Assassins (Shaun Hutson)

I forgot I had this.

When I was living in the UK, the first time around - so, late 80s early 90s - I loved the tattered horror paperbacks that seemed to spawn, unasked and unannounced, in second hand shops. This was roundabout the era of the British Horror Writer, folks like James Herbert, Clive Barker, Graham Masterson (The Mirror enthralled me, and I cannot for the life of me tell you why), and, of course, Shaun Hutson. I'm not sure what it was about the 80s that brought their particular style to prominence, but there were a couple things you could absolutely guarantee would be part of any novel any of these people wrote: gore, in large quantities, and sex, in not quite so large quantities. So basically squirting bodily fluids, and squirting bodily fluids.

Assassins is very much in that category. There's a moment in it when a zombie gets a blowjob, and I think I can safely say this scene sums up the story - maggots and all.

Hutson's an author after my own heart. "I have to get money … basically, that's how it works. Someone says 'here's an obscene amount of money, Shaun, would you like to go and write a book,' and then the Muse descends with incredible speed .. I do get writer's block every morning, at ten o'clock when I get into the office. I'd love to sit here now and say 'I go into the office at ten, then I drive my Ferrari for an hour, go write another chapter, then go off to Bermuda and do the first draft. But one doesn't. One clears off into the office, sits there - and I stare at a blank screen sometimes for two hours at a time - until something clicks into place. That's how you have to do it."

I don't know how much I'd like his stuff now. It's been a while since the 80s. I loved different things. Re-reading Assassins was a guilty pleasure, but it's a bit like re-reading Rats or The Mirror, both of which I enjoyed at the time, but would probably feel a bit meh about now. Which doesn't entirely make sense. Sure, they're trashy, but then so are most horror films - particularly if they're about zombies - and I still watch those.

Must admit, what I don't understand is how they made a film out of Slugs, but not this.

Still, if you were wondering what Hutson's style is like - now you know.

Gore isn't something you see a lot of in tabletop. Gunshots, yes, messy deaths, o Lord yes, explosions, Why Yes I Would Like Another. But I suspect if you tried something like this you'd get banned from the table:

Where there should have been a mouth there was just a gaping hole which seemed to stretch from the remains of his nose to the point of his chin. It was surrounded by wisps of grey hair and strands of rotten flesh which hung down like obscene raffia curtains over the gaping maw. The lips were little more than pieces of shriveled flesh which slid back to expel a blast of air so foul that Adam almost passed out. And, from the center of that reeking hole, a tongue emerged. Blackened and covered with thick yellow sputum which dripped like mouldering pus, it writhed like a bloated worm with a life of its own, twisting and turning in that putrescent gap, flicking in and out …

For starters, too many things are Like Something Else. For another, words are jammed together that make no sense together - mouldering pus, for instance.

But I have to admit, there's something there which grabs my attention. There's a quote about James Herbert which fits: Herbert doesn't just Go There, he Goes There, sets it on fire, and sells hotdogs.

I've been Keeper, Director, and what-have-you for more horror games than I care to count, but I can only think of one time I really got under the players' skin, in the same way writers like Hutson and Herbert do. That was the time I had a victim cut to bits and flushed down the toilet, except it didn't quite work, so the bathroom flooded. Happy days of youth, I suppose.

As with all gaming advice, I preface this with a 'check with your players before you do it' mantra. That said, if everyone's on board, (remember Consent, folks), then my advice for creating horror at the table has nothing to do with vampires, things that go bump in the night, or even atmosphere.

No, my advice is this: be prepared to Go There, set it on fire, and sell hotdogs.

Do I recommend this book? Christ Almighty, no. It's bloody awful, not least because the zombie assassins - the whole reason the book exists - vanish about halfway through and don't turn up again till the climax. Instead Hutson tells the story of the Sharon Tate murders, again. And again. The characters are two dimensional and utterly pointless, and the whole thing's about as engaging as Hammer Horror at its worst. Hutson basically takes Get Carter (complete with 'avenge dead brother' plot), Charlie Manson and Graham Ingels, jams it all together, and adds some softcore porn. There's nothing remotely complex about it.

But.

There's something worth learning from the bad as well as the good.

I see Assassins has been reprinted again and again, and can be had right now, in paperback, for less than the price of a pint in London. Even Foyles has it in stock. So there must be something to it, mustn't there? Hutson's published an average of one novel a year since 1982. That's a success story a lot of us would kill for.

Here's my takeaway. First, that the author only ever writes for an audience of one.

You can try to please everyone, and sometimes succeed. After all, Robert W. Chambers made an entire career out of pleasing a particular audience, and deliberately changed both style and subject matter when he felt the audience wanted something else. He wrote The King In Yellow.

Now, without visiting Wikipedia, name six other novels he wrote. The man churned out well over a hundred, and at least a score of them were turned into movies. It shouldn't be that difficult.

(If you managed it, well done, Ken Hite.)

Therein lies the problem. Most writers who try to please an audience churn out bland mush. Popular mush, sometimes. Dan Brown's rolling in lucre, after all. But mush is still mush, and unless you like the same damn thing every damn day, you're going to get bored writing it. Perhaps not bored spending the money, if you're making Dan Brown paychecks. But that would only carry me so far, and I suspect the same can be said of many of you.

Write to please yourself, and to hell with anyone else.

The second is, stop worrying about art, or the muse. I very much doubt Huston cares one bit about what I think of Assassins, or anything else he writes. He cares about the blank page, and he knows the only way to fill that blank page is to sit in front of the keyboard and make something happen.

Stephen King has, in the course of a long and successful career, said many things, but his writing advice is solid. I want to draw your attention to two from King.

First:

You have to stay faithful to what you're working on.

Second:

I recognize terror as the finest emotion, and so I will try to terrify the reader. But if I find I cannot terrify, I will horrify, and if I find I cannot horrify, I will go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.

Hutson ticks both boxes. Faithful to the subject, and gross-out almost every time, because he cannot terrify and only occasionally horrifies. Not that he cares. He's still writing. He's been sitting behind that keyboard for a very long time; he's not going to quit now.

So next time you're behind the GM screen, and you've the complete attention of a group of wide-eyed horror groupies, remember:

Go There.

Set It On Fire.

Sell Hot Dogs.

Enjoy!

The Exorcist (NBA, Dracula Dossier)

Exorcism is on the rise, according to this Guardian piece. The Vatican set up a new training scheme for would-be Von Sydows, claiming that reported instances of possession have grown exponentially in recent years. Evangelical churches have always been fond of exorcism, and there are independent exorcists that will bell, book & candle you for less than the price of a second-hand car. Or so the Economist claims.

