Death Mask 4 - the First Arc

This will be the last in this series. I may come back to it later; we'll see.

OK, we have Rome, we have the Building, we have a reasonable idea of the OPFOR. The next step is to decide on the opening arc of the campaign, on the assumption this is, at minimum, a 3-act structure.

Let's go over the basics.

A CORE CONCEPT tree bears CORE CONCEPT fruit. So, for example, a DAMNED tree always bears DAMNED fruit. This is a little like Rome, in that every road leads to the same terminus, but it's worth bearing in mind that, if you start with X, you always want to finish at X. Tone is critical. It should remain constant. 

Establish the setting, the characters and the overall mood of the game. Always remember that, while you may have a clear idea of what's happening and why, the players do not. Or, they may have an idea that is wholly at odds with yours. The first act is critical in that it nails down expectations and gives everyone notice as to the kind of game this is.

Put in this way. There are worlds of difference between this film:

The Mummy (1932)

This film:

The Mummy (1999)

And this one:

The Mummy (2017)

But they're all basically the same film. I've only seen two of these, incidentally. Guess which two.

What you, as Keeper, need to do is decide which of these, or some other variant, lives in your Building. Then you need to communicate that to the players. To a certain extent this will happen in session zero, but a lot of this will take place in-game.

The purpose of the first arc is to nail down those expectations so you can explore more complex ideas in the next arc(s). You'll spend a lot of time describing and expanding on starting locations, important NPCs, McGuffins.

The characters don't have to encounter the Mythos, or anything supernatural, in the opening act, so long as the opening act is true to the overall mood. This may seem counter-intuitive but it's actually very important. Your job here is to establish setting and mood. That will be difficult to do if something really flashy and eye-catching gets the players' attention. It's like jangling keys in front of a cat. Useful, if you want the cat to pay attention to the keys. Less useful, if you want anything else to happen.

There's nothing wrong with having things go bump in the night. Bumping is what things do. But if you want the characters to pay attention to the Building and put their own ideas in, that will be difficult if their attention is always being caught by this eye-catching thing over here.

You already know what the Building is, what it consists of. The first arc should include all the important rooms within that Building. If the smuggling route to Cyprus is going to be critical to your game, then there needs to be a mission to Cyprus to establish it as a location. To seed it with important NPCs. Possibly to include a smuggling ship (also an important part of the Building) which will become important in later sessions.

That way, when you return to these parts of the Building for important moments in Act Two, the players already have expectations and will lean on those expectations when they make their own plots.  

Most important of all, the first arc should include the core activities of the setting. If this were Bookhounds, say, then the first arc ought to include at least one important Auction. Buying and selling books is what that setting is all about. You need that moment when player interacts with the core mechanic to achieve plot results, and in Bookhounds that core mechanic is the auction.

What's the core mechanic in Tomb-Hounds?

From the text:

... real opportunities have opened up. Those who know enough Egyptology to know where to dig, and who know enough shady dealers to know how to sell what they dig up, can name their own price for a spectacular item. Of course, there’s always that little matter of a curse – but no true tomb-hound lets the possibility of a curse interfere with the certainty of a profit. Wonderful things await - all you need is a map and a bullwhip.

At its heart, this is a treasure hunt. Core Drives back this up: Adventure, Antiquarianism, Curiosity, Follower, Scholarship, Thirst for Knowledge, In the Blood, Sudden Shock, Greed. These all suggest risk-takers, delvers into the unknown, people who want to find things either for the knowledge they contain, the value that can be put on them, or the fame that comes with being the One Who Found It.

With that in mind, the first arc should start with the players having already found something relatively minor, which hints at something profoundly more interesting.

Let's start at a Dig Site. The players have been working on a site connected with a minor royal or someone connected to royalty - a high priest, say, or an important civil servant like an architect. Through this they have obtained valuables that they need to dispose of, but also through this they have gained clues, or hints, to the much more valuable thing.

Let's further say that the players were minor scholars on this particular dig, that their sponsor or sponsoring agency hoovered up the really good stuff, and what they got away with were the scraps. Again, think of Bookhounds. The Hounds in that setting are motivated by economic drivers. The Tomb-Hounds setting is very similar. The Hounds want that spectacular item which they can bargain away for colossal sums. For that to have spice, it's a good idea to dangle a little bit of that wealth in front of them, then take it away.

Indiana Jones

This has several advantages.

First, it starts with action. The opening scene can be that moment where the archaeologists hover at the door of the tomb, just before they crack it open revealing the treasures hidden inside. They interpret the hieroglyphs: is there a curse? Maybe ... well, nuts to it! Crash, bang, whallop, loot.

Then, it establishes an initial adversary: that scholar or scholarly group which swoops in and takes all the really good stuff for itself. This adversary may or may not have cult links. That's not important right now. What is important is that they have what the players want. They have the shiny valuables. The temporary alliance which existed up till now has been shattered. It's all about the dollars from this point forward, or the academic recognition, or whatever it may be.

Then, it posits the initial question which the characters need to resolve: what is this other dig site that the clues found at this dig site hint at? Is it more important than the dig site they're working on? What's hidden there? 

Can the characters get enough financing behind them to establish their own dig site at that location, to find the really good stuff?

From this point forward it's a combination treasure hunt and race against time. The treasure hunt is finding enough clues to determine the exact location of this new site. Those clues are scattered among other sites, at libraries, in museums, in the memories of occult scholars, and the characters need to gather enough of these clues to find the dig site. The race against time is doing this before someone else does it.

Who this someone else is can be established in play. The likely opposition is the players' former allies, the scholar or scholarly group who worked with them on the first dig. That doesn't have to be so. The new OPFOR can establish their credentials by, say, eliminating that scholar or scholarly group in some spectacular fashion. That puts the new OPFOR on the map and establishes stakes.

Through all this the players are, incidentally, establishing which rooms, in the Building, are important to them. If they find Cyprus boring, say, then fine; the Keeper doesn't need to waste time putting new backstory elements or plot points in there. It would be like lavishing expensive furniture on a room you'll never use. If, on the other hand, they become deeply invested in Cyprus then it's time to flesh out that location for future scenes. 

This is why establishing expectations happens as much in-game as it does off-set, behind the scenes. You can't anticipate what players will find interesting. Don't waste too much time trying. Put a little bait out there and, if they nibble, then you hook them with something nasty. 

All this is leading to that final dig site, and this is where all your tools come out of the box. This is the concluding portion of the first Act. If you're going to use elaborate maps at all, puzzles, traps, this is where you use them. If you let the players find the fancy key somewhere at that first dig site, then this is where they find the door that key fits. If you want them to navigate past improbable traps to get to where they're going, this is where those traps are used.

Indiana Jones Last Crusade

This is also where something supernatural definitely lies sleeping. It might be a mummy, a pack of ghouls, something else, but whatever it is, it's down there. 

Finally, this is where the McGuffin is. The thing that everyone's going to be chasing in Act Two. For purposes of plot, I'm going to assume that the McGuffin is Perseus' adamantine sickle, that peculiar khopesh the cult seeks so they can stop someone from using it on the elder masks. However, your game is your game. If you want that McGuffin to be something else, go for it.

At the end of the first Act the characters will have found that dig site, looted it, come up with a bunch of valuables and the fate of the McGuffin has been determined. It might be with the players. It might be somewhere else. Wherever it is, chasing after that McGuffin will be the focus of the second Act.  

With that, finita! I hope you enjoyed this digression. 

A quick housekeeping note: in a few weeks I shall be off-island and this blog will go silent while I'm in the UK. Not to worry! I'll be back online soon.

Ciao!

 

Death Mask 3 Exploring Rome

Rome: Masks, hidden identities, hidden agendas, Gorgons, the shadowy influence of Egypt's past, the Pharaohs of old returning to take their rightful place.  

Let's dig a little deeper. 

