The Cauldron (RPG All)

A short while back I talked about genre mixing. I thought it would be fun to put those ideas into practice.

This multi-setting chronicle will start (chronologically at least) with School of Night, pass on to Bookhounds of London/Tombhounds of Egypt, and conclude with Night's Black Agents. 

Before I delve into the details, let's spend this week talking about setting.

The great thing about setting a story of whatever type in a city like London is, it's been there since forever ago and its history is well known. You shan't have to spend the first half-hour describing the basics; you can assume the players already know the basics. The same could be said about Paris, Berlin, Rome and a dozen other places I can think of. It's the kind of location where, even if the players don't know exactly what London is like, they can fake it. There's a pub and a Pret a Manger on every corner, Cockneys talk funny, there's an Underground. Sorted. 

School of Night is Elizabethan, Bookhounds and Tombhounds are 1930s games and Night's Black Agents can be any period but tends towards modern day. There's nothing that says you have to play the sessions in that order. You could start with Tombhounds, pass on to School of Night then Bookhounds then Nights. Or Nights, then Tombhounds, then School of Night, Bookhounds, and Nights again. The world is your crimson-tinged oyster. 

However, you do need a reasonably solid core at the heart of this whole thing. Some reliable touchstone that the players can refer back to, so they don't get lost in the alphabet soup. 

Let's set this primarily in Southwark, London. The assumption, since this refers back to Night's Black Agents in the end, is that this is primarily about vampires. It doesn't have to be. Night's has specific rules for a Cthulhu v spies vibe and as Director you can do as you like, but let's not think too far out of the box this time around. Vampires it is. Whether the players are dodging horrors in Cairo or arguing the finer points of literature and history with Shakespeare, it's all vampires, all the time. In the Four Things parlance, vampires are the Fourth Thing. 

What do we know about Southwark that's campaign-useful?

To the Wikipedias!

Recent excavation has revealed pre-Roman activity including evidence of early ploughing, burial mounds and ritual activity ... Southwark was mostly made up of a series of often marshy tidal islands in the Thames, with some of the waterways between these island formed by branches of the River Neckinger, a tributary of the Thames ... without London bridge there is unlikely to have been a settlement of any importance in the area ... For centuries London Bridge was the only Thames bridge ... Londinium was abandoned at the end of the Roman occupation in the early 5th century and both the city and its bridge collapsed in decay. The settlement at Southwark, like the main settlement of London to the north of the bridge, had been more or less abandoned ... Just west of the Bridge was the Liberty of the Clink manor, which was never controlled by the city, but was held under the Bishopric of Winchester's nominal authority. This lack of oversight helped the area became the entertainment district for London ... Southwark was also the location of several prisons ... In 1836 the first railway in the London area was created, the London and Greenwich Railway, originally terminating at Spa Road and later extended west to London Bridge ... Southwark was outside of the control of the City of London and was a haven for criminals and free traders, who would sell goods and conduct trades outside the regulation of the city's Livery Companies ...

That will do to be getting on with. 

There are all kinds of London legends that could be data-mined for this. I'm going to invent one for campaign purposes, but it would be as simple to borrow something from a source like Funk & Wagnalls or London Lore. 

Borrowing from the Wiki:

evidence of early ploughing, burial mounds and ritual activity. Burial mounds sounds useful, as does ritual activity. I'm going to assume that the site I intend to detail for campaign purposes was a burial mound at one point in the far-off times. Further, since this is marshy ground with lots of running water and that useful River Neckinger, I'm going to assume that this location was chosen deliberately as a kind of vampire defense system. That means one of the vampire banes/blocks of the setting ought to be water, whether the vampires themselves are traditional, alien or something else. 

The Neckinger allegedly got its name from hangings and hangmen. I'm going to assume that the tradition goes back much further than anyone realizes, that ritual killing by strangulation was a part of the location even way back in pre-history.

without London bridge there is unlikely to have been a settlement of any importance in the area. That suggests London Bridge as a key ritual location, something that can be used by megapolisomancers and magicians of all stripes. A kind of fane, perhaps? Something that can be drawn on for power.

the location of several prisons. The Clink covers the School of Night period, which is helpful.

