'"What do you mean, forgotten?" I hear you ask. "There are pubs all over the place! Why only last night I drank myself stupid at the Dog and Phuc, the new Vietnamese gastropub on the corner. Surely you're mistaken!"
Yes, there are pubs in London. Quite a few of them in fact, but most if not all of them aren't pubs as someone drinking during the 1930s would have known the breed. Let's talk about some of the differences.
Most of the information I have on this subject comes from The English Pub, by Peter Haydon.
Before the 1890s the pub was a very different animal. Each public house was an independent, owned by the same person who operated it. Each owner could buy beer from whoever he or she liked, and it was very common for pubs to brew their own beer on the premises. Each pub had its own character, no two being quite alike. The owner decided the style, and that meant a riot of differences, of color, of idiosyncrasy. There were also many more breweries active then than there are now, ensuring that there was plenty of choice in what you drank.
However by 1890 the economy was getting softer, and breweries were finding it much more difficult to make a living. In 1899 the bottom dropped out of the market altogether. Breweries went to the knacker's yard, selling their stock and property at bargain rates. People stopped building pubs. What was the point, after all? Nobody was going to invest money in a failing venture.
In 1890, for instance, there were 11,322 independent breweries operating throughout England. By 1900, there were only 6,420. The number of pubs that brewed on the premises also sharply reduced over the same period, from 12,417 in 1880 to 1,447 in 1914.
This didn't just mean financial ruin. It also meant that, if you intended to survive these apocalyptic times, you had to be smarter, more ruthless, and more efficient than your competition. You had to dominate your market. Northern breweries were the first to realize this, and they began buying up pubs left and right, claiming the market by claiming the supply chain. Then everyone else wanted to get in on the act, and before long the breweries went into a pub-buying frenzy.
This led in turn to a sudden spike in pub construction. Not so much in new pubs - those were still a drug on the market - but in refurbishing the existing ones. Look at it from the owner's point of view. You know the brewers are going to be knocking on everyone's door. Unless you're addicted to independence, and poverty, you want to sell, and for the best possible price. You need to convince the brewers that your pub is the very best in the locality, with plenty of thirsty customers. Which pub is the best? Why, the largest pub, of course. Does your pub really need a ballroom that can seat two hundred? Who the hell cares; the brewer's some damn silly Northerner who doesn't know the London market, and if you have that ballroom, the brewer will think you have the drinkers to go with it.
This is when we start seeing innovations like the Saloon Bar, the Public Bar, and a separate tap room. It's all space, and the fancier a place looks, the more likely it is that the buyer will pay top dollar. Do you have snugs, little hole-in-the-wall spots sealed off by frosted glass and wooden walls, so your drinkers can enjoy themselves in privacy? That's money in the bank. Do you have a cheaply furnished public bar for the plebs to get drunk in, and a more elegantly appointed saloon bar for those prepared to pay a little extra? That's money in the bank.
So down come the brewers and buy the publicans out. By the 1920s there are very few independents left, still fewer by the 1930s. However the grass isn't always greener on the other side. Those publicans within the brewery system are living in what amounts to indentured servitude. They owe everything to the brewer, from the beer in the cellars to the carpets on the floor, and the brewers make very sure the landlords will never get out from under that mountain of debt. After all, if they did, they might want their independence again, and that would never do.
George Orwell says as much in his essay The Clink, about an unsuccessful attempt to get thrown in prison. He spends a short time in a police court cell, where he meets, among others, a disgraced 'guv'nor.'
The florid, smart man was, it appeared, a public house guv'nor (it is a sign of how utterly the London publicans are in the claw of the brewers that they are always referred to as guv'nors, not landlords, being, in fact, no better than employees), & had embezzled the Christmas Club money. As usual, he was head over heels in debt to the brewers, and no doubt had taken some of the money in hopes of backing a winner ... the magistrates are hard on these cases - he did in fact, get four months later in the day. He was ruined for life, of course. The brewers would file bankruptcy proceedings and sell his stock and furniture, and he would never be given a pub license again.
Because the brewers own the pub, they can order things as they like. By the 1930s, this becomes a damage limitation exercise. The powers that be, which in the 1930s meant the educated middle to upper classes, have a down on pubs. They promote vice, distract the workers from their jobs, and generally are a haven for criminals. All those private little snugs, saloon bars and so forth; how is a constable supposed to police a place, if he can't see everything that's going on as soon as he walks in the door?
So the brewers bring in their in-house architects for yet another round of pub refurbishments. This time it isn't about money. It's about what we would now call branding, throwing out the old and replacing it with new. The same old new every time, in fact. After all, why go to all the trouble of coming up with a different design for each location, when you can use the same design for all of them?
However since this was very much the governing classes dictating to the governed, the 1930s designs were about creating pubs that the governing classes would like to drink in. Not that they ever would, of course. "It is all to the good that some of England's public houses should be reformed, reconditioned or improved, and made fit and decent places for refreshment and recreation of the people," said a Temperance advocate.
This led to, among other things, an increase in the number of workingmen's clubs. In 1905 there were less than 7,000 clubs altogether; by 1935 there were well over 15,000, with a combined membership of half a million. The pubs were no longer independent, but the clubs were. They could buy whatever beer they liked, and decorate the place as they pleased. But while this may have been wonderful for the working classes, it meant that the pubs started losing customers, further contributing to an already weakened pub market.
It also led to an interesting innovation: the death of pub signs. In days gone by each pub needed an innovative and eye-catching sign, not just because its customers probably couldn't read, but also because a good sign is a form of advertising. People can say "go to the Swan, you'll never get a better pint," and everyone will know what and more importantly where the Swan is, by the lovingly decorated signage which may or may not actually be a carved Swan. However that only advertises the pub. It does not advertise the brewer, and by the 1930s it had become very important that people know the Swan, for example, is part of Fuller's, or Adnam's, or Theakston's. So the elaborate signage went on the scrapheap, replaced by signboards on the side of the building that said not only what the pub was called, but also which brewer owned it. So the drinker knows that, if he likes Fuller's or can't stand Adnam's, that he'd better go to or avoid the pubs that brewer owns.
Meanwhile the brewers began eating themselves alive. The last time the market went downhill, the brewers that survived did so because they bought up the pubs. Now there were no more pubs to buy, and the only way to stay competitive in a vicious market was to make sure there was as little competition as possible. In previous years brewery takeovers had fueled expansion, but by the 1930s they were the only way to keep the remaining breweries alive.
So in your game, what does this mean?
It means the pub is always changing. If there's a rickety Victorian glamour palace at the corner, complete with snugs and saloon bars, it's under threat. If there's an actual independent pub in the neighborhood, it's practically the alcoholic equivalent of a unicorn, on the brink of utter extinction. No doubt the owner is being besieged by the brewers night and day, but old Charlie would never sell out. His thieving son Archie, on the other hand ... Meanwhile the dear old pub of yesteryear, with its original features and Victorian touches, could be gutted at any moment, to be replaced by fake Victoriana and horse brasses. The brewer's in complete control, until the brewer collapses under a mountain of debt, leaving confusion and chaos in its wake.
Remember, the pub is the center of the community's life. There's a reason why so many people have tried to control it over the years, from the brewers to the coppers to the blue-nosed temperance advocates who want everything to be clean-cut, British and manly. This is, after the church, the place where everyone goes. Think what it means, for example, to operate a Christmas Club, as Orwell's guv'nor did. It means you have hundreds of people coming in all the year round, contributing their pennies and shillings to the fund. It means you have regulars.
From your characters' perspective, it may be all about class. Are your Bookhounds hoping to claw their way to the upper reaches of the class system? Then you'll never see them in the public bar; rubbing shoulders with the ho-polloi is the last thing they'd want to do. Except if there's money in it, of course. At the same time the shop workers are either in the public bar or the workingmen's club on the corner, breathing fire and revolution, and voting Labour. Drinking in the right place shows where you consider yourself to be, in the scheme of things. Or where you would like to be.
Moreover people tend to congregate in the same pub, often for generations. If your pub happens to be on Fleet Street, as the Cheshire Cheese is, then it has been a newsman's haunt for many, many years, well known to literary men. So if your characters want to find a particular author, or newspaper editor, their best bet is to haunt the Cheese and wait for that person to come in. It'd be a Streetwise spend to work out which pub the person they want to see is most likely to go to. Where do the Radicals hang out? The Toshers? The medical men, the lawyers, the banker's clerks? Each group has a pub that it prefers to go to, and if the characters want to catch up with a particular person, they need to know which pub they go to.
Or say you want to play on a place's historic links. Going back to the Cheese again - an excellent pub, by the way, well worth a visit for the atmosphere alone, and Samuel Smith's does a good bitter too - there's its links with important figures like Dickens, its potential history as a brothel, and the alleged bones of murdered babies on display, all to play with.
This is a history that could be repeated again and again, in a time-spanning campaign. Something like the Dracula Dossier, for example, could feature repeated visits to the same pub over many decades, if not generations of spies. Say for the sake of discussion that the Cheshire Cheese is a meeting place for Edom in the 1890s. There's no reason why it couldn't have hosted many such meetings over the years, and feature in stories set in the 1940s, 1970s or current day. After all, the pub's still there, almost unchanging, over all that time.