The whole point behind the cult is that it's run by masks, whose main purpose in life is to make more masks, to extend their already lengthy existence. These masks derive their motivating force and their purpose from the old Gorgon cult, which fled to Egypt when the original cult bases in Greece were smashed. Now the cult promotes a return of the old Pharaonic ways, mainly to encourage new Egyptian recruits to join, but at its heart it's the same Gorgon cult it was many centuries ago.

It's probably worth remembering that when Perseus allegedly slew Medusa he did it using flying sandals, a cap of Hades that made him invisible, and an adamantine sickle. Those sound like useful cult-bashing relics to me. Some or all of these might have found their way to Egypt over the years and are now hidden in some tomb or other, or perhaps on the back shelf of one of the many, many curio shops in Cairo or Alexandria. 

What if, for instance, that adamantine sickle is in fact a khopesh?  Ceremonial versions of those were found with Tutankhamun; if King Tut can have them then there's no reason why Perseus' old blade can't have found its way into some priest's tomb. What if those battered sandals are hanging up with the stock in some souk or other? 

The cap of night found its way into several different hands; Hermes had it, Athena had it, there's no telling where else it might have gone after Perseus used it. He may have dropped it in Mycenae, where he was King. If so, then the archaeologist Schliemann might have found it while digging for Trojan loot, in the later 1870s. If that happened then the cap would be in Berlin at the time of the campaign, but then the Great Museums of the world are part of the Building so there's no reason not to have a side trip off to Berlin. Nor, for that matter, is there a compelling reason why a German archaeologist might not sneak the thing away in their bags and baggage for a trip to Egypt. For ... research purposes. Not because they're a cult member seeking promotion. Or because they're a cult opponent trying to smash the new Pharaoh. Possibilities ... 

OK, so we have some Banes and possibly also treasures to be sought for in the first arc of the campaign. Fine. So who's the OPFOR?

Remember, all OPFOR have:

• Power, appropriate to their function within the narrative.
• Goals.
• Assets, to be used to achieve their goals.

What does the cult have?

Power: far-reaching political, social and quasi-military authority and influence within Egypt. Their spies and enforcers are everywhere. They can have people killed. They can deploy assassins, peculiar occult magics, ancient mummies - all within Egypt proper. Outside Egypt, their influence drops off dramatically. They can send agents to do their bidding, but they can't just snap their metaphorical fingers and have a man in, say, Berlin, drop dead that same moment. 

However, this power is basically illicit. They have no actual civil or legal authority. They exist behind the scenes. Everyone fears them, but it's not as if they have an office building, a flag, a government post. 

For the purposes of plot, it can be assumed that their power extends as far as Egypt extends. Which means, among other things, that it extends to all those museums and other places where Egypt mania is all the rage. Where the mysteries of Egypt - and, by extension, the cult - influence art and architecture.

Do the civil authorities in Egypt - at this point in time, the British military occupying forces and the Egyptian civil government - know about the cult? Probably. Inasmuch as the cult is active and does things, the authorities will know about those things. They may not have connected the dots and realized that this peculiar murder, or the rise of that politician, are all connected to a power-hungry pro-Pharaoh movement. They know something's up, but not what. Further, there will be some within the civil authority who have connected dots, who suspect much, and are either opposed to the cult or who seek alliance with it for their own ends.

That rival Power opposes the cult's own, and the cult will constantly be aware of it. This limits the cult's overt activities. It cannot expect to do whatever it wants whenever it wants, not without consequences. It can have a man killed, but if that killing is very troublesome for the civil authorities then the cult had better have someone to take the blame, go to trial and perhaps get executed. Otherwise, the political fallout from the killing may upset the cult's plans. 

Of course, all this is before the new Pharaoh steps forward and takes their rightful place on the throne temporarily occupied by Fuad I. The cult will probably be paying very close attention to the career of Mohammed Ali Tewfik, the heir presumptive, but he spends most of his life outside Egypt. Why? Who can say? But he does have a magnificent Cairo palace full of artefacts and practically swimming in history. It's very private, of course; it won't become a museum until after his death. But I'm sure that can be worked into the first story arc. Perhaps that's where the cap of night is now, or perhaps the person who has it seeks an audience with Mohammed Ali so they can sell it to the heir presumptive. Sounds like a job for some plausible go-betweens ...  

Goals: The cult has a hidden goal and an up-front goal.

The up-front is to restore Pharaonic rule. There will be a new golden age of such and so forth. Egypt will once more become the yadda yadda. This is the goal that all the cult members know about. It's the carrot that brings in new members. It's the lure that keeps radicals, Nationalists, Communists and the Muslim Brother hood on board. Work with us, and we'll help you get what you want. Those groups may not have everything in common with the cult but they have one common enemy: the British occupying forces. So long as the cult keeps playing the public game, and drumming up hatred for the British, the more likely it is the cult will get what it wants from those other groups.

There is another way to play this which could be just as interesting. Have the cult ally itself with the British. All the other groups - Communists, Radicals, Nationalists, Muslims - are against it now, but so long as it can keep them fighting each other they'll lack the resources to come at the cult direct. It does mean that player characters cooperating with the British will never know if the policeman, say, or the Colonel they ally themselves with is, in fact, a cult member. Or even a cult leader. 

That's the up-front. The hidden goal is simply this: survival.

The cult remembers all too well the bad old days after the initial collapse, when it was on the run, fearing for its existence. There were a number of times when it might have vanished altogether. Its final shrines vandalized, the last masks smashed or burnt. It has been surviving in the shadows in Egypt for centuries, eating scraps, gathering strength. The oldest among them remember the bad old days and want no more of that, thank you. They would sacrifice every single Pharaonic cult member, every dollar in its coffers, if that meant the cult would survive another day. It knows how to relocate and start fresh. It's done that before. 

That's the old guard, of course. The ancient among them. The newer masks? They quite like luxuries. They like ruling over men. The shadows are comforting, but also an irritant. Wouldn't it be grand to show off their true power? To take center stage? These are masks, after all; they don't feel they truly exist if they're not performing. These are the cult members who will take risks, who will execute the grand plays and come up with power schemes. They don't care as much about survival. They've been fed scraps for too long. Now they want what's on the center table. 

This is a bit different from the average cult in a Cthulhu-esque game. In the typical setting cult members are just a means. Everyone gets fed into the cosmic woodchipper in the end. In the meantime, they work to bring about the return of [insert squid-faced monstrosity here.] This cult is nothing like that. It exists to exist. If there ever was some deeper meaning in its rituals, that meaning is long forgotten. 

Except, perhaps, by the most ancient among them. 

Can you say gerontocracy? Bet you know what that feels like. The old guard might have believed in something once, when they first started out. Now they just believe in holding on to power, for as long as their cold, dead hands can grip.

Assets: at the street level, hundreds if not thousands of willing servants. Everyone from that knife-grinder in the souk to the policeman, the museum curator, the archaeologist, and more. 

They all have their reasons. Some buy into the return of the Pharaoh shtick. Some just like the idea of sticking it to the British (or, alternatively, to the King, the Muslims, the Communists, or whoever). Some join forces for professional advancement or knowledge. After all, who better to know where the best dig sites are than the cult which has been around since forever and who probably built most of those dig sites in the first place? Some just want loot. Whatever the desire, the cult can provide. 

At the not-quite-street level, the youngest of the masks and the mask-makers. The ones who look like Venetian carnival masks, or just Halloween fun times masks. These are the center of any immediate cult activity. If there's a bunch of cult members centered around the local dig workers, then there will be a mask at the heart of it, probably worn by the reis. If the museum curators are in league with the cult, then one of them will be wearing a Harlequin mask. If the staff at Shepheard's are being blackmailed into doing the cult's bidding, then the blackmailer will be wearing a mask.

These masks give some power to the persons wearing them. Think of these as Renfields, if this were a Night's Black Agents game. So long as the mask is on, the wearer gets that power. However, there is a price to be paid. The wearer either has to make a blood sacrifice to keep going, or to give up some of their own life energy to go on. This can mean the wearer dies with their mask on, in particularly dire circumstances. 

