Sacrifices for Art (Bookhounds of London)

This week's post is inspired by a report from the Guardian about a display currently on show at the V&A in London. Theatre lover Gabrielle Enthoven is getting the recognition she deserves.

Sourced from Wikipedia

Short version: Gabrielle Enthoven fell in love with the theatre at a young age and continued her obsession till the day she died, in 1950. She married but it doesn’t seem to have been a happy arrangement, and after her husband died she never remarried. A child of privilege, she had connections to royalty and spent her life among high society.

She never missed a show.

I don’t know if any of you work in theatre or are theatre fans, but if you are, you know Gabrielle’s type. Someone who’s always there. Seats booked, opening night. Knows the cast on a first name basis. Can’t be kept away from the theatre door. If she breaks her leg then she’s there the next day on crutches – or in her sedan chair, more likely.

Her obsession led her to become a collector’s collector. She wants everything from playbills to scripts to tickets to costume designs. Her home was stuffed full of theatrical ephemera which she did her best to pass on to a museum for curation and safekeeping, a self-appointed task that proved surprisingly difficult. It eventually went to the Victoria and Albert and formed the basis for that institution’s theatrical collection.

In the 1930s she would have been in her early sixties, a fixture of the London theatrical scene. By that point she was working daily at the V&A cataloguing the museum’s collection – her collection - and was paying for three staff to assist her. Anything and everything to do with the theatre, past and present, was meat and drink to her.

From a Bookhounds perspective, she’s a perfect Patron. Assuming the Hounds can attract her attention. Any number of theatre mavens, Bright Young Things and other moths drawn to her flame might come to the Hounds for material. Actors on the rise, or trying to avoid the fall, might seek her help, and therefore the Hounds’ help in finding material she’d deem suitable. In 1933 she becomes Vice President of the Passing Theatres Association, a group dedicated to seeking out ephemera related to old, dead theatres.  Which sounds a lot like Plot Hook Central for Hounds and has the added advantage that the Hounds themselves can be members of the Association.

People likely to know her or want to know her: Scribblers (p42 main book), Artists (p48), Bright Young Things (p45), Boffins (p48, particularly if connected to the V&A or a similar institution). Possibly Solicitors of the older generation, particularly if they spent some time in the Colonial Service; her father was Judge Advocate General in the Crimea and India, a renowned legal brain. 

Her parties are famous and she's well-travelled, so she's likely to know all sorts of people. She spent some time in New York and knows that city's theatrical establishment well, and her connections to royalty mean she has links with the highest levels of society both here and on the Continent. Once she gets her museum collection, she spends a lot of time cataloging material at the V&A, so if the Hounds want to ambush her at her place of work, they'd best stake out the museum, which she visits every day at 10am on the dot.

All that said:

A Most Exclusive Gathering

Lounger Harvey Walters, fresh off the boat from America, wants in to Gabrielle Enthoven's inner circle. He's desperate to find something to win her favor and to get him into the Passing Theatres Association.

He haunts all the bookstores looking for prizes, and the Hounds can earn a few spondulicks selling him whatever they can scrape up. Walters appears to be minted, but it's always difficult to tell with loungers. Maybe he has it in the bank, maybe he doesn't. 

He becomes obsessed with the Corinthian Hall, a rather grand establishment in North Finchley that was built in 1850 and expired in 1910, briefly becoming a picture house before burning in a fire. The original building's been knocked down but there's been arguments over how best to use the site, so nothing's been built there since. 

If the Hounds can get him something from the Corinthian Hall that impresses Gabrielle Enthoven enough to let him into one of her exclusive parties, Walters offers the world on a plate. Money is no object. 

Option One: Dreaming, Dreaming. There is still a Corinthian Hall in North Finchley. Every night six dreamers will it into existence again, to remind themselves of past glories. If the Hounds can track them down, using Magick or Megapolisomancy, they can enter the dream, find the Hall, and take what they like from it. However, they need to be careful. Nightgaunts circle the Hall, guarding it from intrusion. Should the Hounds attract their attention they may find themselves on an unscheduled flight, high above London.

Option Two: Gabrielle's Dilemma.  Gabrielle Enthoven knows Harvey Walters all too well. When she was in New York the fellow was an absolute pest, wittering on about Mythos forces lurking in every shadow while committing every sort of faux pas imaginable at her New York parties. She dispatches agents of her own to make sure that the Hounds fail in their mission. If the Hounds ally with Gabrielle and secretly sabotage Harvey, those Mythos forces he blithers on about may become all too real. There is no wrath like a Mythos stalker scorned. 

Option Three: Corinthian Shadows. The ruins of the old Hall are very dangerous to the unwary. Anyone who gets too close finds themselves obsessed with the former Theatre, and eventually sacrifices their lives in an attempt to get close to it. This is because the Hall is home to a kind of psychic vampire that exists by draining life energy; the vampire's physical body was destroyed in the fire, and it's building another out of bits of its victims. Gabrielle Enthoven knows about it which is why she and her friends in the Passing Theatres Association never try to get anything from the Corinthian Hall. They've warned Harvey but he won't listen. Will the Hounds?

