Well, that last post on wandering encounters did some pretty decent numbers.
Looks like you folks enjoy campaign design. Fine, okay, and righty-o.
With that in mind, the next few posts will have me writing campaign design for a setting of your choice. If only this thing let me post polls! Alas, it does not.
So!
If you could choose, which system/setting would you rather?
Dungeons and Dragons (Ravenloft)
Dungeons and Dragons (Radiant Citadel)
Serpentine (within the City)
Serpentine (outside the City)
Gumshoe: Tombhounds
Gumshoe: Night's Black Agents
Cyberpunk: RED
??
I deliberately put systems I want to write for on the list because, contrary to appearances, I'm not a complete idiot. Yes, I know Dreamhounds and King In Yellow exist. I'm not in a hurry to write anything for either setting. Ditto Wraith and Vampire, for much the same reason: I don't feel comfortable enough with the setting/rules to go into detail.
Setting to include the first campaign arc, on the assumption that there are three arcs total leading to some kind of Rome. What kind? Well, that will depend, really. Let's see what transpires.
The last time I did something along these lines I was talking about Blair's UK. This time I'd like to do something a bit different, but as to what ... well ...
Happy long weekend, to those of you enjoying a long weekend right about now!
It's the perennial bugbear. The cliche to end all RPG cliches. The adventuring party has to meet somewhere. Why not an inn?
I recently picked up a copy of Curse of Strahd and was unsurprised to see this very idea floated in the first adventure hook in the book: The characters start their adventure in an old tavern, the details of which are for you to describe. It's an old perennial. It crops up everywhere.
Why not? You've got to start somewhere.
The problem is, the more you rely on an old standard the less satisfying it feels. Sure, you need to start somewhere. Yet if you start with something boring that's not a good lead-up to the adventure that follows.
What would make it more interesting?
It's your local. Nameless tavern number 368 in a life full of nameless taverns is not a good start. What if you and your mates have been coming here all your lives? What if you have history with this place? It may even be your family that owns it, the proceeds from your adventuring that keep it afloat. The more stake the characters have in the location, the more likely they are to feel happy about being there. Variant: it's not just your local, you own the place. If you don't look after it, who will?
There's something odd about this place. Just Another Tavern? What if this one's haunted? What if the whole thing is built inside an elemental, frozen in place? What if the inn is secretly run by magical cats that are constantly underfoot? What if the beer is brewed by a God, or at least a Demigod? At least make this place stick out in the characters' minds. They may want to come back here one day; it'd be great if there was a here to come back to, not Just Another Tavern.
There's something very odd about this place. If the tavern is a front for the Zhentarim, or Edom, then it probably looks pretty normal on the outside. That's the whole point of places like these. They don't attract attention. They may be perfectly normal. Pay no attention to the peculiar carts and vehicles that come and go at all hours of the day and night. Don't go looking for secret doors or hidden passages. You won't find any. I swear.
There's something very odd happening right now. Even the most ordinary tavern becomes very interesting when someone sets it on fire. Or perhaps someone important to the ongoing campaign is paying it a visit. Ravenloft, for example, has the bard Darklord Harkon Lukas roaming one of the realms looking for new entertainers to join his act. If someone like that is performing onstage, the inn suddenly becomes a thousand times more interesting. Edom has any number of peculiar characters who might do the same. The Madman might frequent the local bucket of blood, or the Ex-IRA might show up as the behind-the-scenes owner of this particular establishment. Maybe they'll become the characters' patrons. Maybe they'll let slip some important clue.
It has a peculiar history. This works very well in settings like London, where there's an established history that goes back centuries and it's not uncommon for pubs to have a past that goes back to the Tudors. Sure, everything's normal now. At least, it seems that way. But fifty years ago there was a string of horrible murders, or a cult, or a conspiracy, and at this very inn ...
It's not really there. What if the adventurers are only dreaming? Or hallucinating? What if the inn only exists because of a shared delusion, perhaps inspired by a peculiar book that the characters all read, one that doesn't want to leave their minds? Let's say this is Ravenloft. In that setting there is a realm called I'Cath, infested by ghosts and hopping vampires. This is a realm with two sides, one of which is trapped in the throes of an eternal dream. Suppose the inn only exists on one side of that paradigm? The inn might be part of the dream version of I'Cath and the characters may only experience it by being part of the dream; God and the DM alone know where their bodies are in the waking world. If this were Cthulhu, and the inn only exists in the Dreamlands, then the characters might be in very different parts of the waking world. You could run a sprawling campaign with characters based across the planet, who meet each night in the Golden Cat to discuss their adventures and plan new ones.
After over 200 hours noodling on other playthroughs (got to see how Gale does it, nearly had a Dark Urge moment - but that's for a different discussion) I've finally reached the city proper. No, the nice auntie was not able to homeopath me back to health but I have had some refreshingly direct discussions with my Githyanki physician. I'm sure the psychological trauma will wear off. Eventually.
Now I get to see how the dev team handled city building. It's interesting, certainly. You are kinda left with the impression that the city exists for player characters to experience, but I suppose the same argument could be made for, say, New York. Every tourist thinks that New York was built for them alone because they only ever see those bits of New York that were built with tourists in mind. Students at CUNY probably feel the same way, at least in their first year, before they start stepping out of their comfort zone. When in a curated environment everything seems built for you, until you start looking for the things that aren't.
When designing an urban environment of the fictional variety it's usually a good idea to look at how it's been done before and by that I do not mean 'how did Tolkein do it?' No, I mean how did we do it, and the answer can be found in the oddest of places.
