Need help with Teen Heroes

[starblaze]

Hey there,

Just started a new champions game a couple of sessions ago. It is a teen heroes campaign set in 1963, at Stanford University. I plan on more or less setting it in the Champions U and I thought I would ask your assistance.

 

I have a two things going for me in running this game.

 

1. I have been a teenager.

2. I have lived in Northern California before, I live Miami Florida now.

 

Unfortunately I have some strikes against me.

1. I was born in 1963.

2. I have never been a student in a major university.

3. I have never been to Stanford.

 

[starblaze]

Re: Need help with Teen Heroes

 

Also could you recommend what characters I could modify to fit into a sixties game from one of the sourcebooks like CKC?

[Ghost Archer]

Re: Need help with Teen Heroes

 

Hey there,

 

I have a two things going for me in running this game.

 

 

 

1. I have been a teenager.

 

2. I have lived in Northern California before, I live Miami Florida now.

 

 

 

Unfortunately I have some strikes against me.

 

1. I was born in 1963.

 

2. I have never been a student in a major university.

 

3. I have never been to Stanford.

 

 

Wow, even as old as I am I was only 9 in 1963 but I was raised in the Bay Area. As for Stanford, I have been there a few times but never as a student. I think your best bet is not some much Stanford but the general feeling of the Bay Area in 1963. As a nine year old, I remember JFK's assassination, duck and cover drills, the coming of the Beatles, the general sense of 'Suburban life' in California but it is AS a nine year old. I doubt there is anyone on these boards that can tell you the feeling of Stanford in 1963 from the point of view as a student.

 

The cold war was very hot, the Soviets where a boogie man, Castro was a threat to our nation, Kennedy had just faced down the Russians in Cuba and not long before, really screwed the pooch at the Bay of Pigs. The space race was just getting going good. Seven astronauts were the hope of the nation and the idols of millions of kids my age. We didn't watch TV much, we preferred baseball or riding our bikes. We played tag and hide n' seek. We didn't have to worry about getting kidnapped if we were out after dark. I think, even at a college age, there was a great deal of innocence you'd never find today. The world was a scary place but it was all because of Communism. We still had years to go before Vietnam entered out conscious and free love and grass. Cars, cruisin', frat parties, parking, drive in movies, maybe a little surfing, beach parties, panty raids and the Red Menace.

 

I'd suggest you watch movies from that time. Look for movies about college and the cold war. Believe it or not, watch something like Animal House even though it was made years later and done for comedy. It might give you a little idea of the 'innocence' and simplicity of the time. If you're looking for conflict, look for biker movies or 'rebel' movies. If you're looking for mundane villains, think about the Hell's Angels that roamed the central valley. Don't look for integration, don't look for equal rights. California was always ahead of the rest of the country but even there, in 1963 it would be rare to find an African American or Asia or Latino in Stanford.

 

San Francisco has always been and will always be a unique city, look for those things that accentuate that quirkiness. Alcatraz was still a Federal Prison, maybe the era's Stronghold? The Navy was still at Hunter's Point. Enterprise was still about a year away. The San Franciso Giants where alone in the Bay Area. San Jose was a small city. Look into the success of Stanford's football team. J. Edgar Hoover was still in control of the FBI and he thought nothing of investigating anyone he felt was a threat and to hell with their rights. Look into the populations of San Francisco and Palo Alto, see how many people were going to Stanford . . . I wonder how many women even got in there at that time? Read On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The Beat generation was still going on. Beach Boys and surfing music was hot.

 

In general, life was easier. . .

[assault]

Re: Need help with Teen Heroes

 

A thought about campus politics:

I would expect Stanford to be pretty quiet in 1963, but as a comparison, Berkeley was the scene of a big Free Speech Movement in 1964.

 

It seemed to have come pretty much from out of the blue, although the political clubs that formed its organisational backbone were well established. This seems to have been the beginning of Berkeley being the "radical" campus. I gather Stanford lagged behind.

