What Odd Fellows (RPG All)

Recently someone discovered desiccated human remains in a garage in Ohio, but you'll be pleased to hear that, just this once, it wasn't a gruesome murder.

The tip-off came when a neighbor heard what's been described as 'youthful voices' coming from a detached garage in Mt. Healthy, Ohio. Further investigation uncovered no suspicious youths (I firmly believe it was four meddling kids and a dog) but did find the bones of what proved to be a very long dead gent.

Turns out the garage was formerly a different building altogether, and was used by the Odd Fellows as a lodge. The bones were kept there for ritual purposes. Time passes, lodge changes hands, lodge is torn down to be turned into a garage, and lo and behold here's our pal Bonesy. 

What do you do when you find a corpse in your new garage? Why, you keep it, of course. The new owner didn't seem inclined to, I don't know, bury the dead, but he wasn't going to turf the poor thing out with the trash. He boxed it and forgot it. Then someone else found it.

The Odd Fellows is a very old masonic organization. The first lodges date back to the 18th century, and nobody really knows what they got up to; its traditions are shrouded in antiquity and, as any historian will tell you, the absolute best way to make everything clear as mud is to shroud the historical record in antiquity. Broadly speaking it's a charitable, philanthropic organization with a penchant for fraternalism and benevolence. Sounds very nice, I'm sure. 

Hot Fuzz, second in the Cornetto Trilogy

The Catholics didn't like 'em much, but then the Catholic Church in its day has condemned everything that isn't Catholic and some things that are, so it's not that difficult to see why the Church might have had a downer on the Odd Fellows.

If you want to know more about the Odd Fellows there is an interesting book over on Gutenberg, first published 1901, about the American branch of the Odd Fellows. 

On Jericho Road is about as gnomic and mystical as you could possibly hope for.  It poses the obvious question: "If," it is demanded, "the aims and purposes of the order be legitimate and praiseworthy, why shroud them in mystery rather than give them the broad sunlight of publicity." only to answer it with the most banal retort possible. "But if the preference of Odd-Fellowship be for quieter and less obtrusive methods, pray who shall fairly contest its right of choice?"

If it specifically mentions bones and peculiar rituals, I didn't notice. That said, I couldn't read it cover to cover and I shall be surprised if you manage it. If you wanted some bland yet useful text to make a mystic, or even Mythos, tome out of, you certainly couldn't do any worse. 

We travel from star to star, from system to system, until we reach yon lonely star that appears to be performing the Guardian's task, upon the verge of unmeasured and immeasurable space. We may descry and describe the form and outlines of those heavenly bodies, detect their movements and approximately determine their distances and dimensions. But what more? Little that is satisfying ...

OK, let's talk gamification. This could be a purist Trail of Cthulhu scenario. In that event the Lodge gets knocked down, say, in the 1890s and replaced with [insert building here - something modern and industrial]. There's a fair amount of junk left over from the old Lodge and the building's new owner can't be bothered to throw it out, so it ends up in the spare room. You know the type. Every office has one. Nobody remembers what its original use was; now it's a place you put things you don't want to have to think about. 

It could also be Fear Itself, or Esoterrorists, or any one of a dozen different modernist settings. Given the Youthful Voices, it could also make a fun BubbleGumshoe scenario. It might be a little tricky to turn it into Night's Black Agents since, in that setting, finding human remains in an unexpected place is just another Tuesday, and not a very exiting one at that. However if you replace the human remains with, say, any of the relics from Dracula Dossier, or some similar McGuffin, you're off to the races. 

Let's round out with a few story seeds. 

The premise: someone finds human remains in a [mundane setting] and it turns out that these bones are older than expected and came from the building that used to be on this spot, but which was torn down forty years ago to make room for this one. What happened, and what will happen next?

• What happened: the old building used to be an occult lodge, and the bones were kept for ritual purposes. 
• What will happen next: The new lodge, located somewhere else in town, is startled to discover its old ritual artefacts hidden away in some forgotten spot, and will do its best to get them back - using magic, if they have to.
• What happened: the old building used to be a funeral home, and was put out of business because it was breaking all sorts of laws regarding the disposal of human remains. The new owner found these bones, decided they didn't need the negative publicity, and put them somewhere forgettable.
• What will happen next: The former owner of those bones wants to be buried properly, and will haunt the finders until they do that.
• What happened:  the old building was someone's home, back in the 1840s or thereabouts, and they wanted to be buried on the old homestead. So they were. The bones were excavated as part of the new build and the developer didn't want the headaches that come with admitting you've found human remains on the property. So they hid the bones.
• What will happen next: The bones become the focal point for a peculiar kind of time dilation. The psychic powers of the dead person were such time doesn't really exist for them: it's always 1840, where they are. Now they've been disturbed the bones will start rebuilding reality to fit its internal vision: first the bedroom where they spent their final hours, then the rest of the house, hall by hall. Soon people in the new building will find themselves walking into the old, by accident, and there's no telling when or how they'll get out again ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

One Job Too Many (Mutant City Blues)

A quick recap from last post: 

Do they like the idea of being cogs in a mincing machine? A Pinkerton-style go-between, acting on behalf of less-than-innocent clients - perhaps even doing things that a more moral character would recoil at? ... Then their clients are going to be powerful, unscrupulous people who want what they want whether or not they deserve it, because in that kind of world nobody deserves anything. They only keep what they can take.