As a closer, here's a brief scenario idea, suitable for Trail or Bookhounds.
The Unicorn is a pub of long standing in Blackfriar's, on Queen Victoria's Street, not far from the church of St-Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe and Blackfriar's Train and Tube station. It has links of long standing with the Worshipful Society of Apocatheries, one of the twelve great livery companies of London. Opiferque Per Orbem Dicor and a golden unicorn has been its signage for as long as anyone can remember; both the motto - throughout the world I am called the bringer of help - and the unicorn are used by the Worshipful Society. Medical men and members of the Society frequently call on the Unicorn; you can often find the best surgeons and doctors in London enjoying a pint in the saloon.
One of its prize possession is a poem alleged to be the work of John Keats, though its authorship is disputed. Keats is known to have been an Apocathery, and it's thought that the poem was a gift to the daughter of the pub's then owner. Signed only with a K, the framed original, To A Friend, hangs in the saloon bar.
The Unicorn is owned by the Brocklebury Brewery, Yorks, and the owners are contemplating a complete refurb. Out with the old, in with the new, and that includes the ancient signage and the alleged Keats. Then the accidents start happening; the architect, the architect's business partner, and two builders die, one after the other, each after visiting the Unicorn. Meanwhile the guv'nor's losing sleep; something's haunting the place, he claims, something that glistens black as midnight, and the strange tittering noise it makes is more than he can stand ...
Enjoy!
Showing posts with label George Orwell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Orwell. Show all posts
Sunday, 10 January 2016
Sunday, 26 April 2015
The Rental Library (Bookhounds of London)
A while ago now I had cause to mention George Orwell's essay on running a book store. Among the topics covered was the store's rental library, something that was very common in Orwell's day but is extinct in ours. I wondered how it was organized, what its purpose was, how it was run. Wonder no more, for there is a book out there that reveals all: Ruth Brown Park's Book Stores and How To Run Them.
I had no idea this book existed until someone Tweeted about it, probably because the cover is so evocatively art deco. First published in 1929, copies of this can be had relatively cheap, and while it's not an absolute must-buy - the writing's a little dry, and as might be expected it dwells on the economics and accounting side of the business - any Keeper interested in running Bookhounds might at least see if it's available on inter-library loan. Naturally I turned to the Rental Library chapter first.
Few new book shop owners realize the importance of the rental library, it begins. Besides furnishing a source of steady income, remember always, a rental library brings people into your store. At first they come only to rent, but passing attractive displays on their way to the Rental Department, they eventually begin to buy,. And therein lies your opportunity. Make permanent buyers of former borrowers. Let people learn how delightful it is to own books, not merely to rent them. Create in them, through subtle sales talks, a desire to become book collectors, not transitory owners. You can do this if you exert real selling technique ...
Already I'm beginning to see why the Rental Department is extinct. The core assumption, judging by this piece, seems to be that people don't really know that they can buy books; that ownership is within their grasp. There's almost a subtle class war situation going on here, where a host of potential buyers, who previously thought that owning books was for the well-off, now realize how wonderful it could be to have a real, live book of their very own, to cuddle and play with and call George. In 1929, this might have been true. These days the written word doesn't have quite that same upper class cachet. People who want to own books just go out and buy them, and the ones who don't want to own books wouldn't care if Rental Departments opened up in all the Starbucks across the land.
George Orwell, since we're in his territory again, discusses this tendency at length in the essay Books vs Cigarettes. A couple of years ago a friend of mine, a newspaper editor, was firewatching with some factory workers, Orwell begins. They fell to talking about his newspaper, which most of them read and approved of, but when he asked them what they thought of the literary section, the answer he got was: "You don't think we read that stuff, do you? Why, half the time you're talking about books that cost twelve and sixpence! Chaps like us couldn't spend twelve and sixpence on a book." These, he said, were men who thought nothing of spending several pounds on a day trip to Blackpool. For the record, one pound in old currency is twenty shillings, and each shilling is twelve pence. Twelve and sixpence is twelve and a half shillings, or slightly over half a pound.
Orwell's essay concludes that, overall, reading is probably the cheapest recreation available, but it might not have appeared that way to the people doing the spending, because reading seems expensive when compared to everyday luxuries like cigarettes or beer. The individual pint or pack of coffin nails is relatively cheap compared to the price of an individual book, but when a year's spending is taken into consideration, you're likely to have bought, and spent more money on in aggregate, many more cigarettes or pints than you have books. Yet each cigarette or pint can only be consumed once, while a book lasts as long as need be.
Of course, says Park about the Rental Library, no definite choice of books for the renting department can be laid down, because the character of your patrons pays such an all-important part. However it has been found a good plan to have, first, the latest and most popular new fiction; second, the popular books of the past year, and the earlier books of authors whose present books are causing discussion; and third, non-fiction having wide popular appeal.
The point always being to draw people in. Footfall is the life blood of retail. Remember what was said previously, about passing attractive displays on the way to the Rental Department. This is exactly the same kind of technique used in retail outlets all over the world; large chains, like Walmart, have this down to a fine art. You put the things that you know the customers will want as far away as possible, so the customer has to walk past other things on the way to their destination. Those who walk past may stop, at those attractive displays, and those who stop might buy. I've previously spoken about shopping malls, and the practice of keeping key tenants far away from each other, so people have to walk from one to the other. The principle's the same. Only the scale is different.
As far as revenue's concerned - remember that source of steady income mentioned in the first paragraph - the retailer gets his cash up front. There's a deposit, refundable when the member decides he's had enough and wants to withdraw, and a small charge per week. Local competition would probably affect your decision as to deposits and rentals, Park diplomatically concludes. Some shops might choose not to demand a deposit, for fear of frightening off patrons. Orwell points out that theft is common in rental libraries, with the books being sold on at a small profit to other book shop libraries, but also says that the shop owner felt it was an acceptable loss, so long as Rentals kept drawing people into the store.
Park starts talking about accounting at this point, and I shan't bore you with that, but she goes on to mention something I hadn't considered. Book wrappers should be of some distinctive design, with the name of your shop in clear relief. The more original and outstanding they can be, the more chance you have of saying to the public, "We have a rental department, and we can serve you."
You'd never persuade a shop owner now to produce their own line of dust jackets. The cost would frighten them half to death, but Park's writing about a time when paper's cheap and people's expectations are different. They'd demand dust jackets for their leather-bound darlings; only the pulps went about in horrid softcover.
From a Keeper's perspective, this is possibly the easiest prop ever invented. Want instant atmosphere? Photoshop a half-dozen dust jackets, wrap them around the books in your collection, and you're sorted. Or if you haven't got anything suitable, go to a second hand shop and buy a few of their cheapest old hardbacks. Let the players argue over the shop's logo, or how best to advertise. Oddly enough, this is exactly the sort of minutiae that many players love to get involved in, not unlike the Innsmouth House Players' inordinate fondness for period menus and food. You may even have to spend an entire session arguing over how best to design the jackets, but to be honest, if your players are quite that mad, good luck to you!
So there you have it: the Rental Department, in all its glory. What will it be to your bookshop? A constant trial and expense, with chancers nicking the books every other week? A source of revenue and advertising? What happens if a corpse turns up in an alleyway with one of your shop's books in his pocket? That attractive wrapper with the shop's name, address and logo on it might not seem like such a wonderful notion ...
That's all for now. Enjoy!
I had no idea this book existed until someone Tweeted about it, probably because the cover is so evocatively art deco. First published in 1929, copies of this can be had relatively cheap, and while it's not an absolute must-buy - the writing's a little dry, and as might be expected it dwells on the economics and accounting side of the business - any Keeper interested in running Bookhounds might at least see if it's available on inter-library loan. Naturally I turned to the Rental Library chapter first.
Few new book shop owners realize the importance of the rental library, it begins. Besides furnishing a source of steady income, remember always, a rental library brings people into your store. At first they come only to rent, but passing attractive displays on their way to the Rental Department, they eventually begin to buy,. And therein lies your opportunity. Make permanent buyers of former borrowers. Let people learn how delightful it is to own books, not merely to rent them. Create in them, through subtle sales talks, a desire to become book collectors, not transitory owners. You can do this if you exert real selling technique ...
Already I'm beginning to see why the Rental Department is extinct. The core assumption, judging by this piece, seems to be that people don't really know that they can buy books; that ownership is within their grasp. There's almost a subtle class war situation going on here, where a host of potential buyers, who previously thought that owning books was for the well-off, now realize how wonderful it could be to have a real, live book of their very own, to cuddle and play with and call George. In 1929, this might have been true. These days the written word doesn't have quite that same upper class cachet. People who want to own books just go out and buy them, and the ones who don't want to own books wouldn't care if Rental Departments opened up in all the Starbucks across the land.