It depends on what kind of fiction you intend to write. For Keepers and Trail GMs, I always recommend Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s by Frederick Lewis Allen, followed by Since Yesterday: The 1930s in America, and then, if you're really ambitious, Big Change: America transforms itself, 1900-1950. There is no better coverage of the period. If you really want to go gonzo nuts then Middletown: A Study in American Culture by Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd is worth your time but it's a bit of a brain-breaker.
The point being that you do not know what tools you have to play with until you look into the box and see those tools for what they are. There are always ideas you haven't thought of. Concepts that never occurred to you, worries that you never knew anyone had, and you won't have the slightest idea until you go looking for them. Or to put it another way, until you start looking for the things that aren't built for you, you don't know what's really out there.
Let's say this is a fantasy setting. What resources exist?
Well, Diana Wynne Jones' Tough Guide to Fantasyland is a damn good start. If you, as an author, can read that without blushing and confessing, perhaps through gritted teeth, that you too have been to Fantasyland, then you're a better author than I.
However, if you're looking for a fantasy city (or possibly a fantasy village) then I highly recommend Joseph & Frances Gies' Life In A Medieval City, or Life In A Medieval Village. Perhaps followed by a dessert course of Myddle by Richard Gough, if you enjoy period pieces. Life in a burgher's household, big business, small business, the church, the condition of the streets, books and authors, disasters, fairs - it's all here. A moveable feast of material.
What kind of feast?
Well, taking a look at Life In A Medieval Village: 'One holiday, Wake Day, the feast of the local parish saint, varied from place to place. Probably in the 13th century, as later, the villages kept vigil all night, in the morning heard Mass in honor of their patron saint, then spent the day in sports. Often the churchyard was turned into a sports arena, a usage deplored by the clergy ...'[p102]
Let's say this is Ravenloft. In that setting there is the Church of Ezra. 'Pious souls in various domains pray to Ezra, an aloof god who embodies the Mists ... With no domain-spanning organization, the church serves largely as a formalization of local superstitions ...'
It's reasonable to think that, in at least some of the Ravenloft realms, Ezra may have local saint figures or provincial heroes who fill the same role. Or that Ezra has different aspects, just as in, say, Greek mythology where Zeus has many aspects: Zeus Agoreus, Zeus Xenus, and so on.
Let's say that this is Mordent. Ravenloft's equivalent of Hammer Horror Cornwall/Kent/Sussex. Mist-shrouded coastline with a ghostly secret.
Captain Clegg (1962, Peter Cushing)
Now we have:
The Demon Fiddler
The characters arrive in Oxney, which overlooks Lazarette Rock, just before its annual feast. The Chapel, the only building in Oxney made of stone, plays unwilling host to the feast; the priest, Berriman, does their best not to intrude, as the last priest who did was run out of town. By tradition the villagers gather in the churchyard for the celebration, eating specially prepared cakes over the graves of their forebears, telling stories of ships at sea and the fabled Lazarette Rock, where the long-term contagious are, by tradition, left, so as not to spread their sickness to healthy folk. In the morning, again by tradition, there is a service, followed by sports, games and a ritual dance, again all in the churchyard for the benefit of the dead. This ritual, it's said, keeps the dead quiet in their graves. Not walking about or harming honest folk.
This year the service is attended by a Tiefling Bard (College of Spirits) who has never visited Oxney before. Nobody knows where the bard, Ariala, came from. Some claim she arrived all alone, by boat, from Lazarette Rock. Whether she came from there or somewhere else, she has unsettling tales to tell about the people of Oxney and the priest, Berriman.
In the morning Ariala is found dead. How did she die?
Option One: Unfriendly Dead. In Mordent nobody ever rests. The dead linger, and in Oxley the dead don't like having their stories told. It was the grasping hands of Oxley's ghosts that did for the bard but, in so doing, presented themselves with a problem. Now Ariala is one of the dead and, so long as she stays in Oxley, it will forever be feast night, where the villagers must appease the Demon Fiddler all night long ...
Option Two: Wicked Priest. The Bard dropped too many hints that she knew about Berriman's dealings with those out on Lazarette Rock. The priest slips the long-term sick shipments of luxuries to make their interment more pleasant, but each trip back and forth increases the risk of spreading diseases to the parishioners of Oxley. Now that dead Bard's ghost haunts the churchyard where she died, and Berriman's not about to reward adventurers who start asking why that should be.
Option Three: Ezra's Burden. There never was a Bard. There was a servant of Ezra, sent to warn the people of Oxley that their transgressions were going too far. When the people of Oxley turned their back on the Bard, Ezra turned her back on the people of Oxley. Now the church cannot protect the village, Oxley will soon know what it's like when its dead are no longer confined to the churchyard by yearly rituals of cake and storytelling ...
D&D was my first system but it's not my favorite for a number of reasons, probably the biggest of which is that no matter the iteration the system still drags around the carcass of its first incarnation - the skirmish combat wargame. Everything goes back to that 10x10 room with an Orc and a chest. Or an Orc with a chest. In a chest. Juggling two chests and a gnome. However you care to word it.
Its more recent incarnation as 5.0 has a lot to recommend it (and I'm glad it brought back Ravenloft) but it occurred to me that there are two things a GUMSHOE game could steal from D&D:
Background
Treasure
Backgrounds are detailed in the PHB and can be summed up as Personality, Ideals, Bonds, Flaws. Treasure is detailed in the DMG and in particular the Other Rewards section from p.227 on.
