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!

                     

     

Not Quite Review Corner: Kolchak the Night Stalker

Kolchak: the Night Stalker Kino Lorber blu-ray 2021 edition, first filmed by CBS way back in the mid-70s.

Sourced from CINE CLASICO DE TERROR

My collection grows apace. I've known about this for a long time. Pretty sure I first heard of it when Stephen King referenced it, probably in Danse Macabre. I'd never seen it, so when Kino told me a sale was on (I think Kino has my number) I figured I could spend a few bucks and find out what the fuss was about.

Well. 

Hum.

It's ... interesting? I can't put myself in the 70s and imagine what it would have been like to see this on the small screen in a darkened living room. I think it hits differently under those circumstances. I can understand why the likes of Chris Carter (X-Files) cite it as an influence on their work. It has flair, even charm. 

Where it loses me a little is with the monsters. 

Carl Kolchak faces off against pretty much everything you can think of, from relatively ordinary beasties like zombies and vampires to the more esoteric aliens, ghost knights and killer robots. They're a grim bunch. Richard Kiel of Jaws fame plays the gribbly at least twice. Thing is, they lack personality. They exist to menace. But even the ones that might have a little something, like Jack the Ripper, are one-dimensional. This Ripper is a wooden slash-slash killer with almost no dialogue. There's a side character who reportedly has whole conversations with him, off-screen. But nothing out in the open where the audience can see it. 

It doesn't help that, since this is a 70s TV show and not a movie, the effects are minimal and there's no blood to speak of. Not that I like to wallow in gore, but if you're going to have a dog viciously attack someone on-screen there ought to be at least a hint of claret.

It's just about as cheaply made as you'd expect. Lots of clips sourced from other stuff with voiceover attached. Cardboard sets. Minimal fight choreography. There was one moment that stick in my mind, where Kolchak meets a source of information. This source is introduced, given a bit of background, but they never speak and you never see their face. It's almost as if they couldn't afford an actor so they dragooned one of the studio lot lice, put him in a dark suit, and said 'wave your arm around when I tell you to.' Somehow I don't think they had a union card.

But when it works, it works. This is due in no small part to the lead, Darren McGavin, who grabs the screen and doesn't let go. It's a treat to watch him scuttle around, fight his bosses with pop-eyed enthusiasm, dive after a story despite compelling reasons to run the other way. His Kolchak does what some Cthulhu investigators fail to do: he investigates. He actively goes after clues. Interrogates witnesses. Challenges authority. He's no angel, but fights on the side of the angels. 

I know McGavin didn't like working for TV. He felt the work was soul-destroying. If you know him at all, it's probably thanks to his role in A Christmas Story, not this show. Still and all, this is damn fine work from someone who didn't like television. He put it all out there, and in doing created a character that's fun to watch.

A neat little Kolchak trick: he's at a hospital, trying to get a photo of the patient in their hospital bed. The door between him and the patient is shut and a cop stands outside, not letting Kolchak in. Kolchak engages the cop in conversation, gets the cop to agree to have his photograph taken. At the fatal moment, the hospital door opens and a nurse comes through. Kolchak whips around, gets a shot of the patient. 'Thanks!' Off he scuttles. 

Another neat Kolchak trick. He has a recorder in a bag with a strap on it. The crime scene is on a stairwell. He knows he's not supposed to be at the scene, so he hides one floor up and lowers the recorder by the strap close enough to hear the forensic techs gossip. When caught, he loudly protests. When dragged away, his camera pointing at the ground, he makes sure he's dragged over the body on the stairs (which even in the 70s must have been a crime-scene no-no) and the viewer sees the flash go off.

That's Karl Kolchak in a nutshell. He finagles. He twists, he schemes. He does not bluster or start fights. He's no action hero. But he's got a lot of courage and he doesn't mind taking risks to get a story. 

The blu-ray set is the full TV series, but it does not include the movie version which kicks it all off in 1972. It has a couple of special features but nothing too fancy, no commentary track. Worth picking up if you like this kind of thing, but not something I'd call a must-have. More a might-if-on-sale.

Keepers want this to steal NPCs from. It's vintage 70s stuff. If you have an NPC or a situation set in that period, you want to watch shows like this. Players want this because Kolchak is their patron saint. He shows you what it means to be an investigator into the mystery, and he never gives up.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Not Quite First Impressions: The Troubleshooters (Helmgast RPG)

 

The Troubleshooters

I've been looking forward to this.

