Making Hounds Modern (Bookhounds of London)

I know you’re away from your excellent blog at the moment for personal reasons, but when you’re back (not sure if you take suggestions) I’d be really interested in how you’d generally approach updating Bookhounds to the present(ish) day.

Thanks to Fred for the suggestion! 

Would I update Bookhounds to the modern day, as in 2020s? I'm not sure. 

Part of my hesitation is due to the simple fact that there are plenty of modern-day horror games already, some of them very well established. Night's Black Agents and Esoterrorists being the two obvious examples. True, they have a different feel, being espionage-tinged rather than mystery-oriented. But they would be fighting for the same thoughtspace. 

That's a minor issue. 

The larger point has to do with M.R. James and emotional resonance.

Eton's master of ghost stories, M.R. James, was known to wax lyrical on the subject of atmosphere. 

 ... the setting seems to me all-important, since in it there is the greatest opportunity for variety.

It is upon this and upon the first glimmer of the appearance of the supernatural that pains must be lavished. But we need not, we should not, use all the colours in the box. In the infancy of the art we needed the haunted castle on a beetling rock to put us in the right frame: the tendency is not yet extinct, for I have but just read a story with a mysterious mansion on a desolate height in Cornwall and a gentleman practising the worst sort of magic. How often, too, have ruinous old houses been described or shown to me as fit scenes for stories.

‘Can’t you imagine some old monk or friar wandering about this long gallery?’ No, I can’t ...

Roughly speaking, the ghost should be a contemporary of the seer. Such was the elder Hamlet and such Jacob Marley. The latter I cite with confidence and in despite of critics, for, whatever may be urged against some parts of The Christmas Carol, it is, I hold, undeniable that the introduction, the advent, of Jacob Marley is tremendously effective.

And be it observed that the setting in both these classic examples is contemporary and even ordinary. The ramparts of the Kronborg and the chambers of Ebenezer Scrooge were, to those who frequented them, features of every-day life.

In a story-heavy game of this sort, you need to hit the key notes. You need to be able to persuade the players that this is where they want to spend their time. James makes an excellent point about the supernatural: the setting should be contemporary and ordinary.

But.

Emotional resonance requires a shared emotional state. You need to bring the players with you on the journey. You need to make this setting Bookhounds and at the same time make it modern. It needs to feel contemporary to those who inhabit the setting. 

The question then becomes, what makes a setting Bookhounds as opposed to, say, any other game setting, and how to make that modern while at the same time retaining its Bookhounds qualities? 

Once you know that, you can nail the Contemporary bit down.

The global Depression has driven an unprecedented number of collectors – both individual and institutional – to sell off their holdings for whatever they can get. The global crisis has also driven an unprecedented number of over-educated, morally bankrupt aristocrats and resentful would-be Great Beasts to experiment with black magic … including the Cthulhu Mythos. Between the two groups, sellers and buyers, a specialty market has sprung up in blasphemous tomes, no questions asked.

You cater to that market ...

Now, you could argue that sounds a lot like the 2020s, and broadly speaking, you're not wrong. However, I would argue there's a better version of London you could use. One that more accurately fits the great Depression/Great Depravity model, with its resentful Beasts and whinging aristocrats. One that is more Bookhounds than the 2020s.

The London Nobody Knows (James Mason)

Say hello to the late 1960s early 70s. 

You've had the Wars. You've had Suez. Mau-Mau and Maylasia. The Empire is on its way out. There's war damage, bombed out wastes and the occasional still-ticking bomb hidden away in the mess. Thirteen Wasted Years! (of Conservative rule). Vietnam is smoldering away and, while the UK isn't directly involved in that mess, several thousand troops are Over There along with a massive quantity of British made munitions. Mind you, if you don't like Over There there's always Across The Water, in Ireland, where things are getting very nasty. The economy's sputtering and while we haven't quite reached the age of constant strike action, you can see it without a telescope. The country (the world) is months away from an oil crisis, an economic collapse, a banking crisis, and in Britian's case a collapse of the government.

You've got a UK that's all but on its knees, and a London that still hasn't excavated itself from the rubble left behind by Nazi bombs. A London that's lost its shipping status and now has eight square miles of derelict land right at its heart, where its Docklands used to be. 

If that isn't ripe for horror storytelling I don't know what is. 

Added to that, you have the bonus of Fall of Delta Green, which is also a Gumshoe setting. This is happening at about the same time, and you can liberally borrow from it to enhance your game.

How would I adapt the existing rules for this setting? 

Well, the great thing about picking a period like the 1960s-70s is there's less of a need to adapt the character sheet or invent new abilities. Yes, technically there is Computing, but it's such a specialized skill and directly affects the lives of so few that I'd be inclined to leave it to the Boffins, to the NPC experts. Other than that, I don't think there are many, if any, abilities that need to be added or modified. 

I would be inclined to steal the Chase and Thrilling Chase rules from Night's Black Agents, if only to recreate The Sweeny.

                                                                                                                                                                        I don't think I'd change the character creation rules with its heavy emphasis on creating characters who run away. Running away is a good idea. There's no reason to create combat monsters. This still isn't a combat game.

Not sure I'd steal the Cherry rules. Again, this isn't that kind of game. You still aren't playing hyper-competent people. If anything, you're creating barely competent people. Flawed heroes. More likely flawed protagonists - forget the hero part.

What I might steal are the achievement rules. This feels like the kind of game where pools deplete more quickly than the original, and a means of instant refresh midway through a scene could improve play. Besides, in gaming, achievements aren't limited to the Halo and Modern Warfares of this world. Any game can have them. Even point-and-click adventures.  

The biggest rules draw, from my POV, is that you wouldn't have to change the Auction rules.

Auctions are at the heart of Bookhounds. A Bookhounds game without some backroom shenanigans and Lovejoy antics at the sales room just isn't a Bookhounds game.

Lovejoy Action At The Auction

I can't help but think, however, that if you introduce the internet and outside bids to the auction room you need some kind of rules finesse to account for it. Greater Auction pools, possibly, or some means of making the auction a Thrilling contest in the same way Night's Black Agents makes chases thrilling. Which would also mean bigger Auction pools or at least an easier way to get Auction refreshes mid-contest.

Admittedly in the 1960s-70s you have the option of telephone bidding, but it's relatively rare, in-period. You don't need a rules finesse for that.

In any setting change, TBH, one golden rule ought to be Keep It Simple. You can tack on a Stupid, there, if you like, for the whole KISS. Any settings change that lets me keep the major mechanic of the setting intact, no finesse or additional rules, is a good thing.

That's the rules bit discussed. 

However, the biggest setting change would have to be international travel.

There's a travel component in Bookhounds 1930s. You're expected to wander off to forgotten libraries in the Home Counties, perhaps to attend auctions on the continent. No further, though. It is Bookhounds of London, after all. Edinburgh, perhaps Berlin, is about as far afield as anyone expects you to go.

The 60s, though, is the dwindling of the Jet Set era. 

The Jet Set kicks off in the 1950s-ish, with international travel winging across the ocean blue. It's the purview of the rich and brainless, of course. The ones with cash to pay. But it's getting cheaper and cheaper all the time. By the time the late 1960s roll around, flights become truly international. Anyone can go anywhere. 

Which means your Bookhounds might as easily be in New York as Norwich. 

In fact, from a game perspective it might be fun for them to spend some time in New York since that city's famous Book Row still exists. It's dying off, of course. But from a plot perspective a dying Book Row is evocative, as well as a handy source of book stock. Besides, American buyers have deep pockets. You need buyers to keep yourself in the manner to which you would like to become accustomed.

Plus, if this is early 1970s then we're a couple short breaths from turning New York into a Warriors simulator. Which has its own plot lure.

