… it did give any blog idea for the springtime. A search for news articles about trending pod hotels, similar to the article you did for the techno train or novelty hotels. I was also considering working in threat profiles too …
Well now.
A pod hotel, or kapuseru hoteru (capsule hotel), is basically a collection of very small sleeping pods intended as cheap, overnight accommodation. Maybe you can’t afford anything better, or maybe you only want to be there for a night and can’t be bothered with all the extras you aren’t going to have time to enjoy anyway.
They vary. I see the NYC chain Pod Pads offers quite nice accommodation, assuming you intend to stay a month. Their one bed (aircon, kitchen, sitting area, amenities) goes for a little under $200/night but you need to book for 30 nights. So you’re spending roughly $6000 for a month’s accommodation in NYC. That’s honestly not too awful, for NY prices.
However, if you go for the standard pod for a couple nights then you get a bed, possibly a workspace, and shared bathroom, for roughly the same price per night. Less time = less comfort, but you still get the same location which may be all you want. I know I’ve stayed in places that are less than ideal, comfort wise, knowing that the location is all that matters to me.
After all, Midtown West, just blocks from tranquil Hudson River Park and steps to 8 subway lines is an attractive offer. Plus gym on-site? Tempting indeed, even if the bed is about the size of a modest toolbox.
Incidentally the shared bathroom is probably what will put many people off pod hotels and cheap hotels in general. People will put up with a lot for the sake of a private en-suite.
In RPG fiction this is typical Cyberpunk accommodation, but isn’t often seen outside Cyberpunk. I’m not sure why. Particularly in fantasy settings the average tavern or inn always has remarkably roomy, middle-class accommodation. If there’s a shared bedroom area, it’s still pretty nice by comparison to a pod hotel.
Nothing like the fourpenny coffin, say. Or the conditions described by Orwell in Down & Out.
I’ve been reading a chunk of World of Darkness stuff recently, for example, and I don’t recall coming across anything that isn’t resolutely comfortable. Your Brujah, Nosferatu et al have their expenses handwaved as points in a pool, without anyone going into detail about whether they sleep in a bed or a cardboard box. Or what it means to sleep in a cardboard box.
It’s almost as if the intended audience are nice middle class kids looking for a few illicit thrills.
After all, pod hotels in the West, intended for tourists, are almost nothing like the capsule hotels of Japan, intended for salarymen, which in turn bear very little resemblance to the coffin homes of Hong Kong. Intended for those who have no other options. Literally named after cheap, charitable mortuaries.
Compare that to Berlin’s Space Night Hotel, for instance. Or the Hosho chain.
It’s all very quirky. TBH if I want quirky I’ll find myself a fun place, not a box that tries to sell itself as a fun place. Still, takes all sorts.
From an RPG standpoint, which game does this suit?
Probably not Night’s Black Agents. Even the Dust version is trying to be a Spy game, not a Tourist game. It’s difficult to picture, say, James Bond checking into a pod hotel. I can’t think of that many spy stories that feature the hotel as part of the plot, not unless the hotel also includes a casino.
Of course, if the pod hotel was an enemy asset, that’s a different story. Perhaps the whole complex is a massive brain-sucking entity or draining psychic energy for future use. Maybe that antenna on top of the building is actually some kind of focusing device for the mind laser.
Pod Hotels work really well in settings that depend on sci-fi or dystopian future elements. Cyberpunk’s the obvious one here; City of Mist spin-off Otherscape would probably also work quite well. I can see pod hotels popping up in Mutant City Blues as a scene location, but probably not a full-scale plot element.
A dream or nightmare-inspired scenario would do very well in a pod hotel location. Delta Green once did something very like with the King In Yellow scenario Night Floors; the characters had to investigate an apartment building where someone had vanished into the King In Yellow’s mysterious domain. Normal during the day, nightmare scenario after hours. A pod hotel that presented itself as resolutely normal and small on the outside, only to become luxurious and vast once you cross the threshold, could be very interesting.