Of course, there are no reliable statistics for any of this. The people reporting a rise in demand for exorcism are the same people who want to hold more exorcisms. The evidence is anecdotal, but that's never stopped anyone from jumping to a conclusion before.

Christianity has traditionally had a very uneasy relationship with the Devil, but not for the reason you might think. It's a power problem. If the Devil is capable of performing miracles, then what price God? In order to keep God at the top of the hierarchy, the Devil cannot perform miracles. His imps and minions can only perform natural acts, because if they could actually pull off supernatural stunts then the fine line between God and his opposite number gets blurrier than philosophers like. Instead they manipulate Man to achieve what seems to be miracles, but are not.

For the Dog of Hell is bound, writes one philosopher, neither can he operate on Forms, the Bodies of these, or their properties, unless he take to him the mind of Man as a co-operatives with him, under whose convents he bond-slaves by deceit, and binds them in a Covenant ... For he persuades those who have renounced Divine Grace, of whatsoever he will. and promiseth that he will perform Mischievous or wicked Acts, by strength or faculties which he feigneth to be natural or proper unto himself. For he snatcheth his Imps into the detestable adoration of a He-Goat, as if the government of all things stood in His power, and that he alone could confer the gift of the working of miracles.

The larger problem - and again, this was true in the medieval period as now - is that once you let the Devil in the door, there's no keeping him out. He's the original Special Pleading. There's no justifying him, but once you admit that he could be lurking in the shadows causing mayhem then there's no way to tell the difference between reality and the Devil's fantasy.

Moreover an exorcist, particularly an amateur, is likely to look at almost any problem as a spiritual one requiring immediate spiritual intervention. Not, say, a problem of  human fallibility, or a medical problem requiring medical assistance. The same is true of their petitioners. Very few people understand what exorcism is, but if it doesn't look like Netflix crossed with Hammer Horror and offer a convenient one-stop cure for their problem, they don't believe it.

Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins series about a female Deliverance cleric operating in Hertfordshire makes this point again and again: it is all too easy to become addicted to exorcism, to see it as a solution to problems it was never meant to handle. Merrily often has to discourage people from thinking of her job as an immediate cure, like calling out the plumber to deal with a leaky faucet.

However from a role-playing POV, and with one eye on Pelgrane's Night's Black Agents, an exorcist player character has appeal. Moreover Merrily Watkins has a hint as to which way it should go, as the series is set near Hereford, the home of the SAS. Often a character in one of her mysteries turns out to be a former SAS now retired, or turned priest. You can see the appeal for a serving soldier; first-hand combat experience often either turns a person atheist, or devout. Muscular Christianity offers the willing a chance to fight spiritual problems with physical action. What more could a former special operations vet wish for?

That said, designing a character template for this ought to take the civilian version into consideration, the occultist with a yen for theatrics and a PayPal account for donations. With that in mind, here's two options for an exorcist player character.

Exorcist (Former Soldier)

Investigative:  Intimidation 2, Military Science 1, Occult Studies 2, Outdoor Survival 1. Possible alternates: Urban Survival, Vampirology.

General: Athletics or Shooting 10, Hand-to-Hand 4, Preparedness 4. Possible alternates: Sense Trouble, Weapons.

Exorcist (Enthusiastic Amateur)

Investigative: Bullshit Detector 1, History 2, Occult Studies 2,  Research 1. Possible alternates: Vampirology, Diagnosis, Reassurance

General: Conceal 6, Shrink 6, Preparedness 6. Possible alternates: Filch (for those who like to take their theatrics one step too far).

The Battleground of the Mind (Bookhounds of London)

In this ongoing series on Bookhounds campaign design, so far I've talked about the setting, why a bookstore should be either Spring or Winter, and what the first arc might look like. Now I want to take a step back and talk about another concept, borrowed in part from Ars Magica but also from Ken Hite's KWAS Mind Control: the Regio.

In Ars Magica, a Regio is a place of power. It draws its power from one of several possible spiritual sources: the Infernal, the Divine, Faerie, or Magic. More than one region is called a regiones, and in situations where multiple regiones are layered one on top of the other, a peculiar thing happens. Two people can stand in the same place at the same time, and yet be in two different versions of that same place.

Take a horror setting regiones, for example: a ruined castle. On the lowest level, which everyone can see, it is exactly that: a ruined castle. Faintly forbidding, and probably a bit nasty to hang around in for any length of time. It has a nasty reputation, and perhaps bad things happen there from time to time. But even with that, people who look at it see just the ruined castle.

At the next highest level, things change. It's still a ruined castle, but now the eerie quotient is raised. Strange noises, peculiar lights, odd weather effects, even unusual animals or ordinary animals that behave in an unusual way. Someone not in the regio, but looking at the castle from afar, would see none of these things. Someone near the castle, but not on that level, also does not see these things. However they don't see anyone on the next highest level either, nor do the people in the next highest level see them.

At the third level, things change still further. Now perhaps the castle is less ruined than it first appeared. It might not be completely rebuilt, but that tower where everyone says the old Baron used to torture his captives is intact. Also, the eerie effects increase in intensity, and achieve a kind of physicality not seen before. Old bloodstains become fresh blood. Faint moans become ear-piercing shrieks, and corpses which long ago went to dust have physical form. Moreover if there's any entity here capable of posing a physical threat, that entity exists and can harm people on this level of the regiones.

AD&D's Ravenloft setting played with a very similar concept, calling it a Sinkhole of Evil. As with the regiones, a Sinkhole exists on multiple levels of consciousness, but here the Sinkholes are Ranked in terms of the event that created them. A Sinkhole of Rank 1 can be created by intense emotions. A Rank 2 can be created by emotions and a particular evil event, say the spot where a murder occurred. A Rank 3 can be created by emotions and a prolonged event or series of events, such as a torture session that lasts several days. A Rank 4 can be created by emotions, prolonged activity and a remarkable event, such as the sacrifice of multiple people at an unholy chapel over a period of years. A Rank 5 is the most monstrous, the kind of thing reserved for battlefields where the hopes and youth of warring nations were sacrificed to no good end. The scarred landscape of the Somme or Passchendaele, in a game based in our world, could be a Rank 5 Sinkhole.

Leaping to the KWAS, Ken Hite suggests something interesting: a conflict of the mind, in which the players battle for control of the Superego, Ego, and Id. With each conquest the conqueror becomes bolder and more powerful, meaning that resistance to future conflicts is at a penalty. Here is a situation in which the evil is, quite literally, within. But like the regio, and like the Sinkhole, it exists on a completely different level: it's a fight that cannot be seen from the outside, which is being powered by something unspeakably evil, and which can do incredible damage all without being seen by anyone not directly involved in the situation.