However, and going back to London for a moment, one of the biggest draws to relocating Bookhounds to this period is London itself. You can still find relics of the Victorian age, the Edwardians, Art Deco rubbing shoulders with Nazi bomb sites. Anything you want to still be there in the 1960s can plausibly still be there in the 1960s. This becomes less and less likely the further you head into the future. Many of the things seen in the James Mason documentary (the full version of which is on YouTube) will be gone within a decade or so. 

Not all of them, mind. I'm reading the book on which that documentary is based and just come across a bit where it waxes lyrical about the Bunch of Grapes, a fun little pub on the river currently owned by Sir Ian McKellern and which hasn't changed all that much since it was built. 

AP Archive

Not every pub can have a famous savior, of course. The vast majority of the Docklands the Grapes was built in has long since vanished, including all the pubs that used to be next to the Grapes. Still, the boozer's a highly recommended venue, if you have an hour or two to spare in London. That rear balcony overlooking the river is not to be missed.

Leaving aside locations, this is also the last time period you can reasonably expect to have veterans of the First and the Second World War still living. Retired, probably, in the case of Great War vets, but still living. Whether this is useful to you will depend on your plots, but it can be very handy to have someone still living who remembers X - whatever X may be - and was a first-hand witness to events.

The main book goes to great lengths to describe each section of London and none of that has to change. The East End is still the East End. You don't see the great regeneration of the 1980s and 90s. Canary Wharf isn't even a glimmer in a developer's eye. 

If you've already played Bookhounds in the 1930s then you probably have established locations, NPCs, rivals, bookstores. Some of them will probably still be around. Even the ones that aren't leave memories behind. A place like Du Bourg's, for instance, which was already on its last legs, might have gone under at some point during or after the War. The building may still exist. Is its cadaverous founder still down there in the basement, waiting for its people to read out the finances of the last year?

What I'm getting at is, if you've already played 1930s and now want to move on, relocating to the late 1960s doesn't mean you have to throw everything away. The greasy spoon the 1930s characters went to time after time can still exist. Or, if it's changed and under new management, the management can be the kids or grandkids of the originals. Same for the pubs, the shops, the auction houses - everything stays broadly the same, just with greyer hair and a paunch. 

That eager beaver young constable, for instance, who walked the beat in the 1930s is probably still alive in the 1960s. Retired, likely, or very close to it. Probably had a promotion or two. But he still exists. Old Doctor Farringdon is most likely dead but the surgery he worked in is still there. The pub everyone went to at end of day is still there. Cracks in the walls, most likely, and there may be bomb damage. But it's still there.

Basically, if you go this route, then London is still London and is recognizably the London your players are already familiar with. Changed, yes. But still with enough similarity to the original that you don't have to start reinventing any wheels.

It's also one of the last times you'll see Old English traditions and customs in their unpolished state. Guy Fawkes. May Day. Old football. Cheese rolling. Yes, some of these things still exist in touristified form today, but it is touristified, made safe, made innocuous. It's not the way it was, for good or for ill.

From BFI's Barley Mow documentary

I don't think you'll find that one on YouTube but I recommend seeking out the BFI DVD if you like that sort of thing. Might be on the BFI Player as well; not sure.

In summary: 

If you want to update Bookhounds to a modern(ish) setting, have at it, but I would recommend the late 60s early 70s rather than current modern day. There's enough left of the past that you don't need to change much in your historic background. The rules can stay broadly the same, with some minor tweaks. The major markers of the setting - economic near-destitution, rocky politics, the desolation and depravity of the great and good - are all still there.

Enjoy!

                     

     

Campaign Design Night's Black Agents - Stone Age Soundtracks

 

Stone Age Soundtracks (Channel 4, original concept Paul Deveraux)

The quality's not the best but I recommend watching the whole thing. I have mentioned this documentary before; it stuck with me.

Brief and inadequate summary: our ancestors discovered the power of ritual sound by accident, in ancient caves which they transformed into temples. They attempted to replicate the effect, with some success, in artificial environments - long barrows and similar megalithic sites. 

That's the core concept for the Node I contemplate coming up again and again in this campaign: the Ritual Site.

Before I said: 

This, ultimately, is location-based. In the earliest days it would have had sacred fanes high up on the mountain top, some grove or cave or other hidden place where the rituals are conducted. There the Omadios, eater of raw (human) flesh, awaits its portion, and in exchange grants a kind of extended life. Brings the dead back from the lands of Hades. At least, so goes some of the tales.

Omadios is a variant name for Dionysus, as in Dionysus the Raw-Eater. Sacrifices of flesh, usually thought to be human flesh. There's an old tale of Zagreus, son of Zeus, in which the child was butchered by Zeus' enemies and his flesh torn apart, devoured, some of it cooked. When Hermes discovered what had happened he informed Zeus, who destroyed the child's killers with divine thunderbolts. Zagreus' heart was the only thing that survived, and was later used to create Dionysus. 

From that myth our vampires are born, the Pentheus and the Maenad variants. They hear a sound, a song, that echoes through the ages. Some claim this sound is the echo of the Titans, the hideous creatures that tore apart infant Zagreus. That, if they can somehow make sense of it, the Titans will come again. Of course, this is coming from a group of creatures whose mental stability can best be described as Shaky, so take that with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, it is what some of them work towards, even if in an indirect way. They are constantly looking for old ritual sites, so they can examine the design and use it in their own projects. 

This has been going on for a very long time. It's likely that some of those old, abandoned castles mentioned in the Dracula Dossier were ritual sites with their own sound chambers, once upon a time. That locations like Carfax or HMS Prosperine might have sound chambers, or that someone's been working on an old orphanage run by Heal the Children to turn its concrete corridors into a ritual location. Opportunities abound.   

Mechanically, something similar already exists within the Dracula Dossier setting: the Red Room.

The Red Room was a place of power for Dracula in London. Magically (or tellurically) designed to focus and amplify vampiric energies and wavelengths, he used it (or planned to use it) in 1894 to cement his hold over the high-society degenerates he recruited to his faction. Since then, Edom might have taken it over for their own purposes, or Dracula may have created another, or both. [p187 DD]

In that text the Room is a singular area in a specific place, with a variable power set. I'm proposing multiple Rooms in many areas, with one known power set (create vampires, under specific ritual conditions) and any number of unknown power sets. Not all of the Rooms work. Many or most probably don't work, or, if they do, they work in unexpected ways. Not even the vampires understand them, though there are some within the Conspiracy who claim they do. 

The perennial McGuffin in this situation is something I'm going to call the Instruction Manual. It might be a crumbling set of texts held in some forgotten monastery, translations of some Greek histories that go all the way back to Herodotus. It might be a transcript from the researches of the magician John Dee or some similar occult experimenter. It might be research notes from a Silicon Valley tech bro relying on the previous researches of a former Nazi, but whatever it is, it represents the most likely means of finding out how the Ritual is supposed to work. 

Everyone wants it. Factions within the Conspiracy - all of them a Pentheus variant - want it because they think it will help them create more Pentheus. The Maenad want it because they think it will create more Maenad. Other occult factions want it because they believe it will help them do X, whatever X may be. Immortality is a popular choice, but you do you. 

Meanwhile the various factions continue with their occult traditions, experiments, what-have-you, relying on the broken version of the Ritual that they think they understand, in hopes of getting what they want. This broken version sometimes does what it's supposed to but there are nearly always side effects, and most of the time it doesn't work at all. This may be because the Ritual site is contaminated or broken in some way, or it may be for some other reason. 

Note that in this version the Conspiracy has factions within factions working against each other. Broadly speaking, this is true of any organization. Regardless of the united front it presents to the world anything, whether it is a business, political party or other collective organization, has factions within it that want to promote X, whatever X is. Point being that, in this fictionalized example, those factions are hyperviolent blood drinkers who may or may not be insane.