George Orwell, since we're in his territory again, discusses this tendency at length in the essay Books vs Cigarettes. A couple of years ago a friend of mine, a newspaper editor, was firewatching with some factory workers, Orwell begins. They fell to talking about his newspaper, which most of them read and approved of, but when he asked them what they thought of the literary section, the answer he got was: "You don't think we read that stuff, do you? Why, half the time you're talking about books that cost twelve and sixpence! Chaps like us couldn't spend twelve and sixpence on a book." These, he said, were men who thought nothing of spending several pounds on a day trip to Blackpool. For the record, one pound in old currency is twenty shillings, and each shilling is twelve pence. Twelve and sixpence is twelve and a half shillings, or slightly over half a pound.
Orwell's essay concludes that, overall, reading is probably the cheapest recreation available, but it might not have appeared that way to the people doing the spending, because reading seems expensive when compared to everyday luxuries like cigarettes or beer. The individual pint or pack of coffin nails is relatively cheap compared to the price of an individual book, but when a year's spending is taken into consideration, you're likely to have bought, and spent more money on in aggregate, many more cigarettes or pints than you have books. Yet each cigarette or pint can only be consumed once, while a book lasts as long as need be.
Of course, says Park about the Rental Library, no definite choice of books for the renting department can be laid down, because the character of your patrons pays such an all-important part. However it has been found a good plan to have, first, the latest and most popular new fiction; second, the popular books of the past year, and the earlier books of authors whose present books are causing discussion; and third, non-fiction having wide popular appeal.
The point always being to draw people in. Footfall is the life blood of retail. Remember what was said previously, about passing attractive displays on the way to the Rental Department. This is exactly the same kind of technique used in retail outlets all over the world; large chains, like Walmart, have this down to a fine art. You put the things that you know the customers will want as far away as possible, so the customer has to walk past other things on the way to their destination. Those who walk past may stop, at those attractive displays, and those who stop might buy. I've previously spoken about shopping malls, and the practice of keeping key tenants far away from each other, so people have to walk from one to the other. The principle's the same. Only the scale is different.
As far as revenue's concerned - remember that source of steady income mentioned in the first paragraph - the retailer gets his cash up front. There's a deposit, refundable when the member decides he's had enough and wants to withdraw, and a small charge per week. Local competition would probably affect your decision as to deposits and rentals, Park diplomatically concludes. Some shops might choose not to demand a deposit, for fear of frightening off patrons. Orwell points out that theft is common in rental libraries, with the books being sold on at a small profit to other book shop libraries, but also says that the shop owner felt it was an acceptable loss, so long as Rentals kept drawing people into the store.
Park starts talking about accounting at this point, and I shan't bore you with that, but she goes on to mention something I hadn't considered. Book wrappers should be of some distinctive design, with the name of your shop in clear relief. The more original and outstanding they can be, the more chance you have of saying to the public, "We have a rental department, and we can serve you."
You'd never persuade a shop owner now to produce their own line of dust jackets. The cost would frighten them half to death, but Park's writing about a time when paper's cheap and people's expectations are different. They'd demand dust jackets for their leather-bound darlings; only the pulps went about in horrid softcover.
From a Keeper's perspective, this is possibly the easiest prop ever invented. Want instant atmosphere? Photoshop a half-dozen dust jackets, wrap them around the books in your collection, and you're sorted. Or if you haven't got anything suitable, go to a second hand shop and buy a few of their cheapest old hardbacks. Let the players argue over the shop's logo, or how best to advertise. Oddly enough, this is exactly the sort of minutiae that many players love to get involved in, not unlike the Innsmouth House Players' inordinate fondness for period menus and food. You may even have to spend an entire session arguing over how best to design the jackets, but to be honest, if your players are quite that mad, good luck to you!
So there you have it: the Rental Department, in all its glory. What will it be to your bookshop? A constant trial and expense, with chancers nicking the books every other week? A source of revenue and advertising? What happens if a corpse turns up in an alleyway with one of your shop's books in his pocket? That attractive wrapper with the shop's name, address and logo on it might not seem like such a wonderful notion ...
That's all for now. Enjoy!
Thursday, 9 April 2015
Junkhounds of London (Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds)
This time out I want to talk about an optional addition to the Bookhounds character list: the Junkhound. I owe inspiration for this character type to George Orwell, particularly his essay Just Junk: But Who Could Resist It? I've had reason to mention Orwell before, and I highly recommend his short essays to anyone planning on running this game.
The Junk Shop probably exists on the same street as the characters' bookshop. They may well be neighbors, particularly since the kind of customer likely to wander into a junk shop is exactly the same kind of customer that might patronize the characters' establishment. If you should want to visit an example of the breed and happen to be visiting, or live in, London, I highly recommend The Junk Shop in Greenwich, which I used to visit often when I lived in South London. It's probably less dusty than those found in Orwell's day, and unlike Orwell's shop the owners of the Junk Shop are usually happy to make a sale. Otherwise it's a picture perfect example of the breed. American Pickers, for those of you trapped within the confines of the US of A, is also a pretty good example, except of course they seem to do most of their business long distance, where a junk shop relies on walk-in trade.
You can find almost anything in places like that; I can remember being tempted by a chunk of scrap from an American fighter, World War Two vintage, that someone had dug up out of a muddy field in Europe. My memory tells me it was probably a Curtiss Hawk or Warhawk, but the wretched thing was huge, perhaps three or four foot across, not the sort of piece you could put in a display case. Yet I could see it hanging above a mantlepiece, and was disappointed when, after going away to think about it for a while, I returned to find the scrap metal had sold to someone keener than I.
There will be some crossover between a bookshop and a junk shop. A junk shop is more likely to carry back issues of magazines, cheap publications, or books in bad condition. In the terms of the trade, its book stock is almost certainly disbound, remainder binding, or - worst of all - unsophisticated. Still, that shouldn't stop ambitious Bookhounds poaching from the Junkhound's stock, now and again. Equally a book shop may carry things of interest to the Junkhound, or the book scout may come back with news of an estate sale that has items of interest both to junk and book collectors.
While it may seem that the Antiquarian overlaps a bit with the Junkhound, there's one very important distinction to make. An Antiquarian is primarily interested in things of the past, collects items of historical interest, and generally is concerned about the condition of his stock. Not so the Junkhound. While the Junkhound has some love for history and things of historic importance, any item of scrap is grist for the Junkhound's mill. It doesn't matter to him how old it is, how decrepit, how valueless, or lacking in merit. The Junkhound stocks anything. If the Junkhound specializes in, say, pictures, as Orwell says one shop of his acquaintance did, those pictures will be from all possible artistic schools, of varying age, and the only thing they would have in common is a general lack of artistic talent. If ever you're going to find Dogs Playing Poker, it will be in a junk shop. Though there could be something valuable hiding away in the stacks of forgotten landscape artists and minor surrealists ...
With all that in mind, I give you:
Junkhound.
You live surrounded by other people's discarded valuables, and make your living from them. You have a deep and abiding love for your charges, and spend days hunting down rumors of a complete set of whatever it might be, or a replacement chair, or even just a trove of scrap metal. You own either a shop front, or a yard, filled with what anyone else would see as scrap, but you see opportunity. You're a close relative of the rag and bone man, except you'd like to think of yourself as one step up on the social ladder, since you own your own premises, and a rag and bone man often does not. There's nothing you won't sell, but you can't often give an accurate history of the things you do sell. It's not as easy a life as bookselling, but you enjoy it, because with every new day comes a new item, something you may not have seen before; something you can turn to a tidy profit.
Occupational Abilities: Auction, Accounting, Assess Honesty, Bargain, Craft (often Carpentry, or something to do with metalwork), History, Oral History, The Knowledge
Credit Rating: 1 to 3
Possible Drives and General Abilities: The Junkhound isn't restricted as far as drives go, but Artistic Sensibility is probably the least likely. The one thing you can be sure of is that a Junkhound wouldn't know true art if it bit him on the leg. A Junkhound is quite likely to still rely on a horse and cart for transport, so Riding is a useful general ability. Abilities that allow the Junkhound to do minor repairs or reconditioning, like Electrical or Mechanical Repair, are also useful.
Special: Like the Bookseller, you own your own store or yard, and have the final word on anything to do with that establishment. Like the Antiquarian, you can, once per session, draw on your stock for something of minor interest. This item cannot be exceptionally valuable, be a weapon of greater than +0 damage, or supply a clue greater than a 0 point informational clue. However your greatest advantage lies in putting people - usually customers, or people who might be able to supply you with junk - at their ease. You have a raffish, disreputable charm that disarms people. You can use Oral History to activate contacts in the same way a Hobo can. These contacts can be from any Occupation, but your ability only works on those with Credit Rating 2 or lower. Those with higher Credit Rating don't want to know you.
The Junk Shop probably exists on the same street as the characters' bookshop. They may well be neighbors, particularly since the kind of customer likely to wander into a junk shop is exactly the same kind of customer that might patronize the characters' establishment. If you should want to visit an example of the breed and happen to be visiting, or live in, London, I highly recommend The Junk Shop in Greenwich, which I used to visit often when I lived in South London. It's probably less dusty than those found in Orwell's day, and unlike Orwell's shop the owners of the Junk Shop are usually happy to make a sale. Otherwise it's a picture perfect example of the breed. American Pickers, for those of you trapped within the confines of the US of A, is also a pretty good example, except of course they seem to do most of their business long distance, where a junk shop relies on walk-in trade.