With that I propose the overarching plot of the Bookhounds campaign: the return of the Comte d'Erlette, author of the Cultes des Ghoules, through the flesh of a player character.

The Comte laid plans for this long ago. Through his book - bound in human skin, one of the special volumes - he laid the seed. He's been waiting a very long time for someone to find it, touch it, even read it, and now he has that someone. There was a time when Etienne du Bourg was the target, but Etienne forestalled that plan by dying - and really, was his death an accident, or did Etienne decide suicide was the better way out? Since then, the Comte has waited patiently for the right candidate.

Along come the protagonists.

This shall be a battle of the minds, that takes place at intervals during the plot. In each instance the Comte goes after the geography of the mind, striking out at the Superego, Ego, and Id. If successful, the Comte gets a new body, and with it a new lease on life.

Exactly which player gets the dubious honor of becoming a target will depend largely on circumstance. Is there a protagonist who has paid special attention to the book? Then the choice is obvious. Otherwise it will be up to the Keeper to decide who's first on the list, but if, say, someone should have the bad manners to die before Mind Control can be achieved, then the Comte sighs and moves on to the next likely target.

To look at, each layer of the target's mind exactly resembles the Bookstore, du Bourg's. Except different somehow, in odd little ways. A level 1 might be slightly unusual, feature NPCs who no longer exist - because they died - or have doors that will not open. A level 2 has doors which do open, and the protagonists may devoutly wish that they did not. Strange and terrible creatures may stalk the halls. Odd landscapes may be seen out the windows. A level 3 is completely beyond the bounds of reality. There is no outside world in this scenario, and you cannot trust any door to lead where you think it ought to.

Movement from reality to the mental realm may be as easy as stepping from one room to the next. The target simply discovers that, when she emerges from the stockroom laden with books that a customer asked for, not only is the customer not there but neither is anyone else. That signals the start of a mental attack, but as to when it ends ... ah, there's the rub.

How to get the other players involved? Well there are two obvious ways. First, the target can create the other characters in her mind, using them as mental bodyguards. The other players take over the role of those bodyguards, and play them as usual. Perhaps they have slightly unusual appearances; someone she always thought had a fish-face, say, now really is a fish, in a much-patched suit and cheap cravat.. But fundamentally they are the same people with the same suite of abilities. This option allows the Keeper to use lethal force without troubling his conscience too much about whether a character lives or dies. A mental construct, after all, can die multiple times - theoretically, anyway.

The other option is to use magic. If the characters on the outside find their companion standing mute and apparently senseless, the victim of a mental attack, they can use, say, Idiosyncratic Magic to get into their friend's mindscape. From there the game plays out as normal, only without the multiple deaths. One is quite enough.

As to how this might play out, that will wait for future posts, I feel.
  

The Bookstore, Winter or Spring (Bookhounds of London)

It seems like a long time since I've touched on Bookhounds of London, so for a change of pace in the next few posts I'm going to design a mini campaign for Bookhounds. Of the three potential campaign types, Sordid, Arabesque or Technicolor, I'm going to go for Technicolor. It's not my favorite; I prefer Arabesque, but I see this as a challenge rather than an indulgence.

Technicolor is B-movie stuff, and when I touched on it in a previous post I used the Hammer Horror Satanic Rites of Dracula as an example. Hammer had a love-hate relationship with the British censor; its box office success depended on gore and sex, not necessarily in that order, and to get people's attention it had to push the censors just about as far as it could. If nothing else, public spats with the censor were good publicity, and its films always seemed to find an audience even when, as happened in the later 1960s, it started recycling sets, costumes, even scenes from film to film.

So a Technicolor style game probably ought to concentrate on the immediate viscera. There must be ichor, and in quantity. If ever you've wanted to play around with zombies or alien beings, now's the time to do so. Mummies roaming the Underground, Vampires haunting Westminster, ghouls lurking in the seven great cemeteries of London; these are all concepts that would suit a Technicolor game.

A Technicolor game is also exactly the place you'd expect to find spooky, cobweb-drenched mansions and forgotten crypts, so let's start talking about the Bookstore itself, since you'll be spending a lot of time in its shadowy confines.

The Bookstore is the scenario hub. The characters all devote themselves to its wellbeing. Without the money they earn each month, they'd be out on the street. But it may be more than that. The characters may be, or become, psychologically dependent on the place. Institutionalized, in the same way long term convicts become so used to their prisons that they can't bear to leave.

But how to design it? Let's take some inspiration from another game altogether: Ars Magica.

Ars Magica is one of my all-time passions, but it's been a long time since I had a chance to play. One of the things that attracted me to that system was its emphasis on troupe-style gaming, and its willingness to make the wizard's Covenant, the place where they all lived, a vibrant part of the setting. Too often a castle is just a castle, but the Covenant was always more than that. In all the games I played and many of the ones I ran, the Covenant was as much a character as any of the actual players' characters. That's exactly the kind of atmosphere I want in this Bookstore.

In Ars, the Covenant can be in Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter; that is, it can be just starting out, in the height of its powers, just beginning to show signs of age, and in near terminal decay. The decision to set the game in one particular season determines the tone of the campaign. But Ars isn't a horror game, so it can utilize the hope and confidence that comes with being at the height of your powers in Summer, or the preening arrogance of Autumn. Bookhounds is a horror game, and therefore doesn't suit either Summer or Autumn play types. I'm going to suggest that, in Bookhounds, the store is always either in Spring or Winter, never any other season.

What does this mean? Well, in Spring, you're just starting out. Like any new business, the store could collapse at any moment, for any number of reasons. 'The challenges are many, and the dull moments few,' says Ars about its Covenants. 'But if the trials and tests can be survived, the rewards are great.' This is a good style of game for new players to the system. It allows them to explore the setting and the rules without interference. It also means they have few resources. The shop's Credit Rating is probably low, and it has almost no important customers.

Whereas in Winter the Bookstore has seen out many decades, and may be on its last legs. It got its start long ago, possibly as early as the 1700s. If its walls could talk, they would scream, no doubt. This is the kind of place that has odd traditions, forgotten corners, and very dangerous secrets. It's probably on its way out, and may not survive to see 1940. But if it does go, it will be in a blaze of malignant glory. This is the kind of game for experienced players who know Bookhounds, and are happy to play with some of its concepts.

Now we come to the nuts and bolts. What ought this Bookstore be like?

Well, what does any store have? It has stock. It has an entrance, and probably more than one exit. It has furnishings and fittings. It has staff. It may or may not have a delivery van of some kind.  As this is a Bookstore it probably has a lending library. It may have a sideline that is not its main business but which earns a little money, like selling greeting cards, stamps, or other ephemera.

