The St.-Germain School
Michael
First things first: if a school is in Mitch's plans, he won't have to fight the "I AM" School: it's currently located in Santa Fe, New Mexico:
Second, I've been thinking a lot about what the vibes should be and of course, Jeff, you should choose what you think Mitch and Mary-Lynn's place on Shasta looks like, but I will point out the chalets, lodges, and A-frames that were popular in Northern California in the postwar years, and of course the hippies who were putting up geodesic domes, zomes, and proto-earthships all over the wilderness in NorCal in the early '70s.
Evans was inspired by similar windows at Druid Heights, a communal outpost formed in 1954 in the Muir Woods National Park that he loved to visit. It was known for its extravagantly experimental hand-built architecture, for low-key performances by musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, and for being the final home and resting place of the philosopher Alan Watts, credited for popularizing Eastern thought and spirituality within the American counterculture.
Jeff
I feel like my Shasta plans are very formless at the moment; I have an end state I want to be reaching for wherein Mitch is living in the Shasta area and...something something. While "Al" is the nemesis the Enemy wants to foist on Mitch, Comte is the nemesis he's chosen for himself, and I have very little sense of what contending with Comte for control of Mount Shasta and the title of St. Germain is going to look like, or what the results would be, or even what I want the results to be.
Michael
[We had a video call which I do not believe we recorded, but this is what came out of it]
XP stuff:
• School (Boardroom & Curia? Organization Rank?): first class of a dozen students by spring '74
• Adjunct to school, Mitch being involved in Puharich plans (being part of the meeting of Marshall and Jo in Mexico?).
• Skills like Teaching and Administration? (Also Illumination Technique of Teaching, below)
• More research on the Comte himself (increase to Occultism, Research, Hidden Lore (Shasta Lore), flashback scenes in early '74 with Nola and/or Peter; Elizabeth Clare Prophet, other I AM offshoots)
• Illuminated research (Mike and Jeff to check out GURPS Powers: The Weird and/or other sources for Illumated-related expenditures) (edited)
It's almost.... it's almost like this was MADE for Mitch's Act III arc
(GURPS Powers: The Weird, p. 7, but the whole supplement is highly suggestive of Mitch Powers)So the Boardroom & Curia description of the school, I would want to workshop with you. To do it all official-like, here are the steps. And feel free to respond to each as I throw out suggestions:
Mission Statement
Capabilities (TL, Members, Wealth, Contacts, Member Traits, Notable Resources, Reaction Time Modifier)
Costs and Values (Startup Cost, Resource Value, Patron Value, Enemy Value, Ally and Dependent Value)
Social Attributes (Type, CR, Loyalty, Rank, Income Range, Reputation)
Other Notes
Mission Statement (~4 xp for Mitch):
So I really dig the idea of Mitch stumbling towards the ability to actually instill Illumination in his students through a slow, methodical process of teaching at his school. In addition, this Illumination process would act as countermemetic programming to the Theosophy/Ascended Master/Comte memeplex hovering over Shasta all these years. Those two mission goals, along with educating and instilling the next generation of psychically-aware children with the proper values seem like three good bullet points for the school to pursue. What form that new memetic-metaphysical-moral framework takes is ultimately up to you as "headmaster," but dispensing with the "secret masters rule the world and we must adore/emulate them" meme would be good for humanity and bad for the Enemy, I'd argue.
So that means Mitch will need to buy at least a point (and I'm fine with just a single point for now) in the Teaching skill (IQ/A: Teaching-13, 1 xp), along with enough points in the Illumination Technique to make it at least somewhat useful over a long period of teaching time (let's say Illumination-9, 3 xp). To me, Mitch slowly perfecting this ability over Act III of the campaign as he reaches out to more and more students makes sense. It seems to me that also when it comes to, like, curriculum and ideology, we could work with one or more of URIEL's memeticists—Archie, Sophie, Marshall, and now Mystic Kate—to come up with something internally consistent and memetically sticky, but I also think the Mission Statement of the school should be, like, uniquely Mitch as well.
Capabilities (TL, Members, Wealth, Contacts, Member Traits, Notable Resources, Reaction Time Modifier)
TL: I don't see any use for super high-tech TL 8 Indigo Project computer/speedlearn stuff at this school; that seems antithetical to what we're trying to do with these kids, so just standard TL 7. Filmstrips, blackboards, books, etc.
Members: The description says it only includes staff, not those they serve, but it also occurs to me that a metaphysical school like this will look for wisdom and revelation in its students as well. So we're thinking the ex-Indigo kids, plus any other psychically-adept kids we find between now and April of '74, that likely means an inaugural class of 10-15 kids. And maybe 2-4 full-time spiritually-aware teachers, a few part-timers, and an administrator or two to handle all the legal and accreditation stuff. Let's call the upper end of Members for the first half of '74 as 20.
Wealth: I like the school starting off at Average: The organization’s facilities are unremarkable, though severe damage may be slow to be repaired. Equipment is typical for its activities, and repaired by professional technicians (if any are available in the setting) where feasible, replaced if need be. Travel and transportation costs are monitored but aren’t necessarily matters of great concern. But you can tell me if that doesn't work.
Contacts: The students and staff have access to the equivalent of Contact Group (URIEL)-18 (as sort of an average of all the various SANDMAN-related skills in URIEL), so that's marked as a [15] in the Boardroom & Curia schema.