Southwark was outside of the control of the City of London and was a haven for criminals and free traders. All kinds of benefits here and this is a situation that lasts a very long time. There are still remnants of it in the modern day - there's a reason why they set Only Fools and Horses in Southwark.

 OK, all that said, let's lay some ground rules. 

There are four big moments in the setting's history:

• Prehistory - when the ritual area is first established, the first killings happen, the magic is evoked.
• Elizabethan - when the first ritual plays are performed by a group I'm going to call the Children of Christ's Chapel.
• 1930s - when the Children of the Sphynx establish their temple on old, tainted ground.
• 1980s - when an Edom rocked by scandal has to deal with a new Strangler attempting to evoke old horrors.

Prehistory

In a time when Southwark was marsh and river, a group lost to history established a fane in a place protected against vampires.

• There they sacrificed human victims by strangulation, boiling the remains in a cauldron which they then used for ritual, divination purposes.
• They created an artefact, a cauldron, for this purpose. The cauldron was in several pieces and those pieces are lost to history.
• The remains of this cult were put to flight and thought destroyed when Caesar first came to Britain. When Claudius completed the invasion that Caesar left undone, no remnant of the cult was discovered.
• Vampires: the leaders of the cult either became vampires or were murdered by the earliest version of the vampire conspiracy.

Elizabethan

When Southwark was a place you went to for entertainment, a boy's performing troupe, the Children of Christ's Chapel, became briefly famous.

• The Children were nominally backed by a nobleman, Sir Jacob Colkins, a man of many investments particularly in the New World. 
• Sir Jacob's antecedents are obscure. He claims to be able to trace his line to the conquest; his enemies say his grandfather was a gond farmer (or dung merchant) for the tanneries.
• The Children performed plays written by Sir Jacob's creature, a scrivener named Francis Harman most famous for being accused of witchcraft - though he escaped punishment.
• Vampires: The vampires used the Children's playhouse, the Devil, as a base of operations. In the past, it had been the ritual site where the Prehistory cultists carried out their human sacrifices.

1930s. 

The Children of the Sphynx establish a ritual site and a small occult press, which proves very popular amongst certain Bohemians.

• The Children of the Sphynx first arise in the 1890s as a smallish rival to the Order of the Golden Dawn, but as an occult order they never amount to much. As a publishing house, they have more success.
• The Devil Tavern, a rattletrap place with a peculiar history, is their unofficial base of operations. They meet here, sometimes hold auctions here.
• One of the rituals - a requirement for entry - is strangulation. The Children describe it as 'a means of enhancing the mystery.' Failures merely fall unconscious, or even die; those who succeed see terrible visions.
• Vampires: The Children are vampire hunters, and their most obscure - and valuable - texts are about hunting vampires.

1930s (Tombhounds).

In the early 1910s an archaeologist, Douglas Colkins-Firth, sets out on an expedition to find a lost tomb of great importance. He never returns, but some think he was on to a rich find and are determined to follow in his footsteps.

• Judging by sketches and notes, Colkins-Firth was looking for evidence of a prehistoric cult whose rituals spread the length and breadth of Europe, but whose roots could be found in Egypt.
• Colkins-Firth was one of the founding members of the Children of the Sphynx, and it was he who first developed the strangulation ritual which is the Children's signature.
• One of the most dangerous seekers after the Colkins-Firth find is a Nazi, Gottfried Frank, who believes that Colkins-Firth was about to discover a powerful artefact when he went missing.
• Vampires: Colkins-Firth had been corrupted by the vampires and was looking for a replacement cauldron; Frank is about to stumble onto the vampires and what he'll do when he finds them is anyone's guess. 

1980s (Night's Black Agents)

In the early days of Thatcherism an Edom reduced by internal scandals to a remnant of its former self is thrown into disarray when one of the Dukes is found dead by hanging in his apartments - and there's the possibility he was attempting some kind of ritual when he died.