Perhaps most importantly it has character, a concept that's difficult to define but easy to spot. It's the difference between a Barnes and Noble, in which one store is always much like another, or a corner book barn, which is unique unto itself.

A Spring Bookstore doesn't have much of anything. There probably aren't any staff, except for the player characters. It won't have much stock, and its furnishings and fittings are second hand at best. I'm going to say that a Spring Bookstore has, at most, three things about it that are unique and interesting details worthy of description. Also, it probably doesn't have anything really weird about it. Weirdness is the kind of thing that grows over time, not unlike dry rot, and the whole point of a Spring game is that the store hasn't been open long.  Whereas a Winter Bookstore will have five things, since it's been around for decades if not a century or so. It will have many things that are odd about it. Probably also dry rot, but that's another topic altogether.

Ideally you'd get the players to cooperate here and think of a few of these details for themselves. In this example, I'm going to do all that groundwork. I'm also going to posit a Winter Bookstore, since that sounds more interesting to me.

This store has been around for many decades. Let's assume it was founded in 1803, by a French exile, Etienne du Bourg. He fled France during the Revolution, and spent some time in London working for Bonham's before branching out on his own. When he started his bookstore he returned to France several times, secretly, and brought back his own extensive collection of incunabula, which became the stock of his store. Though the store is now run by his thoroughly English heirs, it still retains the old name, du Bourg's. This is all borrowed (a little) from Madame Tussaud's, but what the heck. It works.

The building is classic Georgian architecture with all the Palladian neo-classic frippery that implies. This doesn't mean the business has a lot of money behind it. Its Credit Rating might be low, representing years of mismanagement and bad debts. The structure may look impressive, but be a leaky, damp pit in summer and a freezer in winter. Rats in the basement, mice in the closets, bats in the attic. All the joys of imminent financial disaster, wrapped in a cloak of genteel refinement.

So, about those five things:

History: M Etienne du Bourg, the founder of the business, took a leaf out of Jeremy Bentham's book and had himself mummified after his death in 1833. Unlike Bentham, du Bourg didn't mind so much about the cadaverous appearance of his mummified head, so his corpse - currently enshrined in his alchemical laboratory in the basement of the building - still has all its original parts. By tradition, the owners of the business meet once a year in the laboratory, on du Bourg's birthday. At that time the financial returns of the previous year are read out, and presented to the assembly for approval. The assembled drink to the health of the business and its founder, and the meeting concludes. By tradition the staff and invited guests can attend, but in recent years only the business' owner(s) have gone to the meeting. People do say that M du Bourg wanders his laboratory at night conducting experiments, but nobody's ever proved this one way or the other.

Stock: When M du Bourg recovered his library from Europe he brought with him his extensive collection of the works of Francois Honore-Balfour, Comte d'Erlette, including many rare pamphlets, autographed correspondence, and, of course, Cultes des Ghoules. According to the shop's records du Bourg had three copies of that book, including one described as 'in Cordwain binding,' which it has been alleged is a coded reference to one of the three bound in human skin by Honore-Balfour himself. Over the years many of these items have sold to collectors, while others have gone missing. Only one of the Cultes is supposed to have been sold, at auction in 1870, but nobody knows where the other two are. Legend has it that du Bourg hid the rest of his collection before his death, and successive generations have done their best to find it in hope of rescuing the business with a big sale.

Monster: Ever since its opening du Bourg's has always had a cat, and by tradition this has been a ginger tom, always with the name Maher-shalal-hashbaz. Cat after cat has made mincemeat out of the generations of rats and mice that infest du Bourg's. Recently people have noticed that the latest Mash is just a little more feisty and enthusiastic than its illustrious forbears. In fact it's a Mythos entity, or controlled by a Mythos entity, Keeper's choice as to which. Perhaps its friendly with some ghouls who live nearby and feed it sweetmeats when they visit to have a nosey through the library, or perhaps its a minion of Bast with powers of its own. It has no particular allegiance to the staff or shop, but it's not going to destroy its home on a whim. As to what Mash actually is, well, spoilt for choice really. Perhaps he's king of the cats or some shapechanged thing out of Ken Hite's Writes About Stuff series. Power level relatively low, no more that Health 8 and say 3 to 6 Magic.

Shop: Though the building is large, in recent years the management has stopped using some of the upper floor rooms because of damp problems. At least, that's the excuse management have offered for why several upper floor rooms are permanently locked. But locked they are, and it's more than anyone's job is worth to open them again. Odd noises are heard up there at times, and at night people have reported seeing lights in those deserted rooms. Perhaps it's the secret meeting place of some kind of cult, or perhaps it's haunted. Perhaps it once was the meeting place of a cult, and that's why it's haunted. The only way to know for sure is to go and see.

Staff: Most of the staff are probably player characters, but du Bourg's has been around for a long time. Long enough to accumulate some very curious hangers-on; ancient, crumbling wrecks who dodder from room to room like something out of Titus Groan. Perhaps they know a little Idiosyncratic Magic, or perhaps they just drink all the tea and eat all the biscuits. However Mister Bourg, as he is known, is by far the most senior, and the keeper of all the shop's traditions. Though he may not be the Bourg that actually owns the shop - that role ought to be reserved for a player - he certainly behaves as though he is, and he knows everything there is to know about the place. In the first few sessions he ought to be a fount of knowledge, if not the voice of the Keeper, but as time goes on and the players start showing signs of independence, he'll probably become a minor villain of sorts. If the players decide to sack him, the shops Credit Rating immediately drops by 1, and they'll have earned an enemy for life. Such as it is; someone as aged as Mister Bourg surely can't live that much longer? 

That's enough to be getting on with. By now you should have a clear idea of what du Bourg's is like, how it operates, and the kind of stories it can generate. Note that I've deliberately not mentioned its location. It could be anywhere in London. That's for the Keeper and players to decide for themselves. I've also not gone too deeply into subjects like the bookshop stock or its Credit Rating. Again, that's something best decided by Keeper and players together.

Enjoy!

The Pulps (Bookhounds of London)

A while back now, I talked about the kinds of campaign that could be played in the Bookhounds game universe: Technicolor, Arabesque and Sordid, each of which could be played in a Pulp or Purist style. However, of all the settings, the best suited for a Pulp style of play has got to be Technicolor, with its emphasis on the garish and the glorious. This time out I want to talk about a particular aspect of Pulp, the costumed hero, and what role, if any, it might play in a Bookhounds setting.