You can find almost anything in places like that; I can remember being tempted by a chunk of scrap from an American fighter, World War Two vintage, that someone had dug up out of a muddy field in Europe. My memory tells me it was probably a Curtiss Hawk or Warhawk, but the wretched thing was huge, perhaps three or four foot across, not the sort of piece you could put in a display case. Yet I could see it hanging above a mantlepiece, and was disappointed when, after going away to think about it for a while, I returned to find the scrap metal had sold to someone keener than I.
There will be some crossover between a bookshop and a junk shop. A junk shop is more likely to carry back issues of magazines, cheap publications, or books in bad condition. In the terms of the trade, its book stock is almost certainly disbound, remainder binding, or - worst of all - unsophisticated. Still, that shouldn't stop ambitious Bookhounds poaching from the Junkhound's stock, now and again. Equally a book shop may carry things of interest to the Junkhound, or the book scout may come back with news of an estate sale that has items of interest both to junk and book collectors.
While it may seem that the Antiquarian overlaps a bit with the Junkhound, there's one very important distinction to make. An Antiquarian is primarily interested in things of the past, collects items of historical interest, and generally is concerned about the condition of his stock. Not so the Junkhound. While the Junkhound has some love for history and things of historic importance, any item of scrap is grist for the Junkhound's mill. It doesn't matter to him how old it is, how decrepit, how valueless, or lacking in merit. The Junkhound stocks anything. If the Junkhound specializes in, say, pictures, as Orwell says one shop of his acquaintance did, those pictures will be from all possible artistic schools, of varying age, and the only thing they would have in common is a general lack of artistic talent. If ever you're going to find Dogs Playing Poker, it will be in a junk shop. Though there could be something valuable hiding away in the stacks of forgotten landscape artists and minor surrealists ...
With all that in mind, I give you:
Junkhound.
You live surrounded by other people's discarded valuables, and make your living from them. You have a deep and abiding love for your charges, and spend days hunting down rumors of a complete set of whatever it might be, or a replacement chair, or even just a trove of scrap metal. You own either a shop front, or a yard, filled with what anyone else would see as scrap, but you see opportunity. You're a close relative of the rag and bone man, except you'd like to think of yourself as one step up on the social ladder, since you own your own premises, and a rag and bone man often does not. There's nothing you won't sell, but you can't often give an accurate history of the things you do sell. It's not as easy a life as bookselling, but you enjoy it, because with every new day comes a new item, something you may not have seen before; something you can turn to a tidy profit.
Occupational Abilities: Auction, Accounting, Assess Honesty, Bargain, Craft (often Carpentry, or something to do with metalwork), History, Oral History, The Knowledge
Credit Rating: 1 to 3
Possible Drives and General Abilities: The Junkhound isn't restricted as far as drives go, but Artistic Sensibility is probably the least likely. The one thing you can be sure of is that a Junkhound wouldn't know true art if it bit him on the leg. A Junkhound is quite likely to still rely on a horse and cart for transport, so Riding is a useful general ability. Abilities that allow the Junkhound to do minor repairs or reconditioning, like Electrical or Mechanical Repair, are also useful.
Special: Like the Bookseller, you own your own store or yard, and have the final word on anything to do with that establishment. Like the Antiquarian, you can, once per session, draw on your stock for something of minor interest. This item cannot be exceptionally valuable, be a weapon of greater than +0 damage, or supply a clue greater than a 0 point informational clue. However your greatest advantage lies in putting people - usually customers, or people who might be able to supply you with junk - at their ease. You have a raffish, disreputable charm that disarms people. You can use Oral History to activate contacts in the same way a Hobo can. These contacts can be from any Occupation, but your ability only works on those with Credit Rating 2 or lower. Those with higher Credit Rating don't want to know you.
Saturday, 18 May 2013
Bookhounds of London: The House Sale
A man died to bring you this blog post. His name was Ralph.
I never really knew him, though I probably met him at some point, as he was a friend of the family. He had a very nice old house with water views, the sort of well-built 1930s design that stands up very well to the test of time, unlike many modern builds. Like most of us, he filled his house with stuff, things that his family neither wanted or needed but had to get rid of, if they were to sell the place or live in it themselves. The word went out: house sale! Time to get some bargains!
Living on an island, you get very used to the concept of trawling round leaving sales and the like, looking for a good deal. If you buy new, you're paying the importer's premium - often a very high mark-up - for the kind of cheap(ish) tat that, you know in your heart, you could pick up for half the price in any larger, more well-stocked market. A house sale, particularly one like Ralph's, is a good way of buying quality stuff at knock-down rates. On the other hand, from the seller's point of view, you just want rid of all that junk as quickly as possible, and what a load of tat it often is! Dog-eared cookery books and old algebra texts used by young Ralph, aged 15, still gathering dust all these decades later. Sofas and chairs, rotten with age, that wanted new covers and restuffing ten years ago and now need putting out of their misery. Chipped novelty jugs from a long-forgotten vacation, bedside tables, prints probably worth more for the frame than the content, and pretty much every other tchatchke you can imagine, plus more besides.
For those thinking this sort of thing is unique to my situation, I can assure you it isn't, and I have proof from an expert authority: J.R.R. Tolkein. Mild Hobbit spoilers ahoy!
And so they crossed the bridge and passed the mill by the river and came right back to Bilbo's own door.
"Bless me! What's going on?" he cried. There was a great commotion, and people of all sorts, respectable and unrespectable, were thick round the door, and many were going in and out - not even wiping their feet, as Bilbo noticed with annoyance.
If he was surprised, they were more surprised still. He had arrived back in the middle of an auction! There was a large notice in black and red hung on the gate, stating that on June the Twenty-second Messrs. Grubb, Grubb and Burrowes would sell by auction the effects of the late Bilbo Baggins Esquire, of Bag-End, Underhill, Hobbiton. Sale to commence at ten o'clock sharp. It was now nearly lunchtime, and most of the things had already been sold, for various prices from next to nothing to old songs (as is not unusual at auctions). Bilbo's cousins the Sackville-Bagginses were, in fact, busy measuring his rooms to see if their own furniture would fit. In short, Bilbo was 'Presumed Dead,' and not everybody that said so was sorry to find the presumption wrong.
Which just goes to show that Tolkein must have been to one or two auctions in his time. The pattern remains broadly the same today. As with any sale, those who get there first get the good stuff, and many of those present aren't there to buy at all, but to poke their noses round the place and gather - or spread - good gossip. Prices are uniformly low, even for the so-called valuable items, because the priority is to get the stuff out the door and the higher the price, the more likely it is it will go unsold. Particularly in a family sale you will often find the family on site, more or less melancholy, depending on the situation. It's worth bearing in mind, as many of you may know from personal experience, that these situations seldom bring out the best in people. The potential for reawakening old quarrels is very high, and it is not uncommon to find cousins squabbling in the parlor or spouses in tears because they've been denied the whatever-it-may-have-been that their hearts had been set on. And that's just the family; the bargain hunters can easily spark off their own to-do, over some forgettable bit of rubbish that they wouldn't look twice at if it wasn't on sale.
From a Bookhounds of London perspective, this situation is a potential gold mine for the Keeper. Some points you might want to bear in mind:
First, remember that the objective, from the seller's perspective, is to clear the house. That means everything, from curtains to carpets, has a price tag. The protagonists may only be interested in books, but that doesn't mean everyone else there is. Depending on the scale of the sale, there may be scores of people crowding round, or just a few neighbors and family members. This is a time for Interpersonal Abilities to shine. Gathering information can be as important as getting hold of that valuable first edition, particularly if the protagonists want to know where all the really good stuff is, or went.
Second, the protagonists will need to dig if they really want to find anything. The seller certainly won't have done anything more than some very basic organizing. A lot of items may have been left exactly where they were found, particularly the furniture and heavy stuff. Other, smaller pieces will have been taken out and put on display, so the kitchen counter - for example - is bound to be covered with pots, knives, china, and everything else that, until the sale, rested quietly in a kitchen drawer. Bulk items, like the books, may have been gathered up into boxes and will be sold by box. Or perhaps not; they might still be on a shelf somewhere. If you want to find something interesting, you need to search the whole house.
The protagonists should be aware that what they buy may not be all they take away. We found, quite by accident. Ralph's wallet in a drawer of a side table we took away, complete with credit cards. One of the books I picked up has all sorts of old newspaper clippings and other ephemera tucked between its leaves. Look at your own house, or apartment, and imagine what's hidden in some bag, or box, or drawer. Anything could turn up anywhere, and while most of it is undoubtedly not worth the trouble of collection - sorry to say it, but it's true, and no less true of my stuff than it is of yours - every so often a gem will surface. The people running the auction will go through the collection looking for that sort of thing but, particularly in a large sale, they can't be expected to find it all.
