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Welcome to Argent Dawn

09:52, 28th March 2024 (GMT+0)

Argent Dawn



Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics:
As the theory of the atom, quantum mechanics is perhaps the most successful theory in the history of science. It enables physicists, chemists, and technicians to calculate and predict the outcome of a vast number of experiments and to create new and advanced technology based on the insight into the behavior of atomic objects. But it is also a theory that challenges our imagination.


Alan Moore, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?:
This is an imaginary story (which may never happen, but then again may) about a perfect man who came from the sky and did only good.


Argent Dawn is a superhero setting which occurs in an alternate version of 1965 in the wake of the Kennedy administration and right after Johnson takes his first term in office.  The characters are superhero vigilantes operating in a common city, only to slowly discover a mysterious foe of great power is unhatching a scheme unprecedented.

Can our heroes defeat the rising conspiracy while saving the day from bank robbers armed with radium rifles and the villainous likes of Glue Gun Gary?  How will they relate to other good daring doers of derring-dogoodery, such as the mighty E Pluribus Unum?  Will they join one of the many splinter groups, such as The Pyschadelic Spree?

In the meantime, the Cold War is being fought as supers are enlisted in international intrigue as communist saboteurs or counters to same, and the question of supers embeds itself firmly in the ongoing Civil Rights movement.

Argent Dawn is a love letter to the Silver Age, although it is highly inspired by admittedly post era works like Kingdom Come and Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? which reminded us why we loved and still love superheroes.  It seeks to tip its hat to the era and even indulge in a little of its wonder and whimsy without falling entirely into the realm of pure silliness.  It's an attempt to tell stories in the vein of the classics, with just a sly nod to the humor, a dash of the whimsy of the era, but with a more modern sensibility.

It is a game of contrasts, where over the top characters battle it out in the streets even as civil rights protesters do the same, where secret agents simultaneously talk on shoe phones and protect the public from cosmic horrors and terrorism.

It is 1965.  But it is not a cynical hopeless world, just one on the verge of change.  The question is, what kind of change?

This is a callback to a time many have argued told better stories.  It was an era which gave us countless classic characters, legendary story-lines, and the tropes that made the genre what we think of now.

Many have argued products of the age like the late Adam West as Batman "ruined" superheroes, but I disagree.  I think it merely explored all the facets of what they could be.  Nick Fury and Namor are much of a product of the era as campy Batman and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, and the social criticism embedded in the pages of X Men and Green Lantern was cutting edge and a definite product of the era.  I think we can take the good and leave the necessary.

Elliot Maggin says this in the introduction to Kingdom Come:

Elliot Maggin, Kingdom Come (Introduction):
Here before you is a clash of good against evil, of course, but more than that.  There are clashes of judgment, clashes among different interpretations of what is good and what is justice, and clashes over who is to suffer the wages of the evil born of our best intentions.

This is a love story.  This is a story of hatred and rage.  This is the Iliad.

This is the story of how we – we ourselves; you and I,- choose to use whatever special powers and abilities we have, even when those powers and abilities are only a little bit beyond those of mortal men.

This is a story about truth obscured, justice deferred, and the American way distorted in the hands of petty semanticists.

...

Super-hero stories – whether their vehicle is through comic books or otherwise – are today the most coherent manifestation of the popular unconscious.  They're stories not about gods, but about the way humans wish themselves to be; ought, in fact, to be.


It has been said that the best way to revisit the Silver Age is to never repeat it, and it is in that spirit I welcome you to Argent Dawn.  I have rated the game Adult to explore all possible stories, though those elements typically won't be depicted in great detail.

As I lack absolutely every detail of this setting, I'm going to be relying on players to help flesh it out as we go.

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