All Aboard The Saturnia! (Trail of Cthulhu)

I like cruise liners. They're especially useful locations for horror narratives. An enclosed space, often exotic or opulent, far from shore (and the authorities), populated by an ever-changing cast of characters. In the classic period of liner travel (broadly 1890s through to 1940s) these queens of the ocean serve two purposes: first, ambassadors for their nation. Second, transport for the vital, lucrative immigrant trade. The Titanic of legend, for all its gilt and glory, was practically an immigrant ship, earning its money off her 709 Third Class passengers, the vast majority of whom drowned - including most of the Third Class children.

This time out I want to draw your attention to MS Saturnia, launched 1927 by the Cosulich Line, later the Italian Line. Built in a Monfalcone shipyard, she's capable of carrying 2,196 passengers from Italy (Trieste, Venice) to New York, or 279 First Class, 257 Second Class, 310 Third Class, and 1,350 Fourth Class. That last are the ones going to New York permanently; the rest are probably only there to visit. She's capable of 19 knots on a good day with her twin screw engines, or a little over 20 miles per hour.

Inside, she's a Beaux-Arts wonderland, gaudy marble, stained glass, wood paneling and more Gods (Roman, naturally) than you can shake a stick at. Her indoor swimming pool is practically a Roman bath. Her pride and joy is a vast internal gallery locked off from the rest of the ship with wrought iron gates, which was probably intended for those passengers (First and Second Class, most likely - no Fourth Class plebeians here) who didn't enjoy ocean travel and wanted to be as far removed from shipboard life as possible. Here they could relax in an atmosphere that wouldn't shame a feudal banquet hall, never having to so much as smell the sea.

Naturally things did not go well for her during the War. She became the American hospital ship Frances Y. Slanger and most of her finery, including her bath and gallery, was torn out and not replaced. She went back to Italy after the war and continued to carry passengers until 1966, when she was scrapped. The Italians had a very slight advantage in the age of jet travel; their ships tended to be smaller, so they lost less money than did the larger Queens of the Sea. However, that advantage wasn't enough to save MS Saturnia. Nor was it really enough to save the Italian Line, which operated at a tremendous loss (on government subsidies) for many years and only saved itself by switching over to freight shipping. These days what's left of the Italian Line is part of Hapag-Lloyds, though in a Dracula Dossier game there's always a chance HGD Shipping bought her out instead.

Her glory years are the 1930s, which is the same period as most Trail games. She's also not a bad pick for some pre-War Night's Black Agents gaming. The Gestapo regularly used cruise liners as transport for its couriers; no doubt the Servizio Informazioni Militare did something similar. In an age before jet aircraft ocean liners are the only way from Europe to the New World, so if your Big Bad wants to get to New York then hi ho the ocean waves, and let's hope seasickness isn't a vampire Bane.

Or perhaps someone wants to get their occult item of choice from Europe to the Americas. Even an occult building of choice, since the 1920s-30s is also the time when eccentric American millionaires are buying up European monasteries, castles and churches, and dragging them across the ocean blue. William Randolph Hearst brought St. Bernard de Clairvaux from Spain to New York city in 1926, though it ended up in Florida. Gothic chapels, Renaissance chateaux, manor houses, practically anything with a patina of age on it could be uprooted, sailed across to New York, and planted somewhere scenic. The Depression put a bit of a gloom on the market for historic buildings, and by 1939 you couldn't unload a castle for anything like what you might have paid for it in 1929. That said, your basic antique masterpiece was still making the journey from the Old World to the New right up to the outbreak of war.

Image sourced from the Museum of the City of New York

For similar images please go to the Museum's website. There's a ton of useful resources there.

With all that in mind:

The Transporter

You and your companions have been hired to shepherd an Italian castle from Venice to New York, aboard MS Saturnia. You're a short-notice replacement for the original custodian, who fell critically ill at an unfortunate moment. You must make sure all the crates are safely stowed, shipped and delivered to its new owner, the architect Philip Lehmann, who hopes to sell it on to an American buyer. He's already had several offers. Hearst himself is said to be interested.

Castello della Fontana, built 1180 and allegedly a Templar stronghold once upon a time, has a nasty reputation. A ghostly nun and a headless knight, as well as two demonic children, are supposed to infest its gloomy corridors. It's said the Inquisition burnt the children at the stake, though the details of the trial are not known. However, Lehmann's only interested in the castle as an architectural and historic artefact, not as some kind of carnival spook-show. He's packed every least item, down to the candlesticks, each with a detailed description of where it was in the castle and where it should be put. He's gone ahead to New York to make arrangements for storage. It's the investigators' job to make sure nothing happens to his precious castle.

If the characters are an unprepossessing mix of unemployables and occultists, then Lehmann probably hired them because they speak English. He distrusts foreigners. This is especially likely if any of the investigators are American.