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

House (1977 Film)

 

Sourced from Criterion

Sometimes it's just for fun.

I run a small cinema group down here. We watch films on the big screen in the drama society bar. I supply the film every Monday night. October is on its way and I'm putting together the cinema list: Yokai: 100 Monsters, The Haunting, probably Night of the Demon and then I'm a bit torn. I have options. I could go for Kurokeno. I could go for Kwaidan. Both are solid choices.

Then I reminded myself that House exists.

So of course I had to watch it again.

Have you seen it? Once seen, never forgotten. I don't know that I'd recommend it, exactly. You have to have a love of surrealist imagery and a tolerance for nonsense. If you have both those traits, then, by golly and by Gadfrey, this is a film you'll love.

Gorgeous, a headstrong teen, is surprised when her film composer dad comes back home from a shoot with a new bride in tow, replacing her beloved dead mother. Consumed by angst and mommy issues, Gorgeous decides to run off to the countryside for a while to see her aunt, her mother's sister. She gathers up her friends Kung Fu, Professor, Sweet, Fantasy, Melody, and Mac, and brings them all to a nice place in the country. It will be a summer vacation to remember.

For the rest of their lives. 

Director and producer Nobuhiko Obayashi would go on to have a long and successful film career, but this was one of his earliest outings and a big risk for Toho Studios. They wanted him to make Jaws, the Japanese version. He wanted ... well ... this. Which was a tough sell. All Toho's usual people refused to direct it, thinking it would end their careers. To be fair, it probably would have. This is the kind of thing that can only be made by someone who truly believes in the material. 

Obayashi believed.

This is one of those times when the belief shines through. 

The aunt turns out to be a Hidgeous Fiend In Human Form. That's not me spoiling; the movie makes it very clear from the moment she shows up on screen, early in the runtime. She's a vampire, and she's not at all well, since all the young people are dead or moved away and she has nobody to eat. Now here's the niece with her six friends. begging to be devoured. Yum! 

Special shout-out to Mac, the one who goes first. Before she does, she turns her head and gives a smiling farewell to her dear friends, not realizing she's about to become vampire chow. But the way that moment happens ensures the Audience (with a capital A) knows what's about to happen. 

It's not the last time Mac appears on screen. It's just the last time she's seen alive. 

Night of the Living Dead is one of my favorite films, and that's not just because it's a classic. It's because you can see, on screen, everyone's enthusiasm for the project. It was made by a bunch of crazy cinema fanatics sleeping in bunkbeds in an old house that was going to be torn down once the shoot ended, so they could do what they wanted to it. Furnished by Goodwill. The car in the opening sequences belonged to the director's mother. Made on a shoestring, crafted with care. That sort of thing.

That's how I feel about House. It's ropey as hell. The special effects are certainly ... special. But it has that quality, the raw enthusiasm bleeding off of every scene. Crafted with care. 

There's really nothing else like it.

If I had to drag one fact off the screen and use it in every TTRGP from now until the end of time it would be this: enthusiasm sells. Your game is not perfect. I guarantee you will make mistakes. But you are the best (and often only) salesman for this product. If you go all-in, if you make sure everyone sees how much care you invested, if you show your enthusiasm, you will get players onboard. 

Not all players, mind. Not everyone loves House. But you will get players, and you can't game without them.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai (Bookhounds, RPG All)

It is not made of air at all, but of ghost - the substance of quintillions of quintillions of generations of souls blended into one immense translucency ... Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan

Yokai: 100 Monsters, via Shudder

Got to see this courtesy of a box set from Terracotta, which I highly recommend.

Bad people do bad things, upset the local spirits, and the expected results result. So far, so plot, but what makes it work is its use of the traditional storytelling game Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai as a plot device, allowing the narrative to be broken up into shorter chunks. 

Briefly, the idea is to gather your friends in a shadowy room, at night. Preferably during the Festival of the Dead, for maximum effect. 100 lamps or candles are lit and provide the only light in the room (or rooms - there are different ways of playing the game). As a ghost story reaches its conclusion, a light is snuffed. With each story, the spirits - the yokai - come ever closer to the gathering, and with the last candle gone, they are in the room with the participants. 

For that reason, it was common for the last story to remain untold, keeping the last candle lit. Or, as in 100 Monsters, you could have a cleansing ritual after the last tale to achieve the same effect.

You've probably seen versions of this in other films or may have played one of the many games inspired by it - Ten Candles, say. 

In 100 Monsters the effect is heightened by a series of special folding partition screens, each with their own image of horror, provided especially for the evening's entertainment by the storyteller. As the light dims, the images begin to seem as if they glow in the dark, or at least move of their own accord. Prints were made of the stories which could, theoretically, be used in similar fashion. Many books were printed to help participants come up with their own stories; Lafcadio Hearn used them in his own Kwaidan, which inspired many a film.

How to Bookhounds this? Or to RPG in general?

