Linearity in scenario design is meant to be one of the bigger no-nos. I can see why. Player participation is key, and if the players don't feel that they have a role to play then any interest they may have had in the adventure quickly dies. This is a problem that affects not just tabletop but also video game design; this week's Zero Punctuation takes Medal of Honor; Warfighter to task for, among other things, carefully scripting the game so that player input is almost nil.
Scenario playtest feedback for my work often contains the complaint, "feels too linear". I particularly liked one report for a short piece due to appear in print soon, that started with the feels-too-linear statement only to say, once the players had become involved, that it didn't shake out in a linear fashion at all. In fact, the players floundered around a bit before finally working their way to the McGuffin; according to the report some of them liked the sensation of not being in control, while others said they could have used more pointers.
I'm not going to downplay linearity. It's definitely a script problem, and it gets all the worse in an environment like a video game, where the player literally cannot escape the boundaries of the plot, whether because invisible walls are blocking off all escape routes or for some other in-game reason. However I don't think it's as much of a issue as people seem to think, particularly in tabletop, and this is why:
Players are kittens.
I mean that. Anyone who's ever actually dealt with a kitten knows that they can be psychotic one minute, biting the hand that feeds it, and docile the next. Kittens wander off into any kind of disaster, wide-eyed and innocent, because they don't see any boundaries even if boundaries are there. They'll cheerfully walk off a table edge, given half a chance; but there's just as much likelihood that they'll find someplace they like the look of and put their heads down for a nap. Kittens do as they please ... and so do players.
The Keeper, knowing this, has to structure the scenario environment to withstand sudden flights of player fancy. The basic premise has to be strong, and supported by useful scenes that support the basic premise. That's the only way to prevent accidents. You wouldn't leave a kitten unattended on a table; why leave players without a safety net?
Say for the sake of discussion the scenario revolves around a murder, a good old-fashioned locked-room body-in-the-library situation. Once the body is discovered, there are certain things it is reasonable for the players, as the detective heroes of the hour, to do. They will want to inspect the body, the room, and the lock. They will want to talk to anyone who might have known the victim, or anyone else who happened to be in the house at the time. They will want to know how the victim died, and if it was something relatively unusual, like a poisoning, they're going to want to find out how easy it is to get hold of the poison and where it might have come from. Each of these issues can be a scene in itself, and each scene can contain clues that lead to the next logical scene. So if the players talk to the victim's lover, and get nothing, but talk to the maid and discover that the victim and the lover quarreled, they're going to want to go back to the lover again. None of this is brain surgery; anyone who's ever seen or read a murder mystery, ever, knows - at least in broad terms - how a murder investigation works.
Now, the Keeper could easily come close to linearity in plotting this situation out. Discovering the body leads to finding out how the murder was done, and from there to who might have done it, and from there to who did, in fact, do the deed. It seems so straightforward, when written out like that. There are variations on the theme, of course; many murder mysteries focus almost exclusively on motive, with an eye to a dramatic confession in the final chapter, while other investigations worry less about that and more about the mechanics of the crime. "That's How," Lord Peter Wimsey might say, "and now we know How, we also know Who."
However linear a scenario of this type might read on paper, it probably isn't going to be linear in practice. That's because you can't rely on the players to be perfect detectives. They're kittens, remember; they'll poke their heads where they please, and hope for the best. Some of them may not try to work out how the victim died, or content themselves with superficial seemings. Some of them may even invent wholly implausible theories and wed themselves to those theories beyond any hope of amicable divorce. The least likely NPC, having wandered into view, suddenly becomes Number One Suspect without even the smallest shred of evidence to convict them. Some will spend all their time chasing up exotic poisons without once confirming the actual cause of death. Some will convince themselves that, against all appearances, the person whose head was bashed in with a shovel actually was eaten by a lion - and this despite there being no lions in the scenario whatsoever.
The only thing a Keeper can do is write a fairly solid plot, and cover all the most reasonable bases. Anything beyond that is up to luck. Linearity in tabletop is, all too often, an illusion, and the Keeper believes in illusions at the Keeper's peril.