Do they like the idea of being the clever, morally centered Poirot, Marple, Monk or Rookie? ... Then their clients are going to be innocent people looking for something that rightfully belongs to them. No grey areas, only moral absolutes, and the adventure along the way involves solving puzzles, not playing several different gangs of crooks against each other and hoping to come out on top. In fact solving the puzzle is the only reason this kind of detective exists ... 

I'm going to go one step further and borrow a writing trick used by Agatha Christie: no matter which fictional portrayal you shoot for, write the first chapter and the last chapter first, and then fill in the blanks in the middle. 

Christie famously went so far as to write the last novels for Marple and Poirot years in advance - in the 1940s, decades before publication - sealing them in a bank vault until time came to publish them. She wanted to make sure she had the final chapters for their lives finished and ready for publication, so if she died in the Blitz there'd be definite endings for their narrative. 

From your perspective as Moderator, what this means is you set down how you think it may end and how you know it will begin, and then work out the bits in the middle. An RPG is slightly different from a murder mystery, in that it's always possible the crime won't get solved. Or at least, that it doesn't get solved the way you think it will be. 

In Night's Black Agents this final scene is sometimes called the Capstone, and is a climactic moment unto itself. It's an opportunity for the villain to prepare a final encounter, where the PCs prevail or die trying. In Mutant City Blues the PCs are less likely to die trying (this being a more heroic setting than NBA, with fewer fatalities), but they can still fail, and even dramatically fail. 

In a Mutant City Blues game it may be prudent to prepare two potential Capstones, loosely described as Villain At Bay and Villain Triumphant. Villain At Bay assumes the main antagonist's plot is basically foiled and they're on the run; Villain Triumphant assumes the main antagonist's plot is on the verge of success, and only a last-minute Hail Mary from the PCs will get this done.

So with that in mind the base outline is this: prep an opening scene, prep two potential Capstones, and then work out the middle bits. In this example I'm not going to work out the middle bits; that's up to you. I'm just going to prep the opening scene and two Capstones. I will include a 'what the PCs don't know' section in place of the middle bits.

In this example I'm going to draw up two mysteries, one for the clever and morally centered, and one for the cogs in the mincing machine.

Maltese Falcon opening

Let's start with the cogs.

In that kind of game there are plenty of fish bigger than you, and they all have agendas that don't necessarily agree with your own. In the Maltese Falcon, for example, Sam Spade has to dodge the district attorney and the detective in charge of the case, Dundy. This isn't because the DA and Dundy are bad people, necessarily; they're just not on Sam's side. 

In a regular MCB game, for example, the PCs may think Lucius Quade is on their side. Or they may give it no thought at all, and simply assume Quade isn't someone they have to worry about. In this kind of game, Lucius Quade definitely isn't on the PCs' side. That doesn't mean Quade's a bad person. He's just not a reliable ally, nor is he a neutral party. He has his own agenda, and he pursues it whether or not the PCs will get hurt as a result.

The same applies across the board, and applies double when actual law enforcement, whether federal or local, is involved.

Snatching Jimmy

The PCs are approached by a distraught father, Jamshid Mirwani, a restauranteur. He says his young son Jimmy has been kidnapped, and the kidnappers say they'll kill Jimmy if Jamshid doesn't pay them $400,000. Jamshid has an audio recording of the kidnappers torturing Jimmy, which he'll give the PCs. Jamshid is on bad terms with his ex-wife, May (formerly May Quade, Lucius' second ex-wife) but doesn't think she has anything to do with this. She'd never torture her own son. Would she?

Jamshid wants the PCs to act as his representatives, either to find Jimmy or to pay the ransom and get Jimmy back. Except Jamshid says he hasn't got $400,000; people always think because he married Quade's ex he must be loaded, but that just isn't so.

Villains Triumphant: This assumes either the kidnappers get paid or Jamshid gets his hands on the heroin somehow. The handoff takes place in a multi-storey car park in a neglected part of town famous for suicides and suicide attempts, sometimes called Jumper's Corner. After getting what they want the kidnappers will kill Jamshid as a warning to others, but they'll let Jimmy go. Jamshid's body will be dumped off the car park; it might look like a suicide at first, but he may have been blasted off the car park or influenced to jump.

Villains At Bay: This assumes Jamshid's shenanigans are revealed and the kidnappers traced before things get out of hand. Maybe May remembers seeing her errant husband with them, or can tell the PCs more about her ex's criminal past. Alternatively Jimmy, an emerging mutant himself with Dream powers, may contact the PCs remotely. This scene takes place at the kidnapper's safe house, a run-down biker bar with a lot of security cameras. 

What the PCs don't know: Jamshid is a drug dealer who was supposed to be arranging a shipment of heroin. The kidnappers are Jamshid's former business associates, a biker gang, and Jamshid ripped them off to the tune of $400,000. That's why they took Jamshid's kid. Jamshid didn't intend to rip them off, but the customs agent he thought he'd bribed demanded more money Jamshid didn't have. Currently the drugs are sitting in an impound depot, but if Jamshid could meet the customs agent's demands he could get the heroin, fulfil his promises to his former business partners, and get Jimmy back. The kidnappers are heightened (various combat-related abilities).