The era of the Pulp magazines, particularly the 1920s and 1930s, introduced a different kind of protagonist to the reading public. In the Victorian era, heroes were bold, resolute, usually Christian, and always fought on the side of the angels. The Pulp era turns all this on its head. A Pulp hero can be an out-and-out villain, like the Eel, or the Spider, self-interested and vengeful. A Pulp protagonist doesn't have to have a name; many of the secret agents that infest the genre go by numbers, like Secret Agent X, or adopt a pseudonym, like Raffles, to disguise their true identity and protect their reputation. Sometimes, as with the Continental Op, there's really no need to hide the protagonist's identity at all, but he still doesn't have a name. There's often a hint of mystery and mysticism, particularly with the Yellow Peril masterminds, and frequently the hero has direct dealings with the occult and the minions of Hell, as with Jules de Grandin or Carnacki.

As far as backgrounds are concerned, there's a heavy emphasis on revenge, often for the death of a family member. Gone are the days when people got into the hero business because it was the right thing to do. Now it takes someone killing your father to get you involved. Coincidentally, this frees up the hero to do a lot of killing on his own account, without boring existential angst. Once upon a time, even Batman used to machine-gun his enemies to death, and seldom did an episode of Dick Tracey end without at least one or two people getting murdered before Tracey steps in and guns the villain down.

Many of the villains and heroes of Pulp are technologically skilled, or born in the new age of technology. Biggles couldn't be considered a science hero, but he wouldn't be a hero at all if he hadn't happened to be around when people were inventing aeroplanes. Meanwhile villains like Doctor Death manage to mix an intriguing blend of horror and technology, using science to create zombies as well as death rays.

What does all of this suggest for Bookhounds?

Well, there are several possibilities. The first has to do with the players themselves, particularly if one or more of them happen to be close to the edge, in terms of Sanity. Often insanity is seen as an affliction meant only to hinder the character's progress, but it could also serve as an interesting motivator. Imagine a character who, after a sudden shock, decides that the only way to put a stop to the nightmares that plague her every night is to get out there in a costume, and fight occult crime. That's pretty much the origin story for Wesley Dodds, aka the Sandman, but there's no reason your players can't steal an idea or two. Imagine a bookstore where the proprietor, sinking deeper and deeper into delusions, uses the store's cellar as a lab for forensic analysis, and mixing the sleep gas that he, as the Red Shadow, uses to help him fight the forces of evil.

This is probably best used for a character who's already on the way out. While the idea of a character acting as a costumed hero has a lot of potential, I can't help but think it clashes slightly with the Bookhounds downbeat economic horror ethos. But as a brief, bright spark of manic life just before the candle gutters out, the character as costumed vigilante could be very interesting.

Perhaps a better use for a Pulp character in a Bookhounds campaign is as mentor figure, or villain. It's often the case that a player wants to increase his character's knowledge in a particular discipline, perhaps Occult, or Magic, but lacks the resources. Alternatively the character might have the Occult at his disposal, but lacks information in Physics or Chemistry, or some other vital ability. A Carnacki type could be a useful instructor, or source of those extra points needed to put together a plan to stop the villain in her tracks once and for all.

As a villain, there's all kinds of possibilities. Many of the cults already familiar to the players are essentially pulp villain vehicles already, like the Hsieh-Tzu Fan or the Cult of the Black Pharaoh. It may need very little tweaking to turn these organizations, or their leaders, into true Pulp Technicolor villains. Or perhaps that mentor, so useful in former days, suffered a psychotic break, and is now the very villain the characters now have to defeat. Except here's an antagonist who really does know all the characters' weaknesses, and how to exploit them, since he's known them all for years. Who better placed to defeat you than the man who taught you everything you know?

Another possibility is as an NPC who needs the characters, but is unwilling to reveal his true identity to them, for whatever reason. This NPC might see the characters in the same way Fox Mulder does the Lone Gunmen. While this does have potential, it risks moving the focus from the characters to the mysterious, powerful NPC, which isn't ideal. The best thing in its favor is that it gives the characters a clear motivator to get involved: their NPC asks them to do something for him. Perhaps the best use of this kind of story is to have the powerful NPC overwhelmed by mysterious forces halfway through the adventure, and either killed or seemingly killed. That way the Lone Gunmen get promoted from sidekick to main character status. It could be a very interesting way to start a campaign: the employees of the shop discover that their bookseller employer was really the Red Shadow all along, and now he's vanished. What to do?

With all that in mind, to close out I'm going to outline the Red Shadow, the notorious vigilante who's been turning London on its ear for the last few years.

Red Shadow, aka Marcus / Melinda Dash

Abilities: Auction 4, Athletics 10, Disguise 8, Driving 10, Electrical Repair 4, Explosives 6, Fleeing 10

Specialties: Biology, Chemistry, Evidence Collection, Forensics, Occult

Combat: Health 7, Scuffling 12, Weapons 5.

Martial Art: If used in the campaign, Red Shadow is an expert in Baritsu (see Zoom Martial Arts)

Signature Weapon/Device: The Silencer, a short-range dart pistol operated by compressed air. Capable of delivering one shot before it has to be reloaded. Damage -2, but projectile is usually tipped with sleeping potion, Athletics Diff 7 or fall unconscious. Red Shadow rarely uses other potions, but does know how to make deadly projectiles capable of delivering +3 Damage, based on an obscure venom obtained from a South American plant, grown in the Shadow's own greenhouse.

Special Gimmick: Truth Serum. The Red Shadow concocts this from a recipe of his own creation, based on secrets uncovered from a medieval herbal manuscript. In game terms, acts as 3 point pool Intimidation, one target, as the target hallucinates strange and terrible mirages. While, strictly speaking, this doesn't guarantee that the target will tell the truth, it's a pretty good persuader.

Transport: The Red Shadow owns a finely tuned bright red sports car, capable of 100 miles per hour.

Appearance: When acting as the Red Shadow, wears sharply tailored formal attire, and a red leather Commedia dell'arte mask. Whether male or female, the Red Shadow is an adept cross-dresser.

Notes: The Red Shadow lost his two best friends on the same terrible day. The three of them had ventured, on a lark, to an old, abandoned house in the West End, rumored to be the most haunted spot in London. There they encountered a group of individuals, self-proclaimed occultists and wizards, who were carrying out a ritual in the cellars of that shunned place. One of them was immediately sacrificed, while the other two were imprisoned while the ritual was conducted. The Red Shadow and his friend managed to escape, but the wizards chased them down, and the Shadow's companion sacrificed his life so the Shadow could get away. Ever since that fateful night, Dash has used the nom de guerre Red Shadow to hide his identity, as he tracks down and kills the cultists who murdered his friends. The conspiracy, Dash has discovered, has roots sunk deep in London's best and brightest citizens; so far Dash has uncovered and dealt with two of his enemies, but the rest seem to be protected by none other than British Military Intelligence. Though cautious, Dash will not give up his chance at revenge, no matter who stands in Dash's way.