There is one other point to make here, and that is that even if a plot is completely on-rails, it doesn't have to be a problem. In fact, it might be the most enjoyable part of the experience. As evidence, I direct you to Telltale Games' survival horror puzzler, The Walking Dead.
If you haven't already played this, I highly recommend it, particularly if you enjoy zombie apocalypse settings. The game is based on the comic - not the TV series - of the same name. You play as Lee Everett, a man on the way to the penitentiary who manages somehow to struggle out of a car wreck into a world gone mad. Along the way he picks up a fellow survivor, an eight-year-old named Clementine, and together they do their best to pick their way through a very hostile Georgia.
It's grabbed a lot of people's attention this year, particularly for its excellent writing, but if there's one criticism that stands out above all the rest, it's aggressive railroading. You, as the player, have very little choice in what happens next. Scene follows scene like soldiers on parade, and if there is a puzzle in the way before you can get to the next scene, it usually isn't that much of an obstacle. Before you know it you're back on the train again, chugging away towards the next plot point.
Yet I, as player, don't have a problem with that; I've been enthralled by The Walking Dead since I learned I could pick it up on iPad, and just finished episode 4 this weekend. I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for 5; at least two major plot points reaaaaaally need resolving, and I won't be happy until they are. I suspect most fans of the game feel the same way.
It wouldn't have nearly the same kind of impact if it wasn't masterfully written, and that's the key issue here. Even if you are marching from scene to scene without deviation, it's your interaction with the world and the characters in it that makes the experience so enjoyable. What happens next to Ken, to Carly, to Lilly or Doug, how Clementine reacts, how you react to her, whether your morals are strong - or flexible - enough to withstand what's coming next, is what makes this game a stand-out.
The straight line between two points isn't an issue, and while linearity can be an easy plot criticism I'm not sure it's entirely valid. To my mind, using "linear" as a scenario descriptor is actually a cover for something else, and that something else is "badly written." We know bad writing when we see it; flat characters, unbelievable plot points, disjointed or facile settings, are all issues that fiction has had to deal with over the years.
But those issues are the problem, not the linearity - or otherwise - of the plot. A straight-line plot with excellent writing can work brilliantly; a badly written sandbox will often fail and, where it does succeed, anything good it manages to pull off is a matter of luck, not design.
Sunday, 11 November 2012
Sunday, 21 October 2012
Necessity is Somebody's Mum
Now that Sisters of Sorrow is out, I can talk a little bit about how that scenario came to be.
The Great War has always fascinated me, both as a historical period and as a setting for RPG scenarios. It seems uniquely suited to a horror setting, as well as being a conflict that, from a Keeper's perspective, involves so many different potential ideas. You could literally do anything, anywhere; a Great War scenario set in Africa, or the Pacific, is as feasible as one set in the trenches on the Western Front. A Keeper could set the scenario set entirely aboard a zeppelin, or a cruise liner, could have spies infiltrating the New York docks, a conflict in the Italian mountainside, Japanese soldiers in a bayonet charge, or German internees awaiting their fate after the Siege of Tsingtao. Any nation, any setting the Keeper can think of, and the War provides it.
I hadn't intended becoming Pelgrane's go-to for Great War scenarios, but they're a lot of fun to do, and I hope to make more of them. That said, there are times when I run smack against a scenario problem that takes some thinking to solve, and Sisters of Sorrow was one of those times.
I had intended to write a completely different kind of scenario, something more on par with Red October. It would have been a haunted house at sea, with the players creeping around the once-familiar corridors of the U-Boat, never entirely sure what they would find around the next corner. I had the rough idea sketched out in my head before I started the research.