Above the street level are the advanced members. The ones who know what's really going on (or who think they do). The ones who are working to bring about the new Pharaonic dynasty. These are highly placed persons and high-powered masks. The masks themselves are probably quite old, if not ancient. At least a century's worth of experience. They might be original Commedia; they certainly date from that period. They were made in the time when the cult was just beginning to reinvigorate itself, to draw on new membership. They don't remember the bad old days, at least not first-hand, but they've heard the old stories time and time and time again. Their loyalty wavers. Perhaps, they mutter among themselves, the time has come for a new direction. 

The oldest among them, the original Gorgons, are ancient indeed. They remember the old days first-hand. These are the ones obsessed with recovering the artefacts that Perseus (whoever that may have been) used to destroy the cult the first time. They realize how fragile life can be. They exist in the shadows. So long as the cult keeps bringing them people to eat, they're happy. These are the only masks with the ability to annihilate a person just by looking at them - the turn-to-stone ability. If there is a whisper of some peculiar theatrical troupe that performs once every so often, for a select audience, this group of masks is at the heart of that rumor. The ancient Roman or Greek theatre, reborn. Except the audience never gets to go home ... 

This final group is the one with real power. They can kill; they have access to ancient knowledge; they can summon up spirits or command mummies to rise. They have in their possession the ancient texts sought after by so many occultists and Tombhounds. They know where the real dig sites are. All they want is to continue to exist. For that to happen, they need to get the relics of Perseus. For that matter, they also need anything else that might pose a threat to them. If it should turn out that some modern artefact, say, has the same potential as Perseus' adamantine sickle then they will want it in their possession, toot sweet. For that reason, they may be very interested in any surplus Great War weapons or sinister death rays that some mad scientist left lying around. If you want to turn the game towards a kind of superhero (or at least super-science) direction, that's the way to do it.  

So! Rome. This is where it's all heading. This cult with its desire to just keep on existing, who plays with making men into Gods. 

Next time, let's talk the first arc.

Death Mask 2 - Exploring the Building

The Building: Egypt in general, Cairo in particular, various dig sites scattered across the desert, Cyprus, smuggling ships, and the Museums of the World with a focus on the British Museum, the Louvre, and the Museo Egizio of Turin.

Let’s populate the Building.

All kinds of people and events might be in any Building. Some are plot relevant. Some are there to be there, and some are there because they have to be there.

Plot relevant is an obvious descriptor, and I shan’t go into detail about that group. I trust you to work that out for yourself.

What about the ones who are there to be there, and there because they have to be there?

Let’s say this is the opening scene of Casablanca. 

Casablanca sourced from Film Clips

In that scene we’re introduced to many people, almost none of whom are plot relevant. One or two of them have function within the narrative. They do things. They have lines. The majority are there to be seen.

These are the ones who are there to be there.

The street juggler, the hawkers, the foreigners being swept up (the usual suspects) the man with the Free France leaflets; they perform a necessary service, just by being seen. They set the stage for what’s to come. The pickpocket has a recurring role, has lines of dialogue, and draws the eye. He introduces the setting and gives the audience a taste of what’s on offer. The young couple seen briefly will appear later at Rick’s and provide what amounts to a side quest.

They exist within the narrative because someone has to. In any given scene, there will be people in the background. If this scene takes place in a bar, there will be other people in that bar. If in a market, then other people will be buying, other people will be selling. Any setting – any society – cannot exist without someone in there participating in the scene.

However, because player characters expect to be able to tinker with the bits and pieces of any scene, you as Keeper need to be able to pluck any of these otherwise faceless personalities out of the toybox and make them do things.

What makes them different from the ones who are there because they have to be there? 

Plot function.

The ones who are there to be there have no plot function. They might become plot relevant, through accident rather than design, but there’s nothing about them which makes them plot functional. They exist to be seen, not to do something nor to provide something.

However, there’s a class of character who’s there because they have to be there, and for that example in Casablanca’s opening scene, I point you to the French police.

After all, someone had to round up the usual suspects. Someone had to shoot that Free French fifth columnist with the leaflets. Someone had to provide tension within the narrative. If the police didn’t exist someone would have to invent them, because without their presence there’s nothing keeping the narrative together.

In any game setting there will be a class of characters within the Building who exist because without them the Building could not exist. They serve a vital plot function by making sure the whole shebang makes sense. They might be police, or government officials, or religious authorities, local politicians, street cleaners, bartenders, antique dealers – whatever makes best sense within your Building.

This is a specific Building, don’t forget. It involves smuggling, antiquities, occultism. That means the people who are there because they have to be there are probably smugglers, antique dealers, occultists. Some of them may even become plot relevant, but they don’t have to start that way.

They must exist because, without them, the whole conceit of the narrative falls apart.

How much detail need you lavish on these folks?

Well, probably not much, but you do need something more than a lick and a promise. For example:

• Merchant tall, always bends lower to appear shorter than they are, rapid talker, has four sons to assist them in their work, believes God will provide but, in the meantime, he must provide for himself. No combat skills, but the sons are combatative.
• Merchant A born gossip, this one lives for scandal and is always on the lookout for the latest news. They deal exclusively in expensive small things (eg. coins) and carry their wares with them in a leather bag. The merchant is an experienced knife fighter, for all their apparent helplessness.
• Merchant: A skilled tradesman, perhaps a stonecarver or a jeweler, or even a forger, who only deals with people that he knows. He has no time for riffraff or people who wander in off the street. He is very influential with the local authorities and can bring that influence to bear against people he dislikes.
• Merchant: This one sells supplies to expeditions and always has what an expedition needs to get going. He has been on several adventures himself as a young man and is more than willing to talk about his exciting past. Have you time for a coffee? Good! Now, this happened long ago ...

That’s the people, but why are they there? Partly for background, sure, but the players are going to want to interact with some of them and when that happens the players will want something in return. Clues, possibly. Stuff. Adventure hooks. 

These shouldn’t be specific to the NPC, whether they’re there to be there or there because they have to be. If you attach a specific clue to a specific character the only thing you achieve is an increased chance that the players will lose track of the plot, because they didn’t speak to X about The Thing. 

These are non-plot related, at least conceptually. None of them attach directly to any given scenario or plot seed. But there’s no reason why any of them shouldn’t attach to a scenario or plot seed. Let the players make that choice. If they want to follow up on that peculiar scarab they picked up from dear old so-and-so, then it makes not a scrap of difference whether that scarab was intended to lead to Rome. Now it definitely does.  

You probably don’t need too many of these, at least up-front. There are only so many shiny things any player can concentrate on at any one time. But you do need some, like so: 

• This character has a 1-point clue that leads to a Dig Site. 
• This character has a 1-point clue that leads to the location of a minor relic. 
• This character has a 1-point clue that can be developed into an important NPC relationship. 
• This character works with the Gorgon Cult and can be persuaded to turn against them. 
• This character has a minor relic (scarab, papyrus, mummy) that they’re prepared to sell. 
• This character has a fake relic that they’re prepared to sell. 
• This character works with a criminal organization and can make an introduction to that organization. 
• This character is actually undead and will lead the players into an ambush if given the opportunity. 

List of potential minor relics: 

• Granite stone inscribed with text. 
• Small amulet of a winged lion. 
• Small amulet of a cat. 
• Badly damaged mummy. 
• Incense burners with the head of Horus. 
• Bust of an important official, possibly Roman or Greek. 
• Papyrus with religious text. 
• Lapis Lazuli scarab. 

Again, you don’t want a lot of these but you need to have just enough on hand to be able to fling them out, when you need fresh meat for the lions.  

