Hello! Happy New Year!
I'm going to start the year off by noodling with some campaign design notions and I thought I'd start with the Shop.
I'm using Bookhounds as the primary example, but this concept can be used in any RPG setting where the characters have a home base of some description. It might be a clubhouse. It might be the police precinct they all work at. It might be a railway carriage on the Orient Express, speeding through the night, but whatever it is, it's home to the characters. It's the place they retreat to, the place they store stuff, the place they go to when they want to make plans or brainstorm their way to success.
It's Home.
It has its dark side.
In a previous post on campaign design I said:
Let's say you intend to start with a small shop at the edge of the City, in the East End but trying to pretend it isn't East End, not really. Nobody drops their haitches in this establishment. You'd want to leave a fair amount of shop design up to the players but that doesn't mean you leave everything else alone. What's on the same street? Who's the main rival? What's the trade like? Is there a secret hidden under the floorboards or up in the attic? Do the drains work and, if not, what makes up the fatberg that's blocking them?
I'm going to use this East End shop as an example, and this is where we start talking about secrets hidden under floorboards and blocked drains.
The home base is something I expect the players to help design. Each person at the table should contribute at least one thing. Think of it like an ideas potluck. That means, among other things, that you can never be sure what will be in the home base. Which suggests that the dark side, whatever it ends up being, will start life disconnected from the home base's main concepts. After all, you can't establish links to something that just doesn't exist yet.
No, But what you can do is make sure that the dark side you design remains true to Rome and the basic principles of the setting, whatever those may be. That way, you can retro-engineer your Dark Side to fit whatever ideas the players come up with.
I mention the basic principles of the setting because it's important to remember that all settings have their quirks. We're using Bookhounds as an example. That means we're talking about shops, trade, auctions, customers, London. It's a completely different vibe to, say, Night's Black Agents, or Cyberpunk. Even if your NBA game is still set in London - at the Bull, for instance - it's a very different vibe from a Bookhounds London. A Cyberpunk campaign can still begin in London - it can even begin at the Bull - and yet be totally different from both Bookhounds and Night's Black Agents. This will determine the basic principles of the setting, which you need to establish in the opening arc of the campaign.
OK. In this example it's Bookhounds, which means basic principles are shops, trade, auctions, customers, London. We're using the East End as a location, which in the main book is the Abyss:
Since mediaeval times, the East End has been where London put its blood, its stenches, and its death: tanneries, slaughterhouses, and fulling-yards. The docks and canals brought steady work, along with injury and ague; the ships brought crowds of foreign sailors and workmen, and crowds of British whores and thieves. Gin-houses and music-halls sprang up, as did radical politics and dissenting cults. Homes were small and streets were narrow even in Elizabethan times; with factories, gasworks, and workhouses rising in the Victorian era, things got even worse. The East End became “the Abyss.”
Further, we already know that this shop is near the divide between the East End and the City, and that it's trying to pretend to greater status than it deserves. All these things feed into basic principles, which will help you design the dark side.
That being established, we're probably looking at something in East Smithfield near St. Katherine's Docks. Something like Tower Ward, or near as dammit to it. In fact, we're looking at Stepney, within spitting distance of Whitechapel.
Ahh, Already I can see plot beginning to form.
A quick look at the vicinity and at St Katherine's tells me it was ridden with plague back in the day, that thanks to its connection with the wharves and trade there's all kinds of overseas influences, immigration, new ideas, and that the construction of the Docks back in the early 19th century destroyed a historic part of London and forced a lot of people to move on.
Sometimes the plot fairy just hits you over the head with a great big stick.
OK, pick a street. Any street, really. Somewhere in Stepney not far from the Docks. Roundabout the border of Whitechapel South and St George in the East South. That's where the shop is. As Keeper you could invent a street and that would be fine. God knows London has created and lost many little alleys, avenues, Mews and Courts over the years. However, it can also be handy to use a pre-existing location since that location will have a history and sometimes that can be useful for plot purposes.