Bookhounds Technicolor

Having discussed Sordid and Arabesque London for Bookhounds, the time has come to talk Technicolor. To do that I'm going to reference an example that may at first seem out of place: The Satanic Rites of Dracula, the last Hammer Horror film to feature Christopher Lee as the Count. I picked this up as part of a bundle of 10 films for 10 dollars; included in it were such gems as Snowbeast (Jaws knock-off set at a Colorado ski resort) and House on Haunted Hill (Vincent Price chews the scenery in this locked-room ghost mansion thriller). Satanic Rites deserves to be in that company. It's a pretty standard B-movie shocker with plenty of blood and sexy bits for your viewing pleasure. I don't recommend buying it - not unless you can get it for $1, as I did - but it's worth a rental. Go see!

Now that you've seen it, let's talk Bookhounds.

To begin with, I should point out straight away that apart from the 1970s aesthetic there's nothing here that couldn't have happened in the 1930s. The technology, the style, the characters are all pretty much interchangeable, bar a few hairstyle concerns. Most of it is set in ye ramblinge olde Englishe country home, complete with pleasant woodlands for your walking pleasure.  There's very little of the ultra-modern here, which is one of the reasons the Hammer Horror aesthetic works so well for Bookhounds.

In fact, in the main rulebook they reference Hammer Horror by name. There is another London, garish and glorious. This is the Technicolor world of Hammer Films, in vibrant color – and the color is always bright red or lurid green. Cults wear rich robes; monsters radiate unearthly glows; scarlet blood smears jaws and talons and lips and other parts ... All very cinematic, I'm sure; but with that in mind, what does Satanic Rites tell us about a Technicolor London?

To begin with, it tells us that London is London. Every time Satanic Rites wants to establish the scene, it show a quick montage of famous landmarks. A Sordid London might set its scenes in nameless back alleys and Soho nightclubs; an Arabesque can take any aspect of the city and turn it into something glorious. Technicolor London is all about the bling; Nelson's Column, the British Museum, the Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square, the Palace, the Tower. Even the relatively ordinary laboratory of Professor Keeley is in a rather splendid Georgian terrace. If there's ever a campaign in which the characters are trying to find out what really lives in the forgotten tube station under the British Museum, or whether the green men in the Jewel Tower hide some sinister secret, Technicolor is that campaign.

In that London, there are mooks. Hordes and hordes of the little devils; three of them go down in a hail of gunfire or are strangled in the first ten minutes of the film. For that matter there are also minions, slightly higher class mooks who perhaps get to lounge naked on Satanic altars or chant along with the ritual leader, but who don't have any significant plot function and will probably get whalloped by the heroes before too long.

As might be expected, these mooks are occasionally plot-stupid. By that I mean they'll do daft things, purely for the sake of keeping the plot moving. There's one moment about a quarter of the way through when Van Helsing's granddaughter breaks into the cellars of Pelham House and discovers, to her horror, that there's half a dozen vampires hidden there. Had this been any other picture, she'd have been sucked dry within half a minute; as this is Hammer Horror her clothes get torn but, as luck would have it, all those vampires are chained down - for no good reason I can think of - so she manages to avoid being bitten.

Not that the heroes have plot immunity. Death stalks everyone, and while it does play favorites to a point, there's still every chance that the heroes will get theirs before the final reel. See that nice secretary lady? All she did was turn up in one scene to make the tea but clearly that meant the cult had to mark her for death and, since Dracula's giving her a nibble, it's a good bet she'll be back before too long. In a Technicolor campaign there should be death, and lots of it. Bodies should be turning up in closets, and the butler the characters met at the door of their friend's mansion could easily turn up as a zombie in the following scene. 

There should be technology, and you shouldn't be afraid to use it against the players. Twice in Satanic Rites an electronic eye becomes plot significant; there are security cameras everywhere; the cultists use silenced weapons; some of the action takes place at an ultra-modern skyscraper. Don't think for a minute that this is 1970s stuff, so you can't use it. The electronic eye was a viable security option in the early 1930s, the Nazis had security cameras in 1942 - a little out of time, but not by much - the first silencers were patented in 1902, and electronic alarms were common enough to feature as a significant plot device in a 1915 silent movie. So if you happen to be designing a secret Nazi Satanic lair in the heart of London, why shouldn't they be using all of those technologies? Don't feel you have to limit this to existing tech either; if there's one thing the 1930s are famous for, it's death rays, those old pulp standbys that never worked but which fired so many imaginations. There ought to be a mad scientist out there somewhere working on a gizmo or a plague to wipe out mankind; it's only proper.

Or consider architecture; yes, this is the London of bling, but this is also the London of the modernist movement. Why shouldn't that new office building, built by the mysterious reclusive industrialist, hide some terrible secret? Its clean lines and Deco touches could be the facade behind which an ageless evil lurks!

Finally, it should be personal. Dracula, if he had any sense, would have made absolutely sure Van Helsing never got anywhere near his office block; the cult assassin, rather than playing with his victims, would have put bullets right through their foreheads. Yet Dracula must have his revenge, so he risks his entire plot to toy with Van Helsing. The cult assassin must show how clever he is, so rather than blow their brains out he captures them and puts them in a deathtrap. Funny how the heroes always seem to escape from those. The point is, death's too good for those pesky heroes. They have to be humiliated, crushed, the last vestiges of those prized Pillars of Sanity swept away, for the villain to feel as though he's really triumphed. The villains take this sort of thing very personally, and they tailor the demise to fit the hero.

That's Technicolor; fascinating, blatant, sinful and technology-driven. I hope you find this useful! Next time: something completely different ...

Trail of Cthulhu: Hauntings

On a completely different note, let's talk ghosts.

Ghost stories are a fiction staple. Writers like M.R. James turned the short haunting tale into an art form, and there's an argument for saying that ghost stories work best in short form rather than long. The short sharp shock is often what's needed here; carry on for too long, and the story gets stale. That said, when the ghost story works in longer form, it works really really well, and that happens at least in part because the authors of those stories never try to explain too much. The best ghost story is one with an irresolvable mystery at the bottom of it, so that the audience goes away with residual chills that will worry their sleep. It's not like a monster movie, where the dynamic almost demands a dramatic climax. A ghost story doesn't need resolution in order to work its magic.