The important thing to bear in mind, from a Director's perspective, is that this Conspiracy has one defined Goal: understand, and replicate, the Ritual which creates Vampires. Regardless of who's doing it, this is what they are doing. That gives this Conspiracy an end goal, whether they're in Turkey examining Neolithic sites, in Ireland digging up a megalith long barrow, or in some secret underground bunker in, say, Texas, surrounded by technology of dubious origin.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!    

 

Campaign Design Night's Black Agents Burn Stakes II

 ... I see this kind of vampire as something that arises from a shared delusion, created less by a Sire and more by a Circumstance. At the back of it all might be a Dionysus figure but, ultimately, these vampires arise from supernatural occurrences and places and are drawn together by that shared experience, by the madness that propels them forward, always forward, in search of that elusive melody that lingers in the back of what is left of their mind ...

OK, no storms forecast for this weekend so with a bit of luck I can finish this thought.

Duckman

I see this vampire divided into two types. 

The Pentheus is the planner, the organizer, the one trying to make sense of it all. They're the backbone of the Conspiracy. They accept their condition but are trying to prevent themselves sinking into madness. They don't really grasp the true nature of their condition because, if they did, they'd stop functioning. They see the others as a kind of Awful Warning. In a Dracula Dossier game, Dracula is the ultimate Pentheus, hanging onto sanity by the atoms on the tips of their fingernails.

The Maenads, on the other hand, are children of madness. They fulfil the commands of Dionysus, or at least that is what they say they do. They carry on a ritual whose purposes have long been forgotten. They have no idea if what they're doing is what they are supposed to do. They see themselves as driven by a higher power. Think of them as you would the Cthulhu Cult, except there is no Cthulhu, no promise of anything divine or beyond mortal understanding. Where they go, bloodshed follows. 

At the heart of it all is the Ritual, which is how you get more vampires. 

This, ultimately, is location-based. In the earliest days it would have had sacred fanes high up on the mountain top, some grove or cave or other hidden place where the rituals are conducted. There the Omadios, eater of raw (human) flesh, awaits its portion, and in exchange grants a kind of extended life. Brings the dead back from the lands of Hades. At least, so goes some of the tales. 

Now, in this degraded modern life, a sacred fane might as easily be a site of mass murder. A place where blood soaks the soil, perhaps because of a terrorist attack, or some other hideous deed. From this horror madness springs eternal, and a corpse left in this place, treated appropriately, might come to life once more. It might help if that corpse, in life, committed some atrocities, or shed their brother's blood, or, or, or ...

Because that is the horror of the Pentheus. They don't know how it works. They serve the Ritual in hope of getting more Pentheus to carry on the tradition, but when it comes right to it the vampires don't understand the whatever-it-is that made them so there's no way for them to reliably make more. Instead, they flock to places where tragedies happen, sometimes engineering events so that a tragedy happens, and all the while it could be a colossal flop. All that effort, and no vampire to show for it. Or, which is slightly worse from the Pentheus' POV, all that effort and only a Maenad to show for it. 

Meanwhile the Maenads flutter off like exploding butterflies. They have absolutely no self-control. They do not care what happens to them and they definitely do not care about other people. At all. A Maenad is driven by the song. They can hear it at the back of their minds. They might constantly hum it, or tunelessly sing it. A Maenad with some musical ability might perform it, but never perfectly, never the way they know it ought to be performed.

These creatures die off, but not before doing tremendous damage.

This kind of Conspiracy best resembles a terrorist organization. We think of these the same way we do organized armies. They have generals, officers, troops, a mission; they work towards a defined goal. This absolutely is not how these groups work in practice. Yes, there may well be a guiding brain - the Pentheus - out there somewhere, trying to make sense of all this. There may be schemes. There may be long-term plans. But the organization itself is as loosely structured as it is possible to be, because that's the only way it can survive and recruit. Everyone's hand is against it. It cannot afford the kind of structure an army has, because armies can be identified and met on the battlefield. This is, at its heart, a civilian organization. Destructured. Disorganized. 

Lethal.  

Next time: an RPG exploration of numinous sound and ritual locations, with a view to creating a new kind of Node.

Campaign Design - Night's Black Agents Burn Stakes

The mob has spoken!

BURN: In burn mode games, psychological damage is more intense; the actions Many of agents must take inevitably burn away their humanity. Your Stability is capped at 12 and degrades faster. Killing is never easy, and never free.

STAKES:  The characters derive their actions from a higher purpose than mere survival or “get the job done” ethics: patriotism, the search for knowledge, protection of the innocent, or even justified revenge. 

SUPERNATURAL: Their markers are strange superstitions, often surrounding childbirth and burial customs; their emphasis is hunger. 

With an additional call for drunken Dionysiac vampires. Well. 

In a long-ago post about the Crawling Chaos Nyarlathotep I said:

In game, the protagonists are effectively the sons and daughters of Pentheus [tragic hero of the Greek play Bacchae]. Like the King of Thebes and the narrator of Lovecraft's short piece they too seek out the inner workings of the mystery ... The Crawling Chaos represents the reward all seekers into the mysteries ultimately receive: ignominious and pitiless destruction, not just of them, but of all their future hopes. Snakes and forgotten tram cars are their only monuments. Or, in RPG terms, a crumpled piece of paper with hasty erasure marks and repeated notches along the dwindling Sanity bar. Moreover none of them can claim innocence; ultimately this was what they wanted. Else why start on the journey in the first place?

    Stranger: Ah! Would you like to see them in their gatherings upon the mountain?

    Pentheus: Very much. Ay, and pay uncounted gold for the pleasure.

    Stranger: Why have you conceived so strong a desire?

    Pentheus: Though it would pain me to see them drunk with wine-

    Stranger: Yet you would like to see them, pain and all.

Let's talk OPFOR. 

In a Dionysiac chronicle, the ultimate mystery is the Maenad itself. It's not clear who they were or what they were up to, historically speaking. They frolic. They are intoxicated by the Divine. They speak in tongues and commit atrocities. Devotees of frenzy. They might commit terrible deeds in their own right, or they might call on Dionysius to torment and destroy their enemies. Either way, where they go, trouble follows. 

Dionysus itself is a peculiar creature. Sometimes called "the raging one" and "the mad one" they are known for pulling apart their enemies and, sometimes, putting them back together again. They delight in transforming; in one set of tales, after driving their enemies mad they turn them into bats. Forcing women to kill their children or their loved ones is a common theme in Dionysus tales. The best-known Dionysus story has Pentheus, the tragic hero, murdered by his own mother and sisters. 

He touched the wild
Cheek, crying: "Mother, it is I, thy child,
Thy Pentheus, born thee in Echîon's hall!
Have mercy, Mother! Let it not befall
Through sin of mine, that thou shouldst slay thy son!"
  But she, with lips a-foam and eyes that run
Like leaping fire, with thoughts that ne'er should be
On earth, possessed by Bacchios utterly,
Stays not nor hears. Round his left arm she put
Both hands, set hard against his side her foot,
Drew . . . and the shoulder severed!—Not by might
Of arm, but easily, as the God made light
Her hand's essay. And at the other side
Was Ino rending; and the torn flesh cried,
And on Autonoë pressed, and all the crowd
Of ravening arms. Yea, all the air was loud
With groans that faded into sobbing breath

 A chronicle of this type ought run red with blood, gore shed by those least expected. 

The main book uses the vukodklak as a supernatural vampire example and, broadly speaking, I'm going to use that as a stats template. 

When an evildoer dies unpunished and lays undiscovered for 40 days, he rises again as a vukodlak ...

With a few modifications. 