The obvious route is to hold a Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai in-game. 

Some settings - Swords of the Serpentine, say - have explicit rules for non-physical combat. In Swords, Sway is the technique used where the intent is to damage morale rather than someone's physical form. A Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai could be an extended Sway challenge. 

Or, in Night's Black Agents, this could be a means of arranging a Thrilling Stability challenge. Stability isn't usually thought of as an ability pool, and Thrilling challenges are reserved for, say, Gambling, or Driving. But there's an undeniable attraction to gathering all of these badasses in a dark, shadowy place, and getting them to compete for the McGuffin through telling ghost stories. Particularly when there are actual ghosts and monsters in the wings, waiting for their chance to intervene.

Dungeons and Dragons has a whole character class, the Bard, devoted to performances, and any other character class can have a performer background. [I'm aware there's a new PHB due to drop, I haven't seen it yet so can't comment on specifics.] Often in Dungeons and Dragons where there's a bard contest, it's a singing challenge. It would be fun to have a ghost story telling challenge instead, and just like in NBA, there are probably actual ghosts and goblins waiting in the wings. Plus, as DM you could have those folding panels and story books become actual magical items, in-game. 

Bookhounds is about buying and selling books. A Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai needs kaidan. It makes sense, in a Bookhounds game, for the end goal to be one of those kaidan.

From that:

An Evening in Chelsea

West of the Park are Kensington (still acceptable to the quality), Notting Hill (which offers what the middle class no doubt consider gracious living), and Chelsea, of which the less said in polite society, the better ...

The late ghost-breaker Thomas Carnacki lived at No. 472 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. Saiitii emanations haunt his house; his copy of the Sigsand Manuscript has never been found ... [Bookhounds main text]

Ghostly dinner parties are the new big thing.

It started in a Chelsea place - nobody can say for sure precisely where, probably an artist's squat - and the evening was so spectacular that the vibe caught on. Now everyone wants to do one. The best (the most fashionable) want copies of Kaidan, preferably in the actual Japanese, and there's a sudden rush among booksellers to source these ghostly tales. Even the most battered versions, with stamps proclaiming them property of the ship's library off of some Orient Steam Navigation Company's boat, are worth far more than they should be. Not that the buyers can read Japanese; just pretending you can while holding the book in your hands is good enough for an evening's entertainment.

Larry Gore, one of the biggest names in Chelsea, (sculptor, darling, the one who made those precious primitivist thingummies that were all the rage last summer), is determined to make the biggest splash. His party will be the talk of the year. He's rented 472 Cheyne Walk (well, rent is such a strong word; Larry hates handling anything so mundane as money) for one night only and is out to get the best party favors, including among other things a series of prints made by Tadashi, an artist based in Paris who visits London regularly, to enhance the event, and a special kaidan Gore's heard about. The one used at the first ghost party in Chelsea. With the woodblock pictures. Surely the Hounds will be good enough to find him that book?

Option One:  Something In Your Eye. Dust Things are at the bottom of this rabbit hole. They inspired the first Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai in Chelsea, and there was enough energy in that event that they fed well for weeks. Now they want more, more, even more. It was they who gave Gore the idea of holding one of these events at Carnacki's old shop and it was they who inspired him to look for Tadashi (actually a creation of theirs) and the special kaidan. What with all the energy already penned up at 472 Cheyne Walk, and Gore's blundering 'seance', if Gore gets to hold his party Chelsea's in for a very bad night. Potential link to the Long Con.

Option Two: Book Thieves. The kaidan Gore wants belongs to a collector, Quentin Dalgleish, Quentin won't sell but he will trade; if the Hounds can get him into Gore's party, he'll let them have the book for one night only. Gore isn't having it; he and Quentin are on the outs ever since Quentin did [insert ridiculous nonsense here]. Quentin has ulterior motives. He wants to get into 472 Cheyne Walk so he can search the place for the Sigsand Manuscript, and he doesn't care what kind of damage he does - or what he might accidentally summon - along the way.

Option Three: Unimaginable Power. You don't do what Carnacki did in that house all these years and not taint the place. There's Magickal energy leaking out the walls, and the kind of ghost party Gore wants to have is exactly the kind of focused ritual to let it all out. Effectively this is a Create Hypertime Gate (This version of Create Hyperspace Gate creates a gate joining two points in time at a single point in space. It uses the same rules as Create Hyperspace Gate. Once created, the duration between its ends remains constant, both ends moving “forward” in time together) ritual with all the Power necessary to cast it supplied by the house. There are two issues with this casting. First, while one point in time - the party - is fixed, the other is not. It can link to any moment in the House's past or future, including the moment in 1943 when it's obliterated by Nazi bombs. Second, there's a not insignificant risk of encountering Carnacki himself, and his mysterious Sigsand Manuscript. That's what Quentin Dalgleish is hoping; it's why he gatecrashes the party. Gore is an oblivious bystander, but this is the kind of party that puts a man's name on the map forever and ever, amen. So the stranger it gets, the better, as far as he's concerned.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!