Member Traits: Of the Traits in B&C, I like Higher Purpose [5] and Unusual Background [10] but you should feel free to suggest any others that make sense.
Notable Resources: I don't feel like the school would have any "notable" resources outside the standard for an Average-Resourced school, at least yet.
Reaction Time Modifier: Mitch is gonna be pretty hands-on, and have immediate connections to URIEL and the rest of SANDMAN, so this strikes me as a pretty good modifier, let's say 0 from the following modifiers:
• Complexity: Rank 3 maximum/2 rounded down: + 1
• Administration-18 from Contact Group-18: -1
Jeff
I have a soft spot for Mystic Kate of course, probably because you once cast Gillian Anderson in the role
Brant
"A school for gifted youth, you say."
Costs and Values (~8 xp for Mitch):
Startup Cost: Base Startup Cost equals typical monthly pay for the organization’s TL and Wealth (see p. B517), multiplied by the number of members times 12. This works out to $2,100 x 1 x 20 (here it makes sense that the students are included: room and board costs money!) x 12 = $504,000 in GURPSbux. Contact Group, Higher Purpose, and Unusual Background add up to 30. +30% to $504,000 is $655,200. Can SANDMAN handle that? Heck yeah, they can. That's a pittance in the annual SANDMAN budget.
Resource Value: Resource Value is the $ amount of resources the organization can spend per month on things other than maintaining its core functions. It equals 0.5% of Startup Cost. $3276/month, not bad for petty cash.
Patron Value: The school's Patron isn't technically SANDMAN, it's URIEL, so the teachers and students won't be needing a 90-pointer with a 20-point Duty attached (but if the teachers and students do owe URIEL some modicum of loyalty, we should probably throw Duty in there). But the school's people will get a solid Patron with extensive resources (10 points) that appears pretty often (12 or less, x2) and the Unusual Background (x100%): 40-point Patron. Patron as combination of Contact Group (URIEL)-18, Higher Purpose, and Unusual Background.
Enemy Value: To get the school as your Enemy, you get -20 points (medium-sized group of less-powerful people; while the students and some of the teachers may have minor powers, they don't add up to our campaign's 350-point baseline) modified by what exactly the Enemy relationship with the school is.
Ally and Dependent Values: Okay, here's where we get some Mitch-specific xp stuff again in this process. What kind of Ally is the school and how expensive is it? Will Mitch take the kids at the school as Dependents as well? One way I could see us constructing the School as an Ally is:
Ally Power (88 points): 1 xp
Ally Group (20 people): times 8
Fairly Often (9 or less): times 1
And luckily the school's Unusual Background is already covered by your Unusual Background, so the final cost for the School to be Mitch's Ally is 8.
Social Attributes (6 xp for Mitch):
Type: Aid, Occult, Teaching (and also maybe Investigative and Research?)
Control Rating: 1 seems right to me: The organization exercises minimal control over its members. It may formally censure them or, in extreme cases, expel them. But I could see a case for 2, especially among the faculty.
Loyalty: Baseline level of Good to start here seems right. Maybe with awesome leadership Mitch can make it to Very Good or Excellent.
Rank: Rank structure like SCANATE seems to be right here. Three Rank levels: Headmaster, Faculty, and Student. Which means Mitch will need to plump for Rank (School Name Here) 3: 6 xp.
Income Range: I would imagine we want to keep this relatively egalitarian—the salary of the faculty and the income (i.e. cost of teaching) for the students at Average ($2100/month). Not sure if Mitch wants to draw a Comfortable salary out of this gig, but if he does, he can spend xp to raise his Wealth to Comfortable (10 xp).
Reputation: This will be fun to play with over the course of Act III as the teaching and memetics take hold, but at the start, it seems a weird metaphysical school on Mount Shasta should have a nice neutral +0 Rep with the public.
So as a summary for xp for school-related stuff:
Teaching-13: 1 xp
Illumination Technique: 3 xp
Allies (School): 8 xp
Rank 3 (School): 6 xp
Jeff
Contact Group (URIEL) and Patron (SANDMAN) seems like paying twice for very nearly same thing
"We need somebody to make a Shadowing roll to investigate a suspected abusive parent" could be covered by either, I think?
It might be a rounding error pointswise
Michael
Hmm, interesting. I feel like Contact Group would let a teacher or student tap URIEL for skills (like your Shadowing scenario), while Patron gives them direct material support. But yeah, I'm not sure if it has any functional effect other than on the character sheet of a putative teacher or student.
Ultimately the only thing that affects the Startup Cost are the Member Traits and Contacts.
Jeff
I guess I'm arguing that there's no situation that would be covered by the Contact Group but not the Patron. The converse isn't true (though the CG probably supplies like 80% of the functionality of the Patron for like 20% of the cost)
Michael
You know, you're right Jeff. Here's how B&C puts it: This is the organization’s point cost as a Patron, including any built-in limitations or enhancements. A group’s Startup Cost can be used as its assets for this purpose, though the GM may adjust this – see GURPS Social Engineering, p. 41, for variant rules for determining Patron value for small organizations. So yeah, combine the Contact Group, Higher Purpose, and Unusual Background package into a model for the bennies that School X provides as a patron.
(Also, I'm reminded there is a GURPS Social Engineering: Back to School supplement, lmao)