I'm going to drop the following powers as being unhelpful to the narrative:  Blight Crops, Tunneling (in rat form), Turn to Creature (rat, black eagle). Also the Compulsion Count Seeds. 

I'm going to replace with: Compulsion Tear An Opponent Apart, Powers: Strength, Venom (hallucinogen, through song rather that spit - think of it as an entrancing technique that causes riots), Summoning (particularly those it shares blood with or has drained blood from). 

I see this kind of vampire as something that arises from a shared delusion, created less by a Sire and more by a Circumstance. At the back of it all might be a Dionysus figure but, ultimately, these vampires arise from supernatural occurrences and places and are drawn together by that shared experience, by the madness that propels them forward, always forward, in search of that elusive melody that lingers in the back of what is left of their mind. 

***

OK, I'm going to cut this week's post short. Apologies! We had another massive storm that knocked out power over the weekend. I'm playing catch-up and have no time to finish this thought. Let's return to it next week ...

Playing With Real Toys: Pod Hotels (RPG All)

… 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.

I said at the time:

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!

The Senses (RPG All)

First, a bit of housekeeping.

I shall be abroad next weekend, so no post. It's a bit of an unexpected trip for me but I need to see a tailor. No, really. A tailor. For lo, I am that in need of one, forsooth.

Now, on with the show.

I had intended to do a bit on Silent Hill 2, as the remake is out and, as a treat to self in October, I bought a copy. The plan - sinister and wicked, I'm sure you'll agree - was to play yesterday and talk about it today. I'd even intended to record some footage. 

Life had other plans. I couldn't get the damn thing to play. It hard crashed every time I left the cemetery, roundabout where Silent Hill Ranch is. I convinced myself it was a game problem, but in fact it was a me problem. I had to turn off my VPN. Once I did that, it worked a treat. However, the footage I'd been trying to shoot was lost to the void and it's difficult to get that 'first time' energy when I'd already seen the intro three or four times by that point. 

Still. What little I've seen so far is convincing. If you enjoy the genre and the series, it's worth your money and time. 

It does mean that I'm left with little to talk about. I haven't seen much beyond the first half hour or so. I haven't been to Neely's Bar. I can say that, while this is very like the original, it isn't exactly alike beat-for-beat. The game can still catch you by surprise, even if you - as I have - played the original, perhaps many times before. 

Let's talk about atmosphere and the senses. 

Touch. Sight. Taste. Smell. Hearing.

Let's use a stock location to explore options: an art gallery. Located in a not-quite-fashionable part of town. What used to be tenements and low-rent housing has become just that little bit gentrified, and this is the result. 

The sky is dark. Streetlamps gleam, little oases of light in inky darkness. The air is heavy and wet; a storm is coming. A brace of stars glimmer in a cloud's rent, the moon smothered. Not another soul on the street, but there are lights in some of the windows, a radio's buzz, laughter, a touch of warmth.

The gallery's doors are wide open.

The first piece that greets you as you walk in the door is a sculpture half the size of a man, twisted as if under a colossal weight or pressure, its tendons gleaming. The floor under your feet is somehow sticky; the soles of your shoes protest just a little every time you move. Peppermint. The antiseptic air is underlaid with the slightest whimper of peppermint. The sensation waters your mouth, just a little.

Touch, Sight. Taste. Smell. Hearing.

It's worth your while borrowing a trick from Dungeons and Dragons. In that system, and in BRPG to a degree though not as often, it's standard practice to write up a brief description of each room in the dungeon as the players enter it for the first time. 

Unfortunately, Dungeons and Dragons often wastes that opportunity by telling you the dimensions of the room or other trivia. As if it matters whether this room is 20 foot by 15. What matters is what the floor is made of, whether it's rough, smooth or something else, whether the air is fresh or foul.

If you've ever been into a house or office that's been shut up for a while, you know it instantly by how the air feels. A kind of trapped, heavy sensation, underlaid with a little damp or rot. If something died in here it decomposed long ago but there may still be a little reek, adding its stench to the mix. If you're sensitive, you may break out in hives or find it difficult to breathe. Your skin may reflexively prickle, as if touched by a thousand needles at once.

It's difficult to think of the right words, on the fly. Much easier to do as D&D does and write them down in advance. Which is what the Cameos and Stock Locations in GUMSHOE are for. They give you something to hang your ideas on; what you do after that is up to you.

Some ideas:

• Touch:  
• Slippery, twisting, a cat's reluctance.
• Sticky, its casing covered in fluids.
• Hot, just the wrong side of comfortable to the touch.
• Cold, as if it's been dipped in negative space.
• Sight:
• Far-off, just on the edge of perception.
• Somehow visible in every possible detail, to the least crevice and crack.
• Impossible to see completely, it fades in and out.
• Behind you - but you can see a portion out of the corner of your eye/
• Taste:
• Cloying, sweetness overpowering and omnipresent.
• Sharp, acrid, bitter, poisonous.
• Molten sunlight that lingers and vanishes.
• A sensory nail through the tongue that no amount of milk will kill.
• Smell:
• It rips through your nostrils demanding instant attention.
• Antiseptic, bitter, a thousand thousand hospital floors.
• The least hint of something, like daffodils in the Milky Way.
• Leaden absence of life, light, hope - dust, and nothing more.
• Hearing:
• A siren's bold wail, out of sight but drawing nearer.
• Laughter's warm spice, without malice, without shame.
• A sudden glimmer of caution, a warning just on the edge of perception.
• Battering and blowing, a gale demanding entrance.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Libro de San Cipriano (Bookhounds, RPG All)

Whatever a man prefers to God, that he makes a god to himself. 

Attributed to St. Cyprian of Antioch

1.     Jonas Sulfurino [Sulphury Jonas].
2.     Libro de San Cipriano [Book of St. Cyprian of Antioch]: Great and True Sorcerer's Treasure.
3.     c. 1828 [Spanish, translation from the Latin]
4.     Private press; mezzotint
5.     Quarto, grangerized, rebacked c 1890, marginalia 
6.     Embroidered binding
7.     Private collection, Grandes de España Abrantes
8.     Good condition 
9.     No references
10.     Includes text from the Petit Albert, Grand Grimoire and Key of Solomon, purports to contain healing magic and means of finding hidden treasure.

Any Hound who gets an opportunity to look at this piece immediately notices something odd. The book is said to be rebacked; that means its spine was damaged beyond repair and it had to be completely made new. If so, the repair was remarkable in its fidelity to the original. The embroidered binding, which resembles tiny eyes woven into the design, is without flaw. It is impossible to see the repair at all. 

The book is fairly typical for its type. Allegedly the wisdom of St. Cyprian, a pagan, passed down by Sulphury Jonas - clearly a devilish pseudonym - this is the usual mishmash of occult 'wisdom' seen in any of a dozen similar texts. Its claims to fame are the binding and those grangerized mezzotints, depicting occult ceremonies and demon summonings, which lend it flair. It looks more valuable than it ought to be, and is definitely eye-catching.

The Grandes de España Abrantes, if anyone thinks to check, is not the Duke of Abrantes. Pity, as the Dukedom has the blood of Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II in its lineage, which would lend the book a certain gravitas. This Grandes is in fact a much more obscure line of nobility.

If anyone really digs, and spends points digging, they discover that the Grandes is one Harry Wicklow, a notorious scam artist whose specialty is obscure foreign nobility. If the Hounds track him down and make him talk, he says he picked the Book of St. Cyprian up at a French auction house, which claimed to have bought it from a Spanish owner. It was rebacked when he bought it, and the embroidered binding was, when he had it, extensively damaged. He doesn't know when it was repaired. He knows he didn't do it, and neither did the French.

Those who skim it pick up two dedicated points towards divination magic and talisman making. Those who study it, and who make a point of cracking the obscure alchemical code in the marginalia, pick up 1 point Mythos. 