The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, starring Daffy as Duck Tracey

OK, now for those morally centered types.

The great thing about this kind of private investigator is you can fit one almost anywhere. You can't picture Miss Marple going head-to-head with Caspar Gutman; it wouldn't sell. Clean-cut teen sleuths straight out of BubbleGumshoe wouldn't last ten minutes in a film noir.  

But if the characters exist in a broadly moral world, in which certain things can be taken for granted - cops represent the law, right triumphs over wrong, people are basically good at heart - then you can have stories where someone who bakes cookies for a living gets mixed up in a murder case, and solves the crime. You could have a lot of fun with Mutant City BubbleGumshoe.

These stories tend to be murder mysteries, probably because the earliest versions - the Christies, the Sayers - were murder mysteries. You could have a burglary or an art forgery as the center of attention, but somehow there isn't the same zing. 

With that in mind:

The Missing Mandala

A mandala made of coral, gold, and turquoise, on loan from a British university museum, is stolen from an art gallery and an art student, Rachel Wu, murdered - presumably by the thieves. The owner of the gallery, Sandra Cohen, suspects it may have been a Chinese-backed heist-to-order, as the mandala was part of a collection of artefacts looted from China by the British in the 1800s. However, there's reason to think heightened criminals may have been involved. The university professor who delivered the mandala, Thomas Duncan, is very upset; this is the second time it's been targeted by thieves, and he only agreed to lend it on assurance that the gallery's security was top-notch.

The gallery was broken into shortly after 11 pm. The thieves clearly had detailed information about the gallery and came in via a skylight, bypassing security. There's not much to go on from the security cameras. What nobody can explain is why Rachel Wu was there at all. From the looks of things she interrupted the crooks as they were making their getaway, but although Rachel did work at the gallery there was no reason for her to be there at that time of night.

Rachel was a B-Category mutant (moving patterns on her skin that resemble cherry blossom tattoos) and was shot to death at close range - close enough for the weapon to leave powder burns. Whoever did it would have been spattered with gunpowder and minute drops of blood. 

Villain Triumphant. Thomas Duncan has managed to avoid detection and is on his way out of the country. This scene assumes the PCs catch up to him at the airport, as he's about to board his flight. He's sent the fake mandala by FedEx to his university address and still has the receipt on him. He won't be quick to cause trouble, not in an airport full of people, but he does have that pesky self-detonation power ...

Villain At Bay. The gun's been found where Thomas hid it, in a vent duct in Sandra Cohen's office. It has sufficient forensic evidence to link him to the killing. The forensic remains of his self-detonation in a locked gallery storeroom might give away his escape plan. Thomas is desperate to get away, but can't fly out. This scene may happen at a flop hotel, an interstate bus depot, train station or similar. 

What the PCs don't know: The mandala is a fake. Thomas had it made and delivered it to the gallery intending to steal it himself; he tried a similar stunt before, but it didn't work. His intent was to sell the real mandala and then cover up his crime with a phony robbery. The fly in the ointment was Rachel Wu. She noticed something was wrong with the mandala but rather than tell someone her suspicions she decided to inspect it closely after hours, to make sure she was right. She was, but she also caught Thomas in the act of 'stealing' the fake mandala. The gun was hers; she had a concealed carry permit. In the struggle she was accidentally shot and killed. In a panic, Thomas hid the weapon on-site.

Rachel has an uncle, Duncan Wu, who has low-level organized crime connections and who will actively involve himself in the investigation; Duncan's no criminal, but he looks suspicious enough to maybe fit the heist-to-order mold. 

Sandra Cohen is deep in debt and owes money to some less-than reputable characters, which may throw suspicion on her, but Sandra has nothing to do with Thomas' heist. 

As an out-of-towner with Dynamite powers Thomas had to register himself on arrival, so his abilities are a matter of record. His scheme was to use his inside knowledge to fake the theft (he insisted on learning everything there was to learn about the gallery's security system, and Sandra was happy to oblige) then explode, sending his particles off into the ether to reconstitute later.   

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

Twisting Christie (GUMSHOE All)

When constructing a mystery scenario - say for BubbleGumshoe - the Director/Keeper will want to keep the players on their toes. Everyone loves a plot twist. It's practically mandatory. The problem is, how to keep players from guessing the twist halfway through?

In some settings, guessing the twist is half the fun. The Dracula Dossier, for instance, provides three possible ways for any person, place or thing to develop; as an innocent, or unconnected plot point, as an Edom-friendly plot point, or as Dracula's puppet. That way the Director can adjust things on the fly, and account for unwise player mutterings like, 'God, we would be so, so hosed if the Journalist turned out to be one of Dracula's minions.' The twist is baked in.

That said, the Dracula Dossier is huge. Over 360 pages of unrelenting evil. When writing your own stuff, you may not want to spend time making sure every single person, place or thing the players might encounter has three different aspects. So what to do?

Author Karen Woodward has this to say about mystery maven Agatha Christie:

Christie often (though not always) had three distinct threads interwoven throughout most of her plots. Let's call these the A story, the B story and the C story.