• The Duke isn't the only one to have gone this way, just the most high-profile. Scotland Yard thinks it may be a serial killer.
• Edom is further rattled when it appears as though the death of the Duke - or something very like it - is the subject of an unfinished Hitchcock thriller, pages from which are found at one of the death scenes.
• The Hitchcock thriller borrows heavily from an obscure play written by an Elizabethan playwright, Francis Harman, and a true-life killing (or possibly series of killings) that took place in the 1930s. How did Hitchcock get this material?
• Vampires: It's all been about divination, storytelling, and the vampires think they're on the cusp of a breakthrough - but they don't know how to complete the ritual. A dead Hitchcock does them no good - but did he really die in April, 1980?

OK, that's the bare bones. Next week, it's time to talk about this old and creaky Building.

Enjoy!

The Recent Unpleasantness (Wizards - OGL)

The OGL.

Oh dear.

Ginni Di

Zee Bashew

Legal Eagle

I’m going to assume you’ve a base familiarity with the problem and not go over old ground. If not, talk to the Internet – it has Opinions and is not afraid to share them.

What fascinates me about this situation is, first, it’s beginning to sound a little like a constitutional law question where President Albert issues an Executive Order and everyone assumes it’s there forever, only for President Bluebottle to come along and tear up that Order replacing it with one of their own. Or just not replace it at all.

The assumption is that Executive Orders exist in perpetuity and some of the most famous ones – Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation – have. More or less. But the outgoing President’s order can be torn up by the incoming at any time. Or by the next one. Or by the one after that. They give the appearance of solid, binding and enforceable statutory law whereas they are nothing of the kind, laws being the province of an entirely different body. They might last only so long as it takes snowfall to melt on a spring day.

See also the OGL, which basically took the form of a company pinky-swearing not to do a thing, and everyone assuming that the pinky-swear was a legally enforceable contract and How Very Dare You Do The Thing, Sir.

Second, I think this only can have happened in the age of the Internet.

As has been said many times before by wiser minds than mine, the whole point of the OGL and its predecessors was so Wizards could pass off scenario-writing duties to someone else. Scenarios are vital to the hobby but they don’t sell enough to make them viable product, particularly if we’re talking about paper versions.

Ask anyone who’s ever published physical – the Unspeakable Oath magazine springs to mind – how those razor-thin profit margins can make strong souls weep like children, particularly when advertisers vanish like a ferret up a drainpipe. Ask the newspaper industry how it feels about running those presses all day every day.

Wizards in its wisdom decided to give the scenario sales to small press outlets, and everyone was happy.

In the pre-Internet past, third-party scenario and supplement production led to product glut and the fabled bargain bin, the butt of so many Knights of the Dinner Table jokes. Many hours of someone’s blood, sweat and caffeine reduced to a $0.99 ‘please God buy this turkey’ junk sale box. As mentioned, there's a huge up-front cash investment when publishing physical, and a lot of would-be creators were forced out on cost grounds. There just weren't the buyers to support the hobbyist creators.

That's still the case, I suspect, for most producers of content. Ask all those streamers who put out Let’s Plays for 10 viewers at a time, or the folks on sites like DriveThru who sell maybe 20 copies of a book that might have taken them years to write. Such is publishing. The difference being that there isn't the huge up-front cost. There is a cost. It's just nothing like as substantial a cost as it used to be.

As a side note – going back to my days at the Escapist – I remember when the site was basically dead, most of the creators bar Yahtzee having moved on or been kicked out. There were a couple video content creators still kicking around the place like ghosts in a museum, none of them big names. They were being shuffled off to Buffalo, one after the other. I still had back-end access and used to poke around just to see what was what.

I recall one video content creator being given the heave-ho and complaining bitterly that it was thanks to the Libs, who had denied her bid for fame. Having back-end access, I looked at the hits per vid. Less than 20 on average, IIRC.

Content creation is not a fertile field that wants only a few seeds and water to grow beautiful flowers. It’s rocky, unforgiving soil. If you persevere, have talent and a bit of luck, you can make it – but there are no guarantees.

It is much easier than it was, and this is where I come back to the Internet.

Look at the production values in any of Ginni Di’s vids, or Legal Eagle’s, Zee Bashew, Game Knights. There was a time not so long ago when that kind of performance was basically out of reach for most, on cost grounds alone. You’d need to be a midsize production studio at least, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank, before you could even think about doing that kind of work. You’d need Disney level resources to produce a Zee Bashew-style animation. Now someone can work from home on a relatively ordinary desktop setup and produce amazing stuff.

