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!
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