A world where Gentleman Detective is a common and competitive career.
Aesthetic Flavour: Some Fallen London style podge of lovecraftian mythos, gothic horror, steampunk tech, and victorian aesthetic. Deep secrets of the world and an interest in occultism.
Key resources: Cocaine, Coal, Secrets
Roles: Detectives (Those who find secrets for others), Journalists (Those who reveal secrets to the wider world), Cultists (Those who gather in a small group around a central secret), Gentry (Those who play the game of social status), and Lordlings (Those who serve the public facing powers). Any two have symbiotic pairings.
Detective + Journalist: Sherlock and Watson, obsessed with finding and uncovering secrets.
Detective + Cultist: The Archivist, investigating secrets for the benefit of the cult.
Detective + Gentry: Inspector Gadgets, investigating secrets for virtue signalling and clout.
Detective + Lordlings: Police Inspectors, investigating secrets for the benefit of their bosses.
Journalist + Cultist: Scooby Gang, Uncovering secrets that threaten the cult.
Journalist + Gentry: Gossips, Uncovering secrets that will destroy their enemies if leaked.
Journalist + Lordlings: Newsies, leaking hidden info to the highest bidder.
Cultists + Gentry: Magic Sects, crafting secret societies to support each others dark needs.
Cultists + Lordlings: Ninjas, The shadowy arm acting as daggers in the night for the elites.
Gentry + Lordlings: Bridgerton, stepping on hands and heads to climb the social ladder.
These ten archetypes make up the main cast of any story in this universe. Set one against another and toss a third in between them that clashes with a fourth.
D+J vs C+G feat. J+C and G+L becomes the following:
A renowned private detective is sent to investigate a magic circle of barbers, who are suspected to be harvesting organs from bodies with their surgical implements, and may even be murdering some of their patrons. The Men of the Shears set up a bunch of glory seeking middle class young men to take the fall for the disturbed bodies, but in the midst of the idiotic young elites is a group of amateur occultists who found the false trail first and are trying to lift the secrets from the hapless dandies.
On its own you already have some interesting shapes and sizes a conflict can take, and the power dynamics that can be explored. In a setting so fundamentally held together by a common interest in keeping secrets, what happens to those who break this social norm and do their best to get the word out about what’s going on?
I suppose that would be the realm of the newsies, peddling secrets out for the highest bidders. That’s why they’re not tossed out for free, when a market exists for buying secrets from the hands of those who do the dirty work to uncover them.
What else ideologically contrasts these groups and singles out individuals? Capitalism v. Monarchism v. Socialism? I can see that as a Lordlings v. Gentry v. Cultist tilt, with overlaps like Magic Sects being the strongest anticapitalists and the Shadow orgs being the most Anti-monarchism. It also implies that the most anti socialism are the Bridgerton elites. It all fits. It also says that Detectives and Journalists are unaligned in that political triad. One could put them into the top left quadrant if we go traditional political chart, but it doesn’t map perfectly. Everyone here is pretty Lib-Right leaning, with the edges being the Monarchistic Authright and the Socialistic Libleft, but no Authleft to be seen.
What else can be explored here. How did things get this way? It seems pretty self explanatory to me, at least in that I’m not snagging on anything unexplainable as I ruminate on it.
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