When I was a kid my folks used to get me Tintin every year for Christmas; I've still got most of them, in less than pristine condition. Trained early on in the ways of evil I soon found myself in Belgium, agog at the one shrine that should be on every comic-lovers itinerary: the Comics Art Museum. So when I discovered that some mad genius was designing an RPG based on the comics I remembered so fondly, I did what I almost never do: I backed the Kickstarter to physical reward level.

See, I know the pain of international shipping. I've known it all my life, so I almost never have anything shipped to me if I can possibly avoid it. When in doubt, I fly to the States or the UK and buy from the store, and I don't often do that. Usually I get the .pdf. 

So picture my joy when, having backed to physical, the world's shipping lanes crashed to a halt, Brexit kicked the UK's shipping timetable in the Boris Johnsons, and COVID kept us all indoors forever. I consoled myself: it will arrive eventually. One day. One far-off day.

It's here! It's finally here!

Is it fun?

Yes!

How fun?

Well, put it to you this way: it's a moderately crunchy light-hearted fantasy tourism RPG in which you, as the hero of a ligne claire style narrative, go forth and do daring deeds. This week, you're hunting a long-lost sunken U-Boat and the treasures it is said to contain. Next week, it's hunting Minoan antiquities while avoiding the minions of a mysterious group known as the Octopus. The week after that, who knows? The world is your oyster!

Speaking of, yes, it is the world, as in the world you know and have been living in for however many years. There are some minor differences, and super science lurks in the shadows with all the mutant octopi and peculiar lights in the sky that entails. Feel free to slip in some references to Atlantis or the Seven Cities of Gold - it's that kind of setting. 

However, world history is broadly the same as it is in our world. Nobody dropped an H-bomb on Berlin, and Martians have yet to land on Golders Green. Kennedy (or possibly Lyndon Johnson) is in the White House. Khrushchev (or possibly Brezhnev) is in the Kremlin. 

Light-hearted means exactly that. Tintin never went to Vietnam, so neither will you. The Cold War might be turning Africa into a blood-soaked pin map and the Belgian Congo might be a nightmare's nightmare, but you're more interested in King Solomon's Mines. Heroes might get knocked cold, but they probably won't have their guts splattered over the landscape. This is a world for Studio Ghibli, not Heavy Metal. 

The rules are moderately crunchy. If crunch-lite is something like Honey Heist, modest crunch is BRP Call of Cthulhu, and major crunch is an Avalon Hill wargame, then The Troubleshooters is probably a notch above CoC but not quite D&D 3.5, in the crunch stakes. Percentile dice, lots of d6s, and a functionally ... odd ... combat system. 

Whoever on the team best loves miniatures combat was put in charge of fight scenes. When planning one of these your first task as Director of Operations is to sketch out the scene of combat and divide it up into zones, which have a tactical impact on gameplay. A street, a sidewalk, fountain, benches, cars parked nearby, all are zones, and some are made up of more than one zone. A car, for instance, is effectively two zones: car interior, and car exterior. If you wanted to make it more complicated you could divide car interior into more than one zone, such as passenger side, driver side, back seats, effectively turning the car into five separate zones. As the game suggests, "if the terrain is boring, add more zones!" 

Eeek!

OK, maybe I'm a psychopath, but when designing a scenario I don't sit down and plan out combat moments because those usually happen without my input. A player character punches a mook, and we're off to the races. Maybe every once in a while I set up, say, a casino floor, in anticipation of a John Woo style gunfight, but that seldom happens. The last time I went to the trouble of sketching out battlemaps, never mind elaborate battlemaps, I was in Uni, and had all the time in the world. Now I have maybe an hour to scribble some notes. Damned if I'm going to pretend to be a draughtsman for the sake of a donnybrook that might last less than 10 minutes at the table.

Moreover it will have to be a sketch most of the time, since zones affect character movement and a host of other tactical considerations, so the players are going to want to see what's going on. If you're not good at sketching quickly, Hergé help you. Nothing kills the mood like ten to fifteen minutes of impromptu drawing while the players twiddle their thumbs.

But you can ignore this, if you like. 

In the combat example given in the main book using the map I described zones do come into it, but only for the first few seconds of gameplay. After that, it's a pretty straightforward smackfest. In fact, zones only become an issue in the first few seconds because the Director is a stickler when it comes to a driver leaping to the rescue over the passenger side of the car (changing zones). If the Director weren't such a stick-in-the-mud, it wouldn't be a problem. There's a brief mention of a zone later in the example, but otherwise zones don't affect the outcome at all. 