I'm not suggesting the players use Backgrounds, though they can. You as Director have more use for them, and you also have more use for Treasure.
As Director you often have to come up with NPCs more or less on the fly, which is why Cameos (p92, Double Tap) are so useful. Still, it's nice to have some NPCs in your pocket for those moments when, say, having a Nemesis walk into the room with a gun fits the narrative, or at least gets the action flowing. Each Cameo has an In Play section which does sketch out a thin personality but it is useful, for those NPCs who might have more plot function, to have something more than the In Play.
This is where the Background section comes in handy. A Nemesis who's a former cop is going to be different from one who's a former special forces vet, and so on. How to make them feel different, though, is where the Background shines.
When I first read that section it reminded me of the Tarot, specifically the Celtic spread, which in its most basic form can be read as:
The Present
The Challenge/Problem
The Past
The Future
It's not an exact match but it performs the same function. It tells you where you are, where you have been, where you are going, and where you might end up. Backgrounds does this with a series of "I" statements, as in "I have been an acolyte, I idolize a particular hero or saint, I believe in tradition, I seek to preserve an ancient text, I am suspicious of strangers."
In Night's Black Agents much is said about Bad Guys (Resource Guide, p23 on) but it's mostly mechanical. Trail doesn't really cover this at all, except to say that to change up the OPFOR you can change up their appearance or stats, so a Deep One, say, might have a hammerhead as opposed to an ordinary fish head.
Suppose instead you tackle it this way:
Connor Rowe is a Deep One hybrid proselytizer who has left his coastal area to spread the word. He:
Is an acolyte of Cthulhu who believes in the critical mass theory (p 91, ToC)
Believes he is a predestined agent of change.
Thinks his mission is to spread the seed of Cthulhu wherever he goes so that more join the critical mass.
Is prone to obsessive behavior and will not change his plans once they are set.
You don't have to change the stats to make this work. You're changing the personality instead.
Here you have a roaming preacher who moves from place to place spreading the word. This week he might be in a flophouse in San Francisco. Next week, Chicago. Wherever he goes he spreads the word, starts cults, so that flophouse in Chicago might become an epicenter of Cthulhu worship spreading the word, increasing the critical mass. It might just be preaching, or he may have other means - narcotics, shared dreams, amulets and crystals, whatever best fits. Given that Deep Ones live long lives, as a hybrid he might last longer than the usual human lifespan permits, meaning he could first be encountered as a young firebrand in 1890s San Francisco and still be around as an aged grand master in the 1960s.
The players might not even encounter Connor, at first. They can encounter the cults he leaves behind him instead. That only builds up his reputation, so that when they finally encounter Connor himself the players have an expectation, even a dread, of what this preacher might do.
That's Backgrounds. What about Treasure?
The DMG has this to say: As much as adventurers desire treasure, they often appreciate other forms of reward.
Why? Because in D&D, treasure usually boils down to X number of gold pieces plus a scattering of magic items. Rarely is it something interesting, or memorable.
What if it were?
Let's say this is Bookhounds of London. The obvious reward for player success in that game is a mythos grimoire, or possibly even a Windfall for the shop. It's what the central concept is about, after all.
But let's take a step back. Those are the gold pieces of the campaign. What other rewards can there be?
D&D explains it in terms of
supernatural gifts (a special reward granted by a being or force of great magical power).
prestige (fame & power, medals, favors).
epic boons (special gifts given to high-level characters).
Let's say this is a Lovejoy or John Constantine situation, two archetypes that work very well in a Bookhounds universe. Lovejoy is a near-supernaturally gifted antiques dealer. Constantine is an occultist who gathers favors; in his original incarnation he acts as a kind of middleman to the heroes and villains of the DC universe, and everyone owes him for one reason or other. His best mate, Chas Chandler, becomes his go-to taxi driver for exactly this reason: Chas owes John big time.
In a Bookhounds world, what kind of supernatural gifts are there?
Straight-up Magic, of course, and Mythos pools, but there are other options. For the cost of 1 point Stability:
Healing Hands: once per session you have the ability to heal as if you had 2 pool First Aid, by the power of touch alone.
The Lovejoy Touch: you can tell the difference between a genuine Mythos artefact and a fake, and if you don't know where in the room the Mythos artefact is, you can find it by this sense alone.
Bane: you create an artefact from whatever happens to be lying around that, for one combat scene only, can prevent a Mythos combatant from attacking you for 2 rounds.
Ghost Talker: you can communicate with the recently deceased, once per session.
Card Shark: you can win the equivalent of 2 points Credit Rating, once per session only. Any Credit Rating not spent by the end of the session is lost. Easy come, easy go.
How did they get these abilities? That's up to you as Keeper, but they probably had to sweat blood for them.
Prestige is a bit different and usually translates into better opportunities and increased Auction pools. Because your character is an influential person the auctioneer will let them look at the merchandise in a private session before the auction. Because your character is a member of the local Ring they get 2 points Intimidation free, to use during this auction only. That sort of thing. Again, it's up to you as Keeper how they got that prestige, but it probably involves a Windfall of some kind, or a very successful adventure.
Epic boons are a little out-of-scope and may not fit your playstyle, particularly if you go Purist. However, it could be very interesting to have a Mythos entity take an interest in your Bookhound. Let's say, for the sake of discussion, that a group of Ghouls take a liking to one of the Bookhounds. They may even consider the Hound for membership of their little supper club. As a token of their affection they give the Hound a silver ring. That ring has no power in and of itself, but all the other cults currently active in London know what that ring stands for and who gave it to the Hound. It's a kind of bargaining chip for future negotiations: I can't hurt you, but you know who my friends are ...