Don’t misunderstand me. What Creators do still takes talent, knowledge, effort. I know that I, for one, haven’t the chops to do what Ginni Di does. But it’s not nearly as expensive or difficult as it used to be, which creates two illusions:

1) The people who do this must be swimming in cash.

2) It’s easy.

I’m reasonably confident that Matt Mercer can pay his rent, or mortgage. I wouldn’t swear as to anyone else’s income. Just because it looks expensive doesn’t mean there’s been a sudden influx of millionaires in the RPG space. It just means that doing this isn’t as costly as it used to be.

Put it another way: there are plenty of creators who may seem to have cash in hand, and yet only be able to do what they do because their spouse has a good job with benefits.

Also, just because content creation doesn’t need a midsize studio any more doesn’t mean there are no studios. Command Zone, Loadingreadyrun, these are studios. They just aren’t traditional studios with network-level cash behind them. They’re small outlets which put out regular content and can afford to pay rent. They make a little look amazing. That’s as far as it goes.

Hell, I can write and self-publish a book, put it on Amazon in front of millions of readers, and pay almost nothing for the privilege beyond my time. That’s absolutely insane. It wouldn’t have been possible thirty years ago. I can put a complete scenario on DriveThru and pay nothing at all, and still collect income from it. If you’d told me thirty years back that this was possible, I’d have called you a liar.

But I’d lose on that book. Because while it seems easy to create content it is not easy to create quality content, nor is it easy to sell product in a crowded market. Not by a long shot. The job still wants editors, draft readers, maybe playtesters, decent art, publicity. Especially publicity. I have yet to meet a writer who’s any good at selling themselves; it’s an introvert’s craft, for the most part.

Or to put it another way, just because Ginni Di makes it look easy to put together a great video or YouTube series, without any apparent resources beyond her time and a dream, doesn’t mean it is. But that’s part of the illusion that the Internet has created.

Ironically this is the future that the folks who created the DotCom Bubble back in the late 90s foresaw and tried to cash in on, but they were too early for the tech and overfed by venture capitalists who, by rights, ought to have been in padded cells rather than throwing cash at the wall to see what sticks. Not unlike some recent venture capitalists I could name, who thought that giving millions to a cryptojackass who liked to play video games during business conferences was a good idea. Funny how venture capitalist seems to be another name for moron no matter which era we live in, but … I digress.

This brave new world has created Creators. If the Internet didn’t exist Matt Mercer would be a talented geek working in a $25/hour office job somewhere, playing D&D with his buddies on the weekend. Always assuming, of course, that D&D survived the collapse of TSR (the original, not New Coke) back in the 1990s. Loadingreadyrun, Command Zone, all of it would be impossible.

However, because the Internet created Creators we now live in a world where anyone, absolutely anyone, has a voice and a means of making themselves heard. To an unprecedented degree. Every day on Kickstarter I see projects that wouldn’t have made it through the submissions stage at an established company ask for $20K and get $2 million, or some equally absurd figure.

Understand, this is the part that’s unprecedented: Creators having their own voice, unfettered. Gone are the days when Cary Grant or Carole Lombard owed everything to the studio. You don’t have to be top of the food chain to have an opinion and be heard. The money situation isn’t unprecedented; control, over the work, the content, is. Having a means of being heard that doesn’t depend on the bosses in corporate is.

It’s worth bearing in mind, as a side note, that this situation kinda underlines the power of white privilege too. If this situation only affected creators who weren’t white, and only attracted complaint from non-white creators, this wouldn’t be a thing. You might hear it mentioned on a podcast. Maybe PowrDragn would be talking about it. There would be no instant takebacks from corporate, no sudden changes in tone or policy. Whereas now, folks have to wait a week for a response from corporate and that week becomes a substantive concern, worthy of ridicule and opprobrium and God alone knows how many thinkpieces on influential online news sites – or even the Actual In-Print Press. Imagine if you had to wait a week for forty acres and a mule. You’d be outraged, I’m sure.