If this incident taught me anything, it's to do the research before coming up with any clever ideas. There was a glaring problem with my plan, and that problem was, there isn't enough room aboard a sub of the period to swing a cat. It's difficult to get hold of a comprehensive sketch, but Submarine Warfare of Today and Diary of a U-Boat Commander, both hosted by Project Gutenberg, give pretty reasonable accounts of life on board a submarine. I can't believe even for a moment that the Diary is genuine, bearing in mind how it's written and what happens in it - Polish spies, ye Gods! - but some of the scenes are probably accurate enough, as far as setting goes.Submarine Warfare was much more useful to me, and many of the illustrations in it could prove helpful to a Keeper running Sisters.
But I had a problem: there was no way the complicated haunted-house story I had in mind could play out on a tiny little thing barely fifty foot long. If every single crewman stood up at once - assuming they could - they'd fill the boat from end to end. The very idea that someone could get lost in one was silly; it'd be simpler to imagine someone not being able to find their way out of a public toilet.
In some ways, scenario writers are crippled by a reliance on historical accuracy; it prevents them taking advantage of an idea, and seeing how it could play out. Yet there's no way a Cthulhu audience would tolerate any significant deviation from historical fact, not when the facts are available to anyone who cares to look. It's odd, when you consider that Lovecraft's U-Boat story featured not just portholes, but also diving suits and the means of deploying them, that players insist on strict accuracy. But then, I suspect there aren't that many who really like The Temple. Incidentally, for those who enjoy coincidences, the real U-29 sank on its first voyage in 1915, thanks to prompt action by HMS Dreadnough.
Meanwhile the real UC-12 had seven patrols to its credit, when it was sunk by its own mines in 1915. All of its crew went down with the boat, most - if not all - probably killed in the explosion.
However the problem presented me with its own solution. A situation in which people are crammed together in a stifling, small space, helpless in the face of danger; that breeds paranoia and fear. It's not unlike Night of the Living Dead, funnily enough, but the interplay of characters was what made that move really interesting ... and then I realized I had my solution, ready-made.
Of course, I don't intend to discuss that here. Read the scenario, if you're interested in finding out what happens next.
The Great War has always fascinated me, both as a historical period and as a setting for RPG scenarios. It seems uniquely suited to a horror setting, as well as being a conflict that, from a Keeper's perspective, involves so many different potential ideas. You could literally do anything, anywhere; a Great War scenario set in Africa, or the Pacific, is as feasible as one set in the trenches on the Western Front. A Keeper could set the scenario set entirely aboard a zeppelin, or a cruise liner, could have spies infiltrating the New York docks, a conflict in the Italian mountainside, Japanese soldiers in a bayonet charge, or German internees awaiting their fate after the Siege of Tsingtao. Any nation, any setting the Keeper can think of, and the War provides it.
I hadn't intended becoming Pelgrane's go-to for Great War scenarios, but they're a lot of fun to do, and I hope to make more of them. That said, there are times when I run smack against a scenario problem that takes some thinking to solve, and Sisters of Sorrow was one of those times.
I had intended to write a completely different kind of scenario, something more on par with Red October. It would have been a haunted house at sea, with the players creeping around the once-familiar corridors of the U-Boat, never entirely sure what they would find around the next corner. I had the rough idea sketched out in my head before I started the research.
If this incident taught me anything, it's to do the research before coming up with any clever ideas. There was a glaring problem with my plan, and that problem was, there isn't enough room aboard a sub of the period to swing a cat. It's difficult to get hold of a comprehensive sketch, but Submarine Warfare of Today and Diary of a U-Boat Commander, both hosted by Project Gutenberg, give pretty reasonable accounts of life on board a submarine. I can't believe even for a moment that the Diary is genuine, bearing in mind how it's written and what happens in it - Polish spies, ye Gods! - but some of the scenes are probably accurate enough, as far as setting goes.Submarine Warfare was much more useful to me, and many of the illustrations in it could prove helpful to a Keeper running Sisters.
But I had a problem: there was no way the complicated haunted-house story I had in mind could play out on a tiny little thing barely fifty foot long. If every single crewman stood up at once - assuming they could - they'd fill the boat from end to end. The very idea that someone could get lost in one was silly; it'd be simpler to imagine someone not being able to find their way out of a public toilet.
