Believe it or not, I've actually never played "Hollywood Hijinx". But
the theme is pretty common, of course.
>I almost expected to
>find Uncle Zebulon still alive at the end, menaced by my evil cousin
>Hector...
The idea did occur to me. Now, if I ever get around to writing that
sequel... :-).
>Perhaps "Cyr-Dhool" is some kind of reference to Liz
>Cyr-Jones, co-author of "Hollywood Hijinx".
No, not a conscious one at least. Honestly, I have no idea where that name
came from.
>The magic/technology-switched background was a good idea (have you read
>"The Iron Dragon's Daughter" by Michael Swanwick?), though I think it
>could have been extended a bit more (and what are "train strikes" doing
>in this world? -- perhaps "magic carpet strikes" instead?).
Would you believe me if I said that I did toy with the idea of magic carpet
strikes?
However, I found it a bit difficult to construct a world with a total
magic-technology reversal; possible, of course, but difficult, and too
ambitious for such a small game. Instead, I chose a world with some
mixture of the two; say, late-19th century technology combined with
*some* magic (but magic is esoteric and incompletely developed - like
computers in the real 1960's). The train strikes were meant as some
sort of pointer in that direction (there is *some* technology like in
our world), but perhaps it's too obscure, and it fills no real
function but making the introduction even more long-winded.
Magnus