In role playing games, ghosts often take the antagonist role, and usually only for a scene or two. They're an obstacle, sometimes a warning, and that's pretty much it. To my mind that's a pity, since they could be so much more atmospheric. I'm going to kick off this particular mini-discussion with ghosts of place, and I'm going to use Bookhounds of London as a setting.

Ghosts are often considered singular entities, and usually human, or at least linked to humanity. The murdered soul of dear old Auntie Doris, come to tell her doting relatives just where the will is hidden, for instance. There are several human links in that. First the crime of murder, which is something that humans do to other humans. Then there's Auntie Doris herself, and her relations. Finally there's the will, which represents a human desire to pass on an inheritance and accumulate wealth. For some reason the Auntie Dorises of the otherworld never tell their nearest and dearest to go stick it where the sun doesn't shine on account of that cheap casket she was buried in, and what happened to her dear old cat Mittens, eh? Down the river in a sack before Auntie's body was cold, no doubt.

However there have been other ghosts; trains, ships, battlefields, buildings; spirits of place, linked to the material world only by the most tenuous of chains. I particularly like the idea of a ghost building. The NY Times article linked to is talking about structures that never actually existed, of course, but to my way of thinking that makes the best kind of ghost story. An entire skyscraper, designed, planned down to the last rivet, yet never was built. Imagine what might be inside something like that. Who (what?) would work there, live there? Where would it get its heat, its power? What vistas could you see from its upper stories?

In Bookhounds, the protagonists are adrift in London, a tangled and bloated metropolis that has forgotten more about its own history than almost any other location on earth. It has reached out and swallowed villages whole, like Cronos devouring his children. It has seen out the Romans, witnessed the executions of Kings and the murder of princes, been the obsession of a long-dead multitude of men and women, been bombed by airships in the Great War, and in the early watches of the night it dreams about everything it has ever been.

A spirit of place, in a location like London, ought to reflect that half-hidden history. The ghost in this kind of tale isn't something that can be met, or neatly resolved by producing hidden wills. It is a memory trying to recreate itself, but some of its bones are missing and the rest are scattered. There may be great power at the back of it, but that power was squandered years ago, and now only a small residual current remains. Perhaps the memory is of recent vintage, say of a zeppelin raid, or perhaps some buried temple is trying to break free. Maybe the docks are trying to recall their Napoleonic glory days, or a hunting lodge still can't quite forget its past.

There are any number of tales that could be told, but there are some things the Keeper should bear in mind:

1. The truth of the haunting will probably never be known for certain, since most of the facts are unavailable.
2. It cannot be dealt with in the same way as, say, an ordinary antagonist encounter. Ghouls, for example, can be shot, or bargained with. There is no way to communicate with a haunting of place, and probably no way to kill it.
3. It has a great deal of power behind it, possibly magical power. That means other people besides the protagonists are going to be interested in it. That also means it could be very dangerous.

With that in mind, consider the following example:

Jerusalem Lane

This haunting is located in ramshackle early Victorian house overlooking a narrow lane, that runs between two rows of houses, with a long-neglected churchyard at one end and a busy shopping street at the other.

In the early hours of the morning, at any point between two and four o’clock, music can be heard from the upper window of the house, but this music can only be heard by someone standing in the alley. It sounds as though someone were playing scales on a piano, with a young boy or girl singing accompaniment.

At the same time this happens, those in the lane cannot find their way out again. It is as if the lane were impossibly long, and shrouded in shadow at the shopping street end. Some who experience this claim to have seen lights at the churchyard, but nobody has ever tried to investigate them.

The experience is said to last between one and ten minutes, no longer; potential Stability 3 loss.

·    Architecture The house from which the music sounds probably was built in the early 1830s, and would have been part of a larger development. James Camberwell, a prominent architect, was the developer. Camberwell is known to have battled in the courts for the use of the land, as there was some dispute over who owned it: the Church, or the man who sold it to Camberwell. The Church also objected to the height and scale of Camberwell’s development, claiming that it blocked their ancient lights. Camberwell eventually won his case.

·    The Knowledge The churchyard, in common with many other spots in London, is supposed to be a mass grave dating back to the Black Death, but this is probably more rumour than fact. It is supposed to have been dug out in 1873 when the church was deconsecrated and demolished. The bones were removed to a different parish, but the stones (some of them, at least) were left behind. In 1896 the bodies of two young boys were found in the long grass. Each had their throats cut, but otherwise the bodies were unmolested. In the present day the churchyard has a reputation as a lover’s lane, and a gang hangout. It’s not uncommon to find a group of men gambling there, or drinking, during the day, and youngsters sparking with their girls in the evening.

·    Streetwise and/or Magick The spot is thought to have had megapolisomantic significance before the church was demolished, as it stood on a ley path. However the destruction of the church and construction of the housing development has polluted the track, and it no longer provides the magickal power that once it did. However there are still one or two street magicians who try, every so often, to reconnect to the place’s dissipated essence. Strange creatures are thought to haunt the old churchyard, and it might be a place to meet a lone rat-thing or ghoul.

• Credit Rating or Bureaucracy The house in question has been owned by Erasmus Phillipson, an ex-patriot living in Boston, since 1902, and it is rented through the estate agents Dawson & Dawes. It is frequently untenanted for months at a time. The inhabitants never claim to have seen anything themselves, but the place has such an uncanny reputation that it puts off the better class of tenant. The last one was jailed on assault and indecency charges, and the place has been vacant for ten months since then. Before Phillipson there were two owners, a Mr James Copper (died 1900) and Miss Elizabeth Bowden (died 1864). Neither of them had children. Miss Bowden was the first owner of the house, and lived there with her sister for most of her life. Mr Copper did not die in the house and neither did Miss Bowden, though her sister Emily did. 

The Art of Books, part Two

In which I return to the ebook quandary!

This is inspired in part by two book-buying experiences: The Greatcoat, by Helen Dunmore (which I recommend, with a caveat that it isn’t particularly spooky), and Monsters in America by Scott Poole, which I didn’t end up buying because the price was too high.

When last I tackled this topic, Travis (hiya! Hope all’s well in London!) commented on the pricing problem, and said:

 “Firstly, [the vendors] want prices that are near, or in many cases more, than trade paperbacks. We have to agree right away that this is ridiculous.”