Alternatively, let's say a Hound has a nasty experience with a Cthulhu cult, and as a consequence gains heightened Dreaming powers. Not only can they lucidly dream, they gain the ability to invade other people's dreams and interact with them. That may seem great, but there's a problem. Every person whose dream they invade loses 1 Sanity because the Hound isn't just invading their dream, they're spreading the critical mass of Cthulhu believers needed to make the Old One return. That is cumulative Sanity damage; it's possible to drive an ordinary person permanently insane. Which some Hounds might embrace as a tactic against their enemies ...
Yes, I know, I missed last week - Charlie was kind enough to give us a three-day weekend and I used it wisely but too well.
Second, a quick heads-up: I've been working on some Ravenloft stuff that will go up on DTRPG (DMG) fairly soon. Brief one-shot horror adventures with one simple rule: no more than four pages.
Now, on with the show.
Whittington's Longhouse and Almshouse was built in Cheapside, London, in 1421 and lasted, in one form or another, till at least the 19th Century and possibly the 20th. That may or may not make it the longest-lived public toilet in human history; nobody keeps records of that kind of thing.
Sir Richard Whittington, to give him his proper title, was thrice Mayor of London and a very rich man, but died childless and spent his fortune on charitable works, the Longhouse among them. It could seat 64 women and 64 men and was distinct for having a division between the sexes. One long house, with a dividing privacy wall between the 64 men and 64 women.
The Almshouse was directly above. If you were desperate and had nowhere else to go, you could go there. Records are a little spotty on this one, and it may well be that the almshouse was used for storage at some point in the Longhouse’s career.
The 128-hole original burnt in the Great Fire but was replaced soon thereafter by a much smaller public toilet that lasted till at least 1851, and probably longer than that.
‘In 1660,’ says Liza Picard, ‘The usual practice was to nip into an inn, or a friend’s house. But there was always a convenient corner or accepted ‘pissing place.’’
Whittington was famous in his day for his charitable works. He must have been a clever gent to think outside the usual church-and-benevolent-fund malarkey and build something that everyone would have found useful regardless of status. Of course, in his day while there would have been division between the sexes there was no division between neighbors; your hole was next to the other’s, which was next to the other’s after that. Given that there were 64 holes per, that suggests a remarkable coming and going in the busy periods.
Whittington is probably better known for his famous, fictitious cat which earned him his fortune – at least so goes the story. There’s nothing to suggest the real-life Whittington had a cat, but stories seldom match. The cat as helper has a very long folkloric tradition, though Whittington’s version has very little in common with its more famous adaptation, as Puss In Boots.
But! Baghdad-By-The-Thames has a long memory, and if Whittington’s Longhouse survived in one form or other until at least the 20th century – which seems possible – then it would be of interest to Bookhounds and Megapolisomancers alike.
Incidentally there’s all kinds of stories about death on the toilet, from peculiar spiders crawling up the dunny to the legendary (and all too hideous) Erfurt Latrine Disaster. Birth on the toilet too; as Liza Picard notes, there are several instances of babies being found abandoned in toilets and brought up by the Church.
All of which leads to:
The House That Is (And Isn’t) There
Freddy ‘Inkwell’ Rummage, a notoriously sticky-fingered book scout, has lost a commission. Or at least that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.
According to Inkwell he picked up a rather choice copy of [insert interesting text] and was on his way to the Hounds’ shop to negotiate a price when he was accosted by some Rough Lads who wanted a word with him about unpaid gambling debts.
Inkwell was about to give himself up for lost when he saw a public convenience. Thinking to outwit, or at least outlast, the Rough Lads, Inkwell nipped in and found himself in a very peculiar hiding place.
It was, says Inkwell, a very long and remarkably smelly convenience, with holes rather than the more comfortable compartments he’s used to. He had the feeling there was someone else in there with him but saw no one.
After waiting what seemed like a short enough time Inkwell risked an escape, only to discover that it was midmorning of the next day! Moreover he no longer had the valuable package; Inkwell thinks he must have put it down for a moment and never picked it up again.
Preliminary investigation suggests that wherever this place is it’s somewhere in Cheapside, but exactly where is anyone’s guess.
Options:
The grimoire is protected by [something] and it was that [something] that opened a temporary hole in space & time. However, the grimoire is now stuck in that alternate dimension until someone comes to collect it. A Hound roaming Cheapside at the same hour of night that Inkwell got himself into trouble might find their way into the Longhouse.
Inkwell stumbled onto a long-forgotten secret Fane, protected by Isis and her servants, the cats of London. The real prize is upstairs, in the Almshouse, where Isis keeps a kind of temple – or at least her cats do. Some megapolisomancers know about this secret haven.
Inkwell stumbled into a Haunting and while he was able to get away with his life others might not be so lucky. By leaving that book behind Inkwell inadvertently created a kind of link that allows the Haunting greater power/longevity than usual. So long as that book is there, the link to the Longhouse is open …
There are moments in any RPG narrative where the heroes have has A Moment, whatever that moment may have been, and now need to transition from the Moment to wherever else in the narrative they need to be right now. Maybe they just overheard the bad guys explaining their plan and now need to get the hell out of there, as happens in SPECTRE. Maybe they need to get from their current location to a more useful location, say because somebody in the party died and they need to get to the temple for a resurrection or raise dead.