The initial load, on the docks of Trieste, is fraught with the usual brushes with catastrophe. Is a box missing? Was that box that landed with an almighty thump the one marked delicate that contained the antique, irreplaceable china and crystal goblets? Why is that customs official going crimson with rage?

However, during all this the investigators notice a family that is taking more than the usual interest in them. Papa, mama, two small children, all impeccably turned out, clearly upper class. Yet they never speak, and have no servants, which seems unusual for people of their social standing. Whenever the investigators pay close attention to them they are nowhere to be found, yet whenever something goes wrong with the load they are on the sidelines, watching closely.

Throughout the journey the investigators see them again and again. Never in the dining rooms, never eating or drinking - but they're always there, in the gallery, near the pool, in the music room, the reading room, on the first class stairwell, window shopping in one of the many fashionable stores on board. They seem to stand apart from the rest of the crowd, and they always stare at the investigators with unfathomable, dark, hypnotic eyes.

What's Going On:

The Knight, Nun and Demon Children: The castle ghosts are just as keen to get out of Italy as Lehmann is to get their castle to New York. However, the last thing they want is for something to go wrong with the journey, so they're paying extra attention to the investigators to make sure that doesn't happen. Of course, if the investigators do something that might imperil the shipment (or let that precious china crack) then they're fair game. Carelessness must be punished ...

Exorcists: The 'family' is a cover for a group of occultists determined to put an end to the castle's demons once and for all. The 'father' is an ex-Vatican exorcist, the 'mother' his devoted sister, and the children her children, brought along because there was no way she was leaving them with their deadbeat, atheist, Communist father. Trouble is, bringing children along gives the castle's demon kids opportunities for possession ...

The Autumn Moon is Bright: Did you know that when Lycaon sacrificed his son and turned him into a pie to serve to Zeus, who then punished Lycaon and his fifty sons by making them lycanthropes, that Lycaon's son Peucetius went to Puglia in Italy, bringing the family's werewolf curse with him? Well, now you do, and so will the investigators when they learn that the castle comes from Puglia, notorious werewolf haven. The family are the castle's true owners, who want to escape Italy and live in the New World, but they refuse to leave the family home behind. So they bullied Lehmann into buying their castle - 'do as we say or you will share our werewolf curse.' That's why he was so eager to get to New York, and leave the shipping to a bunch of nobodies who could, for all he cared, get eaten alive. Of course, it's a long journey from Italy to New York, and the children aren't used to fasting ...

Enjoy!

Silly Skills

Millionaire's Special was recently published via Pelgrane, and the profits from the sale of that scenario are going to help Heroes in the Dark. So far it seems to have done really well; when last I heard, sales had topped eighty downloads, but that was a little over two weeks ago so it may well have topped 100 by now. That's very gratifying!

I want to draw your attention to an ability introduced in that scenario: Gambling. People gambled heavily on the old liners. It was one of the main forms of entertainment on what was otherwise a longish trip across the Atlantic. Though the shipping companies did make sure that their floating palaces were well stocked with diversions (including a heated swimming bath and badminton court on the Titanic), the less athletically inclined were more interested in sedate entertainment. Gambling provided that surge of exitement coupled with pecuniary reward. It could be risky. Professional gamblers knew all the tricks, including several that Hoyle never thought of. Unwary travelers could end up much poorer after an otherwise enjoyable cruise.

The issue with gambling is, while it's appropriate to the situation and the era it doesn't lend itself to the pools system used in Gumshoe. There are a lot of abilities with the same problem. I tend to think of these as Silly Skills; abilities that may be fun or develop character but don't otherwise contribute to the plot. In the old Unspeakable Oath (TUO 10) there's an article by Duke Janus, Quirk Skills, that embraces the Silly concept and extends it to all sorts of potential abilities: Analyze Poetry, Annoy Coworker, Perform Tricks with String, and so on. Any Keeper can see the potential here for a roleplay moment, one that could be entertaining in the right circumstances. Entire scenes could be based around a Silly Skill. The old James Bond RPG played much the same trick. There was an extensive shot-by-shot golf game written into Goldfinger, for one, and while that was certainly appropriate for that senario it would hardly be worth inventing a whole new golfing mechanic for a skill only used once.

More often than not, Silly Skills have no real use. They may facilitate roleplay, but they don't advance a scene nor do they achieve a result that has any significant impact on the ongoing plot. Gambling is an appropriate skill for a Titanic theme scenario, and there are plenty of other potential uses for it. Something set in the California Gold Rush or modern day Macau will also have Gambling built in. However most other scenarios won't showcase a gambling opportunity. The same could be said of many other potentially useful abilities. Sports is probably the most obvious Silly Skill; while a character might enjoy playing out a rousing game of tennis or dominating the football match, the player may not appreciate having to spend out of his Athletics pool in order to shine on the playing field.