Students who go that far claim to discover references to hidden treasure somewhere in Abrantes and dream nightly of an obscure tumbledown monastery in Bemposta where this treasure is supposedly buried. The monastery is featured in the mezzotints grangerized into the book. According to the alchemical marginalia there is a means of directly transporting a scholar to the monastery from anywhere in the world; they brew a potion according to the book's direction, drink it, and are flown to the monastery by demons. 

Anyone with Mythos who makes a point of investigating this claim realizes that the potion is in fact Create Dream Gate, a one-time-only transportation of the person who consumes the potion to a location in the Dreamlands, actual destination unknown. 

If anyone does complete this ritual they are never seen again. However, when this happens the book's condition improves. The embroidered binding is already near-perfect and the rebacking almost impossible to spot. If someone completes the ritual again then the book improves from Good to Very Good condition, increasing its value. 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Sinister Buns (Call of Cthulhu, Hong Kong Cinema)

I held off getting a blu-ray player for a long time. 

I didn’t see the need. Drives are dead. DVDs are yesterday’s tech. Physical is so last century.  

Then those wicked pork buns drew me back in. 

See, physical is still the best way to get hold of anything that isn’t Main Street USA. If I want Hollywood, if I want anything North American really, it is easily had. There are any number (God, oh God, so many) ways to get that content. Streaming options beyond the dreams of avarice. 

But. 

If I want, say, The Untold Story, how do I get that? If I want any kind of non-English language media, how the hell do I get it? There must be Spanish, German, Italian streaming services, and I shall want a VPN at the very least to access them, never mind a working knowledge of the language to understand the menu options. Netflix is a gateway but it offers only a glimpse; besides, damned if I’m paying $22/month for yet another streaming service. 

No, if I wanted my pork buns – hot from Terracotta in the UK – I’d have to get an external blu ray drive for my PC. Which is exactly what I did. 

The Untold Story is a retelling of the infamous Eight Immortals killings in Macau. Two high stakes gamblers, one a restaurant owner with a family of ten, argued over debts. The restaurant owner Zheng Lin refused to pay Huang Zhiheng so Huang, in a fit of rage, tried to force Zheng to pay up. That went badly wrong and Huang killed Zheng’s whole family, thus becoming the owner of the Eight Immortals restaurant. Briefly.  

How do you get rid of all those bodies? 

Well, there’s a perfectly good restaurant in need of meat for its famous pork buns … or so the story goes. That part may be apocryphal, but it became part of the narrative.  

The 1993 film version won awards and made a ton of money at the box office, but due to its graphic scenes of rape and murder – plus, of course, those buns – it was age restricted to 18 and up. It’s mildly notorious as a slasher, but difficult to get hold of. Unless you buy from an outlet like the folks at Terracotta.  

Having seen it, my review: 

It’s an odd little duck. The killing scenes are about as bloody and nasty as anything you’re going to see on screen and Anthony Wong Chau-sang as killer Wong Chi-hang is a standout. The comedy cops in hot pursuit are an incompetent bunch of bozos; they’re all stereotypes of one kind or other, led by their fearless Lieutenant Lee, and there’s a peculiar running gag where Lee parades around with a host of prostitutes on his arm much to the disgust of his only female subordinate Bo (Emily Kwan) who wants Lee all to herself. It doesn’t pair all that well with the main plot. That said, it does end in a stunning moment when all those same comedy cops realize that the pork buns they’ve been chowing down on free of charge came with a hidden cost. 

Cheap, nasty, entertaining. It may be the unrelenting realism of the gore scenes (a stark contrast with modern cinema) but it really does stick in your mind in a way that few other films can. 

If you want a good retelling of the pork buns saga I recommend Kento Bento’s version, which I believe is on Nebula; not sure as it’s been a while since I watched Nebula. 

From a gaming POV there have been plenty of examples of suspicious meat on the menu. Sweeny Todd, Telltale’s Walking Dead (the comic too, for that matter, in a different plotline), Fritz Haarmann the Vampire of Hanover, who allegedly sold the meat of his victims on the black market – take your pick, really. 

There haven’t been as many haunted restaurants. 

There is a starting Call of Cthulhu scenario in the main book, The Haunting. It’s been around for donkey’s years. You can find it in the free-to-play Quick Start rules. In that scenario the investigators are called in to investigate a haunted house. So far, so normal – at least, normal in a Cthulhu-esque way. 

What if it wasn’t a haunted house? What if it was a haunted restaurant? What would need to change? 

Not much, really. The Keeper would need to change some of the details of the ground floor plan. But the plot would tick on regardless, and you’d have some interesting horror options – particularly in the kitchen. The family would live above the restaurant, so you wouldn’t have to change much about the upper floors. 

The Macario family would be the ones running the restaurant of course; a nice little red-sauce-spaghetti joint. Until Mr. Macario decided to add a little extra to the Bolognese. Then there’s a discreet pause while the place is shut up for … let’s call it redecoration.  At that point Mr. Knott, the building’s owner, calls in the investigators. He wants to rent the place out to new tenants but the restaurant’s reputation frightens off any interested parties. If they could just give the place the all-clear, he could rent the place out. 

A potential plot change: as written Vittorio Macario, the former restauranteur, is locked up in the asylum. His only plot function is to hint at a way of defeating the evil. 

Suppose he has a secondary function. Suppose he escapes from the asylum with one thought on his mind: a grand reopening of Macario’s Restaurant.  

He’ll need meat for the Bolognese, of course … 

That’s it for this week. Enjoy! 

Playing With Spines (GUMSHOE)

 

original source Randy Writes a Novel

If you're new to this whole GM/Director/Master of Minds malarkey, you'll probably look at the section on Clues and Spines in the main book and say 'crikey!' Possibly also 'foozle!' and 'pob!' because you have a full vocabulary.

A straightforward investigation can be seen as a series of scenes arranged in a straight line, with multiple ways to move from each scene to the one following it. Improvisation consists of reacting to the players by switching the order of scenes around or interpolating new scenes in this order. This is simple to write and run, but difficult to hide.

A looser structure will still consist of an investigative line, in which the Investigators pursue a series of core clues until they achieve a resolution of some sort. This is called the spine.

 Trail of Cthulhu p192

Let's play amateur chiropractor. 

The main setting for this example is Night's Black Agents, a modern-day spies v. vampires game.  Characters for this example are Fibber McGee, a bang-and-burner; Molly, the black-bagger, Gildersneeve, the former crime scene investigator turned Cleaner, and Belulah, the wetworker. The setting is London.

Someone's blown a hole in it.

A very small hole, but a hole nonetheless. An apartment in a Wandsworth council house exploded thanks to a mistimed suicide vest, which the powers that be are covering up under DORA as a gas leak. There's an official investigation; the agents are parachuted in as 'experts' by whichever agency sponsors them. Edom, why not.

That's the Hook, and since I like to start with action the scenario will open at that point, with the agents and the official investigators poking through the crime scene in an uneasy, mistrustful partnership. This is the inciting incident and also the first point on the Spine.

Let's take a step back.

As Director, you already know a few things. For instance:

• You know who the OPFOR are;
• You know what they want;
• You know where this is going to end.

You probably also know your players' characters well enough to be able to plan around their MOS and investigative pools. That's not a given, though; this might be a one-off for a completely fresh group. However, if you do know that, say, Molly is a fan of Electronic Surveillance and Architecture, then you can plan for a few clues that allow her to make use of those pools.

You also know one other thing.

You know the type of scene that makes up the Hook.

Some scenes are action scenes, with all the explosions and broken bones that an action scene implies. Some are investigative. Some are interstitial; that is, it transitions from one moment to another. Whichever kind of scene it is will determine, to an extent, the kind of clues the characters might find, which in turn determines how they get from point A to point B. 