The protagonists should remember that not everything has to be in their specialty in order to be valuable to them. Back in 2012 I wrote about Orwell's Bookshop, and it's worth referring to again now. Remember what he said about his lending library:
Probably our library subscribers were a fair cross-section of London's reading public. It is therefore worth noting that of all the authors in our library the one who ‘went out’ the best was — Priestley? Hemingway? Walpole? Wodehouse? No, Ethel M. Dell, with Warwick Deeping a good second and Jeffrey Farnol, I should say, third. Dell's novels, of course, are read solely by women, but by women of all kinds and ages and not, as one might expect, merely by wistful spinsters and the fat wives of tobacconists. It is not true that men don't read novels, but it is true that there are whole branches of fiction that they avoid. Roughly speaking, what one might call the average novel — the ordinary, good-bad, Galsworthy-and-water stuff which is the norm of the English novel — seems to exist only for women. Men read either the novels it is possible to respect, or detective stories. But their consumption of detective stories is terrific.
Bear in mind, the protagonists are in business to make money. They might live for the day they finally discover the grimoire of their dreams, sell it, and retire to some blissful Pacific atoll on the proceeds; but in the meantime, they need to pay bills, and that means supplying what the customers want. Moreover I don't doubt for a minute that the buying public's consumption patterns have remained unchanged since Orwell's day. The Ethel M. Dells of this world still make a pretty good living, and while the critics may adore a literary phenomenon, that doesn't mean the phenomenon's books fly off the shelves. Finding a collection of some romance author's works can be a good way of keeping the shop afloat, and a useful reward for a protagonist determined to put the effort in to find it.
But what kind of property has a house sale? Broadly speaking, it's a middle class occupation, but that's a very all-inclusive term. A governess who spent all her life looking after other people's children, and who retired to a little cottage or flat, is as much middle class as the stockbroker who earned a very good living in the City and who owned a country house, even though each would have understood the subtle differences in their own social station. The smaller sales won't attract as much attention as the larger ones, of course, but that doesn't mean they're not worth paying any attention to. After all, governesses spend a lot of time in other people's houses, and often pick up things given them by their more well-to-do employers.
Not every house sale is, by definition, an auction, as not every decedent is a Bilbo. There are very many businesses that make their living out of going through a place and carting away the rubbish. Enterprising Bookhounds ought to be on very good terms with people in that line of work, but it's also worth their time poking through the items that don't get collected. You hear, every so often, about the incredibly valuable painting or other antique found in the skip after the house clearers have been. That could as easily be your players, if they're sharp about it.
Is this limited to Bookhounds of London? Not necessarily, though for obvious reasons it's most applicable to them. There's scope for Night's Black Agents, for example, in a house sale, but protagonists in that sort of game are probably going to be involved in more high-end auctions. There's limited interest in a James Bond type poking his nose in some granny's bloomer drawer, seeking bargains. Yet clearances aren't limited to grannies and the like; government archives are often throwing away valuable stuff, sometimes by accident. Or perhaps it's kept well beyond its sell-by. It's well known in London, for example, to those interested in such things, that lurking underground in forgotten tube stations and bomb shelters, there are still old records dating back to the war. The government had all kinds of blitz-proof hiding places and offices scattered over the city, and when the war ended, often the shelters and storage facilities were locked up and forgotten about. Imagine an old Nazi bunker in Berlin, not touched since the war, suddenly rediscovered during building works. Or imagine the sudden interest there might be in, say, hard drives from Russian computers, sold on by enterprising bandits or ex-internal security people, if people realized what kind of data was stored on them. That sort of thing can happen in many different circumstances; there's been interest, recently, in Silicon Knights' sale of office supplies and computers to Precursor Games, and Silicon had to prove that the hard drives were wiped before sale, as part of its dispute resolution with Epic Games. Tech companies go under all the time, and only those with the appropriate Abilities will be able to work out where all their - potentially valuable - stuff went. Or say an old Cold Warrior with unusual connections cashes in his chips unexpectedly. There's bound to be an interest in his belongings, and the only question is, can the protagonists beat all the other interested parties to the punch?
This is intended as food for thought for the Keeper. There's plenty of mileage to be had from a house sale, whether as a one-off event or as the kicker for a more in-depth series of scenarios. Just bear in mind, someone's treasure is another person's trifle ... unless it turns out, as happened with Ralph's wallet, that trifles hide treasures after all.
I never really knew him, though I probably met him at some point, as he was a friend of the family. He had a very nice old house with water views, the sort of well-built 1930s design that stands up very well to the test of time, unlike many modern builds. Like most of us, he filled his house with stuff, things that his family neither wanted or needed but had to get rid of, if they were to sell the place or live in it themselves. The word went out: house sale! Time to get some bargains!
Living on an island, you get very used to the concept of trawling round leaving sales and the like, looking for a good deal. If you buy new, you're paying the importer's premium - often a very high mark-up - for the kind of cheap(ish) tat that, you know in your heart, you could pick up for half the price in any larger, more well-stocked market. A house sale, particularly one like Ralph's, is a good way of buying quality stuff at knock-down rates. On the other hand, from the seller's point of view, you just want rid of all that junk as quickly as possible, and what a load of tat it often is! Dog-eared cookery books and old algebra texts used by young Ralph, aged 15, still gathering dust all these decades later. Sofas and chairs, rotten with age, that wanted new covers and restuffing ten years ago and now need putting out of their misery. Chipped novelty jugs from a long-forgotten vacation, bedside tables, prints probably worth more for the frame than the content, and pretty much every other tchatchke you can imagine, plus more besides.
For those thinking this sort of thing is unique to my situation, I can assure you it isn't, and I have proof from an expert authority: J.R.R. Tolkein. Mild Hobbit spoilers ahoy!
And so they crossed the bridge and passed the mill by the river and came right back to Bilbo's own door.
"Bless me! What's going on?" he cried. There was a great commotion, and people of all sorts, respectable and unrespectable, were thick round the door, and many were going in and out - not even wiping their feet, as Bilbo noticed with annoyance.
If he was surprised, they were more surprised still. He had arrived back in the middle of an auction! There was a large notice in black and red hung on the gate, stating that on June the Twenty-second Messrs. Grubb, Grubb and Burrowes would sell by auction the effects of the late Bilbo Baggins Esquire, of Bag-End, Underhill, Hobbiton. Sale to commence at ten o'clock sharp. It was now nearly lunchtime, and most of the things had already been sold, for various prices from next to nothing to old songs (as is not unusual at auctions). Bilbo's cousins the Sackville-Bagginses were, in fact, busy measuring his rooms to see if their own furniture would fit. In short, Bilbo was 'Presumed Dead,' and not everybody that said so was sorry to find the presumption wrong.
Which just goes to show that Tolkein must have been to one or two auctions in his time. The pattern remains broadly the same today. As with any sale, those who get there first get the good stuff, and many of those present aren't there to buy at all, but to poke their noses round the place and gather - or spread - good gossip. Prices are uniformly low, even for the so-called valuable items, because the priority is to get the stuff out the door and the higher the price, the more likely it is it will go unsold. Particularly in a family sale you will often find the family on site, more or less melancholy, depending on the situation. It's worth bearing in mind, as many of you may know from personal experience, that these situations seldom bring out the best in people. The potential for reawakening old quarrels is very high, and it is not uncommon to find cousins squabbling in the parlor or spouses in tears because they've been denied the whatever-it-may-have-been that their hearts had been set on. And that's just the family; the bargain hunters can easily spark off their own to-do, over some forgettable bit of rubbish that they wouldn't look twice at if it wasn't on sale.
From a Bookhounds of London perspective, this situation is a potential gold mine for the Keeper. Some points you might want to bear in mind:
First, remember that the objective, from the seller's perspective, is to clear the house. That means everything, from curtains to carpets, has a price tag. The protagonists may only be interested in books, but that doesn't mean everyone else there is. Depending on the scale of the sale, there may be scores of people crowding round, or just a few neighbors and family members. This is a time for Interpersonal Abilities to shine. Gathering information can be as important as getting hold of that valuable first edition, particularly if the protagonists want to know where all the really good stuff is, or went.
Second, the protagonists will need to dig if they really want to find anything. The seller certainly won't have done anything more than some very basic organizing. A lot of items may have been left exactly where they were found, particularly the furniture and heavy stuff. Other, smaller pieces will have been taken out and put on display, so the kitchen counter - for example - is bound to be covered with pots, knives, china, and everything else that, until the sale, rested quietly in a kitchen drawer. Bulk items, like the books, may have been gathered up into boxes and will be sold by box. Or perhaps not; they might still be on a shelf somewhere. If you want to find something interesting, you need to search the whole house.
The protagonists should be aware that what they buy may not be all they take away. We found, quite by accident. Ralph's wallet in a drawer of a side table we took away, complete with credit cards. One of the books I picked up has all sorts of old newspaper clippings and other ephemera tucked between its leaves. Look at your own house, or apartment, and imagine what's hidden in some bag, or box, or drawer. Anything could turn up anywhere, and while most of it is undoubtedly not worth the trouble of collection - sorry to say it, but it's true, and no less true of my stuff than it is of yours - every so often a gem will surface. The people running the auction will go through the collection looking for that sort of thing but, particularly in a large sale, they can't be expected to find it all.