A Story --> the murder (the whodunit)

B Story --> a romance

C Story --> a touch of evil

The A story is the main story, the story of the murder. The B story is a subplot that includes one of the main characters in a romance. The C story is another subplot, one about a character who has malign intentions toward one of the other characters. These intentions aren't related to the murder--perhaps this is suspected but, in the end, the 'touch of evil' character will not be intimately connected with it.

In Death In The Clouds, for example, the A plot is the murder of blackmailer and moneylender Madame Giselle. The B plot is the romance between ingénue Jane Grey and dentist Norman Gale. The C plot revolves around crime novelist Mister Clancy, who may or may not be the murderer. 

Yet a typical scenario often has only an A plot: one clear objective, which the agents or investigators have to shoot for or die in the attempt. Seldom is there a B plot, and almost never a C. However the disentanglement of A from B and C is what makes the twist a twist. It's because the reader can't be sure that A won't turn into C at the last minute, or vice versa, that the denouement becomes a denouement, and not just a rubber mask removal.

Now, it's unreasonable to have a romance B plot in every single scenario. Christie liked them, but you're trying to get a plot out every other week, where she's aiming to get a novel out every six months or so. Equally, in a TV series where there's a romance subplot, the romance isn't part of every single episode. Flirting, yes, but not the full-blown will-they-won't-they stuff. The audience gets tired if you return to the same plot points in every scenario, whether it's romance or some other thing.

However a B plot that adds some non-threatening drama is perfectly reasonable. Even better if it includes something the characters can relate to, but what that thing is will depend largely on the setting. In Bookhounds of London, the obvious target is the store itself. In Dreamhounds of Paris, it could be a proposed art showing, possibly even the 1938 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme. In settings where there are character hooks baked into the setting - like Night's Black Agents with its Sources of Stability - there are other possibilities.

With that in mind, and using a Bookhounds scenario idea I've described in the past, let's do some brainstorming and see where the B and C plots might be.

Lucy Ainsworth is the second daughter of wealthy shipping magnate Peter Ainsworth. Her eldest sister is married to minor nobility, and lives in Kensington. She and her younger sister Elanor still live in the family home in Wimbledon; both parents are dead.

Years of simmering hatred and jealousy have turned Lucy into a werewolf. She sees herself as the guardian of the Ainsworth legacy, defending it - and the Wimbledon house she and her sister Elanor share - against intruders. So far her activities haven't attracted attention, but her restraint is slipping. Sooner or later something will happen that will shatter their peaceful home life for good.

So the A plot is Lucy, and what to do about the ravening werewolf she's become. We're now looking for B and C plots that can be tied into A.

B is meant to be the non-threatening plot. It may or may not be the cheerful plot. When Christie plots her B level romances, they don't always end well. C is the touch of evil plot, the character that draws focus away from the real villain. C may or may not be a threat, but C certainly looks like a threat.

Since this is Bookhounds, the store is in play. There may be other, character-related hooks that are equally viable, but when writing for a group not your own you can't guarantee those hooks are there or, if they are, whether they're useful.

So let's make the B plot store-relevant. If the store is actually in Wimbledon, even better, though again when writing for a group not your own you can't order things the way you'd like them.

The main plot is about jealousy and rage, so it would be good if the B plot could also be about jealousy and rage. This helps tie everything together, thematically, reinforcing the scenario's central concept.

So: one of the store's rivals, fed up at the store's perceived success, hires Chester Riley, an amateur actor down on his luck, to do them foul. Chester, who thinks he's a master of disguise, keeps coming back to the store again and again to cause trouble. Maybe this time he'll make himself obnoxious while customers are in the shop. Or loudly argue with the staff about the price of a book. Or say he wants to return a book, since it was damaged when he bought it and he wants his money back. Of course he's doing that in front of a crowd of would-be customers.

In order to deal with the B plot the characters need to work out who Chester is, and why he's doing what he's doing.

Note that the B plot has little relevance to the main plot. It's a distraction, a thing the characters don't have to worry about too much, but can't entirely ignore since it does affect their lives and livelihood.

It could have been different, of course. Given the relationship between Lucy, Elanor, and anyone who pays any kind of attention to Eloise, a romance B plot is doable. The difficulty is how to involve the characters. Either they have to be the object of someone's affection, or they have to willingly pursue it. Willingly pursue is fun, if a player can be persuaded, but the Keeper can't rely on that every time. Alternatively Elanor - or possibly Lucy - might develop a fixation, but then you run the risk of it being short-lived if the player decides to negate the idea.

That, and ideally you want to involve all the players, otherwise one character's getting a lot of spotlight time for no other reason than that the plot says they must. You want to avoid 'the plot says, therefore you must' as often as you can, whether for B plots or any other reason.

One further possibility is to have an NPC be the lover and an NPC - presumably Elanor - be the object of affection. However that means two NPCs are basically having their own plot with no player input. Again, this is something to be avoided if at all possible.

Onward to C.

The C plot is the touch of evil plot. It needs to feature someone, or thing, that seems to be a threat but in fact is not. Since this is a horror game, that C plot probably needs to feature something supernatural-ish - heavy on the ish.