It’s not as if this stuff never happens. Spelljammer: Adventures in Space – remember that? Or the whole business with New Coke TSR? Gee, that was news not so long ago. 2022. What a year.

Back on topic.

As far as the OGL is concerned it appears – at least, it appears to the madding crowd - as though Wizards took one look at the evolving situation, thought about the money they believed they’d thrown away when they gave scenario creation to the nerds, and tried to rake the cash back in. Only to discover that they were biting the hand that fed them. You don’t get to sell $50 game books unless you make the nerds happy, and they weren’t happy about this.

But I submit to you that the alleged motivation for doing this – the money – was illusionary from the beginning. Possibly on both sides. It’s been said – mostly by Wizards – that money was not the company’s primary concern. That this situation has less to do with cash than it does the changing market. Whether or not you believe that is up to you, but judging by the screams the Creators definitely believe it’s about the money.

Yet another side note (they breed like rabbits). It’s been suggested that the reason why Wizards wanted this switch was to protect their rights to the brand; they wanted to ensure they could step in and quash unacceptable use. I can see a case for that. It used to be said, if you were in the software business and Microsoft wanted to buy your company, you had two options. Take the money and run, or say no. If you said no, Microsoft would reverse-engineer your tech, and then steal the business right from under you.

I can see a case for arguing that if, say, Disney, wants to get into the RPG space, it doesn’t even have to reverse-engineer the tech; making it OGL or Creative Commons does all the hard work for them. It’s not as if anyone ever got rich fighting the House of Mouse. You can say that’s unlikely right now, and I’d agree with you. But the more visible Dungeons and Dragons gets, the more movies/TV shows/whatever are based on or reference Dungeons and Dragons, the more likely it is one of the bigger fish in the pond will take note. Then there will be trouble.

Back on topic.

The money.

You can make money doing content creation. Good money. But it’s not anything like as easy as it looks and just because someone, operating on a smallish budget, can put out good-looking content does not mean everyone’s a millionaire and there’s oceans of cash out there waiting to be redirected into your pocket. Or anyone’s pocket.

It’s still the same game as ever was. The production values are better, but don’t get fooled by a pretty outward show.

Anyhow, that’s enough bloviating from me. Have a good one!

Final Thoughts - Serpentine

OK, so far I've talked about the basic shape of the chronicle and followed that up with a discussion of the kinds of scenarios that make up any chronicle, whether in this or a different system. I said there were three types: Foundational, Plot Specific and Climactic.

What exactly is a Foundational scenario?

A Foundational scenario does two things. 

• They elaborate on the established Building and put some flesh on its bones. 
• They also provide the initial clues which the characters will follow up on for later plot.

Let's go back to the first post and use the examples there for Foundational purposes.

The Strazzaruola are the other family business, the rivals, the no-goods. If a Strazzaruola did it, it must be wrong. Worse than wrong. You never met a Strazzaruola you didn't hate.

Four things:

• The Strazzaruola run loan sharking in the Night Market and there are few stalls that don't owe them money or favors - often both.
• Isabetta Strazzaruola is a sorceror, or at least everyone says she is. Dripping with corruption, no doubt.
• Baldo Strazzaruola is a notorious duelist, when he's not drunk off his ass. Dangerous, certainly - but unpredictable when drunk.
• Monstrosity: Several Strazzaruola are Drowned.

OK, so already there's some meat on the bones. We know the Strazzaruola are loan sharks; that must mean they have plenty of debtors, and some heavies to help them collect the debts. We know a little about Isabetta and Baldo, enough to put a little plot into them. The next step is to devise some Strazzaruola plot hooks that provide initial clues which can be followed up for later plot.

It'd also be helpful if that same scenario helped make the setting feel more alive, solid, real. If it helped create a situation in which the characters get to explore the world a little and see what's out there. 

Probably you've been to New York, or at least a major city. You know that feeling, when you stand on the street and realize that there's a whole world around you, teeming with life and stories of which you can only be the smallest part? It's easy to think, if you're sat alone at your desk, that the world is your desk and only your desk; that there's nothing more important than what you're doing, thinking, feeling right now. Being in a big city and just looking up shows you that you are, at best, the smallest part of a much larger story. That you and yours don't amount to a hill of beans, but that sometimes you can see a glimpse of the larger reality.