Now, Monsters in America speaks to that problem. I didn’t buy that book, because the vendor’s price was wildly overinflated. Monsters is only available in hardback or electronic format at the moment, and Amazon’s price for the Kindle version is only a buck shy of the hardback price. That’s crazy. There’s no way a Kindle version ought to be at the same price as a hardback, particularly given that the hardback is usually considered the premium product. People want those because they want to display them, and they’re often considered collectable because they’re usually a limited print run. There’s just no way that a Kindle version has the same value. The only possible justification for this price point is competition; the vendors are afraid that a rush to buy the Kindle will limit the demand for the hardback. That’s backwards thinking. The market for a hardback doesn’t overlap with the market for electronic. People expect completely different things from a hardback than they do, say, a paperback. Paperbacks are bought to read, and carry around; their covers will get torn and battered, their pages creased and folded. They aren’t expected to be put on display. Nobody’s going to care that their dust jackets are slightly foxed or that the binding is beginning to separate. Whereas a hardback is bought to keep, and is often kept carefully, because their condition speaks directly to their perceived value.

But then, this is the Amazon price, and my take on it is that since Amazon just aren’t booksellers, (though they obviously want to be), they don’t understand the book market well enough to accurately price their stock. Clearly there's also a market war going on which is only going to get hotter, and that will have a knock-on effect on price that has nothing to do with demand for ebooks. Amazon want to sell Kindles, so they make the price of their ebooks attractively low. Meanwhile Barnes and Noble wants to sell Nooks, Apple iPads, and so on and on. I must admit, this is where I start to think that the market has lost its collective wits. Why would a bookseller like Barnes and Noble want to sink their R&D budget into a new electronic toy, when the electronic goods manufacturers are coming out with tablets by the bucketload without needing the impetus of book sales to drive demand? It's like Ben & Jerry's trying to increase market share by inventing the perfect spoon - but I digress.


Going back to price, there’s also the point that, as discussed by Dan Gilmore of the Guardian, publishers don’t like discounting the ebook price too much, and publishers have a big say in how their wares are priced. Gilmore attributes this discount dislike to the publishers’ fear that consumers would become too used to underpriced books, thus reducing demand for anything other than electronic. I’m sure that plays a part, but I tend to agree with the thesis that there’s more to a book’s price than just the cost of paper. There’s editors, proofreaders, marketers and marketing, and a host of other expenses most of which are invisible to the consumer. These costs are fixed, fairly high, and have nothing to do with the format the books are published in. And that, of course, is before we even get to the question of the author's advance. I'm aware that there is mathematical justification for arguing that you don't need all that, that an author can self-publish with nil marketing at a minimal price point and make money. However even a glance at some of the stuff available out there at low-or-no cost shows the benefit lost to the creator in not having a good editor, or proofreader. Much of it is just trash. There may be a few fresh ideas in them, and with a bit of luck someone who really deserves to succeed will do so through ebook self-publishing. Most won't.  


For those who really want to frighten themselves, check out Ewan Morrison's take on where self e-publishing is headed.  I don't think he's wrong. This bit in particular strikes a chord:


"And what has happened to all those new authors who were told they could make money from epublishing? Well, they are working entirely for free (on spec) on the promise of those big 70% royalties on future sales. They write their books, they blog, they net-network and self-promote; they could put in as much as a year's work, all without payment."


On the whole I would agree that the current price of ebooks, as exemplified by Monsters, is crazy. However I don't think we can expect the actual ebook price to fall much below the paperback cost, which is where Dunmore's book comes in. (I bet you thought I'd forgotten about that!) Dunmore's Greatcoat is part of Hammer Horror's new publishing experiment; they seem to be aiming for a more literary style. The Woman In Black is another in this vein. Where this ties in to the current discussion is this: the Greatcoat's price tag was roughly the same as the paperback version, and the decision to buy was made all the easier since there doesn't seem to be a paperback version available via the States. I was happy to buy at that price, in a way that I wasn't for Monsters, and of course the instant delivery was a plus.


Given that the costs to the publisher are more or less fixed, I suspect we can't hope for a significant drop in ebook price below the paperback price point, unless we're prepared to accept a sharp reduction in quality. I also suspect that most consumers are willing to pay paperback prices for ebook versions, though I agree with Travis that it seems only logical for there to be an ebook version bundled with every paperback sold.


However price wasn't the only thing Travis talked about. He also mentioned ownership:


"Secondly, they want everyone to buy, but no one should own. Try loaning your ebook to a friend. Sure, Amazon will let you do it for a limited time, as will B&N, but both also for a limited number of people. And don't forget, you DON'T OWN the ebook, you are licensed to read it."


I agree, this is a problem. However I do wonder how much of this is an actual problem, and how much a problem of perception. Put it another way: did we ever own books? Could we dispose of them precisely as we pleased?


Not quite, I'd argue.


"All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.


This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser."


That version of the caveat is taken from the 1999 Harper Collins paperback, Flashman at the Charge. In some variant forms the prohibition specifically warns purchasers that if they buy the book without its cover (stripping, it's called), they're buying stolen property. Admittedly this is more of an attempt at moral 'suasion than an enforceable prohibition, not unlike the bit at the beginning of the DVD when some spokesman says, more in sorrow than in anger, that you really shouldn't pirate movies. Even so, it still represents the publisher's contention that ownership has its limits.


The publisher has always asserted their ownership of the words within the book, and ebooks haven't changed that. We bought the husks that the words came in, and when we tired of those we lent them on, or gave them away, or sold them. There was no way the publisher could stop us doing that, short of coming into our homes and posting guard over the bookshelf, and that assumes that they wanted to stop us. I suspect that most publishers accepted the second-hand trade as a useful adjunct to their own business; publicity that they didn't have to pay for, which increased the demand for their own back catalogue. Yet there were probably some who resented the percieved loss of revenue, just as video game publishers lament the perceived cost to them of second-hand sales.


The chief difference between the trade in ebooks and the trade in the physical version is that where the publisher could never control what happened to the words after they left the shop, now they can.


Give someone, anyone, control, and they tend to want to exercise it. They would justify this as acting in their own self-interest, though frankly I doubt that many of them'd think very carefully about where their true self-interest lies, never mind about wider problems of the market and future growth of the business. There has always been a short supply of Timoleons. Besides, it's always easier to say No than Yes, because No has a definite, quantifiable result, where Yes could go almost anywhere. Yes could end up floating around on the net for free, which I suspect is the publisher's real nightmare.


I do see this ownership issue as a problem. People have become used to being able to lend or give their words to others, and a change in format isn't going to change this. Eventually there will have to be a system in place that allows an ebook, once bought, to be transferred to another user. However I also think that we're in a transitional stage. We still haven't got a reliable cross-platform delivery app for ebooks that can be read by all tablets and operating systems; the equivalent of having plenty of words, but no paper. How then can we expect to have a lending system in place?


I think this is a problem that time alone can solve. That shouldn't stop people demanding the service, of course, but we probably ought to accept that this particular demand may not be met quickly.


That's it from me on this topic - at least for the moment!