I recently got back into collecting films (thanks be to Terracotta) and I just spent more than I ought on books (thanks be to Thompson Rare Books) all of which got me thinking about when I first picked up the collecting bug.
Back in the mists of time I went to Reading University and joined the WARUS Society (wargaming & roleplaying - I think it must be the precursor to GARPS). It was my first time living abroad and the first time I lived anywhere that was close to a gaming convention. At that time Reading (and the surrounding area) was host to at least three, including Europe's version of GenCon. Briefly, anyway. The Student's Union thought we were responsible for GenCon being at Reading so we got all sorts of bennies, right up till GenCon upped sticks and went to ... France ??? [memory error] ... for a while. Salute was nearby too; looks like they've upped sticks as well. It certainly wasn't anywhere as fancy as the EXCEL center. My memory says there was at least one other but damned if I can tell you which.
It was the first chance I really had to collect anything.
Hell, it was nearly the first chance I had to go to a gaming store. Before that when I was in high school we dipped into a shopping mall when I was on the Washington DC trip and I picked up some of Steve Jackson's stuff plus (if my memory's not playing with me) The Tower of Indomitable Circumstance, a Judge's Guild scenario.
I see you get a toe shot as well, you lucky devil.
It's in remarkably good shape for its age. The cover's a little shot but otherwise everything's there.
That, incidentally, was the first time I encountered that pesky devil, sales tax. Caught me by surprise. I had to spare-change a classmate to be able to afford it.
The only other time I got to see the inside of a gaming store on a regular basis was when I was at King's College Taunton (a place I do not remember fondly) and the Taunton store must have closed; at least, I look at the map and I don't recognize any of the names.
Reading was the first time I really lived in a place, took care of myself as opposed to having other people take care of me, and it was the first time I got to spend my own money.
So of course I spent it on RPG stuff.
I had quite a few boxes, once. I've culled a fair amount of it. I discovered that stuff is stuff, it collects dust and roaches whether it's paperback Agatha Christies or antique TSR scenarios, and there are only so many hours in the day so why spend them taking care of inanimate objects that do not love you back?
These days I keep the things I want to keep and bung the rest, but I wanted to talk about the one guiding principle to my collecting that has never left me:
Will I use this?
This is one of my earliest purchases. I think I first saw it in the WARUS games cupboard and knew I had to have a copy of my own. Seven Sinister Scenarios! 80 pages of terror! They don't even waste the frontispiece and back pages, which are devoted to maps of Maine and Arkham. I see it had a re-release in 2022 so theoretically there should be copies out there on the Ebays and probably the stalls of some RPG convention or other.
I got this because I knew I would use it. Have used it, many times.
There are a couple clunkers among the seven. Black Devil Mountain is basically a dungeon crawl and Gate From The Past is an absolute stinker (six shoggoths? SIX SHOGGOTHS? SIX BLEEDING SHOGGOTHS JAYSUS PLEASE US! WHY ADD DINOSAURS ON TOP OF SIX FECKIN ... [unitelligible])
But the ones that work? They really, really work. The Auction. The Asylum. The Madman. Even The Mauritania and Westchester House are pretty decent; you might not want to play them every chance you get, but they're playable and entertaining.
For my money The Auction is the best of the bunch, and for those of you on the lookout for crossover material it works really well as a Bookhounds of London scenario. Plus, at the end of it the Hounds might possess a McGuffin that could power an entire campaign. Choice!
The Asylum is very nearly neck-and-neck with the Auction. The villain is suitably villainous and there's enough background here to hint at even more sinister goings-on which, again, can power an entire campaign. It could be retro engineered to take place somewhere other than New England but that would take some doing.
The others are just plain old fun and The Madman has the added advantage of fitting well with The Asylum. It could be used as a precursor scenario with very little difficulty.
Now let's move on to something I didn't buy until much, much later.
Masks is of similar vintage to The Asylum. First came out in 1984, which is about the same time The Asylum saw print. I could have picked it up easily.
Why didn't I?
I couldn't use it. Still can't, really.
I know it's one of the beloved shibboleths of the Chaosium canon. Mine is the 1996 edition. Masks garnered great reviews when it first came out and it's been a staple of the Cthulhu scene since it launched.
Ehhhh.
See, I have the same problem with this as I have with some of the earliest Cthulhu products. Cthulhu Classics is a bit similar. Even Horror on the Orient Express - one of my favorite campaigns - has this problem.
Put simply, the story as written is a meatgrinder. Insert characters here, re-roll characters half an hour later, have some backups for half an hour after that.
Bear in mind this was written in the Before Times, when the average investigator carried two tommy guns, a shotgun, a barrel full of dynamite and a couple grenades attached to their unmentionables. (Encumbrance rules exist for a reason, kids). They existed to do damage, lots of it, in a hell of a hurry. This caused a kind of arms race between Keeper and Players, and since the Keeper had access to all the best toys the Keeper usually won. But not without devoting significant firepower and damage reducing armor to the enemy forces.
What this invariably means is, the investigators march from bloodbath to bloodbath. Either they outgun the cultists, or the cultists outmatch them. More often, the cultists outmatch them. Thus the investigators take cover and watch all the exciting stuff, which they could be involved in, take place just out of reach. Gods are summoned, ancient priestesses brought back to life, strange craft built and launched - and the investigators can do little or nothing about it. Unless they're packing an extraordinary amount of heat.
See, what I like is a story where anyone can get involved. Where you don't have to be Rambo to get the job done. One of the things I like about Baldur's Gate 3 is that you can have almost any party combination and still have a decent shot at winning. There are multiple ways to solve most problems, multiple ways to get to any location in the game.
With campaigns like Masks, as written, there's usually only one way to solve the problem.
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