Now, remember what I also said about the Building:

When designing a setting, think about how people live and what they have to do in order to live well. Not just the big stuff, like which Camarilla faction holds political sway after dark, or whether ghosts are secretly controlling the police force. I mean the small stuff. What do people do for fun? How do they get their food? Do they have light when night falls, and if so how is that managed? What happens when it's hot? What happens in the rainy season? What happens when it snows? What happens to all the shit - literally, the shit - that your average city produces every day?

With that in mind, some events & locations:

• A funeral procession passes, the emaciated corpse on an open bier, carried by their friends and servants, only covered by a hastily flung shawl. Professional mourners follow behind, howling and bawling. The actual mourners, the spouse and children, are more restrained, but weep real tears. 
• A group of people argue over the acts of an efrit that supposedly haunts a nearby building. The efrit, they say, inhabits the bath, because a servant was murdered in that bath. There is much argument over what to do about it.  
• A group of locals and merchants discuss the Nile floods, and whether this years’ will be as bountiful as the one before. If it is too high a flood, they say, plague will surely follow. 
• The heat today is almost unbearable, making every surface and piece of furniture a furnace. It is almost impossible to move in the streets; even a stroll of a few hundred meters feels like an eternity in a hot griddle.  
• The call to prayer sings out from nearby minarets, bidding the faithful to worship. It is such a melody as would gladden the heart, but tonight there is a tinge of melancholy. Why? Who can say? 
• The flies today are particularly annoying. You cannot wipe them away fast enough; they return again and again, drinking your sweat.  
• A brightly colored lizard perches on a nearby windowsill. Its scales are the most magnificent; a little pharaoh on its throne. It has the most beatific expression, like a bishop welcoming guests into his home. 
• A darb, or by-street, about six or eight feet wide, a thoroughfare, with, at each end, a gateway, with a large wooden door, which is always closed at night. This darb is entirely shops, small recesses at the grand floor of a modest house.
• A hárat, or quarter, a district consisting of one or more streets or lanes with private houses, and but one entrance, with a wooden gate, which, like that of a darb, is closed at night.
• A Sook, or market, a short street, or short portions of streets, having shops on either side. These sooks are covered overhead by matting, extended upon rafters.

You may notice I nicked some of that direct from Gutenberg, with what is probably idiosyncratic spelling. When you're going to be reading it aloud anyway, spelling can slide. 

There's a lot more I could put in this Building. I still haven't mentioned what people do for fun, or whether there's street lighting and if so who manages it, who the civil authority is, who the street-level authority is, and a host of other factors. The point here isn't to be exhaustive. This is meant to point in the right direction for further detail later.

After all, any one of these could occupy a whole evening of play, in theory.  The born gossip with the 1-point clue that leads to a relic directs the characters towards that group arguing over the efrit in the bath, and it's off to the races. The players could practically invent the scenario on their own, by their reactions to those prompts.

Remember, this all sprang from that group of Building occupants who are there to be there. I never delved deep into that group who are there because they have to be there. I leave that to your imagination, except to say that in this situation there are probably two types: the first being the occultists and other esoteric experts who the players may turn to for guidance, and second, the ordinary cultists themselves, the ones not deeply involved in the Gorgon cult but who are cult-aware, and can be trusted to aid the cult when needed.

That's it for this week!

Death Mask 1 - Rome and the Building (Campaign Design)

OK, I have support for an expansion of a Gorgon masks idea first posited here, and for Tombhounds of Egypt.

Why not combine the two? 

Let's begin by talking about two core game concepts, Rome and the Building. 

Rome, as you may recall, is the endpoint, where all roads lead. This is where the game is ultimately heading, and elements of Rome need to be present wherever the characters go to reinforce that concept. 

The Building is that part of the game world where you, the Keeper/Director/Idiot Who Agreed To Write Something expect action to happen. It is where people meet the players, creating plot. After all, if your game world is this world then the characters might, theoretically, go to Chicago, say. But if the game is Tombhounds, why would they be in Chicago? No, your Building is ultimately smaller than that, but you need to have a firm grasp of its scale and what's in it.

Why start here? Because these are the foundational building blocks of the narrative. You need to know where the campaign is going. You need to know where the action is set. Once you have those two things, you can build with confidence.

In this instance, Rome is the Gorgon masks cult. This campaign takes as its central premise this truth from Joseph Cambell, as follows:

The legend of Perseus beheading Medusa means, specifically, that "the Hellenes overran the goddess's chief shrines" and "stripped her priestesses of their Gorgon masks", the latter being apotropaic faces worn to frighten away the profane. That is to say, there occurred in the early thirteenth century B.C. an actual historic rupture, a sort of sociological trauma, which has been registered in this myth ... 

Fine. At one point there was a Gorgon masks cult in the Hellenic world, and that cult was overthrown in the 13th Century BC. What happened next? Well, in this timeline whatever parts of the cult survived ended up in Egypt, finding safe haven far away from the heroes who destroyed the cult the first go-round. This is about the same time as the 13th Dynasty, as Ramases II, as the battles with the Hittites. It's a time of prosperity and conflict, with the Sea Peoples in the wings waiting to eat everything alive. 

Sourced from Extra History

So: in an Egypt that's at the height of its power and about to go downhill, a death cult based around Gorgon masks settles in for the long haul. It's one of many cults in Egypt. So many cults. But this one has a Mythos tinge to it, a touch of madness that will infect the body politic and eventually play a part in bringing it down.

According to myth there were three Gorgons, including the human Medusa changed by Athene into a Gorgon for her impiety. Perseus slew Medusa, in the process creating the horse Pegasus and Chrysaor of the golden sword from her blood. This, in the campaign setting, is the cult overthrow that drove the remnants to Egypt.

That left two Gorgons standing, brother and sister duo Phorcys and Ceto. Tales vary as to whether Phorcys and Ceto were Gorgons or the parents of Gorgons. For purpose of this story, they're Gorgons. 

Brother and Sister. You know who else were brother and sister ruling together? The Pharaohs. Marriage between siblings was relatively common. Probably the most famous paring was Cleopatra and her brother. Sibling marriage wasn't accepted outside Egypt, but within its ruling classes it was the standard.

So, to Rome: the Masks of Death, whose self-appointed task is reconstituting the Hellenistic Pharaonic dynasties within Egypt, themselves a relic of the Gorgon cult. The idea of recreating the Pharaohs may simply be a means to an end, the end being the recruitment of willing Egyptians. The Gorgon cult doesn't need Egypt particularly, but it does need people to keep its traditions alive and to make more masks, so it tolerates the Pharaonic delusion to keep the masses happy.

All led by Phorcys and Ceto, brother and sister, the Horus, the Sedge and Bee (nswt-bjtj), and the Two Ladies or Nebty (nbtj). Interesting fact about the Horus: it is associated with gold. Much like that golden sword of Chrysaor ... 

Rome: Masks, hidden identities, hidden agendas, Gorgons, the shadowy influence of Egypt's past, the Pharaohs of old returning to take their rightful place.  

What of the Building?

Well, there are a couple obvious candidates. Cairo, for starters. Dig sites, and for purposes of the Building it doesn't matter what those dig sites are or where; they're dig sites, and that's what matters. However, this is as much about smuggling as it is archaeology, so it's reasonable to assume that the Building also includes smuggling routes. Let's include Cyprus within the Building as a minor but not unimportant adjunct. Also, smuggling ships of various kinds, sail and steam. Finally, since this is about antiquities, let's assume the Museums of the World are involved to some degree. Include the British Museum, the Louvre, and the Museo Egizio of Turin as rooms within the Building proper. None of these will ever be crucial to plot, but they make excellent background shots for plot reveals.   

Also, Patrons. Let's not forget those useful, money-rich patrons. 

Which begs a question: do I want to use the Icons system that Pelgrane's developed? Possibly. I should want some time to think about that. 

The Building: Egypt in general, Cairo in particular, various dig sites scattered across the desert, Cyprus, smuggling ships, and the Museums of the World with a focus on the British Museum, the Louvre, and the Museo Egizio of Turin. This is where I expect action to happen. 