It also needs to be relevant to the main plot, unlike the B plot. The B plot can afford to be a little oddball, and so long as it affects the characters it doesn't matter if it isn't 100% plot relevant. In the same sense, the romance between Jane Grey and Norman Gale isn't 100% plot relevant, though the reader becomes invested anyway.

So we need a touch of evil character who is related to the A plot but not a central part of it. We already have a maddened werewolf and her trapped sister. We also have another sister, married, who lives in Kensington. We haven't specified who the sister married.

Let's say that the sister married Algernon Parker, a no-good snake in the grass who married sister Helen for her money. Thanks to unwise speculation that money's almost gone, though you'd never know it to look at their lifestyle. Algernon knows that Lucy and Elanor are still sitting on the bulk of their trust funds, and thinks that, if they wrote wills at all, they probably left everything to their sibling. After all, why wouldn't they?

Algernon's scheme is to get rid of Lucy and Elanor, so Helen can inherit the lot. However he wasn't counting on Lucy's unique condition. He has become aware of it, thanks to an unlucky encounter with Lucy on the Common, and is secretly worried he too might be infected after Lucy bit him. So he's resorting to magical means, and reading every grimoire and tome he can get his hands on - in part to find a cure, and in part to get rid of Lucy once and for all.

This may or may not bring him into the players' orbit, as he's bound to need Bookhounds. However so long as he keeps lurking in the background, possibly arranging fiendish traps to get rid of the Ainsworth sisters or chaining himself up at night to prevent disaster when he transforms, the players are bound to suspect him.

Which means they may not suspect Lucy - until it's too late.

Enjoy!

McCybercrime (Mutant City Blues, Night's Black Agents)

According to the latest Europol serious crime threat assessment there are over 5,000 new gangs operating in Europe, most of them human traffickers or cybercriminals indulging in ransomware attacks.

The biggest spike is in polycrime groups, or organized crime operations that are involved in more than one criminal activity. However the Europol assessment warns that the greatest challenge threatening law enforcement is the increasing adaptation and deployment of technology.

Document fraud, money laundering and the online trade in illicit goods and services are the three key issues. Document fraud is linked to human trafficking and the increasing migrant problem, while the other two are more traditional criminal activities. While there's no direct correlation with terrorism, terrorist groups often work hand in hand with criminals, either for services or to fund operations.

What makes it all the more serious, the Europol assessment alleges, is that cybercrime is getting to the point where you don't need to be a sophisticated computer user to take advantage of the technology. This is the age of crime-as-a-service; you can buy everything you need online, without having to write a single line of code.

Tony Thompson in his book Gang Land says much the same:

Internet Relay Chat rooms - an untraceable form of instant messaging - are filled with hackers advertising their wares, from keystroke loggers and password cracking programs to stolen credit card numbers and banking details. The more you get into this world, the more amazing it gets. Back in the day, the only way to acquire this kind of detailed knowledge about how to be a successful criminal was to go to prison. Now, for those who know where to look, it's all available online.

Misha Glenny in his work McMafia says:

The era of the malicious virus that chewed up computer screens, destroyed your hard disk or directed you to vile pornographic websites is fast coming to a close. Those attacks were the work of so-called 'ego-hackers.' They were designed to make the computer users' life a misery, as projects that had taken months or years were destroyed for the sake of an adolescent giggle. Now viruses, Trojan horses, worms and other malware go largely unnoticed. The sun has set on the age of the ego-hacker and the dawn is rising on the age of the criminal hacker, or cracker. 

So how can this be gamified?

Games set in the modern day like Night's Black Agents, or even BubbleGumshoe, can make use of crackers and their made-to-order crime packages. In fact it may be even better suited to BubbleGumshoe than most Pelgrane titles, since that setting is all about the solving of crimes.

That said, there's one setting that's even more suited to crime-busting than BubbleGumshoe: Mutant City Blues, a game in which super-powered mutant cops chase down their criminal counterparts. 

Ever since the Sudden Mutation Event, people have been able to fly. Phase through walls. Read minds. Shoot bolts of energy from their fingertips. Walk into dreams.

As members of the elite Heightened Crime Investigation Unit, you and your fellow detectives solve crimes involving the city’s mutant community. When a mutant power is used to kill, you catch the case. When it’s a mutant victim in the chalk outline, you get the call. And when it comes time for a fight, you deploy your own extraordinary abilities to even the odds.

 Mutant City Blues assumes, among other things, that the game takes place ten years from the current date. That allows you, as GM, to take advantage of current day technology and world events without worrying too much about pin-point accuracy.Technology will be recognizably similar to today, but updated, and the same goes for geopolitics, social trends, and other markers.

So if you assume that the inciting event, the Ghost Virus, happens right now, then however Donald Trump leaves office by the time the game starts he will have left office. There will still be a Russia, still be a China, a Europe. Brexit will be well under way, with significant effects for the UK and Europe. There will still be an internet, and probably still be some form of tablet, but perhaps there will be a rival to Apple and Samsung, and so on.

Which means that the age of the cracker will already have passed its zenith by the time the game starts.

What does that suggest? Well, probably that what we now call the darknet, accessed mainly by the techno-literate, is more available to the techno-dim. That setups we consider to be the province of sophisticated criminal networks are now available to those for whom Internet for Dummies is a must-read.