It's a scarcity problem. There are only so many points to go around during character creation. No player wants to cripple themselves right out of the gate with an ability that sees no use. They also won't want to spend in-game from pools that might otherwise be handy, like spending Athletics on football matches only to find that later in the scenario a well-judged jump from rooftop to rooftop gets more complicated now Athletics pools have been depleted.

Moreover in games like Trail or Call of Cthulhu there aren't many ways to gain more points as the game progresses. Even in RPGs with more significant point gains, like Dungeons and Dragons, players tend not to spend points in skills that don't directly benefit them in some way. I've yet to see a D&D player spend points on, say, Crafting skills who weren't intending to make magic items somewhere down the line. Similarly I'd bet that not many Trail players pick Astronomy as one of their starting abilities, unless they happen to know that their Keeper has a thing for astronomy-themed scenarios. It's not that Astronomy has no use, but that it gets used only rarely, and points sunk in an ability that only sees play once every three or four sessions are all but wasted.

On the other hand, picking at least one Interpersonal Ability (like Reassurance) is a no-brainer. It doesn't matter what the scenario is; so long as it's set somewhere in the real world, chances are pretty good that Reassurance will come in handy at some point. Similarly Evidence Collection is also an easy pick, for much the same reason. It fulfils much the same plot function as Spot Hidden in Call of Cthulhu, and there isn't a Call scenario written that a Spot check won't help solve.

When Janus wrote Quirk Skills his proposed solution to the scarcity problem was simple: don't make the player spend points on Quirks. Instead, let them roll a percentile to randomly determine their level of starting skill, and let things progress from there. While this works for Call, it doesn't help Trail, as Trail doesn't have a random element built into its abilities system. In theory the Keeper could create one, say by making all Silly Skills General Abilities and rolling a d10 (or whatever) to determine starting ability. This doesn't sound very satisfactory, as it eliminates any possibility of character depth. Someone who designs a sporty type with Athletics pool 8+ might only get a 1 on the d10 for Football Ability, while the weedy prof might get a 10 on the same roll.

Some players might enjoy that kind of random element, but I suspect most won't. The player who designs an Athletic type wants to shine athletically, and that isn't achieved by fumbling an easy pass or double-fouling in a tennis match. Similarly the prof might enjoy being a footie champ once or twice, but the player that builds around Library Use and Technical Abilities probably isn't as eager to seek out chances to show off athletically. It's all about player-facing Abilities; the pool should match the players expectations, and that isn't achieved by using a random result.

When faced with situations like these I prefer to base pools for Silly Skills on the character's existing pools in other, relevant General abilities. In Millionaire's Special, I reasoned that Gambling is probably best linked to Sense Trouble. The main rulebook says Sense Trouble allows you to perceive (either with sight or other senses) potential hazards to yourself or others and gambling is all about hazard. Therefore the base pool for Gambling was the character's starting Sense Trouble pool. That way they could spend Gambling points without depleting Sense Trouble, and yet have a base Gambling that reflected their initial character build. I further reasoned that some players cheat, and for those inclined to do so base Gambling could be boosted by adding the average of Athletics and Filch, rounded down. Filch allows nimble fingers . . . to unobtrusively manipulate small objects while Athletics is all about physicality. Nimble fingers and a certain physical dexterity are what card manipulation is all about. I could have added in Conceal as well, since that seems appropriate, but by this stage Gambling was beginning to look crowded. I wanted a General Ability, not an algebra problem. It was simpler to cap it there.

In most cases a Silly Skill won't need to be as complicated. Football can be based directly on Athletics, or horse racing on Riding, without getting any other General abilities involved. Gambling is in some ways a special instance, where the base skill involves several different General abilities. There are bound to be others, but I doubt there are many.

I can forsee situations when this approach won't work. Treating a Silly Skill as a General ability and basing it on other pre-existing General abilities will cover most situations, but perhaps not all of them. Say I wanted to include Trainspotting, or Graffiti Tagging. Those ought to be based on artistic skill or spot hidden ability, but Art and Evidence Collection are not General abilities. It may be more sensible to assume that in situations like those, where there is little chance of a contest and no significant plot function, that anyone with the base abilities Art and Evidence Collection are also good at Transpotting and Graffiti. Therefore any attempt to spot trains or tag a building automatically succeed. So long as there isn't the prospect of a contest, automatic success on non-plot skill checks is reasonable. It's the contest that makes the difference here; if a Silly Skill can't be based on a General ability but does result in a contest, I would have to seriously rethink the problem.

Still, for the moment at least I recommend Silly Skills as a means of solving problems that other Abilities won't fix. There will be times when a chess game or a badminton match are of all-consuming importance to a player, but makes no difference to the overall plot. When other Abilities just won't do, Silly Skills are there to help!