That said, the whole point of a pod hotel as a location is that it is a pod hotel; to immediately negate that quality seems pointless. It’s a plot twist that could play out at almost any location. You don’t need a special one.
Oddly, the problem reminds me of a scenario I wrote some time back: Sisters of Sorrow, set aboard a Great War U-Boat.
But I had a problem: there was no way the complicated haunted-house story I had in mind could play out on a tiny little thing barely fifty foot long. If every single crewman stood up at once - assuming they could - they'd fill the boat from end to end. The very idea that someone could get lost in one was silly; it'd be simpler to imagine someone not being able to find their way out of a public toilet … However the problem presented me with its own solution. A situation in which people are crammed together in a stifling, small space, helpless in the face of danger; that breeds paranoia and fear.
A similar solution for the pod hotel, perhaps. You’d need to introduce the characters to their neighbors, somehow. Maybe down in that on-site gym? Or a nearby bar? Then, once they’re all inside and snuggled up in their beds …
OK, all that said, let's gamify this.
A Place With Many Doors
The characters are in town for a completely separate reason and it does not matter, for plot purposes, what that reason is. Let's say they've been asked to go to X to find a missing person, who for this example will be Sarah Lovett, a lawyer from Chicago who likes to explore places on the cheap. According to her social media profile, her last posts came from a pod hotel in X: The Happiness Quotient.
The Happiness Quotient is a resolutely cheerful place in one of the more expensive parts of town. It has its own bar, its own gym, and is very close to public transport and other amenities. Its color scheme is very, very bright, and frequently features the hotel mascot, a jolly, grinning panda named Frank. The Quotient's user reviews are nearly all ecstatic, and many of them feature photos of the gym, the bar, and the penthouse apartments, all of which have fantastic views of X.
Lovett's last few posts were all made from the Quotient. According to her profile (and her bank account) she paid for a month's stay in one of the penthouses.
Investigators who pay close attention to the social media posts notice that some of the penthouse suite pictures show a view that actually doesn't exist at all. According to these shots, the hotel has a view of a park that doesn't exist, yet it can be clearly seen in photographs. AI generated art at work, perhaps?
Option 1: Devil's Idle Hands. The hotel is the preferred hunting grounds of a solo killer or an entity like Fear Itself's Blood Corpse, something that isn't particularly intelligent but whose actions are being covered up by the hotel's owners and its manager, Theo Salter. They can't afford the scandal. They can't afford the killings. But they keep hiding the evidence and denying the problem, and Salter's dwindling resources will eventually be insufficient to cover up the losses. Meanwhile the solo killer flits from room to room, taking what it needs and going dark for a night or two, until it needs to kill again.
Option 2: Frank's Forest. He may look like a happy little mascot but there's something very nasty hiding behind that relentlessly cheerful smile. Those who pay attention to Frank notice that his posture and demeanor changes the closer it gets to nightfall. After nightfall Frank gets positively shifty and mean-looking. Come midnight, Frank vanishes altogether, from all the walls of the hotel. When that happens it's best to stay tucked up in bed and try not to think about going to that shared bathroom or the 24-hour gym. When Frank's playing games, nobody's safe; and God forbid you should somehow find yourself in that hidden park outside the hotel. You may never find your way back in, if that happens.
Option 3: Penthouse Problems. This issue only affects people who rent the penthouse apartments, and not all of them. However, for those of a sensitive or psychic disposition, it's possible you'll find yourself in the House With Many Doors. You're perfectly safe, so long as you never try to leave the penthouse. After all, why would you? Look at that view. You can see the whole city from here. You can see the park. You can watch people playing in the park, walking their dogs, having a fine old time. They can see you, too. They wave at you. They seem to know exactly where you are, what you're doing. Just never try to leave the penthouse. There are many, many doors in this hotel, and none of them go outside.
That's it for this week. Enjoy!
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