The Fourth Element - Bookhounds of London

The East End of London extends as far as Blackwall on the Thames, but it begins at the edge of the City. In fact, the “Bow Bells” (which all true Cockneys must be born within the sound of) are in Cheapside in the City. Jack the Ripper killed one of his victims (Catherine Eddowes) in the City, in Mitre Square, but the others left a bloody trail pointing east. The East End began as marshy ground outside the walls of the city proper, slowly drained by the original “Black Wall” of the Saxons. Since mediaeval times, the East End has been where London put its blood, its stenches, and its death: tanneries, slaughterhouses, and fulling-yards. The docks and canals brought steady work, along with injury and ague; the ships brought crowds of foreign sailors and workmen, and crowds of British whores and thieves. Gin-houses and music-halls sprang up, as did radical politics and dissenting cults. Homes were small and streets were narrow even in Elizabethan times; with factories, gasworks, and workhouses rising in the Victorian era, things got even worse. The East End became “the Abyss.”

Bookhounds main book, p 51

From my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this: the knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could account. The effect was, that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity; yet, however obstinately I endeavored with my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I never could see why it should produce such an effect.

Thomas De Quincey, Murder as considered one of the fine arts, an essay.

OK, so you've decided to set your game - whether it's long or short - in a specific location in London. I'm using the East End, purely as an example. What next?

Trail offers two types of play, Purist and Pulp. Bookhounds refines this further by adding Arabesque, Sordid and Technicolor. Ideally you'd want to sit down with your players in a session zero and discuss tone, and decide as a group which you'd like to shoot for. However, as Director/Keeper/Poor Unfortunate, you often don't have the luxury of coming up with an entire campaign on the back of a session zero. You want to have at least some of the setting outlined in advance. 

But if you don't know whether you're going to be Arabesque, why would you design an Arabesque plot point or location? Surely that's wasted effort? 

No. But then, you wouldn't design an Arabesque plot point or location. You would design the thing, and then assign characteristics as the needs of the campaign develop. Further, you'd have at least some of its characteristics outlined in advance so you can slot them in when necessary.

Let's take the Abyss as a starting point. In any campaign design, when you don't know exactly where this is all leading you never tie yourself to a particular endpoint. What you need at the start is a very clear idea of where you are beginning and, after that, a reasonable idea of where you are headed. 

Let's say you intend to start with a small shop at the edge of the City, in the East End but trying to pretend it isn't East End, not really. Nobody drops their haitches in this establishment. You'd want to leave a fair amount of shop design up to the players but that doesn't mean you leave everything else alone. What's on the same street? Who's the main rival? What's the trade like? Is there a secret hidden under the floorboards or up in the attic? Do the drains work and, if not, what makes up the fatberg that's blocking them?

OK, so you've done all that. Well done. 

What about the reasonable idea of where you are headed?

There's no way to know for certain which decisions the players will make. They may seize on the main plot with cries of joy or dash off after some tangent. Don't worry about that. These things come out in play. What you need to think about is where all this is headed, in broad terms.

Pick a plot. Lord knows there are enough of them. The Bookhounds text gives half a dozen cults and an Old One as a cornucopia to pick from. If you don't like any of them there's London folklore aplenty in any number of texts. Point being, whichever of these you pick, that's where all this is headed. 

Let's say we opt for the Brotherhood of the Pharaoh as the main plot, the destination of this runaway train. The campaign is headed in an Egyptian direction. That doesn't mean you can't have side plots with, say, the Nazis, but after the side plot is over we go straight back to Egypt. In fact - tangent time - it could be a lot of fun to have a Tomb-Hounds of Egypt game running concurrently with the Bookhounds sessions, so the players get to experience the Brotherhood from both ends of the narrative. Also, shoehorn in some Nazis, why not. 

So you've got the start point nailed down and you know where the runaway train is going. The little book store with pretensions on the edge of the City, mired in the Abyss, is going to go on a journey that ends in a very Egyptian denouement. Established. Done. 

The question at the start of this was if you don't know whether you're going to be Arabesque, why would you design an Arabesque plot point or location? Surely that's wasted effort? 

The answer becomes: you design what you need to design and then you add the Arabesque/Sordid/Technicolor extra, as part of the Rule of Four. Effectively, you design something with three elements and the fourth element is the extra.

Let's say we were designing the Crown and Dolphin Tavern which is linked to the infamous Ratcliffe Murders of 1811, which in Bookhounds terms is a little over a hundred years before the start of the campaign. It's that same murder which inspired De Quincey to write the essay quoted above. The alleged murderer's skull is on display at the Crown and Dolphin, according to the Bookhounds main text, and history says the rest of him is buried out in front of the Crown & Dolphin. Cannon Street, where the tavern's located, is in the City proper.  

With all that in mind:

The Crown and Dolphin, 56 Cannon Street

Four things:

The landlord, Horace Glover, is affable and a friend to all; he's also up to his ears in gambling debts and is looking for a way out.

The tavern's brewer, Ashton Gate Brewery Co Ltd, is having a financial crisis and one of the odd effects of this is that the Crown and Dolphin is the only pub in the chain that serves its Dancing Man Premium Bitter. An odd, dark amber brew, it's either loved or loathed by those who know it.

The local Ring likes to hold knock-down auctions in the Crown after hours. If you know who to talk to you can get in on the action but it never begins until the pub shuts. 

Fourth Thing Arabesque: A woman with no known name - everyone calls her Queenie - plays solitaire dominoes every night every Friday, always at the same table and always from 9 till closing. Nobody sees her enter; nobody sees her leave. Nobody dares sit at her table before she gets there, and if a stranger does so by accident they are told to move. 

Fourth Thing Sordid: Horace has turned to drug peddling to pay his gambling debts. He doesn't sell the stuff himself; he lets other people - strange, silent folk - come in and sell their peculiar narcotics. A group of addicts can always be found gathered round the Crown's door waiting for the pushers.

Fourth Thing Technicolor: The ghost of John Murphy, the alleged Ratcliffe murderer, stalks the street outside the Crown and Dolphin. In life John Murphy had hair of the most extraordinary and vivid colour, viz., a bright yellow, something between an orange and a yellow colour according to De Quincey, and it's this color that sets him off; if someone with yellow hair passes by, John Murphy will try to snatch it from their head, with painful consequences for the victim. 

What I'm getting at here is the Crown and Dolphin may or may not become an important part of the ongoing campaign. It may be a side note; it may become a major location. At the start of the game you can't know whether it will be one or the other. 

Therefore you put in just enough detail so you can use it however you need to use it. You have your Four Things, which in this instance is Three Things Plus One Extra. With those Four Things you have enough plot to be getting on with.

But.

What about the Brotherhood? That's where all this is going, after all. 

Easy. You put the Brotherhood in the Fourth Thing. The Brotherhood is ultimately behind the Arabesque, the Sordid, the Technicolor moment. Or the Brotherhood is interested in the Arabesque, the Sordid, the Technicolor moment. The Brotherhood may be the ones supplying those peculiar narcotics, or those dominoes she's playing with could have mystic significance, or the ghost of John Murphy could actually be the result of some peculiar Brotherhood plot or artefact that has the unintended consequence of stimulating ghostly activity and thus provoking John Murphy. 

You don't need to know, up front, how exactly the Brotherhood is involved in that Fourth Thing. All you need to know is that the Brotherhood must be involved because that is where all this is going. The runaway train has a destination, after all, and it will get there. In one piece or several. That's up to the players.

Enjoy!