That probably includes a lot of mutants.

So with that in mind:

Cracker Firouz Kamkar, aka Marko in his online persona, has a lucrative sideline. He provides what amounts to the complete e-commerce package for would-be cyber criminals. They sign up, and he gives them a custom site with secure bitcoin or credit card checkout. Many of his clients are drug dealers, but a significant minority are criminally inclined mutants selling their specialized services to the highest bidder.

Except for his mutant clients Marko has a special package: ransomware. At any point Marko can seize control of the user's PC, site, bitcoin accounts, and all electronic communication the user may have made with clients. Marko then makes a very simple request: pay extra. A lot extra. Or I take all this and dump it in the laps of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit.

Marko, being a fourteen-year-old living in his parents' flat, doesn't see a problem with this. Why should he worry about a bunch of mutant losers? They deserve everything they get.

The mutant losers don't see it that way, and now a number of them are on the prowl looking for Marko. When several would-be crackers turn up dead in interesting and inventive ways, the HCIU discover a small crime wave right under their noses. Can they get to Marko before his mutant enemies do?

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

Cedar Point and Wild Rides (BubbleGumshoe)

You're reading this in the Glorious Future, but it's coming to you from the Dim and Distant Past, specifically that same day that the UK decided to cut off its nose to spite its face, and also the day that my fellow countrymen said loud and clear that Gays Should Not Marry Or Have Civil Unions. Because my fellow Bermudans are a bunch of bigoted Christians, for the most part, who spend their lives with their heads up each other's butts.

But after last week's short post I thought it would be a good idea to put in some advance work rather than leave it all till Sunday. I also wanted to touch on BubbleGumshoe, the latest from Ken Hite, Emily Care Boss and Lisa Steele, in which you play as a teen detective solving mysteries. What better way to do that then a trip to the funfair?

I haven't much hands-on with BubbleGumshoe, so I may get some of the more intricate details wrong, but the basics are simple enough. The system is stripped-down Gumshoe, so if you've already played Trail or any of the other Gumshoe products, you know the core gameplay already. The big thing to bear in mind is, as a teen, you don't have nearly as many points in your pools as your adult counterparts, so you need to be careful about ability selection.

The other thing to bear in mind is that, since this really isn't a combat-oriented game, you'll be spending much less on fighting abilities than in other Gumshoe products. This can be huge; combat abilities are a significant point sink in, say, Night's Black Agents, such that a minimum of 20 General pool points ought to be sunk into each character's fighting abilities. But since that isn't the case here, you're free to design quirkier character types.

Relationships are much more important than martial arts. Who loves you, hates you, likes you? Using these relationships propels the drama, but it also gives you access to a host of abilities you otherwise wouldn't be able to use. Friends with a cop? Then Interrogate, Forensics, or Cop Talk become available. Or a host of other benefits; really, the only limit is the players' imagination. Mechanically this works much as Network does in Night's Black Agents, except that where Network cannot refresh, these Relationship pools can.

You're in this to solve mysteries - that's why you're a Sleuth, after all - but those mysteries needn't be as deadly as those you'd find in Night's Black Agents, or Trail. Finding a lost dog is a mystery. Discovering who's bullying your cousin is a mystery. Discovering who murdered the next door neighbor is very definitely a mystery, and so on and on.

While this isn't Trail, there is a Stability stat. Only this time it's called Cool, and losing Cool doesn't mean a quick trip to the nearest insane asylum. Instead it means that future tests or contests are more difficult, perhaps impossible, if you've totally lost it and are snot-crying at the least provocation. There's one interesting variation; since this game is based on relationships, you can channel negative Cool pools into creating a new Hate. This is a person, place or circumstance that, you now realize, you Hate. That restores your Cool, but creates a new negative Hate pool that the GM can use against you in future conflicts.

Incidentally if you were expecting some variation on the Pillars mechanic, first seen in Trail and later used, in one form or another, in most Gumshoe products, there isn't one here. Cool isn't as vital a stat as Stability is in Trail; losing it isn't as world-crushing as losing Stability, and you can't permanently lose, say, your faith in the Church, or your belief in the essential goodness of mankind. However Cool is very important in Social contests and Throwdowns, and therefore in Relationships, which are at the heart of the game.

This is the part that players familiar with Gumshoe but not as well read in teen drama may stumble over. Mechanically the contests are broadly similar to Thrilling Contests seen in Night's Black Agents. The terms of the conflict are defined, the players pump in General pool spends to adjust difficulty or to change the terms of the conflict to more favorable ones, and then dice are rolled. However the conflict isn't how to stake a bloodsucker while at the same time surviving a high-speed chase on the autobahn. The example given in the main book is of a bunch of teens confronting a rival at a party and humbling her by pushing an anti-drug message. Its a situational switch, not a mechanical one. That's the key thing to bear in mind.

The default setting is a small American town, but really, it doesn't have to be American. Small town life is small town life, wherever you go. It wouldn't be at all difficult to rearrange things to make this a small town in France, or a small island in the Caribbean. However it might be more challenging to set this in, say, London, or any large urban area.

Relationships are different in large cities. The social dynamic is different, and in a sense diminished. If your mom is the principal of the high school, for instance, and it's the only high school in town, that makes her a very important person within the social fabric. Less so, if she's one of several dozen in a sprawling urban metropolis.