Maybe this, maybe that, maybe the other thing, but the point is they were Here, and now they need to be There. Right Now.
Often this involves a chase scene, a dramatic interpersonal showdown, or something that, as Director, you may not have planned for - hence this post.
Many RPG campaigns, no matter the setting, explicitly plan for this moment. Horror on the Orient Express is designed so the ending scenario of the campaign is a race to [LOCATION HIDDEN] to prevent horrible things from happening to the world. Nights Black Agents has Extended Heat chases for exactly the same reason, always linking the agents to the ongoing threat whether they happen to be in Lisbon or Bern this week.
However, you can't always plan for these moments. Players are unpredictable. They may invent the most peculiar moments and make them the Moment, for no better reason than it seemed like a good idea at the time. Then you, as Master of Ceremonies or whatever shiny hat you're wearing this week, have to pull a scene out of your capacious crevice.
Or it may be that the players haven't invented a Moment at all, but instead they're stuck in a holding pattern waiting for a Moment that may never come.
Waiting for Godot, Harold Pinter (Sir Patrick Stewart, Sir Ian McKellen)
What to do in moments like this? Or even Moments like this?
Cheat.
The great thing about many RPG systems, and I'm going to use Dungeons and Dragons as an example, is that the crunchier they are, the easier it is to cheat, since most of the narrative depends on die rolls. It's not exactly scripted, but it's easy to manipulate a situation so that it appears scripted because everything ultimately depends on whether or not a particular die roll hits a particular difficulty.
That means you can create interchangeable scenes. You take a prewritten sequence, slot it into the narrative, and boom! Instant plot, that looks as if it was made from scratch.
So in any given chase scene, for instance, it almost doesn't matter who's doing the chasing or where the action is taking place. What matters are the DCs scattered along the path, because the DCs determine whether a particular moment goes one way or the other.
This is more difficult to pull off in player-facing systems where the emphasis isn't so much on hitting a particular number as it is leveraging a particular situation. In those circumstances the GM really does need to know what is going on in that specific scene, rather that rely on a set of generics to help them out of an awkward situation.
However, even then it can be done. Consider Night's Black Agents, with its various Thrilling scenes - chase scenes, infiltration, digital intrusion, and so on. These scenes ultimately depend on the agent hitting a particular sequence of difficulty numbers in more or less the right order. That means it doesn't matter who's the active party and who the subject, or where the scene is taking place. What matters is the sequence of difficulty numbers that the agents have to cope with.
Let's say this is Dungeons and Dragons, Ravenloft, using the Mordent setting.
Mordent is a ghost-ridden coastal community, vaguely Georgian in terms of technology and social mores. There are no cities; the biggest community is about the size of Whitby, Yorkshire. There's vast stretches of lonely moorland, isolated hamlets, spooky mansions on the hill, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are chewing chunks out of the scenery, that sort of thing.
So how shall we cheat?
To begin with, on that description we already know that most if not all scenes will take place in a moderately civilized but not urban area. This isn't Tolkein's Middle Earth; you won't find ancient dragons sitting on vast hoards of stolen dwarvish gold down some mountain hole or other. Nor is this Jack the Ripper's fog-shrouded London town, with sinister threats lurking down every dark alley - and there are more dark alleys than there are hot dinners.
On the other hand, a coach racing down a lonely road trying to outrun a half-dozen highwaymen sounds perfectly in keeping with the aesthetic. Or a skiff out at sea trying to beat the storm and get back to harbor before being driven up on the rocks.
So any DM wanting to organize a transition chase scene could assume that the available chase options are:
Small village (one-horse town).
Large community (more than one street and horse, but not a metropolis).
Open civilized countryside (ie. something with a road in it, but houses/inns are few and far between).
Open countryside (no road, probably a few treacherous bogs or a Hound of the Bonkervilles lurking down an abandoned tin mine shaft).
Coastline, shallow water.
You could get more complicated than that if you wanted to, but that should cover most options.
Then you go through each line item, assign half a dozen obstacles or chase moments (is that a fallen tree trunk blocking the road ahead? What's the Jump DC?) and you're more than halfway there.
So if the players manage to antagonize, say, a bunch of hellhounds and have to run for their lives, you already have most of the work prepped ahead of time. Or if they're at sea and need to beat that storm back to shore, bingo! One coastline shallow water chase coming up.
Exactly the same works for systems like Night's Black Agents. In fact it's easier, because the players announce ahead of time that they want, say, Thrilling Digital Intrusion scenes by giving their agents 8 pool points or more in Digital Intrusion. Knowing this, you can set aside a couple of Digital Intrusion sequences knowing full well it won't matter whether this sequence is meant for the casino in Monaco or the military base in Germany. Then, when the player announces they want to make a Digital Intrusion, you can slip one of your pre-prepared sequences in and it will look as though the player's improvised moment is part of the narrative.
Systems like Dungeons and Dragons, which rely heavily on crunch, are particularly easy to manipulate this way because everything those systems do rely on one Difficulty Number or another. Social Interaction is a set of Difficulty Numbers, Stealth is a set of Difficulty Numbers, everything can be reduced to a set of DCs - and it doesn't matter who's making the roll or why, because what matters is someone will have to make a roll eventually.
This, in a nutshell, is the difference between a player-facing system and a more traditional RPG. A player-facing RPG relies more on the player than it does the game mechanics; a traditional RPG relies on the mechanics rather than the player. Point being, if the game relies on mechanics then as DM you can manipulate the mechanics to make your life easier. Sometimes this can involve outright bullshit, like fudging die rolls behind a screen to produce one result or another, and that kind of thing is always a bad idea.