Which isn't to say that action outside the Building is verboten. Just that I don't include a developed version of 'outside the Building.' I've got enough to do with the Building's interior without worrying about detours. The best way to deal with unexpected detours is to have a sketch developed of whatever I want the initial detour to look like, and then Quo Fata Ferunt the rest.

Quo Fata Ferunt, by the way, is Bermuda's motto. I've always found it useful. 

Whither the Fates Carry [Us]. 

That's it for this week! Enjoy!

Cauldron 3: The Long Term

Opening Scene. Bioshock

A man attacks flight crew with an improvised knife attempting to get access to the cockpit so he can crash the plane, all the while screaming that he’s a child of Dracula. Passengers subdue him and he’s arrested as soon as they land at Gatwick. That’s when the agents are called in, because not only is the attacker on a special, secret list (known Renfields), he was also attempting to crash the plane in Southwark in order to ‘destroy them all’. 

Destroy who? And why Southwark?

That’s how I’d start the Cauldron. 

Which begs a few questions, among them how I’d organize this multi-genre epic, and how I’d deal which changing story arcs bearing in mind this sprawling yarn takes in everything from Shakespeare to tomb-hunting shenanigans in Cairo. It’s vampires, vampires, all the way down, but what exactly is the thread holding all this together?

As described in the ground rules, there are four sections: prehistory, Elizabethan, 1930s, 1980s. The long-term plot revolves around a strangler cult that boils the remains of its victims in a cauldron, for divination purposes. This cult has been anti-vampire in the past but a takeover bid in the Roman era may or may not have permanently changed it to a vampire asset – that’s to be determined in play.

We won’t be playing in prehistory, or even Roman times for that matter, though we probably could; GUMSHOE is nothing if not versatile. From a timeline perspective, the action starts in School of Night. 

Not necessarily in a playtime perspective, though. The great thing about a multi-genre chronicle is you can begin whenever you like and move to whichever moment in history best suits the narrative. Which is why I’m starting with a potential plane crash in the 1980s. Start with action. You don’t get much more action than an abortive attack on a major metropolitan era, and it’d get even better if you followed it up with a vampire attack on the Renfield suicide bomber. No witnesses, after all. 

Imagine being on that plane. Passengers going crazy, the Renfield sweating blood and raving. Maybe only one player character is aboard and the other players have civilian characters for this brief scene – but what a scene it could be … After all, this is 1980-something, long before the security theatre we have now. Scans and searches were lax and best. You could still smoke on planes back then. All sorts of possibilities!  

The opening scenes of every narrative, whether we're talking about an RPG campaign, a novel or a film, serve to establish two things: setting, and stakes. The setting in this case is London, mostly in Southwark, with some stopovers in Cairo. The stakes? Control over the government, through divination, which allows the vampires to infiltrate the corridors of power by being the only one who know what the future holds. By predicting what's to come they can guide their allies and catspaws to success, and therefore glory. 

That means by the end of the opening scenes your players should know that there is a conspiracy, that it stretches back centuries, and that it revolves around divination through ritual murder.

Once those objectives are achieved, you as Director immediately switch genres to the next point on the plot graph, which is whatever you want it to be. For the sake of this example I'm going to say that the next point is School of Night, because I want to establish some backstory and the best way to do that is to let the players do the hard work for me. I want to get them involved in that mysterious revenger's tragedy written by Francis Harman, and the best way to get them to do that is to put them in a room with Harman. 

My objective, once the opening scenes have been dealt with, is to define some of the parameters of the Conspiracy. The best way to underline the stakes of the game is to make it clear from the outset that the enemy are powerful and aiming for high stakes. The best way to do that is to show the enemy doing exactly that, by having them take a shot at the Queen of England, Elizabeth I. It might be interesting to hint that this same group tried to cement Lady Jane Gray's claim to the throne, but that the 9 day's Queen was outmaneuvered by the members of the School of Night. Now those same conspirators are plotting to put Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne, and it's up to the players to make sure that doesn't happen. 

Point being, the best way to establish that the enemy is powerful and aiming for high stakes is to show them exercising power and aiming for high stakes. It isn't enough to say that they're bad. They must be seen to be doing bad things, and scheming against the characters and the Crown. There's got to be murder, got to be a hideous soup boiling in that cauldron, and the best way to demonstrate this is to have it happen. Think of it in the same vein as the Bond villain demonstrating the power of the super laser (or whatever it may be) by blowing up a few preliminary targets. 

 Diamonds Are Forever

From this point forward the plot evolves through player action. You can have the bare bones outlined in your text, but whether or not the players win or lose determines how powerful the enemy are in the next segment. The Conspiracy might be a scattered and beaten force in the 1930s, or they might be nigh untouchable villains, and whether they are or are not will be determined by how well the players do in School of Night. 

OK, so far so good. But this is an evolving narrative so that means the characters are evolving too. Except where in a normal long-running game evolution is determined through experience (and the spending of experience points) that isn't as easy an option to model here, where the characters are changing from session to session. This week, Sir Henry in 1609, next week, Basil in 1930. How to deal with that?

Again, leave it to the players - but establish a framework for them to do so. In any game they're going to be earning experience points. Give them the option of doing one of two things with those points: giving their current character a boost, or spend the points on an artefact or benefit for another, future character.

Let's say Sir Henry ends the session with 3 points to spend. Sir Henry's player has the option of spending those points to increase Sir Henry's skill set or to use those points to benefit one of the other characters in that players' stable. This is especially useful if, in session Zero, that player either designed all their characters for all the sessions, or at least established a framework for future characters even if that framework is just a name and a few lines of backstory. That way the player knows, in advance, that there will be adventures featuring Basil the bookshop owner and therefore it might be handy to give Basil a boost to prepare him for the horrors to come. Or maybe Dorcas the Night's Black Agents spy, or Roger the Cairo tombhound. 

I'd allow the player to do this in one of two ways:

• Lineage, or,
• Item

By lineage, I'm allowing the player to say that Basil is a descendant of Sir Henry and therefore has some of Sir Henry's characteristics. Or maybe some family legend informs Basil's decisions. However it works, Basil gets that boost because Basil is descended from Sir Henry. Of course, only Basil benefits from this boost. If Basil dies, the boost is gone forever.

By item, I'm allowing the player to create an item that Basil can use, whether or not Basil is related to Sir Henry. A magic dagger, say, that Sir Henry crafts to destroy vampires and which Basil, not knowing the item's backstory, is using in the 1930s as a letter opener. The benefit still exists; Basil has a magic dagger which can kill vampires. The difference here being that items can go missing, be stolen, or be passed on. The dagger isn't unique to Basil so Basil can give it to someone else, or have a fellow player take it from his cooling corpse. But it can also be stolen by the enemy or destroyed in some other way. 

That's the first takeaway in a multi-genre game. Allow the players to establish a bridge between genres by letting them build that bridge with experience points. It could even be a pooled benefit. Say all the characters in School of Night collaborate to create a book that is passed down to the Bookhounds. There could be a lot of experience points invested in that book. But it is a book - it can be stolen or destroyed. Giving the players custody of an artefact like that, one which they created and have a personal stake in, is significantly better than letting them chase after the McGuffin of the week.

The second takeaway is one we've discussed before but which I'm going to reiterate here: find the points of commonality between the genres and play on those points.

Night's Black Agents is a spy game, full of intrigue and action. School of Nights can be a spy game, full of intrigue and action. Tombhounds has the potential to be a spy game (remember that sinister Nazi treasure hunter, Gottfried Frank) and is definitely full of intrigue and action. Bookhounds is full of intrigue and action, and even if the mouthfeel is a little different from the other games that's no bad thing. It's the commonality you're looking for, not the differences.

This can be reiterated by reminding the players of important locations significant in all of the iterations of the game: the Clink prison, London Bridge, the Devil. 