The protagonists should remember that not everything has to be in their specialty in order to be valuable to them. Back in 2012 I wrote about Orwell's Bookshop, and it's worth referring to again now. Remember what he said about his lending library:
Probably our library subscribers were a fair cross-section of London's reading public. It is therefore worth noting that of all the authors in our library the one who ‘went out’ the best was — Priestley? Hemingway? Walpole? Wodehouse? No, Ethel M. Dell, with Warwick Deeping a good second and Jeffrey Farnol, I should say, third. Dell's novels, of course, are read solely by women, but by women of all kinds and ages and not, as one might expect, merely by wistful spinsters and the fat wives of tobacconists. It is not true that men don't read novels, but it is true that there are whole branches of fiction that they avoid. Roughly speaking, what one might call the average novel — the ordinary, good-bad, Galsworthy-and-water stuff which is the norm of the English novel — seems to exist only for women. Men read either the novels it is possible to respect, or detective stories. But their consumption of detective stories is terrific.
Bear in mind, the protagonists are in business to make money. They might live for the day they finally discover the grimoire of their dreams, sell it, and retire to some blissful Pacific atoll on the proceeds; but in the meantime, they need to pay bills, and that means supplying what the customers want. Moreover I don't doubt for a minute that the buying public's consumption patterns have remained unchanged since Orwell's day. The Ethel M. Dells of this world still make a pretty good living, and while the critics may adore a literary phenomenon, that doesn't mean the phenomenon's books fly off the shelves. Finding a collection of some romance author's works can be a good way of keeping the shop afloat, and a useful reward for a protagonist determined to put the effort in to find it.
But what kind of property has a house sale? Broadly speaking, it's a middle class occupation, but that's a very all-inclusive term. A governess who spent all her life looking after other people's children, and who retired to a little cottage or flat, is as much middle class as the stockbroker who earned a very good living in the City and who owned a country house, even though each would have understood the subtle differences in their own social station. The smaller sales won't attract as much attention as the larger ones, of course, but that doesn't mean they're not worth paying any attention to. After all, governesses spend a lot of time in other people's houses, and often pick up things given them by their more well-to-do employers.
Not every house sale is, by definition, an auction, as not every decedent is a Bilbo. There are very many businesses that make their living out of going through a place and carting away the rubbish. Enterprising Bookhounds ought to be on very good terms with people in that line of work, but it's also worth their time poking through the items that don't get collected. You hear, every so often, about the incredibly valuable painting or other antique found in the skip after the house clearers have been. That could as easily be your players, if they're sharp about it.
Is this limited to Bookhounds of London? Not necessarily, though for obvious reasons it's most applicable to them. There's scope for Night's Black Agents, for example, in a house sale, but protagonists in that sort of game are probably going to be involved in more high-end auctions. There's limited interest in a James Bond type poking his nose in some granny's bloomer drawer, seeking bargains. Yet clearances aren't limited to grannies and the like; government archives are often throwing away valuable stuff, sometimes by accident. Or perhaps it's kept well beyond its sell-by. It's well known in London, for example, to those interested in such things, that lurking underground in forgotten tube stations and bomb shelters, there are still old records dating back to the war. The government had all kinds of blitz-proof hiding places and offices scattered over the city, and when the war ended, often the shelters and storage facilities were locked up and forgotten about. Imagine an old Nazi bunker in Berlin, not touched since the war, suddenly rediscovered during building works. Or imagine the sudden interest there might be in, say, hard drives from Russian computers, sold on by enterprising bandits or ex-internal security people, if people realized what kind of data was stored on them. That sort of thing can happen in many different circumstances; there's been interest, recently, in Silicon Knights' sale of office supplies and computers to Precursor Games, and Silicon had to prove that the hard drives were wiped before sale, as part of its dispute resolution with Epic Games. Tech companies go under all the time, and only those with the appropriate Abilities will be able to work out where all their - potentially valuable - stuff went. Or say an old Cold Warrior with unusual connections cashes in his chips unexpectedly. There's bound to be an interest in his belongings, and the only question is, can the protagonists beat all the other interested parties to the punch?
This is intended as food for thought for the Keeper. There's plenty of mileage to be had from a house sale, whether as a one-off event or as the kicker for a more in-depth series of scenarios. Just bear in mind, someone's treasure is another person's trifle ... unless it turns out, as happened with Ralph's wallet, that trifles hide treasures after all.
Sunday, 21 April 2013
Fellow Travellers
This post is going to discuss some plot points in BioShock Infinite. There will be spoilers, and while I will try to avoid major plot reveals, you should bear in mind that there may be some; if you can't abide 'em, then now's the time to stop reading.
On with the show!
One of the main political groups Booker discovers in Columbia is the Vox Populi, a rag-tag bunch of rebels in desperate need of guns. He agrees to help them, in exchange for a favor, an act that causes his companion Elizabeth some concern. Is helping the Vox Populi the right thing to do? Will they be just like the heroes of Les Miserables - a rather melancholy end for them, of course, but death in a good cause can only be heroic - and make things better for the people?
Which goes to show that French literature, no matter how masterful, can't be trusted when it comes to describing revolutions. As a general rule, successful revolts tend to go something like this:
A: These many, then, shall die; their names are prick'd.
O: Your brother, too, must die; consent you, Lepidus?
L: I do consent ...
O: Prick him down, Antony.
L: Upon condition Publius shall not live,
Who is your sister's son, Mark Antony.
A: He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him.
But, Lepidus, go you to Caesar's house;
Fetch the will hither, and we shall determine
How to cut off some charge in legacies.
L: What, shall I find you here?
O: Or in the Capitol.
exit L
A: This is a slight, unmeritable man,
Meet to be sent on errands; is it fit,
The three-fold world divided, he should stand,
One of the three to share it?
This is what a successful revolt looks like, and has looked like ever since man first started building cities. An unsuccessful revolt looks something like this:
D: Shall no man else be touched, but only Caesar?
C: Decius, well urged: I think it is not meet,
Mark Antony, so well beloved of Caesar,
Should outlive Caesar: we shall find of him
A shrewd contriver; and, you know, his means,
If he improve them, may well stretch so far
As to annoy us all; which to prevent,
Let Antony and Caesar fall together.
B: Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius,
To cut the head off and then hack the limbs,
Like wrath in death and envy afterwards;
For Antony is but a limb of Caesar:
Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.
It is a pattern that repeats itself, time and again. When Richard of Gloucester finally has the throne of England in his grasp, after hard and bloody campaigning, his first act is to silence his brother's Woodeville relations, who are accused - whether accurately or not is impossible to say - of plotting against Richard's life. Shortly afterward, Richard's brother's children go conveniently missing, and the fate of the princes in the Tower has never been conclusively proved. Not long after that, Richard himself ends up dead at Bosworth field, only to have his bones excavated under a car park, of all things. The socialists who followed Marx and Lenin, and overthrew the Tsar, did so out of the highest motives; "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a noble sentiment, but soon snuffed out. Come the mid-1920s, many of those who follow Marxist ideals are under suspicion, in exile, or dead; when Stalin consolidates his power, the age of assassination and condemnation begins. "The French give a man rum before they lead him out to the guillotine," said Mikhail Koltsov, Stalin's man in Spain during the Civil War, "In these days we give him champagne." Koltsov was a man with few illusions; he too died, a victim of Stalin's bloodlust.
A rebellion that succeeds does so because it consolidates power quickly and decisively. Time and again, that has meant killing off your political enemies as quickly as possible. Even the United States, much more fortunate in this regard, has its Whiskey Rebellion, and victory for Washington and the rebels meant disaster for the Loyalists, tens of thousands of whom emigrated. But that is a rare example of a revolution that consolidates itself without excess bloodshed. Regrettably many rebel leaders more closely resemble Pol Pot than Washington and, as the CIA has sometimes learned to its cost, the rebels you support today may be your enemy tomorrow.
Even so, it is rare, in a modern fictional context, for rebels to be portrayed in a bad light. Instead it is almost axiomatic that the rebels are the good guys, and - particularly in a video game - if you join the rebels, you must be fighting on the side of the angels. It is very, very uncommon for that not to be the case, and even on the occasions when the rebels turn out to have feet of clay, they still get something like a noble exit. After all, the rebellion isn't to be blamed for the actions of a few bad apples, and if you can only kill the right people at the right time, justice will assuredly prevail. In BioShock context, the Vox Populi soon reveal themselves as being less heroic than the protagonists of Les Miserables, which is altogether a more realistic view of revolutions than video games normally give.
In an RPG context, particularly as relates to Trail of Cthulhu, what does this mean?