In some ways, scenario writers are crippled by a reliance on historical accuracy; it prevents them taking advantage of an idea, and seeing how it could play out. Yet there's no way a Cthulhu audience would tolerate any significant deviation from historical fact, not when the facts are available to anyone who cares to look. It's odd, when you consider that Lovecraft's U-Boat story featured not just portholes, but also diving suits and the means of deploying them, that players insist on strict accuracy. But then, I suspect there aren't that many who really like The Temple. Incidentally, for those who enjoy coincidences, the real U-29 sank on its first voyage in 1915, thanks to prompt action by HMS Dreadnough.
Meanwhile the real UC-12 had seven patrols to its credit, when it was sunk by its own mines in 1915. All of its crew went down with the boat, most - if not all - probably killed in the explosion.
However the problem presented me with its own solution. A situation in which people are crammed together in a stifling, small space, helpless in the face of danger; that breeds paranoia and fear. It's not unlike Night of the Living Dead, funnily enough, but the interplay of characters was what made that move really interesting ... and then I realized I had my solution, ready-made.
Of course, I don't intend to discuss that here. Read the scenario, if you're interested in finding out what happens next.
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
Odd Beliefs
If you haven't already seen The Cabin in the Woods, you ought to. I don't say it's a frightening movie, but it is a fun one, and if you have any interest in horror it ought to be on your list. I won't talk about its plot since that would constitute spoilers, but I will say that it involves sacrifice and odd beliefs, which - since the opening credits and trailers make the sacrifice theme pretty obvious - is a safe thing to say, if you haven't seen it yet.
I'm going to talk about odd beliefs in RPGs, using Trail of Cthulhu as an example system.
Most cults in Lovecraftian horror tales seem to worship the Old Ones just because the Gods are large and powerful. These cults often don't seem to have a long-term goal in mind, and you could be forgiven for thinking they exist only to supply flavor text, or to provide the Louisiana police a convenient target to hit.Yet real-world organizations with similar characteristics often have an understandable goal in mind. Jim Jones wanted to create a better world. Many people want to contact the extraterrestrial creatures they think inspire their religion. Some seek the Messiah, or the Truth; others hope for social or political change. Yet each has a goal, a stated purpose which can be explained in a rational manner. After all, cults wouldn't have much luck recruiting new members if they couldn't explain their objectives to outsiders.
Let's take a step back and consider what it means to live in a Trail of Cthulhu universe.
Well, for starters everything we are, or do, is influenced in some way by the Old Ones. Take Rough Magicks, for instance, and consider the potential sources of magic explained in the Which Magic? section. If magic comes from Dreaming, then all the humans on Earth - possibly other creatures too - contribute in some way to magic. Or perhaps humanity itself is a creation of the Old Ones, an accidental result of a technological malfunction. Or maybe blood really is the life - and so on, and on - but the point is that each of these solutions presupposes a radical reinterpretation of the physical world, on such a fundamental level that it would affect everyone's lives in ways we can't even begin to comprehend.
It would also fundamentally affect our belief systems. Say for the sake of discussion that one or more organizations - they might be religions, they might be groups more akin to the Illuminati - became aware that Cthulhu really did exist, and was sleeping at the bottom of the Pacific until the stars were right. That would be Thinking With Demons in a very literal sense; knowing what was out there, and possibly even working out what it might take to keep it there - or get it out - would become a major goal of that group. Perhaps there really would be a secret organization within, say, the Catholic Church dedicated to hunting down and destroying Mordiggan death cults, for fear that if they did not then ghouls would rise up and destroy humanity.
But that's at the macro level. Let's talk micro for a minute.
We all know about folklore, and its modern counterpart the urban legend. Both are forms of odd belief that most people know about and tend not to take too seriously ... at least, while the sun is shining. An hour after midnight, lost and alone, and suddenly a lot of things seem believable. But the point is that everyone knows those stories, and most of us can rattle off the more famous ones by heart.