Plus there's the issue of added violence, particularly in the States. The game isn't really equipped to handle guns or significant violence of any kind, but a mystery-based game set in a modern city probably has metal detectors in every high school, just because of gun violence. The knock-on involved in setting a game in the big city is significant, and can't be avoided or skirted round. That said, it shouldn't be impossible to set this in a city; just more difficult. 

Okay, that's all mechanical. What about scenario and campaign design? Well, that hasn't changed significantly from other Pelgrane products. Action is still divided up into Scenes, some of which are very important, or Core, while others are optional. The big difference here is the addition of a couple scene types: Dramatic, Pushback, and Throwdown.

A Dramatic scene is exactly what it sounds like. It's not about the plot. It's about the character. Which doesn't sound like much until you realize that, up till now, Gumshoe games have never been about character. It's always about gathering clues, putting them together, and figuring out what's going on. Character has always been secondary, but this time it's primary, and that means the problems you solve may not be about the plot at all. Maybe someone's Relationships are frayed, or there's some other moment of high tension that needs resolving. That's what a Dramatic scene is for. This is the soap opera moment, but soap operas have survived for as long as they have because, when played straight, a Dramatic scene hooks the audience and gets them to pay attention.

Pushback is a little like an Antagonist Reaction scene from, say, Trail. The difference here is that it's non-fatal. An authority figure of whatever type gets involved, and threatens the character in some way. Except rather than drag the character down a dark alley and rearrange their spinal cord, the authority figure threatens social punishment of some kind. Exactly what that punishment is will depend on the scene, and the authority figure making the threat.

A Throwdown is a heightened Dramatic scene. Here the character needs to engage in an extended social conflict of some kind, against an important rival. This is the major drama moment. I went into this in some detail above, so I'm not going to go over old ground here. Except to say that, played properly, a Throwdown can be a major moment in the game; but a Throwdown also has the potential to go off like a damp squib. This is one of those times when the GM needs to take care.

It reminds me, oddly enough, of the Wraith RPG, specifically the Harrowing sequences when the character's Shadow accumulates enough negative points to put the character through the wringer. A similar aesthetic applies here. The intent isn't to destroy anyone, or even to attack them directly. Instead it's all about indirect attacks, in which the character's brawn or weapon mastery matters less than the character's ability to deal with social issues. But in a Harrowing the GM is specifically advised to take lots of notes and prepare in advance, and the GM would be well advised to do the same here. It's not like a typical Antagonist Reaction, where you can throw a few mooks into the mix and see what happens. This needs to be crafted, or it won't work.

In fact, BubbleGumshoe has one other important commonality with Wraith: it's not for everyone.

Wraith's a brilliant RPG, but not all gamers are going to be thrilled with the idea of playing the dead, let alone having a Shadow persecute them at every turn. Players like to feel in control, to be powerful, and the underlying message of the Shadow mechanic is, no, you're weak, you're a failure, you're doomed. Whereas nearly everyone who ever sat at a gaming table and threw dice around has played Dungeons and Dragons, a game which implicitly tells you not only that you're powerful, but also that you're the Most Powerful, if not the Chosen One.

Now, it's not BubbleGumshoe's place to tell the player how powerful their character is, but it's implicit in the setting that they aren't the most powerful in the game world. They're teens, functioning in an adult setting. If they want access to adult skills, like Forensics or Cop Talk, they need to have an adult ally. That alone suggests significant weakness, and that's before you look at the Pushback and realize that there's a whole scene type devoted to making sure the players know they're small cogs in a much larger machine.

Plus, the essence of the Throwdown is social combat, which isn't something that all players will grok instinctively. Oddly enough, teens will, because social combat is a large part of their lives. But it becomes less of an obsession the older a person gets, and I wonder how may players will be able to put themselves back in their fourteen-year-old mindset. The example Throwdown, for instance, has the characters confront a fellow classmate about drug use. While reading it, I couldn't help but wonder, 'is this what teens would do? Or is this what adults would like to think teens would do?'

It's more about fulfilling a particular kind of fantasy than it is wish fulfillment. In this instance, the Kid Fantasy. You can be one of the Hardy Boys, or Nancy Drew, or even - if you want to go back far enough - Huck Finn. He's hardly a sleuth, but his fingerprints are all over this as the archetypal kid set adrift in an adult world. It hearkens back to the one time we all knew we were right and the world was wrong. There's a reason why this is a specifically kid fantasy, after all; only a kid could be quite so self righteous.

None of which is to say that BubbleGumshoe is a bad game. Like Wraith, it's brilliant in its own way. It does exactly what it sets out to do, and does it very well. The mechanics are polished to a mirror shine, and stripped to their bare essentials. The setting is fully realized and the Relationship mechanic plays right into the game's aesthetic. However it must be acknowledged that not everyone is going to want to play a teen detective, because it doesn't play into the wish fulfillment tropes that many gamers come to the table hoping to enjoy. Even in a zombie apocalypse game, where everyone's living off of tinned beans and paranoia, the players still get to prove that, when everything's gone to hell, they have what it takes to survive. Finding out what happened to somebody's bicycle doesn't have the same cachet.