Let's say the Clink is one of those touchstones. There are several versions of that notorious prison (it burnt down more than once) and there's a museum there now. It's not immediately clear when that museum opened. If I was guessing I'd say probably in the late 1990s/early 2000s, but this is fiction; it can open in the 1980s if that's useful for your game. 

We've already established a timeline roughly corresponding to Prehistory, Elizabethan, 1930s, 1980s. Under the Four Things principle, we need Four Things that correspond to those four points in the chronicle history. So:

The Clink

• Prehistory: when the cult was scattered by the Romans, one of the pieces of the Cauldron was buried here for safekeeping.
• Elizabethan: Francis Harmon, a Catholic, spends some time here in jail and while at the Clink carries out rituals intended to evoke demons - but he evokes the Cauldron, instead.
• 1930s: some relic or satanic remnant of Harmon's demonic ritual still haunts this spot, and the Conspiracy is determined to harness this for its own ends.
• 1980s: the serial killer preying on people with his (her?) strangulation ritual seems to be using the Clink either as a base of operations or as the central locus for an occult experiment of some kind. Why?

Physical tags, The Clink:

• Gloomy, the haunt of the desperate and the damned.
• Violent. Things happen here - terrible things. 
• Desolate. It's easy to lose your soul in the Clink - or your mind.
• Vampires. Agents of the Conspiracy enjoy special benefits while at this location.

This is enough to establish the location. If it becomes a major crux of the campaign you'd need more, but you can establish that during play. You don't need to establish that at the start, and you really want to avoid doing more than the basics if you can because you don't want to waste work. Remember, the Clink isn't the only location in the chronicle; it's one of many, perhaps dozens, in this particular Building. You're going to be doing this for all of those locations. Don't obsess over one when there are plenty of others that could end up being just as important, or considerably more so.

With this, you can use the Clink at any point in your multi-genre chronicle and you already know enough about it to place the Clink anywhere in your timeline. It's the same location, evolving. It has different significance depending on when your players encounter it, but it's the same place, with the same long-term role in the ongoing plot. 

OK! I hope this was of use to you. With this you've got enough to build your own Cauldron, with its own plot arc and deepening, horrific mystery. 

Next time: something completely different.

Cauldron 2: Going To The Devil (NBA, School of Night, Bookhounds, Tombhounds)

From Urban Adventurer

Last time I laid the groundwork for The Cauldron, a multi-genre RPG campaign using School of Night, Bookhounds, Tomb-Hounds, and Night’s Black Agents. This time out I want to populate the Building, putting some flesh on the campaign’s bones.

What is the Building? A refresher:

I'm going to suggest to you now, as GM to GM, that this conceit is the Building. It is the structure in which the action happens, and in which people meet the players, creating plot. It can be as large or small as you need it to be. Some games need entire planets. Some stories can play out within a single structure … The Building is that area in which you, as GM, expects plot to happen. For plot to happen, the GM needs to populate the Building, either with people or events with which the players can interact. It is player interaction, not NPC action, that makes plot.

In this instance the Building is mostly Southwark, London, with a detour in Cairo for Tomb-Hounds (and possibly Night’s Black Agents). It’s multi-genre which means it’s more than one time period. School is Elizabethan, Bookhounds and Tomb-Hounds 1930s, and Night’s Black Agents is modern day. However, the great thing about a location like Southwark, London, is that you can borrow some common elements that exist in all time periods – the London Bridge, say – and even if some of the places you want to use no longer exist in some time periods or have yet to be built in others, you can still factor in the location even if the specifics change.

Example: last time out I talked about the Devil, the playhouse used by the Children of Christ's Chapel players in the Elizabethan period, which becomes the Devil Tavern in the 1930s and is used by the Children of the Sphynx, and which could still exist as the Devil Pub in the modern day. Or the Devil’s Darling Cocktail Bar, if you’d rather. Whatever works for you at your table. 

An Elizabethan playhouse is obviously going to be very different from a cocktail bar. At least, I’d really like to think so, otherwise that cocktail bar must be a … special … place. But if the location remains the same then there’s at least one descriptor that can also remain the same, for continuity purposes if nothing else. That’s the tag that lets the players know, even if it’s not the playhouse they remember from before, it’s still the same location.

Which brings me right back to the Four Things principle.

Again, for reference:

Whenever designing OPFOR - or for that matter anything else, whether it's the town the adventurers start in, the organization they work for, or the theatre which they notice as a potential adventure location, design four highlight points and no more than four. The average player's attention span is short, and yours is not any better. You could go deep in the weeds and design twenty different things about the OPFOR, but who apart from you will ever know it? Even you won't, not really; in the heat of play you'll forget half your notes and curse yourself later when you realize you could have used the Thing, dammit, the THING, and never did. That's why you limit it to four. You can remember four things. So can the players.

Using the Four Things principle and bearing in mind as discussed last week that the Fourth Thing has always got to be vampires because this whole thing is vampires, vampires, all the way down, then the Third Thing has got to be the point of commonality. The one eternal verity. The constant, the descriptor that always applies no matter which setting we’re playing in this week.

Using the Devil as an example, then:

Devil Tavern & Playhouse (School of Night)

• The Devil is owned and operated by Walter FitzHugh, an ex-soldier and Upright Man who has been on the fringes of the Vampire cult for many years but hasn’t quite managed Renfield status yet. Walter knows most of the toughs and cunning men in Southwark, though not always on friendly terms.
• The Devil has been a playhouse for five years now and is known as a safe place. Folk who go to playhouses expect to get their purses pinched or their persons ruffled, but not at the Devil. Walter makes sure none of the usual troublemakers get in, and anyone caught causing trouble on the premises is given the boot, but good.
• The shadows at the Devil are peculiar things. They seem to follow a person about, somehow, to flicker when there is no light and to remain solid when in bright light. Anyone who spends a lot of time in the Devil’s shadowy corners feels as if they’re being watched.
• Vampires. The undead come and go at the Devil and use its back rooms as a slaughterhouse/dining area. The clothing and valuables of the dead are sold by Walter at various pawnbrokers about town, but never in Southwark. Walter’s too canny for that. As for the bodies … there’s always somewhere to sling a naked corpse, but many of them end up slung off London Bridge. 

Of those Four Things, the third thing – the shadows – is the constant. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about the 1930s tavern, the cocktail bar or something else. Those shadows are always there. That’s what ties the players to the location, will make them think ‘yes, this is the Devil I remember – and, oh God! Wasn’t there something about a slaughter room? Is that still a thing?’ 

It might be – who knows? Because this isn’t the only version of the Devil. 

Devil Tavern (1930s, Bookhounds)

• The Devil is well known among London’s bohemians and raffish set. If you want to find a Communist enjoying a pint and pie with his rough lad friends, or a well-known portrait artist chatting up his female acolytes, go to the Devil. They’ll be there.
• The Devil has private rooms upstairs which it rents to its deserving customers. The Children of the Sphynx use it for their auctions but they’re not the only ones who use it. All sorts rent the space, from Satanists to ‘film entrepreneurs’ looking for a spot with privacy and lockable doors.
•  The shadows at the Devil are peculiar things. They seem to follow a person about, somehow, to flicker when there is no light and to remain solid when in bright light. Anyone who spends a lot of time in the Devil’s shadowy corners feels as if they’re being watched.
• Vampires. The Devil is protected against vampires by several banes and blocks put here by the Children of the Sphynx. However, anyone with Vampirology or Occult will notice that those banes and blocks are defective – perhaps deliberately so. 

Moreover, if you want to give the players a very deliberate hint that this location is the same as that, then you use that Third Thing as a descriptor.