This is an Investigative scene, which means agents will be drawing primarily on Technical and Academic pools. It's reasonable to assume that every group has at least some Technical and Academic expertise. Each character had the option to buy all sorts of pools at creation. 

Fibber, being a bang-and-burner, is likely to be bringing his Forensic brain to bear on the equipment and debris found at the scene. Molly will want to use Electronic Surveillance, finding security camera footage from nearby businesses and combing through it. Belulah might use Streetwise or Urban Survival to find out if any local criminal groups supplied the bomber. Gildersneeve will be drawing on his Human Terrain abilities to track the bomber's social media posts and see if there's a connection to known extremist organizations. 

All these are means by which each agent can find a clue that leads to the next Core scene. Possibly it will be a direct jump. There may be an interstitial moment, or an antagonist reaction, but ultimately clue A leads to scene B.  You, as Director, know that the agents will do this; that's how it's supposed to work. Each point in the Spine is riddled with clues that are designed specifically for this purpose. 

But.

Suppose we don't want this to be straightforward? Suppose we want a parallel spine?

In this example let's say that the OPFOR, being an extremist group puppeted by the Satanic Cult of Dracula, are meant to be detonating suicide jackets on the London Underground, spreading not just terror but also a vampire-spiced bioweapon that will create quasi-Renfields among those exposed, civilians and crime scene investigators alike. The intent being to create a subgroup of people desperate to join the Satanic Cult so they can get relief from their symptoms, while at the same time spreading terror and distrust of the bumbling authorities who let this happen.

Fine. That's what they want. 

But they're not the only people in the game. 

Which creates a second spine.

The first spine is about finding out who the bombers are, what their target is, and what their timetable is. If the agents are successful, they prevent the attacks. If they're only partly successful, or if they fail, then the bombs go off. That means conclusion of that spine comes when either there is a scene where the bombers are captured, or a scene in which the bombs go off.

Let's go a step further and say that there is a faction within Edom led by, Nails, why not, which wants those bombs to go off. If they do then it furthers his scheme, which is [whatever it may be]. Fort, who is the agents' sponsor, doesn't know which of the Princes is playing with fire and suspects this faction exists but has no proof. 

This spine is completely separate from the main event. Since the opening scene of the main event relied heavily on Technical and Academic pools, it seems reasonable that this parallel spine relies on Interpersonal pools. Which, in this example, Belulah happens to be good at. 

That gives the characters who didn't invest heavily in the other two pools a chance to shine on this parallel spine. While Fibber and the gang chase up Technical or Academic leads, Belulah breaks bones and blandishes informants in her Interpersonal search for the parallel truth at the end of the second spine. 

Which ends when the agents either expose Nails' shenanigans or fail to do so, which pleases or embarrasses their sponsor Fort. 

If I were to represent this with a diagram (I'm bad at drawing) it would look as if each spine started from the same point and then diverged. There might be occasional points where they intersect again. There might not. Both spines can be completed, or one might be completed and the other not, or the agents may fail to complete both.

Why do this? 

First, because complication and conflict drive plot and plot is the objective in every investigative game, whether it's Night's Black Agents or Mutant City Blues. You want plot. You want the players to bathe in plot. 

Second, because it gives the characters two chances to win. 

Think about it. If the bombs go off then the characters lose entirely, if there's only one spine. However, if there's two spines then there are two chances to win. OK, one win - bombs go off but Nails is exposed - is at best a Pyrrhic victory. However, every victory is a victory if you're fighting an unholy war in the blood-soaked shadows of London. 

The two spines can touch, in certain Core scenes. Let's say that the NPC investigative team is being led by someone who's indebted to Nails, for whatever reason, and tries to sabotage it so Nails' plan can succeed. The agents might use Interpersonal abilities like Cop Talk to find this out, or even to trace the team leader to a clandestine meeting with Nails. 

However, for the most part it's a completely separate chase. Will the agents uncover Nails' involvement? Will they chase up the bombing angle without ever realizing that they're making an enemy within Edom, whether they foil Nails or embarrass Fort?

One last thing. I said at the start that knowing where this is going to end is one of the three definite things in every scenario. Well, there's one more thing.

You also know that there will be consequences, no matter which outcome occurs.

If the agents foil the bombing and expose Nails, then the consequence is the Satanic Cult lashes out, Nails may be removed and replaced, and Fort's star rises. All of which gives rise to future plot. 

If the agents foil or partly foil the bombing and do not expose Nails, then Nails stays but is angry, Fort may also be embarrassed and angry, and the agents will catch hell. All of which gives rise to future plot. 

If the agents do not foil the bombing and do not expose Nails, then there's a bunch of people out there - including them, perhaps - desperate for the cure that the Satanic Cult offers. Meanwhile Fort is off to Edom's equivalent of Slough House and Nails is reaping the rewards of service to Dracula.  All of which gives rise to (sing along with me now, folks) future plot.

No matter which is the case, those consequences create more spines. Which creates complication and conflict. Which drives plot. 

Goodness. Did I just mention Slough House? That's because this is exactly what Mick Herron does. There is an A plot, the supposed main plot, the bit that the blurb on the back of the book talks about. Then there is the B plot, the actual plot, the one you really ought to be paying attention to. The great advantage for Herron is that, as he has so many characters, he can split them along the different plotlines. That is exactly what I'm suggesting you do.

Enjoy!

Flipping The Personal Mystic (Night's Black Agents)

Servants seem out of touch. Enter the billionaire’s battalion of experts (Washington Post Christopher Cameron)

“There are areas I want to work on,” says Gill, who would prefer not to name the monk she met while at Tibet House US in New York, a cultural center established at the behest of the Dalai Lama. “There’s professional growth, being a better CEO and a better founder. So he helps me by organizing meditations, where we just sit in noble silence, or we may talk about things.”

To deal with stress and practice mindfulness, she joined a holotropic breathwork community with Angell Deer, a shamanic healer, mystic, medicine man, teacher, permaculturist, beekeeper and international speaker, according to his website.

In July, she traveled to Esalen, the storied Big Sur retreat known for its connections to the Human Potential Movement of the 1960s.

“I’m there exploring breath work and these new modalities, but it’s all very steeped in Silicon Valley tech culture. There’s a guy from Google there,” she says. Ben Tauber, a former Google product manager, was CEO at Esalen until 2019 ...

... Personal chemists now help CEOs hack their psyches with psilocybin chocolates, ayahuasca retreats, microdoses of LSD and IV drips of ketamine (Elon Musk is one alleged user). Teams of private doctors, dietitians, scientists, wellness practitioners and trainers help aging executives search for the Fountain of Youth — with occasionally gruesome techniques (like tech mogul Bryan Johnson’s “blood boy”). Shamans guide board room bosses through difficult decisions. Mixed martial artist Khai “The Shadow” Wu trains Mark Zuckerberg. “Pro-natalists” tap matchmakers to secure high IQ partners to produce elite super children for a world they agree is doomed to societal and environmental collapse ...

...  “I placed a full-time, permanent gaming expert,” says a person working for an UHNW family, who could not be identified due to a nondisclosure agreement. “My client wanted someone who was the best at all of the best games.”

Gosh, isn't it just appalling to have lots of money. 

Jeeves & Wooster, P.G. Wodehouse (Fry & Laurie)

We all knew the rich have peculiar tastes and the idea of a personal beekeeper is neither here nor there, especially if they happen to be a shaman on the side. A personal gamer, though? Someone whose sole job is to make psychedelic chocolates? That's a new one on me. No doubt I'm appallingly naive. 

However, it does suggest intriguing possibilities, particularly for Night's Black Agents.