But sometimes it can involve using the existing mechanics to your advantage, to save yourself work.
Let's say the players suddenly take it into their heads to interrogate the Master of the Guild of Bakers. God alone knows why. Maybe they want to know how he makes those delicious scones. Doesn't matter. What matters is whether the Master (or whoever the heroes have to talk to before they can get to the Master) is Friendly, Indifferent or Hostile, because that will determine their initial reaction to the heroes.
Then that NPC will have character traits - ideals, bonds, flaws - which can be manipulated (through die rolls) to change their original rating of, say, Hostile, to Indifferent. At which point, having played the NPC like a Stradivarius, the PC then makes ... you guessed it ... a die roll to determine the outcome.
What this means is, it doesn't matter whether the Master is some critical path character who the heroes have to talk to in order to unravel the plot, or just some random nutbar who the PCs happened to take an interest in this week. Centaur or Goblin, doesn't matter. Alignment doesn't matter. Stats don't matter.
You could just work up half a dozen profiles with Ideals, Bonds, Flaws and starting Interpersonal rating - Friendly, Indifferent, Hostile - and it will not matter whether you use a particular profile on the sinister vampire lord Strahd Von Whosavitch or Bingo the Wonder Dog.
But it will look as though you planned it all along.
This week's post is loosely based on the recent case of Timothy and Tracy Ferriter, who allegedly had a secure room built to 'house' their adoptive son.
A contractor tipped the police to the existence of the room. He'd been asked to build a small, lockable room in the Ferriters' garage, 8 by 8 ft, with no way to open the only access door from the inside. It had electricity, a window air conditioning unit and a camera in the ceiling, and the Ferriters insisted it be built within two days. The whole thing felt off, so as soon as the contractor finished the job he told the cops, who discovered that the Ferriters were using it to keep their son in secure lockdown when he wasn't at school.
The case is ongoing.
Secret or secure rooms are fairly common in fiction. There was a time when you couldn't write a cozy cottage murder mystery set in England without at least one 'priest's hole,' and the trope is very common in cobwebbed ghost stories too.
Secret rooms turn up now and again in pulp crime novels, particularly those that have some connection with Prohibition, when there were very good reasons for hiding the booze store, or making sure that your tunnel to the outside world wasn't easily spotted by curious onlookers. Some, like the cellar of the 21 Club in New York, still exist.
The principle is sound enough. You need somewhere secure, concealed and relatively easy to access. To do this, you take a portion of the existing structure and wall it off from the rest of the unit. You want to make sure that the space isn't so large that it's easy to spot by cursory inspection, but it can't be so small as to be useless. The priest's holes were built to accommodate one person, perhaps two, and then only for a few hours. The 21 Club's cellar wasn't meant to be secure housing for anyone; it just had to be big enough to store a restaurant's worth of booze, and convenient enough that the waiters didn't have to schlep all over the block to get another bottle.
However this example introduces a new element - the contractor. Someone has to build that room, after all, and construction is a fairly specialist job. Particularly if you want that secret room to have electricity, or plumbing, and especially if you want it to be undetectable. The man who built the 21 Club's cellar was an expert in his field, and he had to be. The whole point was to make an actual brick wall, with all the weight that implies, slide shut noiselessly, with minimal effort, and without leaving any tell-tale scuff marks. This is not a simple feat of engineering. This wants effort, and skill.
You know who else has a particular set of skills? Player characters.
Let's talk gamification, and for once in a way let's talk Fantasy. I'm not going to specify setting, except to say that it could as easily be Ravenloft as Swords of the Serpentine.
Command Performance
The group is hired by a suitably mysterious client, who calls themself Lord Bardwell, owner of Bardwell Hall. Lord Bardwell wants the adventurers to build a secret room at the Hall, to these specifications:
It must be south-facing.
It must have a window or some kind of view port that allows Lord Bardwell to see a particular constellation, at certain months of the year.
It must be undetectable by ordinary means.
The people currently living at the Hall - Lord Bardwell's family and servants - can't know the room is being built.
That last part's the kicker. The group might have all manner of architectural or magical talents that will help them build that room. How can they do it without being spotted by the people living there?
Complicating factors:
'Lord Bardwell' isn't really Lord Bardwell at all. Their actual employer, who prefers to remain incognito and is working through magical disguises or some kind of third party, is the second eldest child of the current Lord Bardwell, the scholarly one who has esoteric and peculiar tastes. Hence the need to look at a particular constellation. Best not to ask what their obsession is really all about. Or why they need to be so secretive.
There are several possible locations for the south-facing room, but the best one is in the old Tower, sometimes called the Green Tower after the green cupola at its top. It's one of the oldest sections of the Hall, and houses a forgotten cellar as well as a seldom-used guest bedroom. The reason why few people go there is because it's supposed to be haunted ...
Lord Bardwell - the real one - spends most of his time in his bedroom, as he's a complete invalid. An ever-changing procession of doctors and other parasites visit every month, each with their own cure. This means new faces come and go regularly, which can be a blessing or a curse depending on how clever, and how much of an interfering busybody, the latest batch of doctors are. To get access to the Hall the player characters can disguise themselves as quacks - probably not much of a stretch for them.
Lord Bardwell's spouse, the beautiful (and licentious) Baroness, spends most of her time in sunnier climes, working her way through the servants and hotel staff. However, Lord Bardwell unexpectedly cuts her off at the wallet, forcing her sudden return to Bardwell Hall complete with a menagerie of card sharps, eccentric swordsmen and other lackies who are hoping for a sniff of the Bardwell loot.