To begin with, the protagonists in your campaign may well believe - as Elizabeth initially believes, and as many intellectuals of the 1930s rationalize it - that revolution is the necessary first step that will lead to a utopia. There are any number of political revolts kicking off, or threatening to kick off, in the decade, many of them inspired by events in Russia. Spain's Civil War is the classic, the one that inspired Orwell first to fight, and later to create his seminal work of revolutionary fiction. Across Europe there are groups dedicated to the cause of working class revolution. Central and Southern America are still smouldering after a tumultuous nineteenth century, Ghandi is fasting and avoiding assassination in India, nationalism is bubbling away in Africa, while in America Roosevelt is dealing with unprecedented poverty by making an unprecedented move to the political Left. Everyone believes revolution is coming, and that the people they most dislike are "a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes." If you believe that revolution is a bad thing, then clearly you must be a member of the bourgeoisie, and therefore thoroughly deserve what's coming to you.
Next comes disillusion. As Orwell demonstrates, there is nothing more likely to induce a violent dislike of revolution than seeing one close up. There will be the pricking of lists, the poisonous umbrellas, torture, unjust imprisonment, and betrayal both of people and of the revolutionary ideal. Your former comrades quickly become your worst enemies; indeed, they have to, even if they would prefer otherwise, since to defend you means being denounced in turn. Or perhaps they have internalized the party message to such a degree that to think otherwise is beyond them.
"It would be impossible for me," wrote Orwell, "for instance, to debate the rights and wrongs of the Barcelona fighting with a Communist Party member, because no Communist - that is to say, no 'good' Communist - could admit that I have given a truthful account of the facts. If he followed his party line dutifully he would have to declare that I am lying or, at best, that I am hopelessly misled and that anyone who glanced at the Daily Worker headlines a thousand miles from the scene of events knows more of what was happening in Barcelona than I do."
Fictions work best when they mirror reality. For that reason, the Vox Populi - and the revolt in general - in BioShock Infinite's Columbia will probably have a much greater effect on the video game playing audience than the hundred other rebellions their avatars may have joined in the past. In your RPG campaign, I would recommend you strive for something similar. In Trail, this could be reflected in something as simple as a Drive, Pillar of Sanity or Source of Stability. Perhaps this character genuinely believes in the worker's revolution, or their best friend and mentor is a champion of the downtrodden. Or, if the Keeper wants to go further, perhaps the game could be set in the context of an existing revolution, like Spain. Even in a less tumultuous setting, like Bookhounds of London, there's scope for revolutionary doings; the owner of a bookstore can easily be distributing political propaganda on the side, or attending meetings of a very dubious nature. No doubt the police, or the domestic intelligence services, would like a quiet word.
The key thing to bear in mind is, in fiction, rebellions give players something to fight for. That's why video games use them so often; they're an excellent context for the ongoing action. But those games ignore the wider context of rebellion at their peril. "You just complicate the narrative," Booker is told, and that ought also to be true of your players. The revolution is by no means an unmixed blessing, and the protagonists may soon discover that what they thought they were fighting for is less substantial than, say, a castle in the clouds.
On with the show!
One of the main political groups Booker discovers in Columbia is the Vox Populi, a rag-tag bunch of rebels in desperate need of guns. He agrees to help them, in exchange for a favor, an act that causes his companion Elizabeth some concern. Is helping the Vox Populi the right thing to do? Will they be just like the heroes of Les Miserables - a rather melancholy end for them, of course, but death in a good cause can only be heroic - and make things better for the people?
Which goes to show that French literature, no matter how masterful, can't be trusted when it comes to describing revolutions. As a general rule, successful revolts tend to go something like this:
A: These many, then, shall die; their names are prick'd.
O: Your brother, too, must die; consent you, Lepidus?
L: I do consent ...
O: Prick him down, Antony.
L: Upon condition Publius shall not live,
Who is your sister's son, Mark Antony.
A: He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him.
But, Lepidus, go you to Caesar's house;
Fetch the will hither, and we shall determine
How to cut off some charge in legacies.
L: What, shall I find you here?
O: Or in the Capitol.
exit L
A: This is a slight, unmeritable man,
Meet to be sent on errands; is it fit,
The three-fold world divided, he should stand,
One of the three to share it?
This is what a successful revolt looks like, and has looked like ever since man first started building cities. An unsuccessful revolt looks something like this:
D: Shall no man else be touched, but only Caesar?
C: Decius, well urged: I think it is not meet,
Mark Antony, so well beloved of Caesar,
Should outlive Caesar: we shall find of him
A shrewd contriver; and, you know, his means,
If he improve them, may well stretch so far
As to annoy us all; which to prevent,
Let Antony and Caesar fall together.
B: Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius,
To cut the head off and then hack the limbs,
Like wrath in death and envy afterwards;
For Antony is but a limb of Caesar:
Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.
It is a pattern that repeats itself, time and again. When Richard of Gloucester finally has the throne of England in his grasp, after hard and bloody campaigning, his first act is to silence his brother's Woodeville relations, who are accused - whether accurately or not is impossible to say - of plotting against Richard's life. Shortly afterward, Richard's brother's children go conveniently missing, and the fate of the princes in the Tower has never been conclusively proved. Not long after that, Richard himself ends up dead at Bosworth field, only to have his bones excavated under a car park, of all things. The socialists who followed Marx and Lenin, and overthrew the Tsar, did so out of the highest motives; "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a noble sentiment, but soon snuffed out. Come the mid-1920s, many of those who follow Marxist ideals are under suspicion, in exile, or dead; when Stalin consolidates his power, the age of assassination and condemnation begins. "The French give a man rum before they lead him out to the guillotine," said Mikhail Koltsov, Stalin's man in Spain during the Civil War, "In these days we give him champagne." Koltsov was a man with few illusions; he too died, a victim of Stalin's bloodlust.
A rebellion that succeeds does so because it consolidates power quickly and decisively. Time and again, that has meant killing off your political enemies as quickly as possible. Even the United States, much more fortunate in this regard, has its Whiskey Rebellion, and victory for Washington and the rebels meant disaster for the Loyalists, tens of thousands of whom emigrated. But that is a rare example of a revolution that consolidates itself without excess bloodshed. Regrettably many rebel leaders more closely resemble Pol Pot than Washington and, as the CIA has sometimes learned to its cost, the rebels you support today may be your enemy tomorrow.
Even so, it is rare, in a modern fictional context, for rebels to be portrayed in a bad light. Instead it is almost axiomatic that the rebels are the good guys, and - particularly in a video game - if you join the rebels, you must be fighting on the side of the angels. It is very, very uncommon for that not to be the case, and even on the occasions when the rebels turn out to have feet of clay, they still get something like a noble exit. After all, the rebellion isn't to be blamed for the actions of a few bad apples, and if you can only kill the right people at the right time, justice will assuredly prevail. In BioShock context, the Vox Populi soon reveal themselves as being less heroic than the protagonists of Les Miserables, which is altogether a more realistic view of revolutions than video games normally give.
In an RPG context, particularly as relates to Trail of Cthulhu, what does this mean?
To begin with, the protagonists in your campaign may well believe - as Elizabeth initially believes, and as many intellectuals of the 1930s rationalize it - that revolution is the necessary first step that will lead to a utopia. There are any number of political revolts kicking off, or threatening to kick off, in the decade, many of them inspired by events in Russia. Spain's Civil War is the classic, the one that inspired Orwell first to fight, and later to create his seminal work of revolutionary fiction. Across Europe there are groups dedicated to the cause of working class revolution. Central and Southern America are still smouldering after a tumultuous nineteenth century, Ghandi is fasting and avoiding assassination in India, nationalism is bubbling away in Africa, while in America Roosevelt is dealing with unprecedented poverty by making an unprecedented move to the political Left. Everyone believes revolution is coming, and that the people they most dislike are "a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes." If you believe that revolution is a bad thing, then clearly you must be a member of the bourgeoisie, and therefore thoroughly deserve what's coming to you.
Next comes disillusion. As Orwell demonstrates, there is nothing more likely to induce a violent dislike of revolution than seeing one close up. There will be the pricking of lists, the poisonous umbrellas, torture, unjust imprisonment, and betrayal both of people and of the revolutionary ideal. Your former comrades quickly become your worst enemies; indeed, they have to, even if they would prefer otherwise, since to defend you means being denounced in turn. Or perhaps they have internalized the party message to such a degree that to think otherwise is beyond them.
"It would be impossible for me," wrote Orwell, "for instance, to debate the rights and wrongs of the Barcelona fighting with a Communist Party member, because no Communist - that is to say, no 'good' Communist - could admit that I have given a truthful account of the facts. If he followed his party line dutifully he would have to declare that I am lying or, at best, that I am hopelessly misled and that anyone who glanced at the Daily Worker headlines a thousand miles from the scene of events knows more of what was happening in Barcelona than I do."
Fictions work best when they mirror reality. For that reason, the Vox Populi - and the revolt in general - in BioShock Infinite's Columbia will probably have a much greater effect on the video game playing audience than the hundred other rebellions their avatars may have joined in the past. In your RPG campaign, I would recommend you strive for something similar. In Trail, this could be reflected in something as simple as a Drive, Pillar of Sanity or Source of Stability. Perhaps this character genuinely believes in the worker's revolution, or their best friend and mentor is a champion of the downtrodden. Or, if the Keeper wants to go further, perhaps the game could be set in the context of an existing revolution, like Spain. Even in a less tumultuous setting, like Bookhounds of London, there's scope for revolutionary doings; the owner of a bookstore can easily be distributing political propaganda on the side, or attending meetings of a very dubious nature. No doubt the police, or the domestic intelligence services, would like a quiet word.