Casablanca

That's what you hope for in a foundational scenario: that the characters see the larger world and understand a small part of it, a fraction - but that's enough. For now.

If I was to take any of the Four Things to make a Foundation I'd pick one of the first three: the loan sharking, Isabetta, Baldo. The Fourth Thing, the Monstrous thing, is where the clues in that Foundational scenario lead.

In any scenario, even the simplest, there's the main hook, the main objective, possibly a Twist, and a conclusion. Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series, must-reads for anyone who wants to get into swords and sorcery, are very like this. Take Bazaar of the Bizarre as an example. There the heroes are hired by their sorcerous mentors to put an end to a nefarious threat. The main objective is that same threat. The Twist is that one of the heroes has been bamboozled by the threat. The story is about how that situation is resolved. It is as simple as it is possible to be, plotwise, and it's incredibly engaging, fun, and thrilling.

Foundation: Baldo's Triangle

Paulina the sword-swallower from Zavatera's Marvels is pissed off with Baldo. He's spending a lot of time with a mystery woman but he swears blind that isn't so. Paulina wants the heroes to check on Baldo's story.

Now, the heroes may want nothing to do with a Strazzaruola, but they want to stay in Paulina's good graces and they figure the best way to do that is to at least play along with Paulina. 

The truth is that Baldo's sister Isabetta's been plotting behind the scenes. She doesn't like how Baldo spends all his spare time with Paulina. Isabetta prefers it when Baldo is out making money for the family, collecting on debts and roughing up fools. Isabetta also doesn't like Paulina much. However, Isabetta hasn't been able to break Baldo's affection so she came up with a scheme that she thought was foolproof. Isabetta would make Baldo think, through sorcerous means, that she was Paulina. That way she could get Baldo to do what she wanted when she wanted. 

Trouble is, she hadn't accounted for Baldo's passionate nature. When Baldo has a little drink in him, he wants a good time. Isabetta, as Paulina, has found it harder and harder to keep Baldo from her bed.

Isabetta's doing all this by means of a peculiar little puppet that she keeps in her rooms. So long as she keeps that puppet, she can make Baldo think she's Paulina. If the heroes get hold of that puppet ...

The next step is to add the clues that lead to the Monstrous, which in this instance is the Drowned.

From the main book: the Drowned are humans who are puppetted and possessed by an underwater fungal hivemind somewhere in the city. They can instantly communicate with each other and use this hivemind communication to focus on and efficiently eliminate one enemy at a time. The Drowned seek to put themselves in positions of influence and power, all the better to promote the fungal intelligence’s inscrutable plans.

It wouldn't be helpful to have either Baldo or Isabetta as the Drowned, but there are plenty of other Strazzaruola. Let's say that Isabetta's maid and assistant, Sarafina, is a Drowned and she's been trying to recruit Baldo by infecting Baldo with wetlung. So far Isabetta's sorcery has kept Baldo, and the other senior Strazzaruola, safe. However, this new thing with Baldo and Isabetta gives Sarafina an opportunity to advance her plans - unless the heroes discover it and stop her. They might not like Baldo, but do they want him to become a monster?

We already know, because it's part of the Four Things of Sag Harbor, that the only time Sag Harbor feels clean is when it rains. "In downpours people come out to stand in the rain as if it were a crystal-clear waterfall, filling whatever containers they have with rainwater. It's the only way to guarantee freshwater supply." But maybe the Drowned don't care about that, or maybe there's something in the rainwater that they really don't like. So the one thing that gives Sarafina away is her reaction when it rains: she hides and doesn't try to collect the rainwater. Why is that, the heroes might wonder? Well ...

The main hook is the love triangle. The main plot objective is countering Isabetta's spell, which she cast on Baldo and is now regretting. The Twist is the Drowned, which in turn will lead to Plot Specific scenarios. It has the additional benefit of adding one of Sag Harbor's Four Things, which in turn helps develop the campaign's ongoing narrative. 

That's a Foundational scenario. 

Plot Specific scenarios function in much the same way. They have their main hook, the main objective, possibly a Twist, and a conclusion, the difference being that where a Foundational scenario hints at the greater world around it a Plot Specific scenario reveals definite things about that greater world and gives clues that lead to the Climactic scenario. 

The Climatic scenario is broadly along the same lines as its brethren, with this key difference: where before all attention was on the ordinary stuff of the setting - the meat and drink - and there were clues that led to Monstrous, now it's all Monstrous all the time. In Twilight Zone terminology, the eyeglasses have broken and now it's time to face the consequences. 

Time Enough At Last

If the Strazzaruola, say, were infected by Drowned before but not all of them had fallen, now all of them have fallen. If Rattakan were persecuting Zavatera's Marvels because Paulina was protecting those pesky orphans, now most if not all the orphans have died and Paulina may well be a Rattakan host, and so on. The adventurers have to deal with this situation as best they can, and how they choose to deal with it will determine whether or not this campaign ends on a high note, or a low.

What I'm getting at is a bit different from, say, Horror on the Orient Express, where the characters have been following a set path down a particular route, and while they may have made choices along the way the ultimate destination was always the same. The whole point behind the Building, and the Four Things technique, is that the players determine which elements of the setting they choose to engage with. In that sense it's more like Dracula Dossier or Armitage Files gameplay, in which there is a defined structure but the ultimate destination, and the route chosen to get there, is determined not by plot but by player engagement. 

The Building provides 'rooms' - encounters, NPCs, setting elements - and the Four Things helps you furnish those rooms. The players then decide for themselves which of the Four Things they engage with, and that in turn leads them to other rooms and more Four Things, and so on. 

Next week - something different!

Enjoy!

 

Floating the Dragon (Swords of the Serpentine)

 Sag Harbor

The swampside docks off the upriver end of the city are in the worst industrial section of town. This is the area where the unmentionable businesses are: the tanneries, the slaughterhouses, the nightsoil collections. It’s where sludge from dredging finds a temporary home, mostly because there’s a surreptitious market for people who want their enemies’ homes filled with the stuff ...

Night Markets

Daytime Sag Harbor is a sprawl of slums and unsavory neighborhoods. Nighttime Sag Harbor (at least along the edges of the District) is a riot of Night Markets. Every night when the sun goes down, the lanterns light and market tents pop up intertwined with the harbor docks and the sprawls of fishmongers, tanners, dyers, outlanders, and other lowlifes. Roving pubs pitch their tents and tap their kegs ...

Family Business

You may be a prestigious member of the ancient nobility, the merchant princes behind a major Mercanti guild, or even a close-knit family of commoners who have taken up a life of crime. For you, family is everything — and when family and friends get threatened by personal or political enemies, you turn to heroics to get your own back ...

Last time I populated the Building. Time to add some layers.

Broadly speaking there are three kinds of scenarios in any campaign: foundational, plot specific, and climactic.

Foundational scenarios are the groundwork. They elaborate on the established Building and put some flesh on its bones. They also provide the initial clues which the characters will follow up on for later plot. When I discussed Bookhounds games, and horror in general, many moons ago I said that "the first act [must] establish the setting, the characters and the overall mood of the game. Whether the players are veterans, novices or a mixture of the two, they've never played in this game world before, because it's your game world, fashioned out of your ideas and imagination. They don't know what to look forward to, or what to be worried about."

That's what a foundational scenario is. The first act. It doesn't have to include anything overtly Monstrous at this stage, because although this train is headed down Monstrous tracks this is just the first act. The establishing shot. The moment where the players get settled in to the story you're telling.

Remember that this is just as much foundational for the players as it is for you. They have only the sketchiest idea of who their characters are. Sure, they know the characters' stats and they have a more or less detailed backstory, but a character isn't defined by backstory. It's defined in play. Just like real life; character isn't about what people say, but what they do. You need to see what the characters do, before you know who they are.

Plot specific scenarios happen after the foundation is established. They usually involve some kind of plot specific quest, quest object, information or NPC. This is either a goal in its own right or it leads the investigators to a goal. Since this is a Monstrous game, a plot specific scenario will involve Monsters. It might be a reveal, a confrontation, an antagonist reaction. If this were a Night's Black Agents game then the plot-specific scenario would probably involve some kind of conspyramid reaction. In a Trail game the investigators would finally come face-to-face with the entity all those cultists have been chanting about, or find a copy of the Necronomicon.

By this point the players should already have a good idea of who their characters are, so you should be on the lookout for some character-specific reactions. Or take the trouble to create some. If you know that the duelist character is into himbos, then the antagonist for this scenario should be a himbo - that sort of thing. If you know a character is afraid of birds, then this is the time for birds. Note, I said character. It's a very different thing if the player is afraid of birds. Don't be that guy. 

Climactic scenarios often happen at the end of the arc and may or may not involve a big punch-up. In The Hobbit the arc ends with the Battle of the Five Armies. In video games, and Dungeons and Dragons, it usually ends with a boss battle. It doesn't have to be that way. A climactic scenario is a climax; it doesn't have to be a bloody one. Most horror games end in trauma, but it's a mental trauma not a physical one. The chief thing to bear in mind is that the central dilemma of the plot so far has to be resolved. 

In the first chapter of Telltale's Walking Dead, there is no clash of armies, no punch-up. The central dilemma has always been how to raise Clementine, the small child who's been the heart of the series up to that point. Therefore the climactic moment comes when Lee, the main character, resolves her plotline - in the quietest way possible, surrounded by the undead. 

That's the kind of climactic moment I like to shoot for, but seldom get. What happens, happens. But the point I'm getting at is the climactic moment can be as loud, as impactful, or as sinister as you make it. It's perfectly reasonable for the climactic moment to come when the characters realize everyone else in the Night Market is on the Rattakan's side, and they have to decide whether to join in and become one of them or leave the only home they've ever known. It's just as reasonable for a traumatic fight against birds end with the survivors sneaking away in their car. Or for a lone guest to leave the restaurant and stagger towards an uncertain future.

The last kind of scenario we need to talk about isn't really a scenario; it's a stopgap. It doesn't fit with the others, but it's necessary. This is the floating scenario. It can be boiled down to a floating scene rather than a full scenario, but the point is this: every so often events will shake out in a way you didn't plan for and you need some time to regroup. That's when you bring out the floating scenario. It doesn't have to fit with the rest. It just has to kill time while you try to resolve the problems caused by the unexpected bump in the road. 

Let's say for the sake of argument that you've been planning a punch-up with the big bad and the players unexpectedly resolve that conflict early by ambushing the big bad and smothering it while it's asleep. OK, not too heroic, but it gets the job done. Now you're short a big bad and you don't know how to get to a climactic scene when the climax you had planned came a wee bit prematurely. 

Time for the floating scenario. Perhaps at the end of that scenario you reveal that the actual big bad was something else altogether, or that the big bad the heroes slew was the real big bad's son, or that without the big bad some other terrible thing will happen so now the heroes have to do what the big bad would have done had it not been killed. But having the floating scenario available gives you the opportunity to regroup without having a nervous breakdown, and hopefully gives you time to sow the seeds for future climactic scenarios. 

The key thing to bear in mind about a floating scenario is, while it may be located in the plot area - Sag Harbor, in this case - it is not plot related. It's just something you have in your back pocket in case of accidents. A Night Market festival. An unexpected arrival, or departure. A disaster. An opportunity. Hidden treasure. Or maybe everyone gets stoned.

Cowboy Bebop

The ideal floating scenario is one which can be used in multiple situations, even different campaigns or settings, with only the most modest modifications.

Bookhounds, for example, has book auctions. Those appear to be specific to Bookhounds, but think about it: auctions can happen in any setting. You can have an auction in Dungeons and Dragons, or Swords of the Serpentine, or Dracula Dossier. If all you have to do to make an auction setting specific is to change a few names, and perhaps the McGuffin, it's the ideal floating scenario. You can put it just about anywhere and it performs the same function (killing time) while also giving the characters a new McGuffin to chase.  

OK, that's enough talking in the abstract. Next time out, some Foundational stuff.

Enjoy!