The Dark Side of the Neighborhood (Bookhounds, RPG All, Campaign Design)

Last time it was the Shop; this time, the Street - or more accurately, the Neighborhood. Why?

Because conflict breeds plot, first and foremost, and the Dark Side is all about plot. 

However, this is also about the Building. 

The Building, if you've forgotten, is that part of the game world where you, the Keeper/Director/Idiot Who Agreed To Write Something expect action to happen. It is where people meet the players, creating plot. You need to have a firm grasp of the Building's scale and what's in it. You do this because the Building is one of the foundational building blocks of the narrative. You need to know where the campaign is going. You need to know where the action is set. Once you have those two things, you can Keeper with confidence.

The Neighborhood is a fundamental part of the Building. This is a part of the game world which the players are expected to inhabit every single session. It might only be for a scene. It might only provide window dressing. Nevertheless, this is the one thing in the game world, apart from the Shop itself, which is a constant. The players will know their Neighborhood backwards and forwards. This applies to all characters. Even the clueless head-in-the-clouds type of character will know where the coffee shop is. The ones who are paying attention will know a lot more than that.

As with the Shop, the players are expected to pitch in and help construct the Neighborhood, at least in rough outline. Each player at the table should contribute one thing. It might be a laundry, it might be a pub, a corner store, a shortcut, a memorial. Whatever that this is, it's theirs. It should come up in play. 

The Dark Side is the Keeper's creation, and it's the one part of the Neighborhood that gets built without the players' input. As before, make sure that the Dark Side you design remains true to Rome and the basic principles of the setting, whatever those may be. That way, you can retro-engineer your Dark Side to fit whatever ideas the players come up with.  

But with those caveats aside, you already know a ton about the setting that you can factor in. You know what Rome is. You know the basic principles of the setting. You know what the East End is like. You have a pretty good idea of what Cartwright Street is like, and you also know that this is your version of Cartwright Street so it doesn't have to be a carbon copy of the real-world version. It can be anything.

Anything at all. 

It may happen that, thanks to decisions made about the Dark Side of the Shop, you already have an idea of what the Dark Side of the Neighborhood looks like. Or at least, an idea of what part of it looks like. Fine. You can expand on that. 

For instance, there's the Dark Side Gang Activity (Cartridge Street).and The Gun public house on the corner. It stands to reason that The Gun is a part of the Dark Side of the Neighborhood. It makes sense to expand on that. 

There's also those quarry pits next door. A few children drown in the pools there in the 1920s. It must have been a desolate, forbidding place. Those pools of water, deceptively deep, freezing cold. Nobody around to hear anything, see anything. If I were the Rough Lads operating out of the Gun and wanted somewhere to hide, say, a body, this would be the place I'd come. 

Added to all that are the Rumors. These are mentioned in the main book; they're clues which may lead to a resource, an item, or something else that the Hounds are interested in. One of these ought to be on the list. After all, the East End is bigger than Cartwright Street. The Hounds ought to have a reason to leave the shop and explore the world around them.

All that said:

The Neighborhood (Bare Bones)

Immediate area: Residential, with Industrial nearby (disused gravel pits).

Wider Area: Mix of industrial and commercial with some residential, mostly low-end. Dock work is one of the main economic drivers. Industries tend to be noxious, poisonous, and not conducive to healthy living. This is reflected in the general health of the people who live and work here. Slum clearance is a government priority, resisted by those who want to keep their homes.

Local Landmarks (Cartwright Street): The Gun public house. The Gravel Pits opposite the shop. The Majestic Music Hall, at the far end of the street. Bomb Damage caused by zeppelin raids, Great War, various buildings up and down the street.

Local Landmarks (East End/Whitechapel): The Crown and Dolphin, where the skull of Ratcliffe Murderer John Williams is kept; Bow Cemetery aka The City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery; Execution Dock in Wapping, last used a century ago; Whitechapel Gallery, a public art gallery opened 1901; St George in the East Church; Traitor's Gate, a water gate in the Tower.

In-game, as Keeper, you'd have more information on all of these. However, this is all the information the players get - for now. 

As with any part of the Building, the players decide which parts they want to interact with. If they show no interest in the Gun, say, then the Four Things you have on file will never see use at the table. That's why you don't put a ton of work into any aspect of the Building; it may never pay off. But you need to know enough so that, if the players show interest, you can come back to it later and build on that foundation.

Some of this may see use in a background moment but never be developed. That public art gallery in Whitechapel, for example, might get used in a scene where the players meet an important NPC for the first time. The Gun is bound to be used in a couple throwaway moments involving Rough Lads. So you, as Keeper, need to know that these things exist and can be used for moments like this.

Sometimes things exist just for style points. Traitor's Gate is the obvious standout. There's little chance the Hounds will spend a lot of time hanging around Traitor's Gate. There's even a novel by Edgar Wallace with that title which might see more use, in a game about books and book-buying, than the actual Gate itself. It's unlikely to ever become an important part of the campaign and probably isn't even a big tourist attraction, in the 1930s. But it's undeniably British, undeniably London, If ever you were to put together a montage of London Stuff as some kind of video introduction to the setting, it would be part of that montage. Along with some grimy back alley, a Tube Station, the Shop, and probably an auction in some otherwise unremarkable back room, with peculiar looking bidders all in a sweat over some grimoire or other.