It's reasonable to assume that, in a Trail of Cthulhu world, there are other urban legends that everyone knows, but which are specific to that reality. Urban legends about a man who walks out of your dreams one day and offers you a blessing, or about the woman whose blood talked to her, or about cats. This is where abilities like Anthropology, Oral History and so on can come in very useful, helping characters to identify these odd beliefs for what they are. Never cut yourself, or bleed, while walking through a graveyard, or the Resurrection Men will sniff you out. If you break a mirror, sweep up the remains without looking at them, because it's bad luck to look into a broken mirror ... you might see things you don't want to see. Never open a door without knocking at least twice; knock only once, or not at all, and you might find something nasty waiting for you on the other side.
Except that the difference between a legend and reality is that legends can't hurt you. Reality, on the other hand, can; and who knows but that Yog-Sothoth, the key and guardian of the gate, may wait behind each and every door, waiting for someone who forgets to knock ... or perhaps someone who knocks only once.
I'm going to talk about odd beliefs in RPGs, using Trail of Cthulhu as an example system.
Most cults in Lovecraftian horror tales seem to worship the Old Ones just because the Gods are large and powerful. These cults often don't seem to have a long-term goal in mind, and you could be forgiven for thinking they exist only to supply flavor text, or to provide the Louisiana police a convenient target to hit.Yet real-world organizations with similar characteristics often have an understandable goal in mind. Jim Jones wanted to create a better world. Many people want to contact the extraterrestrial creatures they think inspire their religion. Some seek the Messiah, or the Truth; others hope for social or political change. Yet each has a goal, a stated purpose which can be explained in a rational manner. After all, cults wouldn't have much luck recruiting new members if they couldn't explain their objectives to outsiders.
Let's take a step back and consider what it means to live in a Trail of Cthulhu universe.
Well, for starters everything we are, or do, is influenced in some way by the Old Ones. Take Rough Magicks, for instance, and consider the potential sources of magic explained in the Which Magic? section. If magic comes from Dreaming, then all the humans on Earth - possibly other creatures too - contribute in some way to magic. Or perhaps humanity itself is a creation of the Old Ones, an accidental result of a technological malfunction. Or maybe blood really is the life - and so on, and on - but the point is that each of these solutions presupposes a radical reinterpretation of the physical world, on such a fundamental level that it would affect everyone's lives in ways we can't even begin to comprehend.
It would also fundamentally affect our belief systems. Say for the sake of discussion that one or more organizations - they might be religions, they might be groups more akin to the Illuminati - became aware that Cthulhu really did exist, and was sleeping at the bottom of the Pacific until the stars were right. That would be Thinking With Demons in a very literal sense; knowing what was out there, and possibly even working out what it might take to keep it there - or get it out - would become a major goal of that group. Perhaps there really would be a secret organization within, say, the Catholic Church dedicated to hunting down and destroying Mordiggan death cults, for fear that if they did not then ghouls would rise up and destroy humanity.
But that's at the macro level. Let's talk micro for a minute.
We all know about folklore, and its modern counterpart the urban legend. Both are forms of odd belief that most people know about and tend not to take too seriously ... at least, while the sun is shining. An hour after midnight, lost and alone, and suddenly a lot of things seem believable. But the point is that everyone knows those stories, and most of us can rattle off the more famous ones by heart.
It's reasonable to assume that, in a Trail of Cthulhu world, there are other urban legends that everyone knows, but which are specific to that reality. Urban legends about a man who walks out of your dreams one day and offers you a blessing, or about the woman whose blood talked to her, or about cats. This is where abilities like Anthropology, Oral History and so on can come in very useful, helping characters to identify these odd beliefs for what they are. Never cut yourself, or bleed, while walking through a graveyard, or the Resurrection Men will sniff you out. If you break a mirror, sweep up the remains without looking at them, because it's bad luck to look into a broken mirror ... you might see things you don't want to see. