The Bull (We All Met At An Inn)

It's the perennial bugbear. The cliche to end all RPG cliches. The adventuring party has to meet somewhere. Why not an inn?

What would make it more interesting? 

It's your local. Nameless tavern number 368 in a life full of nameless taverns is not a good start. What if you and your mates have been coming here all your lives? What if you have history with this place?

The Bar, dir Álex de la Iglesia

So how does this work in practice?

Assumptions: Night's Black Agents, starting locale London, small Edom (as per Field Manual p58), Supernatural variant, and whether it's Thriller, Mirror or something else isn't relevant to this discussion. 

I posted the clip for two reasons: first, it's a brilliant film, go see. But second, just look at that bar. All those little details. I don't doubt for a minute I could walk into any one of a dozen different places in Madrid and find a bar exactly the same as that bar. It's the local spot on the corner. It's the place you walk by every day. If you didn't cross the threshold, you'd still know what you'd find if you went in there because it's no different than a dozen others. It's a bar.

And yet ...

The Bull

East End boozer near Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park and on the edge of Limehouse, West India Docks, narrowly missed by Nazi bombs during the war and now a hangout for peculiar characters of all kinds.

Owned by: Ex-IRA (silent partner).

Publican of record: Charlie Brown (not the Charlie Brown), someone who everybody knows. The police may or may not realize he's a front for the Ex-IRA. Edom certainly knows.

The Brewer: Bowman Brewery, vans coming and going at odd hours.

Watched by EDOM via Maggie Canter, Church Scavenger (p96 Field Manual).

Four Things:

• The telly’s constantly on the go, showing football at all hours of the day and night. There’s usually half a dozen faces paying it attention. Sometimes the same half a dozen, day in, day out.
• The upper level ballroom used to be a second bar but that’s been closed for donkey’s years, used for storage and the like. The Ex-IRA’s pals sometimes meet up here.
• There’s a back way out not many people know about. It leads into a smelly little alley that runs along the cemetery wall; someone athletic could scale over the wall and get into the cemetery.
• FOURTH THING

The Fourth Thing will depend on what variant you shoot for. In this example I'm shooting for Supernatural: vampires are the result of magical or other supernatural activities on Earth; spirits, ghosts, witchcraft and the like. This can be a broad canvas, but I shall shoot for:

• Some say the old black and white photos framed on the wall have peculiar properties. You think it's all a load of crap, but there's no denying some of those photies are creepy as hell. Why does it always feel like the people in those pictures are looking right at you?

OK, so that's the bare bones. This is the adventure hub. It's where the characters initially gather. I see this as a kind of Kingsman variant, where the characters start off as dumb kids messing about. Of course, they don't know what's hanging around in Tower Hamlets Cemetery which, conveniently for plot, is right next door.

So what will this hub have?

Well, it will have surroundings. There will be neighbors. There's that convenient cemetery, and Limehouse not far off. It will have history. It will have rival groups seeking to extend their influence over it, and those rival groups don't necessarily have anything to do with the Conspiracy.

Finally, it will have Plot Function. There's something about it that is necessary, perhaps vital, for ongoing plot. 

This week let's talk about the neighbors.

I've mentioned the Building before: that area in which you, as GM, expects plot to happen. For plot to happen, the GM needs to populate the Building, either with people or events with which the players can interact. 

That's all the neighbors are. They're part of the Building. These are locations where you, the GM, expect plot to happen. That doesn't mean they're all mandatory, that the characters absolutely have to interact with each and every one of them. What it means is, you, the GM, have options. Plot can happen in any of these places and, if you give yourself enough options, you'll never be flailing around wondering what the hell to do next because there will always be somewhere to go, something to do.

I'm just going to discuss a few options this week but always remember, the more options you give yourself the less likely you'll find yourself down a plotless blind alley.

Cowden Wing Tzun (Martial Arts Academy on Cowden Lane)

Popular among women and a slightly older crowd, this academy is open all day and night. The owner, Stanley Ho, is a friend of the Ex-IRA and occasionally does small jobs for Maggie Canter.

Four Things:

• The building was a funeral parlor in the 1900s-1930s and still has a large yard with what would have been a carriage stable back in the day and is now a tumbledown garage.
• Stanley Ho lives in rooms above the academy but his lifestyle is very Spartan; he seems to think that owning things is bad.
• Gym Rats know it as a prime place for finding students out on the prowl, wandering out of their comfort zone.
• FOURTH THING: Some say the carriage stable is haunted by a black carriage that wanders the streets at the dead of night. If you see it, pray it doesn't stop; it might be stopping to collect you.

Michael Townshend Memorial Statue

Made in 1954 by Avant-garde sculptor Townshend in memorial of an ARP warden who died trying to save children from a burning building. This is an abstract work that, to look at, resembles a pipe cleaner gone wrong. It stands close to one of the entrances of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park.

Four Things:

• There’s a persistent story that the statue or the immediate area of the statue is haunted by the ghosts of the children who died.
• The Feral Child Vampire (p191 main book) likes to hang out here and can often be found nearby.
• The street immediately in front of the statue is an accident black spot; rare is the month when someone isn’t sprawled bloodily in front of it. Bike accidents are particularly common.
• FOURTH THING: never, ever touch the black bike. If you see it chained up to the Memorial Statue railing, run.

Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park

Also known as Bow Cemetery, Tower Hamlets opened in 1841 and closed for burials in 1966. Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park today encompasses the original historic cemetery, bounded by historic walls, and additional pockets of land including "Scrapyard Meadow" and the Ackroyd Drive Greenlink. The overall site is today celebrated as Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature and Conservation.

Four Things:

• The Feral Child Vampire lives here and hunts here; the police know that assault victims turn up in the cemetery from time to time but haven’t made the connection.
• Victims of the Bethnal Green wartime disaster (173 dead) are buried here and the Feral Child Vampire sometimes uses their graves as a resting place.
• Scrapyard Meadow used to be housing until it was bombed flat and some say the house returns every so often; there’s a ghost hunting society spreading that rumor and investigating the site.
• FOURTH THING: The Man In Uniform is sometimes seen near Scrapyard Meadow. He looks official but a little old-fashioned, and whenever he's seen there's the persistent smell of burning, and scorched flesh.

Let's talk about this a little more. 

It should be obvious that I'm borrowing from reality to make this work. There really is a Tower Hamlets Cemetery, and it does have a Scrapyard Meadow. That much is true. Michael Townshend and the ARP warden story is completely invented. I ran a quick Google to see if there really is a Cowden Lane in that part of London and to my knowledge there isn't, so pop, there you go. The Feral Child Vampire officially hangs around in Kingstead, but ... well, Tower Hamlets is more plot-convenient.

Point being, you don't have to have an encyclopedic knowledge of London to invent a London that suits your purposes. You need to know just enough to invent a Building, and from that Building plot flows.

Think about it for a moment. Never mind what's in the actual London. What might you expect to find in any city, whether London or somewhere else?

• Public telephones. Bust, yes. But most places still have the spots where they've been. They just haven't bothered to remove them. The UK famously had its red box, and of course there is the Tardis box.
• Blind Alleys. Or narrow alleys, or closed-off-by-construction alleys, or any variant inbetween.
• Peculiar public monuments. That's how I got to Townshend but really, every city or town of size has some odd little statue or stone up remembering [insert peculiar historical fact here].
• Places that were used for something else once but have since been converted to new uses or left to rot. London's best example of this is probably Canary Wharf, which used to be shipping and docks and is now money and banks. You can still find bits of the old Canary Wharf, if you look hard enough. 
• Parks. Not just the big or famous ones, but lots of little parks with iron bars and sturdy gates. Perhaps this one is owned by the city. Perhaps it's owned by the neighbors. Perhaps nobody knows who owns it ... or who plays there after dark.
• Markets. London has more markets than you think. New York has markets. Washington DC has markets. Paris, Lille, Brussels, Berlin - markets, markets, markets.  

That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure you can think of more. Point being, all these are, or can be, part of the Building. 

It's up to you. It's your Building.

Next week: the History.

We All Met At An Inn (RPG All)

Yes, I know. 

It's the perennial bugbear. The cliche to end all RPG cliches. The adventuring party has to meet somewhere. Why not an inn?

I recently picked up a copy of Curse of Strahd and was unsurprised to see this very idea floated in the first adventure hook in the book: The characters start their adventure in an old tavern, the details of which are for you to describe. It's an old perennial. It crops up everywhere.

Why not? You've got to start somewhere. 

The problem is, the more you rely on an old standard the less satisfying it feels. Sure, you need to start somewhere. Yet if you start with something boring that's not a good lead-up to the adventure that follows.

What would make it more interesting? 

It's your local. Nameless tavern number 368 in a life full of nameless taverns is not a good start. What if you and your mates have been coming here all your lives? What if you have history with this place? It may even be your family that owns it, the proceeds from your adventuring that keep it afloat. The more stake the characters have in the location, the more likely they are to feel happy about being there. Variant: it's not just your local, you own the place. If you don't look after it, who will?

There's something odd about this place. Just Another Tavern? What if this one's haunted? What if the whole thing is built inside an elemental, frozen in place? What if the inn is secretly run by magical cats that are constantly underfoot? What if the beer is brewed by a God, or at least a Demigod? At least make this place stick out in the characters' minds. They may want to come back here one day; it'd be great if there was a here to come back to, not Just Another Tavern.

There's something very odd about this place. If the tavern is a front for the Zhentarim, or Edom, then it probably looks pretty normal on the outside. That's the whole point of places like these. They don't attract attention. They may be perfectly normal. Pay no attention to the peculiar carts and vehicles that come and go at all hours of the day and night. Don't go looking for secret doors or hidden passages. You won't find any. I swear.

There's something very odd happening right now. Even the most ordinary tavern becomes very interesting when someone sets it on fire. Or perhaps someone important to the ongoing campaign is paying it a visit. Ravenloft, for example, has the bard Darklord Harkon Lukas roaming one of the realms looking for new entertainers to join his act. If someone like that is performing onstage, the inn suddenly becomes a thousand times more interesting. Edom has any number of peculiar characters who might do the same. The Madman might frequent the local bucket of blood, or the Ex-IRA might show up as the behind-the-scenes owner of this particular establishment. Maybe they'll become the characters' patrons. Maybe they'll let slip some important clue.

It has a peculiar history. This works very well in settings like London, where there's an established history that goes back centuries and it's not uncommon for pubs to have a past that goes back to the Tudors.  Sure, everything's normal now. At least, it seems that way. But fifty years ago there was a string of horrible murders, or a cult, or a conspiracy, and at this very inn ... 

It's not really there. What if the adventurers are only dreaming? Or hallucinating? What if the inn only exists because of a shared delusion, perhaps inspired by a peculiar book that the characters all read, one that doesn't want to leave their minds? Let's say this is Ravenloft. In that setting there is a realm called I'Cath, infested by ghosts and hopping vampires. This is a realm with two sides, one of which is trapped in the throes of an eternal dream. Suppose the inn only exists on one side of that paradigm? The inn might be part of the dream version of I'Cath and the characters may only experience it by being part of the dream; God and the DM alone know where their bodies are in the waking world. If this were Cthulhu, and the inn only exists in the Dreamlands, then the characters might be in very different parts of the waking world. You could run a sprawling campaign with characters based across the planet, who meet each night in the Golden Cat to discuss their adventures and plan new ones.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

Luxury On The High Seas

It’s not often that you see a cuckoo outside your coffee shop window.

I’ve been admiring the Ritz-Carlton's liner Evirma (from the Greek, Discovery) this week. It's conducting its first home port visit; the ship's on the Bermuda register, so it's been on Hamilton dock for a few days as I write this and will be gone by the time I post it, with some very well-heeled passengers aboard. It has the look of a ship built especially for vampires, all black and formidable. 

If you’re not familiar with the modern cruise ship market you might wonder why this seems remarkable but, trust and believe, it is.

The usual cruise liner packs them in like sardines and is painted like a kid at a clown festival. You know what it is by the tunes blaring out at ULTRA HIGH VOLUME (80's and 90's, please, none of the modern shit unless it's Beyonce) and the peculiar water slide that cannons guests into the pool which, as a visual, sticks out like a sore thumb. The Titanic's owners would go into conniptions at the very idea.

Whereas the Evirma is more like the classic ships of yore. It accommodates 238 people at a time in 148 suites and is much, much smaller than the modern liner. That means it can navigate ports that would otherwise be closed to a modern ship.

Bear in mind most of the ports that liners used to visit were originally established back in the 1800s or earlier and have narrow navigational access. Our own port of St. George’s is like that. The navigation channel through the reefs was blasted back in the early 1900s and assumed that all liners would stay petite; once their waistlines ballooned St. George’s lost access to the cruise liner trade.

The Evirma’s also a good deal more civilized than the norm. Michelin restaurant? Palatial staterooms with private balconies that actually are private balconies, not just glorified handrails that look over the ocean? Yes, please.

In game terms, a ship like Evirma has more in common with superyachts than it does with liners, with the caveat that the Evirma isn’t one man’s toy. It has several hundred guests aboard. So, while the rules effects remain broadly as before the scale is larger by far. It’s not just a handful of stews, crew and guests. Now it’s hundreds of passengers, scores of staff devoted to their welfare, plus the crew, cooks, and so on needed to keep this floating hotel functioning.

Why would the Conspiracy be interested?

Well, money’s always attractive. If there’s someone aboard that the Conspiracy wants, it’s a no-brainer. A ship that size is bound to have a fortune aboard, perhaps scattered in safes located in each stateroom; enter Raffles, or his equivalent, stage right. If there’s an exclusive franchise aimed at high-end patrons, like Belle Magie from the Edom Files, then there’s a decent chance there’s an outlet aboard the Evirma (or your campaign equivalent).

Or it may be that it’s not the ship itself that’s important to the Conspiracy, but its destination. Say there’s an old port that used to be high-end, back in the 1930s, but which fell off the radar and has become a shadow of its former self. Still picturesque, especially with that old monastery up on the hill, but not on the luxury itinerary anymore. Now the Evirma, built to get to out-of-the-way destinations like this, is going to pay a call. That exclusive tour of the old monastery might be more exciting than the guide suggests, but what happens when some bitten guest goes back to their suite on the Evirma?

If you aim for the pulpier end of the market and have organizations like the Satanic Cult of Dracula in our campaign, then perhaps some of the high-end patrons have booked this cruise for … let’s call them religious reasons. Got to use those Loyalty points, y’know. Perhaps there will be hideous rituals behind closed doors, out on the ocean deep where governments and those pesky Edom spies can’t reach.

With all that in mind:

The High Life

The agents find out (through their usual sources) that the Conspiracy intends to conduct a ritual aboard its latest acquisition, the high-end liner Trandafir, while it is in home port for its inaugural voyage. It's not clear what that ritual is, but it's something that has to be done on its first trip, not before in the shipyard or afterward. Perhaps it's something to do with attuning a Red Room, or perhaps it's something else. But if the agents want to know what, they have to get aboard and find out. Bonus points if they identify who it is conducting the ritual.

Option One: Board Meeting. Important members of the executive council will be attending to take formal possession of the ship. Once this ritual is complete those same members will be able to keep an eye on the ship remotely and, in certain special suites, use mental and magical powers (mind control, spread nightmares, that sort of thing) as if they were present in the room. They intend to use these suites to gain control over the high-end persons travelling aboard the Trandafir. 

Option Two: Time In Flux. Technical wizards employed by the Conspiracy, perhaps as third parties, will set up certain suites as pocket time capsules, perhaps to assist the creation of new vampires (see also Zalozhniy Quartet) or as miniature torture chambers for the unluckiest of patrons. It's difficult to keep your cool - and your control over your finances - if you think you're being aged to death in the space of a day ...

Option Three: Ghost Busters. The suites are being set up as haunted rooms, using artefacts sourced from Romania's finest castles. Each suite has its own special surprise, to be unleashed at a moment of the Conspiracy's choosing. In some cases the intent is simple possession; the visitor walks out a whole new person. In others, intimidation, or information gathering. The Michelin starred restaurant is the key; the menu is to die for. 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

The Big Bad City (RPG All)

Once again, inspired by Baldur's Gate 3. 

After over 200 hours noodling on other playthroughs (got to see how Gale does it, nearly had a Dark Urge moment - but that's for a different discussion) I've finally reached the city proper. No, the nice auntie was not able to homeopath me back to health but I have had some refreshingly direct discussions with my Githyanki physician. I'm sure the psychological trauma will wear off. Eventually. 

Now I get to see how the dev team handled city building. It's interesting, certainly. You are kinda left with the impression that the city exists for player characters to experience, but I suppose the same argument could be made for, say, New York. Every tourist thinks that New York was built for them alone because they only ever see those bits of New York that were built with tourists in mind. Students at CUNY probably feel the same way, at least in their first year, before they start stepping out of their comfort zone. When in a curated environment everything seems built for you, until you start looking for the things that aren't.

When designing an urban environment of the fictional variety it's usually a good idea to look at how it's been done before and by that I do not mean 'how did Tolkein do it?' No, I mean how did we do it, and the answer can be found in the oddest of places. 

It depends on what kind of fiction you intend to write. For Keepers and Trail GMs, I always recommend Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s by Frederick Lewis Allen, followed by Since Yesterday: The 1930s in America, and then, if you're really ambitious, Big Change: America transforms itself, 1900-1950. There is no better coverage of the period. If you really want to go gonzo nuts then Middletown: A Study in American Culture by Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd is worth your time but it's a bit of a brain-breaker. 

The point being that you do not know what tools you have to play with until you look into the box and see those tools for what they are. There are always ideas you haven't thought of. Concepts that never occurred to you, worries that you never knew anyone had, and you won't have the slightest idea until you go looking for them. Or to put it another way, until you start looking for the things that aren't built for you, you don't know what's really out there.

Let's say this is a fantasy setting. What resources exist?

Well, Diana Wynne Jones' Tough Guide to Fantasyland is a damn good start. If you, as an author, can read that without blushing and confessing, perhaps through gritted teeth, that you too have been to Fantasyland, then you're a better author than I.

However, if you're looking for a fantasy city (or possibly a fantasy village) then I highly recommend Joseph & Frances Gies' Life In A Medieval City, or Life In A Medieval Village. Perhaps followed by a dessert course of Myddle by Richard Gough, if you enjoy period pieces. Life in a burgher's household, big business, small business, the church, the condition of the streets, books and authors, disasters, fairs - it's all here. A moveable feast of material. 

What kind of feast? 

Well, taking a look at Life In A Medieval Village: 'One holiday, Wake Day, the feast of the local parish saint, varied from place to place. Probably in the 13th century, as later, the villages kept vigil all night, in the morning heard Mass in honor of their patron saint, then spent the day in sports. Often the churchyard was turned into a sports arena, a usage deplored by the clergy ...'[p102]

Let's say this is Ravenloft. In that setting there is the Church of Ezra. 'Pious souls in various domains pray to Ezra, an aloof god who embodies the Mists ... With no domain-spanning organization, the church serves largely as a formalization of local superstitions ...' 

It's reasonable to think that, in at least some of the Ravenloft realms, Ezra may have local saint figures or provincial heroes who fill the same role. Or that Ezra has different aspects, just as in, say, Greek mythology where Zeus has many aspects:  Zeus Agoreus, Zeus Xenus, and so on.

Let's say that this is Mordent. Ravenloft's equivalent of Hammer Horror Cornwall/Kent/Sussex. Mist-shrouded coastline with a ghostly secret.

Captain Clegg (1962, Peter Cushing)

Now we have:

The Demon Fiddler

The characters arrive in Oxney, which overlooks Lazarette Rock, just before its annual feast. The Chapel, the only building in Oxney made of stone, plays unwilling host to the feast; the priest, Berriman, does their best not to intrude, as the last priest who did was run out of town. By tradition the villagers gather in the churchyard for the celebration, eating specially prepared cakes over the graves of their forebears, telling stories of ships at sea and the fabled Lazarette Rock, where the long-term contagious are, by tradition, left, so as not to spread their sickness to healthy folk. In the morning, again by tradition, there is a service, followed by sports, games and a ritual dance, again all in the churchyard for the benefit of the dead. This ritual, it's said, keeps the dead quiet in their graves. Not walking about or harming honest folk.

This year the service is attended by a Tiefling Bard (College of Spirits) who has never visited Oxney before. Nobody knows where the bard, Ariala, came from. Some claim she arrived all alone, by boat, from Lazarette Rock. Whether she came from there or somewhere else, she has unsettling tales to tell about the people of Oxney and the priest, Berriman. 

In the morning Ariala is found dead. How did she die? 

Option One: Unfriendly Dead. In Mordent nobody ever rests. The dead linger, and in Oxley the dead don't like having their stories told. It was the grasping hands of Oxley's ghosts that did for the bard but, in so doing, presented themselves with a problem. Now Ariala is one of the dead and, so long as she stays in Oxley, it will forever be feast night, where the villagers must appease the Demon Fiddler all night long ...

Option Two: Wicked Priest. The Bard dropped too many hints that she knew about Berriman's dealings with those out on Lazarette Rock. The priest slips the long-term sick shipments of luxuries to make their interment more pleasant, but each trip back and forth increases the risk of spreading diseases to the parishioners of Oxley. Now that dead Bard's ghost haunts the churchyard where she died, and Berriman's not about to reward adventurers who start asking why that should be.

Option Three: Ezra's Burden. There never was a Bard. There was a servant of Ezra, sent to warn the people of Oxley that their transgressions were going too far. When the people of Oxley turned their back on the Bard, Ezra turned her back on the people of Oxley. Now the church cannot protect the village, Oxley will soon know what it's like when its dead are no longer confined to the churchyard by yearly rituals of cake and storytelling ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy! 

Female Sleuths

Private Enquiries: The Secret History of Female Sleuths by Caitlin Davies (History Press, 2023 hardback) is a fun little thing and just in the right timeline for Call/Trail of Cthulhu … and yes, I know I said ‘fun little thing’ and I’m sorry about that but I don’t really know what other words to use. There’s a trend I’ve noticed in recent British publications; they seem softer, somehow. Not as challenging. Nice. Cozy. Easygoing. Like someone dumped an industrial quantity of tranquilizers and weed into the cake mix and now the Vicar’s tea party is happily contemplating their third eye. 

It’s a good book but I wonder how often I’ll be returning to it. It may be a one-and-done. 

Still. The topic is great and something I’d like to know more about, so I’m not sorry I picked it up. There’s something for the back of the book jacket, hey.  

Davies has a chunk of fiction and non-fiction under her belt tackling, among many other things, Holloway Prison and female crooks from the seventeenth century to now, so this is a natural progression. She kicks off with a great little vignette about Annette Kerner, Queen of Disguise, and frankly, if you Keepers out there aren’t using Kerner as a template for your NPCs there’s no saving your grey, bespotted souls.

Honestly, what’s not to like? Kerner runs away from home to become a nightclub singer and ends up working in British Intelligence before founding the Mayfair Detective Agency. Just that one sentence has enough plot threads for a mini campaign. Perfect material for anyone’s table. 

Then Davies moves on to … actually, I’m not sure. This is the point in the movie where my eyelids go leaden and then, when I wake, I’m fuzzy on where exactly I am in the plot. Except here’s Davies telling me that Kerner wrote a memoir, Woman Detective, published 1954. So now I know what’s next on my reading list, if I can find it. (Amazon tells me there’s also Further Adventures of a Woman Detective so, y’know … if I can find it …) 

See, what Davies wants to do is tell me about her life and times. Except I didn't walk in the door looking to learn about Davies' life and times. I wanted the female sleuths. The history. What I'm getting is a strong whiff of author insert followed by a brief bit of history.

I think it's intended as a framing device; I just don't know why anyone thought this material needed a framing device.

There’s a lot to like about this book. I just wish it wasn’t stuffed with fluff. Unlike Winnie the Pooh, I have no affinity for fluff. I don’t need to know about Davies’ trip to the Sherlock Holmes museum or about her experiences taking the Association of British Investigators’ exam. I came here for the Kerner and her like, not the Davies. 

I do find it frustrating. I could cheerfully read an entire book about Kerner, Clubnose, Kate Easton, Mathilda Mitchell or any of the other characters who flit in and out of the narrative. What I wasn't expecting was a book in which Davies tells me all about her rambles through London looking for old office buildings, interspersed with Davies' trials and travails trying to pass a private investigator's exam, and then a chapter covering someone's entire career in a whirlwind of text before back I am on the Davies trail in the next chapter. 

Do I recommend it? Yes, but not in hardback unless you’re getting it from a charity shop. It’ll be out in paperback soon. Wait. It’s the kind of book you can data mine for more interesting information which you can then delve deeper into elsewhere. 

It could be an interesting resource for Mutant City Blues games. As presented, Mutant City is a near-future setting but there's nothing to say it has to be. It could be a 1890s Science Hero setting, set around, say, a department store ... like Selfridges ... where Mathilda Mitchell plies her trade as a store detective. Food for thought, particularly since the latest version of Mutant City includes variant rules for Private Investigators.

That's it for this week. Enjoy! 

Sinister Buns (Call of Cthulhu, Hong Kong Cinema)

I held off getting a blu-ray player for a long time. 

I didn’t see the need. Drives are dead. DVDs are yesterday’s tech. Physical is so last century.  

Then those wicked pork buns drew me back in. 

See, physical is still the best way to get hold of anything that isn’t Main Street USA. If I want Hollywood, if I want anything North American really, it is easily had. There are any number (God, oh God, so many) ways to get that content. Streaming options beyond the dreams of avarice. 

But. 

If I want, say, The Untold Story, how do I get that? If I want any kind of non-English language media, how the hell do I get it? There must be Spanish, German, Italian streaming services, and I shall want a VPN at the very least to access them, never mind a working knowledge of the language to understand the menu options. Netflix is a gateway but it offers only a glimpse; besides, damned if I’m paying $22/month for yet another streaming service. 

No, if I wanted my pork buns – hot from Terracotta in the UK – I’d have to get an external blu ray drive for my PC. Which is exactly what I did. 

The Untold Story is a retelling of the infamous Eight Immortals killings in Macau. Two high stakes gamblers, one a restaurant owner with a family of ten, argued over debts. The restaurant owner Zheng Lin refused to pay Huang Zhiheng so Huang, in a fit of rage, tried to force Zheng to pay up. That went badly wrong and Huang killed Zheng’s whole family, thus becoming the owner of the Eight Immortals restaurant. Briefly.  

How do you get rid of all those bodies? 

Well, there’s a perfectly good restaurant in need of meat for its famous pork buns … or so the story goes. That part may be apocryphal, but it became part of the narrative.  

The 1993 film version won awards and made a ton of money at the box office, but due to its graphic scenes of rape and murder – plus, of course, those buns – it was age restricted to 18 and up. It’s mildly notorious as a slasher, but difficult to get hold of. Unless you buy from an outlet like the folks at Terracotta.  

Having seen it, my review: 

It’s an odd little duck. The killing scenes are about as bloody and nasty as anything you’re going to see on screen and Anthony Wong Chau-sang as killer Wong Chi-hang is a standout. The comedy cops in hot pursuit are an incompetent bunch of bozos; they’re all stereotypes of one kind or other, led by their fearless Lieutenant Lee, and there’s a peculiar running gag where Lee parades around with a host of prostitutes on his arm much to the disgust of his only female subordinate Bo (Emily Kwan) who wants Lee all to herself. It doesn’t pair all that well with the main plot. That said, it does end in a stunning moment when all those same comedy cops realize that the pork buns they’ve been chowing down on free of charge came with a hidden cost. 

Cheap, nasty, entertaining. It may be the unrelenting realism of the gore scenes (a stark contrast with modern cinema) but it really does stick in your mind in a way that few other films can. 

If you want a good retelling of the pork buns saga I recommend Kento Bento’s version, which I believe is on Nebula; not sure as it’s been a while since I watched Nebula. 

From a gaming POV there have been plenty of examples of suspicious meat on the menu. Sweeny Todd, Telltale’s Walking Dead (the comic too, for that matter, in a different plotline), Fritz Haarmann the Vampire of Hanover, who allegedly sold the meat of his victims on the black market – take your pick, really. 

There haven’t been as many haunted restaurants. 

There is a starting Call of Cthulhu scenario in the main book, The Haunting. It’s been around for donkey’s years. You can find it in the free-to-play Quick Start rules. In that scenario the investigators are called in to investigate a haunted house. So far, so normal – at least, normal in a Cthulhu-esque way. 

What if it wasn’t a haunted house? What if it was a haunted restaurant? What would need to change? 

Not much, really. The Keeper would need to change some of the details of the ground floor plan. But the plot would tick on regardless, and you’d have some interesting horror options – particularly in the kitchen. The family would live above the restaurant, so you wouldn’t have to change much about the upper floors. 

The Macario family would be the ones running the restaurant of course; a nice little red-sauce-spaghetti joint. Until Mr. Macario decided to add a little extra to the Bolognese. Then there’s a discreet pause while the place is shut up for … let’s call it redecoration.  At that point Mr. Knott, the building’s owner, calls in the investigators. He wants to rent the place out to new tenants but the restaurant’s reputation frightens off any interested parties. If they could just give the place the all-clear, he could rent the place out. 

A potential plot change: as written Vittorio Macario, the former restauranteur, is locked up in the asylum. His only plot function is to hint at a way of defeating the evil. 

Suppose he has a secondary function. Suppose he escapes from the asylum with one thought on his mind: a grand reopening of Macario’s Restaurant.  

He’ll need meat for the Bolognese, of course … 

That’s it for this week. Enjoy! 

Heaven's Library (Bookhounds of London)

This noble room, situated at the west end of the Cathedral, immediately above the Chapel of the Order of S. Michael and S. George, contains an interesting and important collection of books; comprising a number of early English Bibles, a few ritual books, a large and valuable series of Sermons preached at Paul’s Cross or in the Cathedral; a few plays acted by the “Children of Paul’s,” some royal and other important autographs, and over ten thousand printed books, besides as many separate pamphlets.

In the view is seen a model of part of the Western Front of the Cathedral, once in the possession of Richard Jennings, the Master-builder of S. Paul’s. In the case on which it stands is the superb large paper copy of Walton’s Polyglot Bible (large paper copies are of great rarity); an exceedingly fine copy of the Prayer Book of 1662, and of the Bible of 1640, both of which belonged to Bishop Compton, the founder of the Library, whose portrait hangs upon its eastern wall. Just to the right of this case, is a cast of an important Danish Monumental Stone, found in 1852, in S. Paul’s Churchyard: it bears a Runic inscription.

In the glass case in the middle of the room are exposed to view a considerable number of interesting objects: copies of episcopal seals, a facsimile of the tonsure plate once used at S. Paul’s, a chain with which a book was fastened to the Library shelves; some medals connected with the history of the Cathedral; and some curious books. The finely carved brackets which support the gallery, long ascribed to Grinling Gibbons, have been ascertained to be the work of Jonathan Maine, carver, in 1708.

VIEWS OF ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL

It adds a whole new meaning to bedtime reading: St Paul’s Cathedral is opening its hidden library for a once-in-a-lifetime overnight stay in honour of World Book Day.

For one night only, two guests will be able to stay in the “secret” room of the historic London landmark on 15 March. It is the first time anyone has officially slept inside the cathedral since the second world war, when a voluntary organisation protected the venue from bombing raids.

During their stay, the guests will enter the cathedral through the dean’s door and climb the spiral staircase, designed by the English architect Sir Christopher Wren more than 300 years ago.

At the top of the staircase is the recently restored library, which dates to 1709 and hosts a rare collection of more than 22,000 written texts, ranging from medieval manuscripts, books from the earliest days of printing to upcoming releases ...

The Guardian

It is often said that, at certain times of year, an auction of old incunabula is held in the crypts. This rumour began life, as far as can be determined, in 1713, when one William Fitzhugh attempted to convince a visiting Dutch merchant that the item Fitzhugh was attempting to sell came from the collection of the Prince of Lies himself ...

The Long Con

Good luck to whoever-it-may-be who ends up sleeping at St. Paul's on the 15th of this month.

Naturally this caught my eye. I enjoyed writing the Long Con for YSDC and was pleased when Pelgrane decided to pick it up. I hope anyone who runs it for their own group has a good time.

For those who don't know it: in the Long Con the characters are tasked with arranging a con game to sucker visiting American millionaire Hubert Walton, who bears a significant resemblance to actor Vincent Price.

His Kind of Woman

Price is one of my favorite actors and this is my favorite Price film.

Bookhounds has a fetish for unusual libraries and St. Paul's is undoubtedly one of the most unusual libraries in London. Substantially rebuilt since the Great Fire it contains all manner of oddities. As you might expect its main topic is Christianity and it's packed full of sermons, epistles, and theological texts, but you might find almost anything in there. The restoration project is the first time anyone's seriously looked at the thing since the 1900s, when they installed electric lighting and, shortly after, heating. 

Imagine going for over a hundred years and the only change that's ever been made, other than sweep up the termite dust, is to install electric light. 

"Our conservators were especially concerned about the safety of the gallery structure and the water-tightness of the roof." Well fork me blind, Lassie, I would be too. Now go fetch the boy out of the well, there's a good dog.

Moving on.

Late Returns

A post-Long Con scenario snippet.

After the events of Long Con, however that came out, the characters are approached by Cathedral representatives.

This may happen up to a year after the events of Long Con.

The Cathedral's people want the characters' assistance. Ever since the events of Long Con visitors to the Library have complained of strange events. The lights don't work as they ought, and there's a nasty burning smell that comes and goes. They've had electricians in to diagnose the problem, but as far as they can tell the lights are working as intended and there's no wiring problem. There's been a lot of loose talk about devils since the characters attempted their con game and the Church authorities want it very clear that there's no such thing as maleficent spirits, certainly not within God's House and the most important Cathedral in Great Britian. The authorities hope that by parading the characters through in a show they'll be able to stop loose talk.

While on site the Hounds' mouths will be watering: here are some of the most valuable books they've seen in their entire career, just ... sitting there. On shelves. If only they weren't under such heavy manners they might be able to lift something ...

Option One: Dusty Regret. One of the Dust Things managed to survive the events of the Long Con and made its way up here, where it bonded to a collection of sermons. It appears as a careworn priest with vacant eyes. It's beginning to propagate among the texts in the Library; if left to its own devices it will spread, infecting scholars who will, in turn, take Dust Things to their own libraries. The smell is coming from the electrics; lead-sheathed wiring that hasn't been looked after causes havoc when it comes into contact with Dust Things.

Option Two: Wiring Faults The wiring isn't everything it should be, but there are some indications that it's been fiddled with. There's a particular section close to the display cases that shows extensive signs of damage. This is because the electrician is trying to set up an opportunity for theft; if he can manufacture a 'fire scare' he can grab the opportunity and steal the items he has his eyes on. Why? Gentleman Jack, that's why; the scoundrel has decided to have another crack at St. Pauls and the electrician is his go-between.

Option Three: Devilish Drama The whole scenario is being manufactured by one of the Cathedral staff, who works at the Library. This staff member is enthralled with the idea of Devil's Auctions and the events of the Long Con inspired them to take it a step further. They've been carrying out rituals up in the Library to summon Old Nick, the idea being to start up a Devil's Auction of their own. The trouble is, they have managed to contact someone. It just isn't Old Nick; Old Nyalathotep, more like.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

BOOKWORM (Bookhounds of London)

 BOOKWORM wants young lady to catalogue library. Answer in own hand writing. Box 520. 

Lured (Cohen Film Collection)

Lured is a fun little film. Made in 1947 with George Sanders as suave clubman Fleming and Lucille Ball as showgirl Sandra who gets recruited by Scotland Yard to find a killer, it bounces along with verve and has some interesting twists before the end. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys cozy crime, or crime in general. It’s fun, it has laughs, it has Boris Karloff chewing all sorts of scenery, while Ball and Sanders bounce off each other nicely.  

The conceit is interesting. The Killer places an advert in the personal column of the paper, victims write in applying for the post, and whoops, strangle, strangle. The audience never sees the strangle, strangle. There’s a chiller moment about halfway through the film when Saunders is brought into the coroner’s office to identify a victim who’s been in the river for … a while … but the audience never sees the remains. Kudos to Saunders on keeping his composure. And his lunch.  

The personal ad has a long and studied history which I shan’t bore you with. Boredom is what Wikipedia is for.  

However, Lured isn’t the only example of a personal ad killer; far from it. There have been all sorts but the one I want to draw your attention to is Béla Kiss, the Hungarian vampire.  

Kiss, a tinsmith, practiced the romance bunco. He engaged in passionate correspondence with lonely women, drew them to his house, at which point they vanished. This was all pre-1914, and he was able to dispose of the bodies in tin drums filled with ‘kerosene’ that Kiss claimed he was hoarding in case war broke out. Lucky old Kiss: war did indeed break out. He was called up, went to the front, and in the meantime left the house in his housekeeper’s care. 

Kiss’ landlord decided to renovate while he was away. He raided Kiss’ workshop for supplies and found a quantity of tin drums. Cracking open the drums revealed horrors; corpses embalmed in alcohol, each drained of their blood, 24 in all. Documents found at the house showed he’d been corresponding with many more than 24.  

Kiss was off fighting the foe and was able to slip away when the authorities came looking for him. Some reports suggested he may have died. Sporadic sightings, most if not all of which were probably mistaken, cropped up over the years. The last recorded sighting was in New York, 1932.   

Then we have BOOKWORM’s personal ad, which crops up among the many that Lured’s Sandra Carpenter goes through in her search for the mysterious strangler. It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it reference, but it’s there.  

From these we get: 

Brain Worm

The Hounds are asked their advice. 

One of the shop's regular customers (or perhaps a staff member) has been corresponding with a Lonely Heart that they met through the personal column. The writer, Bookworm, says he has a library that he wants the young woman to catalogue, and he seems ecstatic about her handwriting style. It's just what he's been looking for, he says, and he urges her to meet with him to go over details of the arrangement. She asks the Hounds: what do they think about her friend?

Going over the letters he's sent her indicates (0 point spend) that he's a foreign national, probably well educated judging by his language choices, and signs himself Kiss, which may or may not be an affectation. A 1 point spend indicates that the writer is probably Austro-Hungarian, judging by some of his word choices and grammar, and remembers the Béla Kiss story. The address is a post box; Kiss wants to meet her at an A.B.C. (Aerated Bread Company) shop not far from London Bridge Train Station. It seems harmless enough - it's a public place, after all. 

Option 1: Hungarian Nightmare. The writer is Béla Kiss himself. Having fled the front and escaped to London, he's set himself up as a tinsmith again but he can't get by on his own money so he's gone back to his old ways. This is one of his early attempts to lure in someone with the promise of work and then kill her, stealing what little she has. He's even gone back to his old methods of corpse disposal and leaves the bodies in tin drums at his shop. There are four such drums at his shop right now. What he doesn't understand is why those drums seem to be talking to him at night. Kiss is one short hop from becoming a ghoul, and the local ghoul population is watching him carefully.

Option 2: Copy Cat The writer is inspired by Béla Kiss. Occultist and fringe cultist Sam Scarlett has been trying to get the attention of the Keirecheires for some time but they've rebuffed his advances. He's come up with a new scheme: vampire-inspired pornography, complete with photographs. That's his ticket in. His lonely heart is destined to become his latest subject, and after that will be pickled in a tin drum. Scarlett's gotten moderately competent at tinsmithing; it's part of his Kiss persona. The Keirecheires are moderately amused by Scarlett's efforts; less so, at the Hounds' interference.

Option 3: Brain Bugs This is a Shan operation. The Bircester bugs have obtained a Mythos text that they're particularly interested in, but they've noticed that the text is difficult for their insect minds to decypher. If they can't do it they'll find a human who can. The library cataloguing is an invention but there really is a library; they just have one book that they want read. Just one. Then they'll take the head off for further study.

That's it for this week. Enjoy! 

Improv Stats (RPG all)

This is where improv comes in. I’m sure I don’t need to describe improv to you. The basic point is this: you need to have just enough random facts at your disposal that you can deploy them as necessary in a yes, and situation. If this becomes a crime scene, you need to have some stats for cops. If this becomes a fight, you need some stats for mooks, monsters, what have you. If this becomes a criminal conspiracy, you need some criminals, and so on.  

The great thing about these improv stats is, you don’t need them for one scenario. You need them for all scenarios. Which means you can re-use them as needed. 

Money Heist

It’s not often you see an armored car taken out by bank robbers armed with anti-tank weapons. 

A while back I mentioned Improv Stats. What does that look like? 

In any game, no matter the setting or system, there is some kind of law enforcement. Someone represents The Man. In some games the players fill that role (hello Mutant City Blues, didn’t see you there) but in most cases the police are potential antagonists, or at least complications to a scene.  

I’m going to use Night’s Black Agents in this example, but this could apply to any system or setting. 

Night’s Black Agents, the spy v vampire thriller espionage RPG, does provide stats for police, dogs, vehicles and weaponry. A quick cut and paste makes an easy cheat sheet for those moments when it’s all gone a bit Pete Tong and you have to run a combat or a chase on the fly. A few extra cut and pastes make more cheat sheets for chase complications (is the street busy? Narrow? Is that a busload of nuns?). Is that what I meant by improv stats? 

Not exactly. 

Don’t get me wrong; I loves me some cheat sheets. They have saved my bacon more times than I care to count. But when I mentioned Improv Stats I was talking about how a potential actor in a scene might Act or React. 

Think of it like this: 

When someone Acts, they take the initiative. In this case, they do a thing that complicates the scene. 

When someone Reacts, they take the back seat. Because you complicated the scene, they had to do something.  

I deliberately chose that scene from Spanish crime thriller Money Heist because the Heist writers are very good at sketching in characters who they use again and again.  Colonel Luis Tamayo (Fernando Cayo) from the clip is a case in point; he barely appears in the early seasons, then shows up as the main police antagonist in the remaining seasons. Meanwhile his predecessor Colonel Alfonso Prieto (Juan Fernández Mejías) features heavily in the early seasons but still shows up in the later ones as the man you love to hate. You know who these people are the minute they walk on screen, and what they’re likely to do.  

There’s a quote that has been attributed to several different people and which may be apocryphal, about German officers and their qualities. It goes like this: 

I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous. 

Once upon a time I talked about things to steal from D&D, and I’m going to add another thing to steal: the social map, in which non-combat encounters with NPCs are affected by whether or not that NPC is Hostile, Indifferent or Friendly.

Zee Bashew

With those two things in mind, Improv Stats: in which everyone can be classified as Clever, Industrious, Lazy, or Stupid, with the qualifier Hostile, Indifferent or Friendly.

Physical stats – how strong they are, how charismatic, what pools they may have in Scuffling and similar, all are irrelevant to Improv Stats. Those are things that might affect player versus NPC tests – combat tests, effectively – and that’s not what Improv Stats are about. Improv Stats are about giving you, the (Director/DM/What-have-you) something on which to base your portrayal of the NPC in question.  

Let’s say the policeman is Friendly, Stupid and Industrious. In any given encounter with your players, that’s what this policeman is like. These three qualities ought to give you enough to portray the NPC in any given situation. It doesn’t matter if the policeman is also, say, bald, or gangly, or wears an ill-fitting uniform. That kind of thing isn’t useful. It might lend a bit of spice, but that’s all.  

With those qualities, you have Inspector Clouseau. That’s exactly what he is: friendly, stupid, industrious. If he were friendly, clever and industrious he'd be Inspector Zenigata. Either one can Act, or React, depending on those characteristics. What happens next can be developed in play.

You don’t need a character sheet for this or a spread of stats, or potential pool spends. That kind of thing is helpful but not critical to your portrayal. But if you know he’s friendly, stupid and industrious then you have a rough idea of what this particular policeman will do in any given situation.  

You can add more to Improv Stats, of course. It might be great to have a picture, or a list of potential names, a standard equipment list. But you don’t need any of those things. All you need is a brief description, with that list of qualifiers giving you the bare bones of the character. 

Let’s say that this is a heist, and your players are walking out of the bank in the dead of night with their arms full. Bags of cash. Swag. The getaway car is just a few steps away.  

Into the scene walks Friendly, Stupid, and Industrious, either Acting or Reacting.  

What do you think he’d do? Because that determines what will happen next. 

That’s all for this week. Enjoy! 

A Hearty Meal (Bookhounds)

Where do you get your ideas?

Life, mostly. Anything and everything can be turned into grist for the mill. I've taken inspiration from a church fete, from Greek myth and a dozen other things besides. It's all there for the taking. Which is why, in my collection, I've books about train wrecks, ghost towns in British Columbia, about New York, London, Paris, the Lusitania, flying aces, domesticating drink, flim flam, stage magic - the list goes on and on, but the point is you need to absorb as much as possible, even if all you take on at first reading is the skim version. You need to have a decent grasp of what's out there before you can start work.

Today's post comes courtesy of The Hellebore Guide to Occult Britain and Northern Ireland, 2021. Page 140: St. Margaret's Churchyard, Ratlinghope, which houses the grave of Richard Munslow, the last sin-eater in England.

Sin eating is an old funerary practice. The eater takes on the sins of the dead, symbolized by eating a ritual meal handed to them over the coffin of the deceased. Munslow got into the practice when his children died and carried on as a service to the community. Given that Munslow died in 1906 it's reasonable that the practice is still well known in the 1930s, prime Bookhounds territory.

If adding a bit of mythos to the ritual, charnel god Mordiggian is the best fit. The progenitor of the ghouls, that ancient symbol of decay. The main book gives several versions but I'm going to use this one:

Mordiggian, the Charnel God, appears as an enormous, worm-like mass of death, darkness, and corruption. Its idols resemble limbless, eyeless, rotting corpses. Its exact form shifts like time-lapse photography of putrescing flesh and is hard to determine, not least because the Great Old One absorbs all heat and light in a room.

With that I give you:

A Hearty Meal

du Bourg's has suffered a financial reversal and a tragedy: the eldest of the family, Edouard, has passed away at the grand old age of 42. Nobody's entirely sure about the cause of death; only the family know for certain and they're not saying.

However, there's no storm without a silver lining and this time the silver is a sale: du Bourg's is clearing out some of its older material at bargain prices, in a keep-the-lights-on blowout. The auction is to be held at do Bourg's, after hours. 

To get in, prospective buyers have to pass one simple test: they must eat a portion of Edouard's sins, passed to them in pie form over Edouard's open casket. Nobody knows for certain what's in that pie. Except that's it's packed full of meat. 

As the Bookhounds approach du Bourg's on the appointed day they see one of their rivals stumble out of du Bourg's, retching. The rival flees down the street rather than answer any questions. 

Now it's their turn at the pie.

Option 1: Charnel Meat. This, the investigators will realize (potential Mythos spend), is a ritual to Mordiggian. It's not clear why Edouard's brothers and sisters chose this ceremony to honor their departed brother. What is clear is that the meat is Edouard's. A nibble is enough to get entry to the auction; a hearty bite earns them a special scene with Mordiggian itself, as the room gets colder and darker by the moment. Of course, they could fake it; Filch may help them pretend to have a bite. Faking it may fool Edouard's brothers and sisters but Mythos old ones aren't so easily betrayed, and Mordiggian will mark the defaulter down in its own special charge book.

Option 2: Rashomon. Eating the pie puts the eater in a temporary dream state in which they relive Edouard's last day on earth. They discover that Edouard was murdered; the question is, by who? Was it his sister Eloise, who wanted advancement in the family business but was never going to get it while her brother was alive? His second-in-command, Marcus Shelby, who was afraid that Edouard had finally realized that Shelby was fiddling the books? Was it his brother Daniel, who was afraid that Edouard's worship of Mordiggian had taken him down a cannabalistic path that could only end with a death in the family?

Option 3: Adulterated Meat. The pie has been unknowingly dosed with some of the Elixir of Kathulos, prized by the Hsieh-Tzu Fan. Edouard's sister Eloise did the dosing; she found the stuff amongst Edouard's possessions and mistook it for an exotic spice. Edouard wasn't an enemy of the Hsieh-Tzu Fan but he was hardly a friend; he'd been hired by one of his more eccentric clients to acquire the stuff and acquire it he did, but the Hsieh-Tzu Fan found out and killed Edouard. The cult wants its Elixir back and there's still a good portion of it left; anyone who ate some of the pie can find the rest. Of course, eating strange elixirs found in funeral meat has its own complications ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Low-Level Scenario Design (D&D5E)

Deerstalker Pictures

This week’s post comes courtesy of something I disliked.  

Fuss! Fume! 

I was reading an article about low-level encounters for Dungeons & Dragons groups, encounters which weren’t just ‘go kill the rats in my basement,’ and, while I appreciated the sentiment, the suggested alternatives were … dull.  

Unbearably dull.  

As in, I would leave the campaign if you tried that crap on me, dull.  

The big difficulty Dungeons and Dragons has is that it’s still dragging around Chainmail’s corpse. At heart, it’s a skirmish wargame. Its mechanics, spells, equipment and ethos is all about reducing the other fella’s hit points to zero as quickly as possible.  

Other fantasy games do this. GUMSHOE’s Swords of the Serpentine does this. But the difference between Dungeons and Dragons and Swords of the Serpentine is, Swords doesn’t start you off at level 1 and say ‘go forth, hero, and do great deeds.’ With Swords, and games like it, your character starts pretty much at the peak of their career and things can only get better. Whereas in D&D and its iterations you start with a handful of hit points and a gleam in your eye. 

A gleam which is quickly extinguished if, say, a goblin punches you in the unmentionables. Fury of the Small is not to be sneezed at. 

Other games choose other solutions. Ars Magica deals with this problem by giving you a half-dozen characters or more per player, so if one gets chewed up by a rampaging beast there’s another four or five behind them to fill the gap. Ars also focuses on story goals rather than combat goals, because it didn’t start life as a skirmish wargame with dreams of grandeur.  

But Dungeons and Dragons is a skirmish game which means the solution to any problem posed in the campaign is often ‘hit it till it falls down, then hit it again.’ It’s the wargamer mentality. Nobody asks a Civil War tabletop gamer to hug it out; Lincoln didn’t defeat Davis in a spelling bee. Though it would have saved a lot of lives if he did. 

Which is why ‘kill the rats in my basement’ is such a popular trope. Rats are small. They have almost no hit points. Their damage output is minimal.  It’s a quest that can reasonably be achieved by even the most incompe … the most inexperienced group.  

Still, there are only so many basements to go around. Eventually your band of pest controllers will run out of rats. Or get bored hitting them. What to do? 

Before I start talking about scenarios, let’s nail down some basic principles.

1)    Keep the combat to a minimum. 

Yes, there will be combat. It’s still a combat-focused game. But the characters only have so many hit points and short rests plus clerics working overtime is not going to solve that problem. Plan for one or two thrilling fight scenes, not The Game Of Death.  

It’s fine if the combat is nonlethal. Particularly in an urban setting where there’s active law enforcement and the death penalty (also known as hanging, drawing, quartering and there goes your weekend) it’s perfectly reasonable for the average ne’er-do-well to prefer nonlethal over lethal violence.  

2)    Make sure there are exciting things to do. 

This ought to be obvious but time has taught me that the obvious is anything but. These are heroes. They need to be doing heroic things. Sure, Hercules cleaned the Augean Stables, but he did it in a heroic way and it was one of his twelve heroic tasks. It wasn’t his Sunday second job.  

3)    Make it fantastic. 

This is a fantasy world where Gods, Devils and things beyond imagining walk the earth. Where physics and chemistry take a back seat to mystics in tune with the mythic forces of the universe. One of the reasons why busting rats in basements gets boring is that it’s just rats, just a basement. Where’s the drama in that? 

With all that in mind, let’s talk scenario ideas. 

The Laughing Cat 

Type: investigative; murder mystery. 

This adventure location is a burnt-out travelers’ inn on the high road. When it was still an inn, it was a popular spot for wayfarers on a well-traveled path. The reasonable thing to do would be to rebuild it but it has a bad reputation. Word is, it’s haunted. The [guild/monastery/family/noble house] which owns the land would appreciate it if someone deals with that problem before the inn gets rebuilt. Generous financial reward offered. 

Journey: 2-4 days across forest terrain to get to the Laughing Cat. The heroes may encounter a faerie dragon on the way there which, if treated with respect or properly entertained (it likes music) can provide a clue as to what might have happened at the Laughing Cat. Otherwise, combat.  

The Laughing Cat is a burnt-out shell. Preliminary investigation (DC10 investigation, history, perception) indicates arson. Someone set the main room on fire while everyone was asleep upstairs. If History is successful, the heroes remember that this happened about ten years ago and there were three survivors; everyone else perished, including the Awakened cat which gave the inn its name.  

A DC15 check remembers that the three survivors were Myria Whispermouse, a roguish Halfling who’s gone on to become a renowned hero; Aramil Caerdonel, an elf paladin (now fallen) whose whereabouts are unknown, and the innkeeper Bron, who was badly injured in the fire and now lives with family far away. Among the dead were Proserpine, a renowned Tiefling bard, and her half-orc companion Morg. 

That’s all that can be seen during the day. At night, the Laughing Cat comes back to spectral life once more. All of its people go about their business as if no time had passed – which, to them, it hasn’t. It’s always and eternally the last night of their lives. To them, the characters are just other guests at the Laughing Cat. The survivors are also there, as their dream selves; a nightmare none of them can escape. 

At which point the Cat enters the picture. Peridot is the only one out of all of them who knows that they’re all dead, and Peridot has a proposition: if the heroes can find out which of the three survivors did it and why, the haunting will stop.  

Was it Myria, whose greed for the party’s loot got the better of her? 

Was it Aramil, whose unrequited love for Morg tempted him to do something catastrophic? 

Was it Bron, whose drunkenness finally had disastrous consequences?  

By talking to those present, finding out what they saw and how they died, the heroes can gather the clues needed to reveal the killer. 

Potential combat encounters: 

Skeletal rats in the cellar (they guard a clue to the villain’s identity, a fossilized memory that will only reveal itself once they are destroyed) 

Bar-room brawl with the dead (nonlethal, but Morg has a punch like a mule’s kick). 

The imp Pazzu, whose temptations pushed the killer over the edge. Pazzu has a stake in the game; if it can drag the killer’s soul back to the infernal regions, it gets the soul coin that the villain’s misdeeds will mint. But until the killer dies, Pazzu is trapped at the Laughing Cat with the rest of them. If the heroes reveal who did it, the killer will die that night of a heart attack and Pazzu will be free to collect the coin. If the heroes squash Pazzu before that happens then Pazzu won’t have time to collect. Pazzu is a ‘hide-in-the-shadows, rely on invisibility’ kind of miscreant, but Pazzu can’t resist boasting about their clever scheme. This may trip them up in the end. 

Immortal With A Kiss 

Type: social, romance, urban 

The heroes are hired as extra guards at a rich man’s villa, one week only. The eldest daughter Olympia is getting married and valuable wedding presents are arriving every day. It’s the heroes’ job to make sure those presents don’t go missing and that Olympia’s privacy is respected before the big event. No visitors, no scandal; everything’s being coordinated to create the big event of the social season and there cannot be even the slightest hint of hijinks.  

This is particularly important to the family because Olympia is magically Blessed; all her life she’s had the Bless spell effect as a permanent, but according to fortunetellers and prognosticators that Bless effect will pass to her true love, when she kisses them for the first time. This story is well known; how true it is, is anyone’s guess.  

The villa is besieged by wedding tourists daily. Bards looking to try out their latest ballads; dressmakers wanting Olympia to wear their designs; cake-makers and confectioners who want Olympia to choose their treats for her wedding; ‘friends of the family’ who haven’t been seen in decades who turn up unexpectedly looking for a place to stay, or a short-term loan, or just a quick word with the bride-to-be. The heroes have to manage all of this discreetly.

Among the wedding tourists are a peculiar band of warlocks and astrologers who, day in, day out, prognosticate the wedding based on Olympia’s birthday and that of her husband, Kairon, the handsome and famous Ranger whose exploits and treasure retrieval bought him instant access to high society. These guys just won’t go away; they fulminate and gibber in the street, producing alarming magical effects, incense, smoke, dancing mice – you name it, they’ve got it. Their omens and portents cover the entire wedding from break of day to the last breath of nightfall. 

The heroes soon realize (DC10 insight, perception, deception) that Olympia’s younger sister Callistra is up to something, but it’s not clear what. She’s seen chatting with the astrologers and passing them insider information – but to what end? 

Further investigation (DC15, and this can involve bribing Callistra’s cat familiar with treats) reveals that wizard Callistra plans to use Disguise Self and Friends on the day in question to pass as her sister on the wedding day. She figures she can get away with it because she physically resembles her sister (size, bodyweight) and most of the day the bride will be wrapped up in veils and dresses. The heroes may work this out when they realize that she’s feeding the astrologers her own date of birth and personal information, not her sister’s.  

She thinks she’ll get away with this because Olympia’s planning on skipping the wedding and embarking on her own heroic career as a Thief. Her lover is an important member of the local Thieves Guild who taught her a few tricks. [The guild member may or may not be her true love; they may just be a seducing scoundrel.] The family would be appalled if they knew, and it’s exactly this kind of hijinks that the heroes were hired to stop – if they want to stop it, of course … 

Olympia intends to make her getaway on the wedding day, as that’s when there’ll be the most confusion. 

What nobody appreciates (except possibly the heroes, if they’ve been paying attention to those astrologers) is that the prognosticators are actually burglars. They’ve been casing the joint all week under cover of magical hoodoo. They know how to get in and how to get out without getting caught, which is exactly what will happen if the heroes don’t intervene. 

Potential combat moments: 

Brawl with drunken aristocratic youth who think it’s funny to sing romance ballads under Olympia’s window every day up until the wedding. 

Chase/combat with the astrologer-thieves as they make their getaway. They prefer nonviolence, ball-bearings and tanglefoot bags to cover their retreat, but they may confuse things by running through a rough tavern hoping that the ensuing bar brawl will help them escape. 

Pilgrim’s Passage 

Type: Negotiation/Problem Solving, Insight, Perception, Animal Handling 

Near the village of Three Hills there is a magical well that has become a popular spot for those on pilgrimage. (Life, Light, Nature). The village is within the fief of [noble/church/monastery] and its patron rakes in a small but not insignificant amount of tolls from those on the pilgrim trail. A nice extra comes from the sale of trinkets and medals organized by a small hermit community near Three Hills. It’s also a well-known fact that horses bred near the well have special properties, and the sale of those horses is a nice earner for the family that breeds them which in turn pays the fief holder a tidy sum for the benefice. In short, there’s a fair amount of cash at stake, which becomes a problem when the pilgrim trail is shut down by druids. Angry pilgrims complain to the fief holder, and the fief holder reaches out to reliable third parties to investigate and (hopefully) solve the problem. Enter our heroes, stage right. 

The druids, a trio of halflings, (Garth, Morrin, Gynnie, all novice members of a far-off circle), say that they have the right to shut down the trail when it is clear that the balance is negatively affected, and further that this right is in writing. Three generations back the fief holder agreed to this is negotiation with the druids’ circle, when a blight threatened the land. The druids cleansed the blight and extracted this promise as payment. 

The druids say that the horses bred near the well do not have special properties; quite the reverse, in fact, which hasn’t stopped the breeders from selling them at inflated prices based on reputation alone. Animal Handling DC10 shows this to be true; DC15 shows that this condition is being disguised by the breeders who use magical feed mash to pep up the stock before sale. The feed makes the horses seem great for a week or so; after that, not so much. The DC15 also shows that the older horses, which the family keep for breeding stock, are still as magical as ever; it’s only the current sale stock that is affected. 

The druids say that this shows the well is being over-used, threatening the balance. They demand that the well be given time to recover – perhaps a year or more. This proposal will not please the fief holder, which conveniently lost the paperwork on that druid deal as soon as possible after it was signed. The fief holder isn’t pleased to hear that the druids kept a copy. 

What nobody realizes is that the source of the problem is the hermits, who have become warlocks, tempted to more-than-mortal power by a devil who wanted access to the well for its own purposes. The hermits knew how to bypass the magical wards put there by the druids and they let the devil in. The devil did what it wanted and then left a few infernal serpents behind to watch over ‘its’ property. The serpents allow the devil to come and go as it pleases, bypassing the wards. The serpents can be defeated in combat but can also be instantly defeated by one of the magical horses, if that horse is brought to the well (Religion, Insight).  

If this is revealed then the druids can restore the protective wards and, after the serpents are dealt with, the well will recover.  If the devil is left in place then the well will become permanently affected within a year.  

Potential combat moments:  

A fight against infernal, poisonous snakes. 

A nonlethal brawl with the horse breeding family, or angry pilgrims.  

A potentially lethal scrimmage with the druids, or the warlock-hermits. The warlocks are likely to take to their heels if discovered; they got into this for power, not to get stabbed.  

The devil, if encountered, will insist on a battle of wits (Arcana) – a riddle challenge. If the heroes win, the devil promises to leave. If the devil wins it will remain at the well for a month. This challenge can be attempted more than once; the devil likes playing games.   

Rewards (RPG All)

OK, it’s end-of-session. The characters have triumphed. Or at least they aren’t dead, which is a triumph in and of itself. The time has come to divvy up the good stuff – or whatever passes for good stuff in your campaign. 

What does that look like? 

Dungeons and Dragons and similar fantasy games have a definite advantage here. Everyone knows what the good stuff looks like. It’s shiny and spendable, glows with magic power, or increases your character’s level and therefore prowess. It’s all easily quantifiable. A +1 sword is a +1 sword, which by default is better than that nasty old ordinary sword you were using five minutes ago. Gaining 500 experience points is an undeniable rush, particularly when you can look at your current totals and think ‘I’m only a few hundred more points from the next level!’  

Call of Cthulhu has a similar reward system, where at the end of the scenario your characters get Sanity rewards depending on what they did and how well they did it. Sanity, for those not in the know, measures the characters’ mental state and can be reduced to 0, through various shocks and trauma. 100 is the theoretical human maximum. 0 = time to book you into a long-term-stay at Casa de Soft Walls, from which you shall not be returning. Nobody’s ever explained what 100 =; I presume you leave your physical body and ascend to the heavens on a cloud of sunshine and rose petals, at which point something quite nice happens beyond the ken & barbie of mortal folk. 

Point being that, in theory at least, if you gain enough rewards you can exceed your original Sanity total. Which in a game like this, where Sanity is the oil that keeps the engine going, is a reward prized above rubies and titles. 

However, there aren’t any other rewards. That’s pretty standard for horror games. You’re not meant to be the dashing hero; you’re meant to be the weedy academic, or similar. Victory for you means survival, not advancement. Sometimes you get to save someone’s life, which is great; saving lives is a good thing. However, it doesn’t fatten your wallet. 

Nor does it have the same impact as that +1 sword or those 500 experience points. It’s not easily quantifiable. The gold you swiped from that dragon all adds up to a total which can then be spent on goods and services. The fuzzy warm feels you got from saving little Suzy from the shoggoth cannot be spent on goods and services. Not unless your in-game economy is radically different from the norm.  

So, to the question: in games where the reward isn’t easily quantifiable, what will make those rewards fun? 

Sometimes the game makes it easy for you. Bookhounds of London is a little like that. You have a shop, which your players are constantly trying to improve. That shop has stock, which your players are constantly trying to get. The obvious reward there is more stuff for the shop, more stock to sell. Replace that dingy little cash box with a shiny new cash register. Design custom book covers for your collection. Thanks to your efforts the shop now has a valuable collection of grimoires on vampire lore (effective increase 2 points Occult). That sort of thing.  

However, as a rule rewards can be characterized as one of three things: 

Reputation 

Resources 

Shiny Things 

Reputation is a bit like pornography. Nobody really knows what it is, but they know it when they see it. There’s a really good reputation tracker in 13th Age which has since been ported over to Night’s Black Agents and other GUMSHOE systems: the Icon system. There are a number of Icons – powerful entities or organizations – whose favor brings a range of powerful rewards, and whose enmity can bring terrible destruction. Your reputation with that Icon helps determine whether or not that Icon will lend aid.  

Point being that reputation is useless without someone to acknowledge it; if, however, the CIA knows you and respects you that could mean you can rely on the local station chief for aid, or get a cache of weapons at just the right time, or transport, or whatever it may be. Reputation = tangible reward.  

This can apply to pretty much every gaming world. Cyberpunk has its corporations, gangs and medias; City of Mist has its avatars and proto-demigods; Troubleshooters has world governments and sinister organizations. Any and all of these can become Icons, which in turn reward gains in Reputation.  

But! It follows that a gain in reputation for one Icon results in a loss for another. If you gain reputation with Scotland Yard because your actions helped foil a cult conspiracy, those cultists are going to have an unfavorable view of you. That can lead to future plot – conflict often does. But it’s something worth bearing in mind. 

Resources are those things that the characters can use either in the current adventure or in future adventures. GUMSHOE has a habit of reducing these things to pool points rather than specific items, which is useful. Pool points can be anything; a gun can only ever be a gun.  

Night’s Black Agents has a fun idea which could probably be ported over to other systems: excess funds. For whatever reason your characters have money to burn. Maybe they had a good run at the local casino; maybe they stole it from some luckless villain. However they got it, they have it and more.  

In fantasy this is often the reward that a swords and sorcery campaign gives. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser were always rolling in excess funds after a job, and by the start of the next story they were broke again. Easy come, easy go. 

The great thing about this kind of reward is first, it can be abstracted, but second, you can make it more concrete by asking the players how they want to represent this resource. It’s one thing to say you have excess funds; something else to say you have a bag full of cash. That bag can be stolen. It can break open mid-chase, scattering bills all over the street. It can be given to someone else. It can be gambled at the casino. 

Alternatively, it’s one thing to say you have transport; something else to say you have a cherry Ford Mustang with custom detailing. One is an abstract. The other is style.  

Bullitt

Let the player choose the physical representation. They’ll have more investment in something they chose as a resource reward. You can abstract it initially if you like, or need, but they give it form.  

Finally the Shiny Things. 

Those are a little bit like Resources in that they have value, but really, they’re trophies. Let’s say that the characters come away from an alchemist’s lab with a half dozen jars that contain God Knows What, but it’s glowing and has little eyes. Fine. It probably has value to someone. But really, it’s the in-game equivalent of a lava lamp. Pretty, meaningless, and there’s a non-zero chance it might explode showering hot wax everywhere.  

It’s often the case that characters choose their own trophies, but it can be fun to design a few as rewards. The hat made entirely of shadows. The golden spider pendant. The illustrated scroll with alchemical writing on it that nobody living can read. The crystal skull that glows in the dark. The mirror that shows your reflection as it appears in an alternate dimension. The framed Nosferatu poster signed by Bram Stoker. These are the meaningless in-game things that players find attractive; they make excellent rewards.  

I started by asking: in games where the reward isn’t easily quantifiable, what will make those rewards fun? 

The answer, ultimately, is by giving those rewards weight and attraction. Reputation has weight: it confers easily understood in-game benefit. Resources also have an in-game benefit. Shiny Things are a bit different but can be equally useful, because they have attraction. The cool tchotchke that they put in their office, to impress visitors. Nobody asks why the hell Batman wants a giant Lincoln penny in his cave; but all eyes go to it whenever they walk in the room.  

It’s just too fun to ignore.