I don't often self-promote here, but as I'm getting close to completion on one of the two Ravenloft titles I'm working on I thought I'd tell you a bit about it.
The people of Oaksey, a small village in Mordent, once were part of the Huntingtower estate, now defunct. Oaksey’s alderman, Sanders Murdoch, suffered a near-fatal hunting accident in pursuit of his favorite prey, the fox. Sanders suspects foul play and promises to severely punish whoever is behind the attacks. Some say what happened to Sanders isn’t natural, and they’re right. The hunter’s horn has wakened something best left sleeping ...
Fox hunting's a major story element. I've never been on a hunt but I've known several who did, and I've spent a fair amount of time out in the countryside where fox hunts were common, back in the day.
The English have a peculiar attachment to fox hunting. Despite the 2005 ban the issue comes up again and again, a kind of political totem for the traditionalist right-wing. The last time it came to a vote, in 2015, the Conservatives under David Cameron were soundly whipped by Nicola Sturgeon's SNP. The Scots didn't give much of a damn about fox hunting, and in fact the hunt is still legal in Scotland. The SNP just wanted to give the Tories a bloody nose, and they succeeded.
Mind you, two anemic girl scouts and a Luigi cosplayer could have whipped David Cameron, but all power to the SNP.
Some activists claim fox hunting persists in England despite the ban. So-called trail-hunts, sending hounds after a pre-laid scent, are allegedly just cover for the old sniff-it-out-and-kill-it fox hunts. Or that illegal hunts carry on despite the ban, since enforcement is next to nil.
Labour traditionally claims to be the anti-hunt party, probably because Tony Blair's government banned it the first time round and Labour feels obliged to stick to its past, but there's never been any enthusiasm for it on Labour's side beyond some dedicated animal rights campaigners and ancient holdovers from the 1980s. Tony Blair himself said he regretted passing the bill.
Meanwhile the Tories come back to it every once in a while, but beyond using it as a stick to beat Labour and the lefties with there's not a whole lot of enthusiasm there either. Possibly because wrapping yourself in the Union Jack and blootering on about traditional values is best left to ardent Brexiteers and other gammons.
As a hobby, it stopped being a countryside pursuit long ago. Reading old manuals and memorials published in the 1920s and 1930s it's easy to see why. Even then they complained that stockbrokers from London and day trippers were ruining the hobby. Now it's an excuse for tourists to come on a gallop, an excellent moneymaker but hardly a community event. Siegfried Sassoon wouldn't recognize it.
I'm mildly surprised there hasn't been a murder mystery with the John Peel title or theme. I understand there's a 1935 film with that title - never seen it, and don't know anything about it other than the IMDB plot synopsis which suggests it has nothing to do with fox hunting. I vaguely remember a Rumpole of the Bailey short about fox hunting, and no doubt there are other UK cop dramas that have dipped into it now and again. Most likely in the 1980s and 90s, when the ban was still a political issue. Google tells me there's an American detective series about fox hunting in the Virginia mountains but to my knowledge there's not an English equivalent.
Which is perhaps a little odd. If fox hunting was integral to the English character you'd think it'd have had a Carry On film by now. Or some not-quite-Belgian with little grey cells a-quiver would have made the theme his own, rather than stick to nursery rhymes about clocks and mice.
Not even comedians will touch it. Oscar Wilde made the oft-repeated observation that fox hunting is the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable, but Wilde's been dead and dust for years. I don't see Dara O'Briain sketching any side-splitters on this topic any time soon. Tweets, yes, but those aren't going to make their way into his act.
Anyway, I came to this to talk about the scenario and I suppose I ought to be getting on with my self-appointed task.
The story is set in Mordent, which is Ravenloft's answer to M.R. James and E.G. Swain. Ghosts-a-plenty, in a countryside designed to feel a little like Dartmoor and a little like Cornwall. In Mordent, nobody ever dies - not entirely. They return, whether to plague the living, beg forgiveness or for some other purpose. There are those who claim the mysterious Apparatus, built for reasons unknown, is the cause of it all.
In my own little corner of Ravenloft the Huntingtower family, dead and gone, is the ultimate cause of the problem the PCs face. The last Huntingtower, Gelbert, committed an unspeakable crime and now Oaksey is cursed to repeat his follies. Desire a thing too much, and what starts as longing becomes obsession. Obsession is a dangerous thing ...
The scenario's intended for PCs from level 1 to 3, and could be an introductory scenario either to the setting or the game itself. Like many other D&D writers I've found Challenge Ratings a bit tricky to handle, but don't worry - I'm sure some of the PCs will survive.
Unlike Cthulhu there isn't a Sanity mechanic but there is a Fear and Stress mechanic, which I'm finding very useful. Mind you, fail too many Stress tests and that old bugbear Challenge Rating will become even more difficult to manage. Still, I'm sure those resourceful PCs will solve that problem - or die trying.
Its climactic moment takes place at the Meet, when Oaksey sets off in pursuit of the fox once more. If the PCs haven't got a solution to the problem by then, things are likely to get very messy ...
The other scenario, The Three Crows, is still in production so I shan't say much about it, except to hint that if you like slasher films set in vampire country, have I got the scenario for you!
Anyway, that's it for this week. Next week, back to the usual weirdness!