 

So I would imagine a fairly conservative crewcuts-and-ties atmosphere. Even the "radicals" would look pretty straitlaced by todays standards!

 

On the other hand, Stanford was co-educational from the very beginning. It has a website: http://www.stanford.edu/home/welcome/

[RPJesus]

Re: Need help with Teen Heroes

 

A period campaign, outstanding!! You of course will look up Stanfords web directory to get a layout of the campus. Some school have tags for the buildings to let you know when they were built and who and why the major benefactor are. That can be a great plot resource especially if it was from a rich ex-student or someone who died mysteriously and a building is named after them. Get a list of tenured professors and sometimes they list retired professors, it's kind of over the top but yet another possible twist. I would also look at the list of graduates maybe someone is doing something interesting that you had not considered a Harvard grad doing later on in there career. I do things like this because if your PC's happen to get interested in the people in the campaign and many of them are based on real people they can root around for possible hints as to how these people will turn out later in life or if you have a player with a typoe of future sight then you can give them clues that they can actually look up to figure out on there own time with the help of Al Gores lovely creation "The internet".

 

There are a couple of movies that you could try to research the early 1960's.

1960 A modern movie made like two years ago.

THE BIRDS Alfred Hitchcock classic but not very helpful

The first 2 James Bond movies also not very helpful but it helps to picture the era

Valley of the Dolls Bing this is a little messed up but:straight:

THE GRADUATE Tells a lot about prevailing attitudes and some mild current events.

The last of the beach movies were in the 60's

It's a hard era to nail down from a strictly historical perspective due to the radical changes in the mid 60s the early 60s is all but untouched the late 60s are hippies and the early 60's the hippies were beatniks.

Remember the bombs we were making and sending chimps into space. The Cuban Missile crisis. Tense times and many current world figures were college or high school students at this time. You could also check the year to year history in the online library at www.questia.com

 

RPJ

[Kristopher]

Re: Need help with Teen Heroes

 

Champions Universe

 

1959: The Fabulous Five become superheroes

1961: "The Sentinels form when the malevolent computer Ultivac tries to take over the world."

1963: U.N.T.I.L. founded.

[Ghost Archer]

Re: Need help with Teen Heroes

 

There are a couple of movies that you could try to research the early 1960's.

1960 A modern movie made like two years ago.

THE BIRDS Alfred Hitchcock classic but not very helpful

The first 2 James Bond movies also not very helpful but it helps to picture the era

Valley of the Dolls Bing this is a little messed up but:straight:

THE GRADUATE Tells a lot about prevailing attitudes and some mild current events.

The last of the beach movies were in the 60's

It's a hard era to nail down from a strictly historical perspective due to the radical changes in the mid 60s the early 60s is all but untouched the late 60s are hippies and the early 60's the hippies were beatniks.

Remember the bombs we were making and sending chimps into space. The Cuban Missile crisis. Tense times and many current world figures were college or high school students at this time. You could also check the year to year history in the online library at www.questia.com

RPJ

Valley of the Dolls is too late, 1967. So was The Graduate.

As for The Birds, since it is 1963 it will give you a nice view of Bodega Bay at the time, which is north of San Francisco on the Marin County side of the Golden Gate. Also 1963 was about in the middle of the Beach movie craze.

 

If you want a few films that will give you a little perspective on the times, try:

The Manchurian Candidate

Days Of Wine And Roses

Lolita

Fellini’s 8½

The Hustler

Splendor In The Grass

Fail Safe

Now. . . as for this hippie/beatnik thing. . .

A beatnik was a non-conformist for the sake of non-conformity. They did share a certain Bohemian outlook on life with the later hippies and of course the drugs, although hippies took that one to a far higher level.

 

A hippie was an activist and protestor. They where against the government, the war in Vietnam, corporate America and were otherwise at odds with traditional middle class Western values. They were anti-establishment. Remember, never trust anyone over 30. They also embraced aspects of Buddhism, Hinduism, and/or Native American religious culture. Don't tell anyone, but hippies still exist.