The key thing to bear in mind is, in fiction, rebellions give players something to fight for. That's why video games use them so often; they're an excellent context for the ongoing action. But those games ignore the wider context of rebellion at their peril. "You just complicate the narrative," Booker is told, and that ought also to be true of your players. The revolution is by no means an unmixed blessing, and the protagonists may soon discover that what they thought they were fighting for is less substantial than, say, a castle in the clouds.
Sunday, 25 November 2012
Orwell's Bookshop
This time I shall discuss second hand bookstores, with one eye on Pelgrane's Bookhounds of London and another on this essay by George Orwell.
When I first read Bookshop Memories I was struck by how modern it seemed, even now, some eighty-odd years after its first publication. That isn't just Orwell's writing style, though that certainly helps. What really makes it seem as though it could have been written yesterday is that, for all intents and purposes, little has changed in the book trade since Orwell's day.
Take the section starting "Like most second-hand bookshops we had various sidelines." You'd be hard pressed to find a bookstore that sold stamps and typewriters these days, but it's nevertheless true that most bookstores even now have a sideline of one sort or another. DVDs and blue-ray discs are very common, as are oddments like cards, novelty mugs, (Keep Calm and Carry On, anyone?), and even collectable playing cards. Plus, of course, snacks and drinks, though these seem to be less common now; or perhaps I've been going to the wrong bookstores.
Or those Christmas cards, sold to stores in June and no doubt shoved out onto the shelves as soon as they arrived. After all, storage space is at a premium and no bookstore can afford to keep a lot of inventory in its back room. Imagine '2 doz. Infant Jesus with rabbits' staring back at you, as you go to pay for your selection. Mind you, it being November as I write this, you may not need to stretch your imagination that far.
Of course, the most obvious then-and-now comparison is with the customers, and those haven't changed at all. The only difference, as Alex Robinson's Box Office Poison demonstrates, is that the muddle-headed aren't looking for books published in 1897 any more. Yet the paranoiacs, the dodgy characters that smelt of old bread crusts, the importunate students all still exist, or have their modern equivalent. Posy Simmonds would probably argue that many of the ones ordering books they don't intend to pay for these days are would-be authors trying to drum up interest in their self-published work.
There are differences, of course, and the most obvious of these is the lending library. Some of the charity shops might still have something like it, in that you do still find places which let you take a book away for free so long as you leave one behind in its place. Yet the library as Orwell remembers it is a long time dead, and probably most second hand booksellers these days don't mourn it.
So what does all this mean for Bookhounds?
For one thing, it leads to some interesting scenario hooks. Imagine what could happen if the horoscopes and fortunes sold at the players' store actually started coming true, or became laden with Mythos hints, or even became a spreading mechanism for Dust-Things. Perhaps one of those dusty old reprobates who's always trying to sell the players worthless books finally turns up with something interesting, or alternatively, claims he has access to a title - or a library - the protagonists want. Or one day, when trying to keep the bluebottle corpses at a minimum, the players may find a new and very interesting insect lying amongst the dust and fragments.
More importantly, it gives the Keeper a window into what life would have been like then, and what the players' shop is probably like. As this is Trail of Cthulhu there's an understandable desire to link pretty much everything to the Mythos, or at least to horror, in one way or another. After all, that's what keeps the players coming to your table every other week. Yet Orwell shows that even places with an "exceptionally interesting stock" have to keep a fair selection of Ethel M Dell on the shelves, just to keep the punters happy. Booksellers who don't pay attention to their customers' wants go broke in fairly short order, and the players may find that - though their incunabula collection may be first-rate - Warwick Deeping is the one keeping the wolf from the door.
Not that you, as a Keeper, need to know much about authors like these. It's probably simpler to invent your own, probably using Mills & Boon as a template to work from. The key point to take away is, the players mustn't be allowed to think that the whole of their professional lives are spent hip-deep in the Mythos because, when that happens, the campaign is one step away from Dark Shadows; and while that has its points, it would be difficult to get a really Purist feel in a game where everything is tied together in one massive Gothic melodrama.
Throw in some scenes, now and again, when the players are dealing with purely mundane troubles, and that will achieve two objectives. First, it will make the horror that much more frightening, when it does turn up. Second, it makes the store an actual character in the ongoing story, rather than the scene of the (Mythos) crime. Finally, it helps the players establish their characters and flesh out their backstory if, every so often, they aren't hunting down occult terrors from beyond the veil. They then get to show what the character likes, dislikes, how they deal with people, how they deal with each other. Allowing them to do that without having an omnipresent threat hanging over their heads will give them space to breathe.
"The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer. It is too closely associated in my mind with paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles." Or perhaps, in your game, something else again ...
When I first read Bookshop Memories I was struck by how modern it seemed, even now, some eighty-odd years after its first publication. That isn't just Orwell's writing style, though that certainly helps. What really makes it seem as though it could have been written yesterday is that, for all intents and purposes, little has changed in the book trade since Orwell's day.
Take the section starting "Like most second-hand bookshops we had various sidelines." You'd be hard pressed to find a bookstore that sold stamps and typewriters these days, but it's nevertheless true that most bookstores even now have a sideline of one sort or another. DVDs and blue-ray discs are very common, as are oddments like cards, novelty mugs, (Keep Calm and Carry On, anyone?), and even collectable playing cards. Plus, of course, snacks and drinks, though these seem to be less common now; or perhaps I've been going to the wrong bookstores.
Or those Christmas cards, sold to stores in June and no doubt shoved out onto the shelves as soon as they arrived. After all, storage space is at a premium and no bookstore can afford to keep a lot of inventory in its back room. Imagine '2 doz. Infant Jesus with rabbits' staring back at you, as you go to pay for your selection. Mind you, it being November as I write this, you may not need to stretch your imagination that far.
Of course, the most obvious then-and-now comparison is with the customers, and those haven't changed at all. The only difference, as Alex Robinson's Box Office Poison demonstrates, is that the muddle-headed aren't looking for books published in 1897 any more. Yet the paranoiacs, the dodgy characters that smelt of old bread crusts, the importunate students all still exist, or have their modern equivalent. Posy Simmonds would probably argue that many of the ones ordering books they don't intend to pay for these days are would-be authors trying to drum up interest in their self-published work.
There are differences, of course, and the most obvious of these is the lending library. Some of the charity shops might still have something like it, in that you do still find places which let you take a book away for free so long as you leave one behind in its place. Yet the library as Orwell remembers it is a long time dead, and probably most second hand booksellers these days don't mourn it.
So what does all this mean for Bookhounds?
For one thing, it leads to some interesting scenario hooks. Imagine what could happen if the horoscopes and fortunes sold at the players' store actually started coming true, or became laden with Mythos hints, or even became a spreading mechanism for Dust-Things. Perhaps one of those dusty old reprobates who's always trying to sell the players worthless books finally turns up with something interesting, or alternatively, claims he has access to a title - or a library - the protagonists want. Or one day, when trying to keep the bluebottle corpses at a minimum, the players may find a new and very interesting insect lying amongst the dust and fragments.
More importantly, it gives the Keeper a window into what life would have been like then, and what the players' shop is probably like. As this is Trail of Cthulhu there's an understandable desire to link pretty much everything to the Mythos, or at least to horror, in one way or another. After all, that's what keeps the players coming to your table every other week. Yet Orwell shows that even places with an "exceptionally interesting stock" have to keep a fair selection of Ethel M Dell on the shelves, just to keep the punters happy. Booksellers who don't pay attention to their customers' wants go broke in fairly short order, and the players may find that - though their incunabula collection may be first-rate - Warwick Deeping is the one keeping the wolf from the door.
Not that you, as a Keeper, need to know much about authors like these. It's probably simpler to invent your own, probably using Mills & Boon as a template to work from. The key point to take away is, the players mustn't be allowed to think that the whole of their professional lives are spent hip-deep in the Mythos because, when that happens, the campaign is one step away from Dark Shadows; and while that has its points, it would be difficult to get a really Purist feel in a game where everything is tied together in one massive Gothic melodrama.
Throw in some scenes, now and again, when the players are dealing with purely mundane troubles, and that will achieve two objectives. First, it will make the horror that much more frightening, when it does turn up. Second, it makes the store an actual character in the ongoing story, rather than the scene of the (Mythos) crime. Finally, it helps the players establish their characters and flesh out their backstory if, every so often, they aren't hunting down occult terrors from beyond the veil. They then get to show what the character likes, dislikes, how they deal with people, how they deal with each other. Allowing them to do that without having an omnipresent threat hanging over their heads will give them space to breathe.
"The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer. It is too closely associated in my mind with paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles." Or perhaps, in your game, something else again ...
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