Basically, it's the Marmite Effect. Some players are going to fall in love with the concept and never want to play anything else. These are the folks who have marmite on everything. Others will reject it outright, the ones who'd bury a jar of marmite at a crossroads with a stake through its dark heart. Most will fall inbetween, tolerating marmite because why not, but just as keen to get back to beating orcs, staking vampire spies, or whatever else the group usually does.

Okay, all that said, what about Cedar Point, I hear you ask?

Cedar Point is going to be the example I'll use to piece together a BubbleGumshoe scenario seed. I could go into a lot of detail here, but that's not what this is about. You do need to know a little about Cedar Point, though, so briefly:

This amusement park in Ohio, on the shores of Lake Eerie, is the second oldest such park in the United States. It's roller coaster heaven, with 17 coasters for the speed freaks out there, plus another 50-odd rides for those crazy people who don't like roller coasters. It also boasts all kinds of live shows for all ages, from Snoopy songs to Motown and fireworks displays. However for our purposes one of the most useful things about Cedar Point is that there's plenty of accommodation both on and off site. That means the characters can live somewhere else, and come to Cedar Point for, say, a week or two. Maybe it's a class trip, or a family vacation. But the point is that it takes the characters away from their usual haunts and puts them in a completely new situation, which can be great either for shaking up a game that's gone stale, or for introducing new players to the mechanics in a setting where failure can be forgotten as soon as everyone goes home.

There are two BubbleGumshoe settings that involve horror, or horror elements. Neither of them are anything like as bloodthirsty as Trail, never mind Call of Cthulhu or Night's Black Agents, but both have that weird Eerie Indiana crossed with R.L. Stein vibe. Either could be Lovecraftian, but Bellairs Falls is the more likely prospect.

This one has magic at its heart, but those of you shouting Wingardium Leviosa at the screen will be disappointed. I suspect one of the writers whispered 'quidditch' longingly, then two of the others screamed LAWSUIT, and that was that. In this setting, magic is eeeeevilllll, and those who practice it are likely to become Obsessed.

The other setting, Ruby Hollow, has ghosties, ghoulies and long-legged beasties (Good Lord, deliver us!), but this is a Scooby Doo setting, in which Traps are key.  This is one for the rubber mask crowd, complete with animal sidekicks for the mystery-busting sleuths.

Take all that together, and then consider that Cedar Point once boasted a Bluebeard's Palace funhouse, and we have the germ of a plot. Bluebeard, in case you aren't familiar with the name, is a very famous fictional mass murderer whose career and characteristics are loosely based on a real mass murderer. It's pretty easy to guess what the Cedar Point Bluebeard's Palace was all about. There's little left of it online, but this blog post features, among other things, period postcards and images that give you a good idea what it may have looked like. You could get away with a lot more then than you can today, and despite the period quaintness there's a hard edge to some of this stuff that's unnerving.

Since I'm going to be referring to two BubbleGumshoe settings, there will be two Crimes, two Culprits and two Hooks, all taking place at the same location.

Bluebeard's Return

No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks! Plus, for once, you're going out of town for some much-needed fun. It's off to Cedar Point, the world-famous Roller Coaster Capital! Sure, you won't be staying on site; in fact, your group (Church group, school group, family group, whichever) has block-booked at one of the cheaper, more rickety off-site hotels, Castaway Lodge, within sight of the much more fun purpose-built pirate hotel, Castaway Bay. But why worry about that? It's time to have some fun!

But wait up a second; what's that funky place on the Broadway? It looks like something grandpa might have enjoyed. Bluebeard's Palace? Well, I guess that big guy on the front of the building is Bluebeard, but what's it supposed to be, some kind of horror house? I dare you to go inside! Heck, I double dare you!

Crime: (Bellairs Falls) one of the group becomes obsessed with the odd postcards that float around Cedar Park, which seem to contain a kind of coded message. If you collect them all, maybe you'll be able to figure out the code? (Ruby Hollow): Jeez! That guy in the mummy costume looks really dead. What's up with that, and why is he following us around after we leave Bluebeard's Palace?

Culprit: (Bellairs Falls) The spirit of Bluebeard, trapped by magic in his old Palace looking for a way out. Or, for a less mystic ending, Packy Dunlop, the operator of Bluebeard's Palace, who offers big cash prizes to anyone who can break the code, but has rigged the game so nobody wins. (Ruby Hollow) The corpse of long-dead gunslinger Elmer McClintock, who wants a proper burial. Or, for a less gruesome twist, Packy Dunlop, the operator of the Palace, who uses the funhouse as a base of operations for a pack of pickpockets.

Hook: (Bellairs Falls) Those postcards really are weird; it's like you can almost see something moving in the images. (Ruby Hollow): Is that a mummy, a zombie, or what? Look out! IT'S MOVING!

In the examples given in the main rules, there would then be a Story and a short list of Clues for the characters to pick up. However I think you get the gist of it, and as it's now Sunday - time flies - and I have an afternoon matinee, that's all for now!

In brief: I recommend BubbleGumshoe wholeheartedly, with the caveat that the central concept is not to everyone's taste. But that's a minor cavil. Even if you never play it, the game's worth reading and possibly data mining for other projects.

Enjoy!