What period is Eidolon City set in and what does that mean for my character?

Whilst Eidolon City, being an shared illusion, doesn't strictly comply with any given time period, it does largely keep with the era around the late 1920s-late1940s. The clothing, cars, technology etc all come from this period - as do the level of healthcare and the disease around.

This is just an overview of the kind of things which can be expected. It's not meant to be the be all and end all, but just a general guide to what does and doesn't fly to that you can get a feel for things.

What is around

• Antibiotics are still fairly new. Penicillin has really only just come onto the market and it's the only antibiotic around, and even that was only first discovered in 1928. The good part of this is that there isn't any such thing as antibiotic resistent strains of bacteria, so it's very effective. It's being hailed as a wonder drug that cures everything.

• Plastic surgery is gaining ground, though not as a cosmetic technique. Generally it is used for reconstruction, for example on burns victims. It's not all that common, and it's far from perfect, but it's there.

What isn't around

• There are very few vaccinations available, which means that diseases such as small pox, polio and childhood diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella cannot be vaccinated against.

• Health and Safety! All the talk about what can and can't be done and what is and isn't safe and government guidelines about what should and shouldn't be done, isn't here! That goes for everything from what playgrounds should be made from, to whether or not smoking is bad for you.
• The contraceptive pill. Wasn't invented until the 1960s.*
• Likewise, there's no such things as IVF.
• Transplant surgery. No transplanting of hearts, kidneys etc. What you have is what you've got, there's no swapping yet.
• Antipsychotic drugs. the first anti psychotic treatments weren't available until the 1950s, so if you have a character with, for example, schizophrenia, be aware! The general treatment for mental illness during this period was admission to an asylum, and lobotomy was still a popular treatment option, as was shock therapy!
• AIDS - wasn't around until later in the century. People did, however, have other sexually transmitted diseases to worry about.

What's going to make you ill?

• Venereal Disease (STIs/STDs). Although this can be treated with antibiotics, antibiotics are a new comer to the market, which means that there's been a whole lot of VD around and not everyone goes for treatment (or can even afford to go for treatment).

• Polio - especially in children. And with polio, 25% of sufferers are left with mild disabilities and 25% more are left with severe disabilities.

*However, simply as a game device to make things easier for people, we're putting into play that pregnancy is affected by the collective unconscious so that characters only fall pregnant if they think they should. Don't look too hard at the logistics of this, just accept that it's a game device which means that you can run pregnancies if you want, and don't have to if you don't want to. This doesn't, however, affect the pregnancy itself, which is still the whole 9 months etc etc.