Cartwright Street is right opposite Swan Lane Open Space, which in the 1920s was a disused gravel pit. Formerly Churchyard Alley, apparently. Or Cartridge Street in Rosemary Lane, presumably depending on which end of Cartwright you were standing in. The whole shebang gets reorganized in the later 1800s when London rebuilds to benefit industry and put up housing for workers. Cartwright sounds much nicer than Churchyard or Cartridge, which presumably is why someone picked it. But with all this stewing it sounds like the perfect place for the shop. Cartwright, aka Cartridge, with the gravel pits just opposite. Disused, of course. Filled with water, in some places.
The plot fairy's stick, again.
OK, that's more than enough to be getting on with. Let's Dark Side this.
The Shop (Bare Bones)
Location: Cartwright Street, aka Cartridge Street, Stepney, East End, near Whitechapel.
Immediate area: Residential, with Industrial nearby (disused gravel pits).
Age of Building: Georgian (George III) built c 1800 as the town house of a well-to-do merchant. Somehow avoided being knocked down in the 1880s. Used as a boarding house from c. 1870 until 1908, when it fell derelict. The Hounds bought it cheap.
Style of Building: 3 storey residential, with cellars and attic.
This is all information the players should be given immediately. They will be expected to add to the bare bones. Name the shop. All that sort of thing. But they need something to build their hopes and dreams on.
If you really wanted to add to the bare bones, you could include a sketch plan of the town house. I'm bad at drawing, so I shan't be doing that. At best, I'd steal something from the internet. As far as internal walls and rearrangements go, I'd keep them where they are and let the players decide which room gets used for what.
The next bit is something the Hounds don't know about their new home. It's the Dark Side of the building.
Now, there's a temptation to make the Dark Side all Mythos and supernatural. This is a horror game, after all. I'd resist that temptation. The supernatural ought to be rare, unusual, out of the ordinary. That's what makes it interesting. If it becomes ordinary or, worse yet, mundane, that's a problem for the game as a whole.
The Shop (Dark Side)
Bad Reputation (Murder). In the early 1900s the boarding house which is now the shop was the site of a grisly murder, which gave the place a bad reputation. This is why the boarding house eventually shut its doors in 1908. Some of the older residents in the area still remember the killing, and the story has only grown in the telling. Details of the killing can be left up to the players. Treat this as a 2-point pool Bad Reputation, which can be invoked by the Keeper at any time to create an effect that impacts Credit Rating or similar spends.
Gang Activity (Cartridge Street). Originally called Cartridge Street because of the gun manufacturing industries in the area, it's now called that because of the Rough Lads that hang around causing trouble. They mostly gather at The Gun public house on the corner, but at any time their actions can impact the shop. Treat as a 3-point pool Rough Lads, which can be invoked by the Keeper at any time to create an effect that impacts the shop or its customers as they come and go.
Unpleasant Smells (cellars). There's something down there that stinks to high heaven. It isn't always evident. You can go for days, weeks, and not notice a thing. Then it creeps into your nose and will not go away. It's especially strong in the summer months, when sometimes the smell hangs round for days, even weeks. Treat as a 1-point pool Stink, which can be invoked by the Keeper at any time to create an effect that causes a Financial Reverse or prevents a Windfall.
Plague Pits (cellars, Mythos). Before the town house was built this was, during the time of the Great Plague, a spot where many of the dead were quickly buried. In the early 1700s it became notorious as a 'damned spot inhabited by the lost and Satan's servants' and in 1752 there was an exorcism that supposedly put an end to whatever it was that was troubling the place. When the town house was built, steps were taken to ensure that 'the holy place' was kept intact, marked with a magical symbol that Mythos experts know to be an Elder Sign. All this can be found with the appropriate Investigative spends, looking at old records or documents associated with the house. However, at some point since then the Sign was damaged, which is why, among other things, there is the Unpleasant Smell. There's just enough juice left in the damaged Sign to prevent the worst from happening, but if something should make the damage worse, well ...
Now, of those four things, three can be dealt with. The Hounds can come up with clever ways to reduce the 2-point Bad Reputation pool, or the 3-point Rough Lads pool. That provides conflict and conflict breeds plot.
The Unpleasant Smell is more difficult and the Hounds will probably try various means to get past it. However, the effect can be nullified by point spends, if the Hounds prefer to ignore the problem.
That last one, though? That's a scenario's worth of adventure, right there. Waiting to be discovered.
That's it for this week. Enjoy!