The obvious is that handy-dandy narrative placeholder, the Strange Psychiatric Facility. The place way off in the never-know-where, or it might be Big Sur, that specializes in recovering your peace of mind, for a fee. The owner (or are they a cover for the real owner?) has all sorts of mystic credentials. Anywhere else, if you happened upon an impressive shrine dedicated to hideous beings from beyond the veil, you'd suspect foul doings; but here, that shrine's just part of the treatment. Meditate upon the swirling colors in that portal to another dimension. All will be well. All will be well.

The agent's task in this situation is to infiltrate the Psychiatric Facility to get closer to the billionaire and do whatever it is they've gone there to do. Warn them, remove their handler, extract the McGuffin before the Conspiracy before they get their greasy hands on it, whatever works for the narrative.

I want to go in a different direction.

Let's say that the Billionaire (civilian stats, bodyguards, martial arts trainers, the lot) is someone of importance to the Conspiracy but they're not yet part of the family. Maybe the billionaire has valuable documents they want to steal, or has connections within a particular industry, or valuable proprietary technology, or just lots of money. For all these reasons the Conspiracy might want to infiltrate the billionaire's luxury compound and gain control of the billionaire and their McGuffin. They might promise the billionaire something they really want, like a super-baby, extended life, or just pleasant dreams. 

For purposes of infiltration the mansion is Monitoring 5 Security 5. There's cameras everywhere, a small army of staff, any number of ways a snooper might get caught on the way in. 

The agent's job is to get in, identify the Conspiracy asset, neutralize that asset without killing them as a murder investigation will only complicate matters, and then get out.

The trouble is, which of the many, many possible subjects is the asset? Is it the chocolate maker with their peculiar candies? The Feng Shui expert (a possible Chinese spy, perhaps)? Their personal religious studies tutor, a high-ranking member of the Catholic church? Someone else?

For purposes of gameplay whoever it is has no supernatural background but does have sufficient Aberrance to power their magical/satanic/psychic abilities. Assume Aberrance 6 and the ability of the Director's choice, chosen from the Vampire list. Also assume that the enemy operative can regain Aberrance in some way, eg. by causing Stability loss which refreshes Aberrance on a 1 to 1 basis, blood sacrifice, use of magical/psychic artefacts or some other means.

But who is it?

Is it the Mysterious Monseigneur (p144 DD), providing spiritual guidance (and connections with the Vatican)?

The Medievalist (p122), who's advising the billionaire on his many, many trips to auction houses to refurnish that baronial castle he just bought?

The Retired MI6 Boffin, now a freelance cybersecurity expert for hire? Or possibly an adviser on that elaborate bitcoin mine the Billionaire's setting up in, oh, Alaska, why not?

Or one of the many, many, many flimflam artists, conmen and grifters who've sneaked into the billionaire's inner circle, to plan a party perhaps, or give them advice on the inner workings of the Bildeberg Group?  

Choices, choices ...

For an added bonus, what about flipping the Mystic?

In this version the job isn't to eliminate the Conspiracy asset. The job is to get in there and turn the asset to good use. Persuade them that the Conspiracy doesn't have their best interest at heart, that Dracula killed their Solace, or that the reward they were promised will never materialize. That way the asset will do the agents' bidding rather than Dracula's. Probably not for very long (Dracula will eventually eliminate them), but hopefully long enough. 

Where is this happening?

Well, the billionaire's mansion (one of several) is the obvious choice, as is their superyacht. But it could as easily be somewhere like Monaco or Macau, the Orient Express (or a facsimile thereof), their favorite ski resort, or some debauched party paradise. Anything's possible. Anything goes. 

Anything.

Enjoy!

The Silent Church (Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds of London)

 Look at her eyes. Look at her eyes! For God's sake, what happened to her eyes?

The Evil Dead

Body horror is a genre that, Wikipedia helpfully reminds us, intentionally showcases grotesque or psychologically disturbing violations of the human body or to any other creature. 

A ghost story is often seen as cosy, gentle, perhaps a little creepy but not, well, grotesque. Yet some of the best ghost stories take body horror concepts and run away with them. Take M.R. James:

This might have been the result of a fall: it appeared that the stair-carpet was loosened at one point. But, in addition to this, there were injuries inflicted upon the eyes, nose and mouth, as if by the agency of some savage animal, which, dreadful to relate, rendered those features unrecognizable. The vital spark was, it is needless to add, completely extinct … The Stalls at Barchester Cathedral

Somehow, the idea of getting past it and escaping through the door was intolerable to him; he could not have borne—he didn't know why—to touch it; and as for its touching him, he would sooner dash himself through the window than have that happen. It stood for the moment in a band of dark shadow, and he had not seen what its face was like. Now it began to move, in a stooping posture, and all at once the spectator realized, with some horror and some relief, that it must be blind, for it seemed to feel about it with its muffled arms in a groping and random fashion. O Whistle and I’ll Come To You

Interesting how often James resorts to a similar idea: remove or muffle the face, and horror follows. He does this trick in A Disappearance and a Reappearance, for example, and The Tractate Middoth. Whereas in films like The Evil Dead and its many sequels some of the most memorable moments have to do with melting, changing, malleable faces.

After all, what are people without their faces? When we talk about the Uncanny Valley it’s chiefly to do with how faces look to us. We don’t scrutinize hands, feet, legs with the same intensity we do faces. We don’t look for discrepancies elsewhere first, and then look to the face; we look to the face and then elsewhere. 

I once spoke about Lafcadio Hearn and I’m reminded of his spectral Cousin Jane:

Then, as if first aware of my presence, she turned; and I looked up, expecting to meet her smile ... She had no face. There was only a pale blur instead of a face …

Sometimes this can be used to show mindlessness, a lack of soul. Zombies are good for this, those shambling, sightless, soulless things. More often it’s used, through gleaming eyes and sharp or snaggle teeth, to show evil, predatory traits. Very rarely, as with Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s done to accentuate the weirdness of the situation. I suspect at least in Del Toro’s case it may spring from half-remembered Catholic iconography of Satan and the damned, via Hieronymus Bosch and the like.

Sometimes it can be simple, awful. No face. Or no mouth, no eyes. A face of crumpled linen. A peculiar mask that covers almost everything, or show the ‘true face’ – a wolf mask, say, or a tiger mask. Del Toro does something similar by moving eyes from where they’re expected to be to the palms of the hands, and then moving those hands to the head making a mockery of how flesh works – or at least how we think it should work.

Let’s start playing with the idea.

As a reminder, I’ve said this about Hauntings before:

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

The truth of the haunting will probably never be known for certain, since most of the facts are unavailable.

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.

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.

Let’s say that as a consequence of this Haunting, this memory of things past, there is a sound. That sound is so horrible that it causes those who hear it to want to stop hearing anything ever again. They ram objects in their ears, but it doesn’t stop the sound. So they ram more objects. More still, till their heads resemble porcupines, and yet they still hear. 

A memory of a sound so hideous that people cannot bear to hear it.

The Silent Church

There is a little chapel close to the edge of the Metropolitan Cattle Market, King's Cross. Nobody can remember a time when it was not there. Architecturally it resembles some of the works of Christopher Wren after the Great Fire, but nobody can find any link between Wren and this little church. Best guess is that it was designed by a contemporary or possibly a student.

Nobody worships there. Nobody is seen to go in or out except for a little man who is popularly supposed to be the verger, and he almost never speaks to strangers. He's stone deaf, and answers to the name of Moody; apparently he lives at the church.

On the rare occasions when workmen are called in to carry out repairs - something which, the neighbors say, ought to happen more often given the condition of the place - the workers are always from McCaw and Sons and the elder McCaw claims to have known Moody when he was a boy. McCaw doesn't gossip. His workers do. They say they have to plug their ears whenever they work there, on Moody's orders. They never stay long and are never there before nine in the morning or after six in the evening.