Example: 

Coffee Shop (Qahwa) on Tawfiq Square, Cairo

• The owner, or qahwagi, is an amiable old soul who greets every foreigner in perfect, almost academic French which he claims he learned in Paris as a boy, when he was sent there by his father. He calls himself Mehedi Saleh and is believed to be Bedouin; many who frequent the coffee shop call him Father, or Old Father.
• The tea served here is strong and sweet, and Mehedi claims to know a secret brew which can cure any illness. Many locals swear by it, and quite a few foreigners as well. Some say this has more to do with the tureen he brews it in, which is marked with occult sigils.
• The shadows here are peculiar things. They seem to follow a person about, somehow, to flicker when there is no light and to remain solid when in bright light. Anyone who spends a lot of time in the coffee shop's shadowy corners feels as if they’re being watched.
• Vampires. The sky above the coffee shop is haunted by bloodsuckers and witches at night; why do they gather here, of all places, and what terrible secrets do they gossip about when they think nobody is listening?

The protagonists may never have set foot in Mehedi's coffee shop before, yet the minute they notice the Third Thing they will be on their guard because they have seen this sign before. Moreover, having given them the Third Thing they will know there must be a Fourth Thing and it must be related to the vampires, because every other important plot location has had a Fourth Thing and it's always been vampires.

You might reasonably ask, what goes in this particular Building? Well, in no particular order:

• London Bridge
• The River Neckinger
• The Strangulation Ritual
• Execution Dock
• The Colkins Family (in general)
• Francis Harman
• Harman's Play, A Season Of Blood (Revenger's Tragedy)
• Sir Jacob Colkins
• Douglas Colkins-Firth
• The Clink
• Tomb of Two Sisters, Egypt
• Cairo

And probably others, but I hope you get the idea by now. These bits of the Building are the bits the players interact with, in their various genres and incarnations. That interaction creates plot. 

Don't be afraid to let plot change your ideas of where the long-term arc might go, always bearing in mind that wherever it does go vampires are standing at the other end of it. But the flavor of that ending? Can depend on actions taken in play. Did the players do something in Egypt that significantly changed the odds of success in the modern day? Then that's what happened. Did an unexpected death in the Elizabethan period mean that Harman's play, A Season Of Blood, became a lost text in the modern era, potentially changing an important clue trail? Then that's what happened.

OK. That’s enough to be getting on with. Using these principles, you should be able to populate your own Building with whatever you need in it.

Next step: building the long-term arc. 

The Cauldron (RPG All)

A short while back I talked about genre mixing. I thought it would be fun to put those ideas into practice.

This multi-setting chronicle will start (chronologically at least) with School of Night, pass on to Bookhounds of London/Tombhounds of Egypt, and conclude with Night's Black Agents. 

Before I delve into the details, let's spend this week talking about setting.

The great thing about setting a story of whatever type in a city like London is, it's been there since forever ago and its history is well known. You shan't have to spend the first half-hour describing the basics; you can assume the players already know the basics. The same could be said about Paris, Berlin, Rome and a dozen other places I can think of. It's the kind of location where, even if the players don't know exactly what London is like, they can fake it. There's a pub and a Pret a Manger on every corner, Cockneys talk funny, there's an Underground. Sorted. 

School of Night is Elizabethan, Bookhounds and Tombhounds are 1930s games and Night's Black Agents can be any period but tends towards modern day. There's nothing that says you have to play the sessions in that order. You could start with Tombhounds, pass on to School of Night then Bookhounds then Nights. Or Nights, then Tombhounds, then School of Night, Bookhounds, and Nights again. The world is your crimson-tinged oyster. 

However, you do need a reasonably solid core at the heart of this whole thing. Some reliable touchstone that the players can refer back to, so they don't get lost in the alphabet soup. 

Let's set this primarily in Southwark, London. The assumption, since this refers back to Night's Black Agents in the end, is that this is primarily about vampires. It doesn't have to be. Night's has specific rules for a Cthulhu v spies vibe and as Director you can do as you like, but let's not think too far out of the box this time around. Vampires it is. Whether the players are dodging horrors in Cairo or arguing the finer points of literature and history with Shakespeare, it's all vampires, all the time. In the Four Things parlance, vampires are the Fourth Thing. 

What do we know about Southwark that's campaign-useful?

To the Wikipedias!

Recent excavation has revealed pre-Roman activity including evidence of early ploughing, burial mounds and ritual activity ... Southwark was mostly made up of a series of often marshy tidal islands in the Thames, with some of the waterways between these island formed by branches of the River Neckinger, a tributary of the Thames ... without London bridge there is unlikely to have been a settlement of any importance in the area ... For centuries London Bridge was the only Thames bridge ... Londinium was abandoned at the end of the Roman occupation in the early 5th century and both the city and its bridge collapsed in decay. The settlement at Southwark, like the main settlement of London to the north of the bridge, had been more or less abandoned ... Just west of the Bridge was the Liberty of the Clink manor, which was never controlled by the city, but was held under the Bishopric of Winchester's nominal authority. This lack of oversight helped the area became the entertainment district for London ... Southwark was also the location of several prisons ... In 1836 the first railway in the London area was created, the London and Greenwich Railway, originally terminating at Spa Road and later extended west to London Bridge ... Southwark was outside of the control of the City of London and was a haven for criminals and free traders, who would sell goods and conduct trades outside the regulation of the city's Livery Companies ...

That will do to be getting on with. 

There are all kinds of London legends that could be data-mined for this. I'm going to invent one for campaign purposes, but it would be as simple to borrow something from a source like Funk & Wagnalls or London Lore. 

Borrowing from the Wiki:

evidence of early ploughing, burial mounds and ritual activity. Burial mounds sounds useful, as does ritual activity. I'm going to assume that the site I intend to detail for campaign purposes was a burial mound at one point in the far-off times. Further, since this is marshy ground with lots of running water and that useful River Neckinger, I'm going to assume that this location was chosen deliberately as a kind of vampire defense system. That means one of the vampire banes/blocks of the setting ought to be water, whether the vampires themselves are traditional, alien or something else. 

The Neckinger allegedly got its name from hangings and hangmen. I'm going to assume that the tradition goes back much further than anyone realizes, that ritual killing by strangulation was a part of the location even way back in pre-history.

without London bridge there is unlikely to have been a settlement of any importance in the area. That suggests London Bridge as a key ritual location, something that can be used by megapolisomancers and magicians of all stripes. A kind of fane, perhaps? Something that can be drawn on for power.

the location of several prisons. The Clink covers the School of Night period, which is helpful.

Southwark was outside of the control of the City of London and was a haven for criminals and free traders. All kinds of benefits here and this is a situation that lasts a very long time. There are still remnants of it in the modern day - there's a reason why they set Only Fools and Horses in Southwark.

 OK, all that said, let's lay some ground rules. 

There are four big moments in the setting's history:

• Prehistory - when the ritual area is first established, the first killings happen, the magic is evoked.
• Elizabethan - when the first ritual plays are performed by a group I'm going to call the Children of Christ's Chapel.
• 1930s - when the Children of the Sphynx establish their temple on old, tainted ground.
• 1980s - when an Edom rocked by scandal has to deal with a new Strangler attempting to evoke old horrors.

Prehistory

In a time when Southwark was marsh and river, a group lost to history established a fane in a place protected against vampires.

• There they sacrificed human victims by strangulation, boiling the remains in a cauldron which they then used for ritual, divination purposes.
• They created an artefact, a cauldron, for this purpose. The cauldron was in several pieces and those pieces are lost to history.
• The remains of this cult were put to flight and thought destroyed when Caesar first came to Britain. When Claudius completed the invasion that Caesar left undone, no remnant of the cult was discovered.
• Vampires: the leaders of the cult either became vampires or were murdered by the earliest version of the vampire conspiracy.

Elizabethan

When Southwark was a place you went to for entertainment, a boy's performing troupe, the Children of Christ's Chapel, became briefly famous.

