronomer Edwin Hubble for the first time. April 1933: Prince Edward, Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay, marries Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark, to great public interest and media spectacle. June 1935: King George V dies peacefully, in his sleep. Edward VIII becomes king. January 1936: Duncan H. Munro claims to have witnessed strange blue men in Theosophical Hall, Leeds. The photographic evidence he provides is proven to be a fake. June 1937: Ocean Liner, the SS Normandie, wins the Blue Riband using an electrically powered jet system to cross the Atlantic in 3 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes. It is beaten three months later by the Zeppelin Liner, the Queen Mary, which achieves the passage 4 minutes faster. February 1938: Vilorik Tesla and Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov meet for the first time at a Red Army training camp. They fast become friends, and it is a friendship that will change the world. 1939-­‐ 1943: World War Two begins with Germany’s invasion of Poland. Technological advances mean that much of the war is fought in the air, as both the Axis and Allies have access to rocket and jet technology as well as advanced computational techniques. A secret war is fought in the labs of mathematicians across Europe as powerful calculating machines are built to crack enemy codes. Russia prosecutes its role in the war by using electrically powered ‘Ray guns’ the world had not seen before to stun (and then kill) its enemies. The war in Europe ends April 1942; thanks to a series of remarkable intelligence intercepts, the locations of 90% of the Axis launch pads and air-­‐strips are discovered, and with assistance of American factories, enough rockets are constructed in order to destroy all of them in just 48 hours. Japan surrenders in August 1943 after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki by the Americans. January 1944 : Alan Turing crippled by an unexploded bomb. The genius mathematician is confined to a wheelchair. February 1944: Ministry of Space formed. May 1944: Modified Supermarine Spitfire, codename Daedalus, officially breaks the sound barrier using a modified Bedford Jet Engine. The claim is immediately contested by a variety of aviation companies, all of whom claim that the sound barrier was broken by them, during the war. June 1945: RAF Air Commodore John Dashwood is the first man to make safe journey into outer space and return in one piece. This marks the beginning of the modern space exploration, and the formation of The British Rocket Group. Russia and America begin their own space programmes in the same year. December 1945: Russian space agency Roscosmos successfully launches and puts into orbit the first space satellite, Sputnik. April 1946: The British Rocket Group and American space agency, NASA, begin collaboration on Churchill Station, the world’s first Space Station. June 1946: Roscosmos formally condemns NASA and The BRG for failing to lend aid to the crew of Soyuz 2. Both Western agencies claim that there was nothing they could do. This incident starts the Cold War. 1947: Churchill Station completed, swiftly followed by the second stage of the plan, Lunar Exploration. Chuck Yeager is the first man on the moon, an American. Doris Lovelace is first woman on the moon, and the first English person to touch the lunar landscape. Russia claims ownership of the Planet Mercury by parking their MIR spacestation in permanent orbit around the planet’s dark side. The station uses technology designed by Vilorik Tesla (allegedly the son of the long thought dead Nikola Tesla) to charge a new design of rocket engine known a Lightning Drive. Currently, only two engines of this type are known to be in active service.) 1948: Space exploration collaboration between America and The British Empire ends when the Americans accuse the British of hoarding information and stealing artifacts from the mysterious tombs found on the surface of the Moon. The Ministry of Space does not confirm or deny these accusations, and instead announces plans to build Victoria Station, a Lunar habitat, located in an area with a natural underground cave system and water. Though the two nations still share resources, they no longer share secrets after this incident. ‘Etheric’ channels discovered to connect planets to each other. Though poorly understood, they are described to the general public as ‘the tides of space’. Roscosmos vessel Soyuz 9 makes a mission to the planet Mars. It does not come back. 1949: BRG Rocketship Perelandra successfully visits Venus, and encounters life on this distant world. Formal negotiations with the people of Venus begins. 1950: A private venture between French millionaire Aristide Ernest and American explorer John Carter sends the Rocketship Discovery to the Saturnian moon of Titan. Carter claims to have encountered a single life-­‐form on this world, a massive creature he refers to as the Titan. However, due to a critical failure with the rocket on his return journey (which resulted in the vehicle crash landing in the middle of the Atlantic ocean) all evidence has been lost. Moon base Victoria is completed. A further two missions to Mars are made; NASAs Apollo 13 and The BRG’s Rocket ship Sophia. Both are believed lost. The BRG launches a second Rocket ship to Mars, The Anastasia, with specific orders to discover what is happening out there. Contact is lost as soon as it enters the orbit of Mars. April 1952: Martian Pod Lands at Hebden Hay. Experts Sent to discover secrets. Unknown to the population Martian infiltration discovered amongst members of the General British populace including government ministers. Further pods land around the UK, most intercepted by British Rockets ships, some ground forces were dispatched by the Heroes and Hebden Hey and other ground troops. April 1952: Queen Regent Dies in a boating accident. April 1953: Recent earthquakes in the area have alarmed geologists, it has also uncovered a most unusual artefact. A standing stone, previously believed to have been a small bit of local colour, has begun to emit exotic energies. Experts from around the world are sent to investigate and it is discovered the standing stone in an intrinsic stone linked to the very nature of the world. Large Scale Disasters erupt across the world. • The Dead Rise in Germany • Meteor showers hit Russia • All Contact with America is lost for 6 months • Large scale Fires engulf large parts of Spain • Discovery of another species of Sentient creature living underground. Know as Saurians. • Global Invasion of the world by Martians. • Invasion defeated 1 week later by a biological weapon specifically designed to destroy anything with Martian biology August 1953: Great Britain, Russia, Australia, Germany, France and the USA combine efforts and agree a joint operation of the development of a new Rocket ship. This Rocket ship will be a flagship of its kind and will fly missions aimed at dealing with the constant Martian Threat. The Ship will be named “Jack Churchill”. Wide spread Xenophic Riots in Australia force Saurians to retreat back underground. September 1953: A large asteroid has been identified for the creation of a listening post, dubbed “Alpha 1”. Germany is condemned by the International community as it begins to Purge its “Undead population”. Diplomatic channels have discovered that the rationale is that 'undead' have no human rights as they have died and so are no longer human. Smog in London Starts to Raise to an unhealthy level November 1953: Due to mounting costs of rebuilding after the Martian war, governments are unable to pay for the development of the “Jack Churchill”. Navistar International are awarded a contract to build the ship and run her first mission to the asteroid Alpha 1. Russia begins a large scale military build up on its western boarders. London Sees a Series of Arson attack June 1954: Jack Churchill successfully landed on Alpha 1 and established a listening post, aimed at Mars.