Besides, you never know; the Hounds might fall in love with the Gate as a location, perhaps for Magickal reasons. It's always handy to have a kind of Portentous Location in your pocket. Execution Dock down in Wapping has a similar function. There isn't even anything there to look at, not in the 1930s, but the aura, the vibe, the Magickal potential is crucial in a supernatural/horror game.

There are going to be some things you prep about the Neighborhood that will not be given to the players in advance. Example: the area is a mix of residential and industrial. It stands to reason that, at some point, the Hounds will visit someone's house, someone's business. You may not even have a scene prepped for that moment, but the players decided, and you had to Yes, And. You need to have at least a sketch idea of what someone's house looks like, someone's business. Equally, the police are bound to be involved in your game at some point. Criminals too. You need a rough idea what the inside of a police station looks like, what the criminals' hideout looks like. You may never need to know this in play. But, if you don't sketch something in, it's dollars to doughnuts it will come up at the worst possible time and you won't know what to do. Better to have at least a sketch outline handy.

All that said, let's add the Dark Side.

The Neighborhood (Dark Side)

The Gun (Public House, Cartwright Street) Local Rough Lads use this as an unofficial base of operations but anyone with a sense of History or The Knowledge knows that this pub has had a bad reputation for over a century. The landlord, Henry Crowther, is a fence of stolen goods and was, in his day, a backer of prizefighters. One of the prizefighters he backed, Dan 'Lightning' Jones, is the pub's security and doorman. In any scene involving The Gun, at least 1D6 Rough Lads are on hand. Some of the area's best Forgers pay Crowther tribute and can be found at the Gun by those who need Forgers. If anyone needs a body hidden Crowther can take care of it - for a price. Dark Side Pool: 2

 [What is that pool, I hear you ask? Simple. It's a Pool from which I can draw Stability Affects. Stabiliy can be affected by, say, witnessing violence or being attacked by someone intending to do serious harm. This Pool means that, in any interaction involving the Gun, I have the option of drawing on that Pool to create affects which might cause a Stability check. Not a large one; after all, at the Gun, human opponents are the most likely.]

Gravel Pits (Industrial Waste Site, Cartwright Street) Back when this was still a working site piles of spoil and rubble ended up here, and huge holes were dug. Nobody's used this in a long time but nobody's paid it any attention either. There are rats as big as cats out here; in fact, cats stay far away. On a lonely moonlit night the moonbeams playing on the still waters of the pools in the pits is almost beautiful. On any other night it is a forbidding spot. Rough Lads sometimes come here on their own business, and children make it their playground during the day. Who knows what's hidden out here? Dark Side Pool: 3. Potential Magick: 1

[See Supernatural Creature at a distance is a potential 3 point check and it makes sense that something like that might happen here. Ghosts of dead children, rat things, possibly ghouls ...  Also, Magick is a resource in the game that sorcerers can draw on. Usually it's part of a magician's personal pool but, this being Bookhounds, one of the central conceits of the premise is that Megapolisomancy, the magic of the city, is a thing. It makes sense that parts of the city can be drawn on to create magical levers, or magical affects. Thus in any scene involving this location there's 1 pool of Magick which can be drawn on, by those who know how.] 

Bomb Damage (Zeppelin Raids, various locations) This reminder of past sufferings marks several buildings in the area. Some wear the marks as a badge of honor but there's something not quite right about the places where the bombs landed. Something hideous, like a wound which never heals and oozes blood. You've seen some very peculiar people fetishize these marks, some of whom you know to be magical practitioners. It's not clear what it all means, but it can't be anything good. Dark Side Pool: 4. Potential Magick: 1

[This is something which can be tied directly to Rome, if the characters taken an interest. Even if they ignore this potential plot point, since the Damage is on several buildings in the East End you can have them pop up in different scenes at different times. It's not like, say, The Gun, which can only be found at a particular point on Cartwright Street. The Damage can be anywhere. There were raids up to 1917 and it's quite likely that witnesses to those raids are still alive and living nearby, so if the Hounds want to start using those social skills now's the time to do it. As Keeper, you can invent a raid rather than use a historic one, but it's your shout.]

The Majestic Music Hall (East End) This home to variety acts of all kinds has been here since forever ago, in one form or another. Those with the Knowledge say they used to bait bears and host plays at the tavern that was here, back when Elizabeth was on the throne. The theatre that stands here now was built in 1859 and has hosted pretty much every famous name you can think of. There was a nasty fire back in the 1880s and several deaths, but the place recovered - some would say, thrived - and even the advent of cinema hasn't quite killed it off. It looks a little moth-eaten these days and there are all sorts of unsavory rumors, but you could say that about so many places ... Dark Side Pool: 6, Potential Mythos Encounter (Yellow King related), Potential Grimoire (Yellow King); Potential Magick 2

[It's always handy to have at least one location in your pocket which can turn into a mini scenario at the drop of a hat. You never know when you may need to drop that hat. Sometimes the campaign doesn't go according to plan and you need a distraction for the players while you reorient yourself. Or sometimes you haven't prepped anything and need an emergency backup. That's what locations like the Majestic are for. I see it as a kind of puppeteer location where you can introduce a potential adversary, or as a kind of abandoned tomb (ish) which can be looted by the greedy. 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!
  

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!