I first encountered Strahd many moons ago, when I still played AD&D. Back then there was no Ravenloft, not as we've come to know the term; it was just a big bad sat up in his castle, a spider in his web - and what a web! Tomb of Horrors might have been more lethal - just - but you couldn't move two steps in Strahd's labyrinthine lair without encountering something hideous, murderous and downright nefarious.
Which, as Tracy and Laura Hickman, progenitors of Ravenloft, admit was the whole point.
“Our [adventuring] party turned the corner and there [the vampire] stood," recalls Tracy Hickman. "I remember thinking, ‘What are you doing here?’ He seemed out of place with the other standard monsters we were encountering. I thought, ‘You’re lost. You’re in the wrong place. You need to have your own adventure, setting, and story.’ That’s pretty much where it all started.”
That was Strahd, and Ravenloft: one big backstory for one bad man. A former hero who'd done the unthinkable, and would spend eternity paying for it. The apex predator, locked in a Walpurgisnacht of his own devising, just as securely imprisoned as any serial killer in a supermax yet free to roam within his prison and tear all the other inmates a new one. His white-hot rage is what keeps the ordinary folk of Barovia deeply embedded in the magical mist that forms Strahd's prison walls, and if you want to get out of this hellhole, you have to deal with Strahd.
His impenetrable fortress was the dungeon the characters would have to navigate, in order to track Strahd down and put an end to his damned existence once and for all. Less a castle in the medieval sense, more Neuschwanstein, except the 6,000 tourists per day who visit the home of Wagner-fanatic Ludwig II don't have to worry about encountering rust monsters, giant spiders or 10-100 bats. Not unless they're prepared to pay extra for the special tour.
Then it grew. From a castle sprang a Manor, and from a Manor whole new lands filled with other Universal Monster-esque grotesques. You got yourself your basic Frankenstein's Monster, your basic Mummy, your basic Poe-inspired gothic giallo, and by that point things were migrating quickly over to 3rd and 3.5 editions.
I was already on my way out the door.
I'd been falling out of love with D&D for quite some time. It was too rulesy, too mathsy, it lacked the horror elements I enjoy playing with, and there were other systems that did it better. White Wolf, Chaosium, Pagan Publishing, those were the places I went to scratch that itch.
Besides, D&D then and (possibly) now has never been a good system for mystery-style games. Ultimately the whole point of D&D - at that time, anyway - was to march into a 10x10 room, hit something, and steal its treasure. There's not much room for story in 'see Dick smack Kobold. Smack Kobold. Smack.'
Things change. There's a new Ravenloft core book due this May, and I'm intrigued.
For one thing, D&D isn't the whack-smash-thanks-for-the-cash game I remember. There can be mystery, the unravelling of a complex story, strong characters playing out narrative arcs. That makes for a meatier, more interesting game at the table. So far, so good.
For another, the Ravenloft design team seem to be leaning heavily into Gothic tropes, which is even better.
Gothic literature often evokes memories of Stoker, Shelley, and Poe, but I like to think of it as the natural home of Le Fanu, Richard Marsh, (The Beetle!), Ludwig Flammenberg (The Necromancer), Arthur Machen, Gaston LeRoux and many, many others. The monster crowd. The steeped-in-sin congregation. The ones who delve into occult grimoires and hide out in ruined castles and dungeons, buried deep in the Black Forest. The Bad People.
Gothic is something entirely to itself, completely unlike other genres of supernatural fiction. There's a magnetic draw that fixes you in place and keeps you there. I suspect, if you were to put a gun to my head, I'd have to admit that one of the draws of this kind of story, for me anyway, is that there can be a hero character, central to the narrative.
You certainly don't get that in Lovecraft, or M.R. James, and you don't get it that often even in Stephen King. You get an Everyman, swept into the story by forces beyond their control. Their only hope of coming out the other end in one piece is to confront the horror, bearding the vampire in its den. Even then, victory is far from guaranteed.
Which, let's be clear, has its own satisfaction. The reader can easily imagine themselves in the same situation, terrified out of their minds and looking for a way out. It's more difficult to picture yourself as Sir Lancelot swooping in to save the day, than it is to imagine you're schlubby author Ben Mears, who decides to go home for the summer and really regrets his life choices.
Salem's Lot
Still, there's something satisfying about being a genuine, bona-fide hero confronting dark and sinister forces. The Hero is the Hero, and the d&s v's are as Dark and Sinister as it is possible to be. The canvas is splattered with crimson and gold, and it's your job to turn this into a masterpiece, even if you die in the attempt.
Dragon's Lair (Cinematronics) - home of more of my quarters than I care to remember.
This is an idea that draws you in, and keeps you playing. Even when everything seems hopeless you can be the single spark raging against the dying of the light. It's why Night's Black Agents works so well; you too, it promises, can be James Bond or Jason Bourne, facing off against something far more powerful than a mere Blofeld.
It's also why Swords of the Serpentine captures the imagination. The city of Eversink may be vast, its hidden face a thing of nightmares, but you - you're a free blade, a witty rogue, and you can beat anything Eversink has to throw at you.
It's why Ravenloft works. At least, I hope it's why Ravenloft works. Like everyone else, I'll find out in May.
Burying the lede! I'm also working on a couple of Ravenloft scenarios I intend to publish via DTRPG. Feel free to seek them out at your peril, once they launch. Not certain of the publish date. I want to look at the book first, obviously, and I'm not sure when that will arrive on-island.
Working titles: For The Sound Of His Horn (a haunting hunting party)
The Three Crows (terror lurks at a sinister coaching inn on the old Svalich road)
We'll see how that turns out. I'll let you know more when I post the scenarios.
