Critical Miss: Issue 2 [Roleplaying In Blighty]

Roleplaying In Blighty

Here at Critical Miss we try to write for a global audience. After all, the Internet is a global network and roleplaying is a hobby practised all over the world. This was why we chose a top-level domain name, criticalmiss.com, rather than the more parochial criticalmiss.co.uk. (That's still available by the way, but if you take it we'll break your legs). We always figured that the majority of our readership would probably be in the United States - after all, that where most Internet users are.

But sooner or later the truth behind every illusion must be revealed. Like they say: "you can bullshit some of the people all of time, but eventually your sphincter'll give way". And so the time has come for us to make a small confession.

We're British... well English to be exact.

Yes it's true. The people who invented industrial pollution, the British Empire, low productivity and football hooliganism have now bought you... Critical Miss.

Of course, the clues were there all along:

We were using English spelling (colour, theatre, metre).

We were using English slang (bollocks, wanker... well actually those are more swear words than slang, but still).

The StoryScape setting was located in West London.

The Bribe rules system required UK money - which is a pretty strong clue really.

But then we started thinking that as a British magazine that is likely to have a predominantly American readership, the one thing that we know, but that you don't, is what England is really like. (We're not even going to discuss the myriad things that you know and we don't).

We've seen some pretty terrible movies over the years, supposedly set here, but in reality set in some kind of bizarre, distorted world full of strange, stilted people. Kind of like a entire Stepford nation.

So perhaps if you were thinking of setting a game in Britain we could give you a few pointers to make your setting just a tad more realistic.

First, we start off with a few tips:

What not to put in your setting...