In fact the entire map, with all its zones, is completely ignored except for the little bit in between the two cars. So all that sketching went for nothing. In the example, mind you, which is meant to show off every aspect of gameplay.

Which suggests to me that you, as Director, could probably ignore sketches and zones altogether and still have a perfectly satisfactory fight scene.

There are a few odd touches like this. An entire page is devoted to the techniques of kodokan judo, both those allowed in competition and those that are not, which I thought was interesting until I realized that it had no practical effect on gameplay. It's essentially a page of flavor text.

There's a moment where the text discusses Roles Within the Team (Doer, Muscle, Investigator, Fixer, Specialist) and on the page opposite the example character Elektra shows off an eye-catching drawing of her apartment in Paris, which is the team's base of operations. Under Doer, which is the first item on the Roles list and is specifically mentioned as a team leader type, it says among other things '[the Doer] frequently controls some key asset for the team, such as their base of operations.' OK, I think, so Elektra's the Doer. Nope. On the page following, she's listed as the Muscle; Frida, an example character who doesn't get as much screen time as Elektra, is the Doer. 

That's the kind of thing that causes a head-scratching moment; it's not wrong, but it contradicts the text for no good reason, and at this point I'm hoping that everything in the examples reinforces the text. After all, why wasn't it Frida's apartment? Why isn't Elektra, the one who gets most of the screen time, the team leader character?

Then there are Plot Hooks, which are specific to a character and hook the character into a scenario. Say, Do-Gooder (You can't help it! You just have to help others.). The text says 'There are only 11 Plot Hooks. It may seem like too few, but the low number is intentional: to make sure there is guaranteed overlap between the Plot Hooks of the characters and the startup handouts in the adventure books.'

Which is a reason, but not a good reason. Again, perhaps I'm a psychopath (whoops! where's my cleaver?) but I intend to write my own scenarios most of the time. I could care less about the startup handouts in the adventure books; those are optional anyway. So why not stuff in as many Plot Hooks as you like? 

Later in the text, in the Director's section, it talks about Other Genres. 'Bande dessinée are broad and span over several genres and styles, from fantasy and history to present day to science fiction, from drama and romance to action and adventure, and yes, erotic stories too. We have focused on international mysteries and adventures in the modern era, but there's nothing stopping you from experimenting with other genres and eras.'

Shoot, why not devote a couple pages to different eras and genres? It would have been at least as interesting as a page devoted to kodokan judo. Or earlier in the text when it talks about different styles of story (curious adventurers, sleuths, agents, heists) - why not devote a page to each style, rather than a column?  

OK, I've spent enough time babbling. What do I think?

I think it's great! 

I think the overall aesthetic of the book matches the desired flavor and theme. I particularly liked the little touches, like the character portraits at the frontispiece (reminds me of Tintin) or the use of expressive symbols rather than swearing - though I also appreciated the list of period-specific curse words in the appendix. Nom d'une pipe! Cornegidouille! 

Character design is clean and well-presented, and I love the idea of having passports as character sheets - though if you think I'm ordering new ones from my friendly local game store, Helmgast, you must be off your Swedish trolley. My friendly local game store is several thousand miles across the ocean; I shall use the .pdf, thanks all the same. ;) 

I think the rules could perhaps have spent a little longer in the oven, but they do the job they're intended to do which is all that can be asked for. I particularly appreciate the use of Story Points, handing control of the narrative to the players. There are some problems with the examples given in the text, but nothing that breaks the game. For those who fear crunch, it's only slightly al dente.

I think the loving care expended on the background, replete with Weird Locations, is delightful - and yes, Helmgast, I did notice 'Skull Island, Bermuda: an island hidden in the mist, where an abandoned British destroyer from the Second World War is anchored in the lagoon.' Cheeky sods!  Bon sang de bois! Cuistre!

I like the idea of the Octopus, a villain group designed to be a source of adventures. Apart from anything else it does the same job SPECTRE did for Bond; it gave him a target to punch that wasn't the Soviet Union or any real-world government. I also like the nod to queer-coded villains in the Director's section.

The accompanying scenario, The U-Boat Mystery, is solid and gives the adventurers some globe-trotting and Nazi punching to do, which is always a good thing. I did get a chuckle when I recognized the source material, but there's nothing wrong with borrowing inspiration from anime or manga. 

Would I recommend it? Sure! It's not a bad purchase for beginning Directors and fans of the source material. I look forward to more stuff from the creators - so long as they don't expect me to draw anything!