It's not difficult to sneak in. Moody's hardly the most efficient watchdog. However, if anyone's ever tried they've not said what they found there, or what happened when they went.

Sometimes the apprentices in the Cattle Market dare one another to make the attempt but nobody ever has.

Anyone who crosses the threshold notices immediately that the noises from outside can't be heard inside the Church. It's as if the building completely muffles all outside sound whatsoever, however loud it might be. 

If they go early in the morning, or after it gets dark, they hear what seems at first to be singing, perhaps a chant, from far away. It never gets louder but it scrapes on the nerves, as if the words meant something hideous - yet they're unintelligible. Potential Stability 2 loss.

If they stay until it is night - say, between 10 pm and 3 am - then they see shapes. Perhaps shadows perhaps people, they pace throughout the church at all hours, mouths moving. Their ears are spiked clean through by what appears to be thousands upon thousands of needles, so heavy that they make the creatures' heads loll from side to side. It's apparent that these are the singers yet the noise never gets louder, or the words clearer. Potential Stability 5 loss. Anyone who loses 5 or more Stability feels an overwhelming urge to Flee; failing a Fleeing test or resisting this urge means they must deafen themselves by any means necessary. If they cannot or will not then they take +3 damage every round they remain in the Church without deafening themselves.

Those who make the Stability check and remain long enough to hear the music for a minute or more gains 1 Mythos and 1 Magic. This can only happen once. Repeated visits do not increase Mythos or Magic though the Stability loss remains as well as the potential to permanently damage hearing.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

The Mythos (Cthulhu RPG, Trail, Bookhounds, Dreamhounds, NBA)

You have begun to piece together the secret rules of the real world, rather than the ignorant scrim of physics and religion. You recognize the great names, and the truths they conceal ...

Let's play with the Mythos.

Imagine that you could see and understand things that nobody else could. That you knew the secrets of the stars, or why Mondays are always brown - and what it means for Mondays to be brown. What does that mean for you, and your understanding of the world around you?

A character can have Mythos at the beginning of the game, if the Keeper is so inclined. Or they can gain it in play, through reading occult texts or encountering the otherworldly. What does that mean for the one who has it? They can see the truth behind the veil, fine, but what does that mean on a day-to-day basis?

That will depend, to a degree, on the source of their knowledge. Let's say for the sake of discussion that the character - we'll name them Sarah for the purpose of this example - got their Mythos at character creation. Sarah's Drive, Artistic Sensibility, led them to a forgotten little art gallery in the outskirts of Manhattan where they encountered a painting that opened their mind to the infinite. Sarah has become obsessed with this artist and seeks out more of their work, partly for the knowledge it contains and partly because they have a peculiar fascination with the art itself. Sarah has 1 point Cthulhu Mythos, and a new appreciation of the world around her. That's all a result of discussion at the start of the game; the Keeper might suggest using Sarah's Drive to justify the Mythos point, but Sarah's player came up with the art gallery on her own. 

That's how Sarah got that point. However, it doesn't stop with one painting. Sarah now sees the world in a completely new way. What does that feel like, in play?

For starters, it means that Sarah sees everything around her in the light of this new knowledge. Other artists either take these ideas on board and incorporate it into their art - in which case Sarah appreciates their efforts - or they don't. Other art seems bland and stale. Things she appreciated before this happened are now derivative, flat, lifeless. 

Sarah may find herself drawn to the forgotten corners of the art world. That's where she encountered her new muse, after all. She might find more works by that artist, or different works by different artists that draw on the same principles. This portrait is clearly the work of someone who knows, and Sarah can tell by the composition, the imagery, the geometric alignment of the work. Or perhaps the artist has stumbled on the idea by accident.

That's Sarah on a good day.

If, on the other hand, Sarah has had a shock - an encounter with the infinite that cost her Stability or worse yet Sanity - then she might start interpreting everything in terms of art. The sky is exactly that shade depicted in the art; what does this mean? The clouds, the stars, the world around her takes on new meaning. Is that a door, or a painting of a door? Did she encounter a face like that in a dusty room in Montmartre? Are these shadows just like those encountered in oils that fateful day? That person's eyes - are they like those she saw in that painting?

Much the same might happen if Sarah's Mythos was gained through book learning. The effect is determined by the source, but the result is the same. That bit of doggerel first encountered in a note in the margins of Azathoth and Others takes on new, horrible meaning in the light of those peculiar stains on the floor - not blood, yet eerily like blood. The fact that the doorman was born in Cancer Ascendant takes on new meaning when you consider what Derby is supposed to have written about the same astrological symbols. 

If Sarah has had a shock, then the words she once read in an inconspicuous little pamphlet of poetry echo in her head nightmarishly. Again and again the words beat on the inside of her skull like a kettle drum, and the fact that the doorman has sky blue eyes is darkly significant when you consider how blue is used in Derby's work. 

Let's say Sarah got her Mythos through a personal encounter with something squamous. What then?

That would depend on what the source actually was. Let's say it was through an encounter either with Nyarlathotep or, more likely, forces aligned with Nyarlathotep. At that point much depends on which version of Nyarlathotep you're using. Trail has several options, among them:

“Nyarlathotep” is not a being, a separate Messenger of the Gods, but a technique, specifically telepathy, used by the Great Old Ones. The “thousand forms” of Nyarlathotep are merely the natural result of telepathic impressions on thousands or millions of brains, human and inhuman.

Thousands upon thousands of psychic messages floating on the ether. Sarah's thoughts are not her own any more. At any moment an idea might pop into her head, and was it her idea, or a fragment of Nyarlathotep that penetrated her skull? That peculiar radio frequency; dead air, or something awful? The rhyme those children are chanting, does it have another meaning?

These are things that Sarah encounters every day and she encounters these things because her fundamental understanding of the world has changed irrevocably. No longer can she pretend that 2 plus 2 equals 4, not when she knows the truth. In many ways she's like the folks who gibber about chemtrails and see mysterious threats in airy nothing. Sarah knows what we do not: that there is a Mythos behind it all.

How does this manifest in play?

For starters, the Keeper can ask Sarah's player to define certain aspects of the Mythos herself, in much the same way that Swords of the Serpentine players describe aspects of Eversink. This is fundamentally a part of how her character sees the world; it stands to reason that Sarah should be able to describe it herself, in her own words. 

"What does your understanding of the way the world works tell you about why those ravens have gathered the way they have on the courthouse roof?" "... about your knowledge of human behavior, and why those people on the edge of the train platform defy accepted norms?" "... about this particular shade of blue?"

For another thing, the Keeper can use this to create scenes and encounters which can be used to distribute clues the players might have already missed in previous scenes. It's the Mythos providing a hint as to the true nature of the situation, when the players have wandered past the clue trail. This can be very helpful in those moments when the players seem lost and the Keeper can't think of another justification for directing them back to the plot. 

Also, it can be used to reinforce the mood. Nothing says Cthulhu like the sudden realization those sinister words on the quiet pages of a book have hideous meaning when you combine that knowledge with the understanding that this particular arrangement of stars has great significance to those who worship the chaos. Or that this style of architecture reflects lessons learned from the buildings found in the damned city of Irem. 

The key point is the Mythos ability shouldn't be used as a passive clue finder. It's more akin to knowing a secret. If you know that medieval architects planned their cities around concepts found in forbidden lore then the fact that this particular collection of streets and alleys is designed in such-and-such a way tells you that the real heart of the city, its intended heart anyway, is over here, and within it lies something terrible ... You know this. But the tourists who wander the streets of this quaint little town each day, all blind to its hideous reality, wander unheeding into the maw of something that must not be named. Does this explain why ... 

Thus the adventure begins.

That's it for this week!