• The Children were nominally backed by a nobleman, Sir Jacob Colkins, a man of many investments particularly in the New World. 
• Sir Jacob's antecedents are obscure. He claims to be able to trace his line to the conquest; his enemies say his grandfather was a gond farmer (or dung merchant) for the tanneries.
• The Children performed plays written by Sir Jacob's creature, a scrivener named Francis Harman most famous for being accused of witchcraft - though he escaped punishment.
• Vampires: The vampires used the Children's playhouse, the Devil, as a base of operations. In the past, it had been the ritual site where the Prehistory cultists carried out their human sacrifices.

1930s. 

The Children of the Sphynx establish a ritual site and a small occult press, which proves very popular amongst certain Bohemians.

• The Children of the Sphynx first arise in the 1890s as a smallish rival to the Order of the Golden Dawn, but as an occult order they never amount to much. As a publishing house, they have more success.
• The Devil Tavern, a rattletrap place with a peculiar history, is their unofficial base of operations. They meet here, sometimes hold auctions here.
• One of the rituals - a requirement for entry - is strangulation. The Children describe it as 'a means of enhancing the mystery.' Failures merely fall unconscious, or even die; those who succeed see terrible visions.
• Vampires: The Children are vampire hunters, and their most obscure - and valuable - texts are about hunting vampires.

1930s (Tombhounds).

In the early 1910s an archaeologist, Douglas Colkins-Firth, sets out on an expedition to find a lost tomb of great importance. He never returns, but some think he was on to a rich find and are determined to follow in his footsteps.

• Judging by sketches and notes, Colkins-Firth was looking for evidence of a prehistoric cult whose rituals spread the length and breadth of Europe, but whose roots could be found in Egypt.
• Colkins-Firth was one of the founding members of the Children of the Sphynx, and it was he who first developed the strangulation ritual which is the Children's signature.
• One of the most dangerous seekers after the Colkins-Firth find is a Nazi, Gottfried Frank, who believes that Colkins-Firth was about to discover a powerful artefact when he went missing.
• Vampires: Colkins-Firth had been corrupted by the vampires and was looking for a replacement cauldron; Frank is about to stumble onto the vampires and what he'll do when he finds them is anyone's guess. 

1980s (Night's Black Agents)

In the early days of Thatcherism an Edom reduced by internal scandals to a remnant of its former self is thrown into disarray when one of the Dukes is found dead by hanging in his apartments - and there's the possibility he was attempting some kind of ritual when he died.

• The Duke isn't the only one to have gone this way, just the most high-profile. Scotland Yard thinks it may be a serial killer.
• Edom is further rattled when it appears as though the death of the Duke - or something very like it - is the subject of an unfinished Hitchcock thriller, pages from which are found at one of the death scenes.
• The Hitchcock thriller borrows heavily from an obscure play written by an Elizabethan playwright, Francis Harman, and a true-life killing (or possibly series of killings) that took place in the 1930s. How did Hitchcock get this material?
• Vampires: It's all been about divination, storytelling, and the vampires think they're on the cusp of a breakthrough - but they don't know how to complete the ritual. A dead Hitchcock does them no good - but did he really die in April, 1980?

OK, that's the bare bones. Next week, it's time to talk about this old and creaky Building.

Enjoy!

Schools and Genre Mixing (RPG All)

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

Which begs the question, when are RPGs compatible – or compatible enough that you can pull this trick – and when are they not?

In the example above the Brotherhood is the point of intersection between Bookhounds and Tombhounds. It helps that both games are set in the 1930s but that isn’t absolutely necessary. What is necessary is some kind of compatibility, some link that makes the one a natural fit with the other. If the Brotherhood wasn’t part of the Bookhounds main plot, then it wouldn’t work. With the Brotherhood and its Egyptian themes in the mix, it does.

That means you can mix genres, but more importantly, it means you can mix plots. Characters. Even whole locations. Say you had a major Brotherhood temple set up in London, with all the pharaonic symbolism that implies, tended by ancient mummies and spirits from beyond. Why not have a mirror image of that temple in Egypt for the Tombhounds to find? Why shouldn’t it be the same temple, linking one location to the other by means of a Gate? 

It also helps that the two settings have a common theme: illicit knowledge. The Bookhounds sell it, the Tombhounds uncover it. The Tombhounds might want to catch the Orient Express up to London to have their latest find evaluated. The Bookhounds might want to learn more about these curious Dynasty XIII papyri they’ve purchased. There’s a reason why both groups might want to talk to each other, to draw on the others’ skillset.

On the other hand, let’s say you were trying to pull a similar trick with a different system – Esoterrorists, say. Does that work?

On its own, probably not, for two reasons.

First, there’s no element of compatibility. In the Tombhounds example the point of compatibility was the Brotherhood. In theory there could be an Esoterrorist element there; the Brotherhood could be Esoterrorists. So there’s a means of creating compatibility, if you wanted to force it. But Egypt is central to the idea of Tombhounds and is the main motivator of the Brotherhood. It is fundamental to both games. There’s no fundamental connection between Esoterrorists and Bookhounds unless you, as Keeper, care to force it.

There’s no common theme either. Bookhounds is about illicit knowledge. Esoterrorists is about fighting off the Outer Black. They’re both horror games, but that’s the only link between them and it’s not a strong thematic connection. There’s plenty of horror games out there. You could make an equally valid case for, say, Wraith. Or Werewolf.  Or Dungeons and Dragons: Ravenloft.

None of that is to say it can’t be done. However, to do it you’d have to go some lengths to make it happen. Ideally that’s the kind of thing you want to avoid, if only because that means more work on your part and the whole point is to avoid extra work. You have enough to do. 

Let’s explore the concept to see how it functions.

Say you’re planning a game of School of Night. Is that compatible with Bookhounds?

Well, you’re looking for an element of compatibility and a common theme. 

School of Night is an Elizabethan-era horror game about defending the Realm against ‘occult forces ... You study those forces at the risk of torture — at the risk of your soul — but you must hold them at bay or see England destroyed …’ You’re walking alongside John Dee, Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare and Sir Walter Raleigh. Bookhounds is a 1930s-era game about buying and selling occult tomes. You’re a contemporary of Agatha Christie, M.R. James, J.R.R. Tolkien and Aleister Crowley.  On the face of it, the two seem very different games. 

However, there is an element of compatibility.  Both games involve literature; School of Night is literally about playwrights, poets and scholars pitted against occult forces. These people generate those same grimoires which the Bookhounds will later sell. You could even make a case for a common prop for both games – the book. A copy of, say, the Revenger’s Tragedy with its o-so-useful disputed authorship which can be battered about, annotated, have fake blood split on it, whatever, during play in School of Night, and then handed over to the Bookhounds. 

Also, there is a common theme: illicit knowledge. With the added benefit that, if you start talking about Elizabethan spies and alchemists, you could make a case for cryptography and hidden secrets within the text. That generates new secrets which the Bookhounds then spend their time unravelling. The School of Night players could literally inscribe the Revenger’s Tragedy with peculiar codes which the Bookhounds players break.

Why do this?

Because it’s fun, silly.

That, and one other reason: it’s instant backstory. Most games involve a certain amount of backstory, and you don’t want to be in the position of having to read out chunks of text or giving the players a prop they may never give a second glance to. 

I love Dracula Dossier to death; I think the Armitage Files is one of the best props in any game ever. I wonder, though: how many players actually look through the Dracula Dossier prop and pick out the particular annotation they want to follow up?

But if you’re playing two settings concurrently then the players will know what happened in the way-back-when, because they’re the ones who did the thing that happened in the way-back-when. The duel that Sir Walter Raleigh fought in 1608 is that same duel you played out at the table. The peculiar history of that scarab your Bookhound is using as a paperweight is something that your Tombhounds were caught up in two years prior. That peculiar fellow who plays chess every day at a club at the Elephant and Castle who strongly resembles Thomas Middleton might actually be Thomas Middleton – and because your School of Night players had that adventure they know why Thomas Middleton is condemned to remain at that spot forever and ever, amen.  

That’s it for this week. Enjoy!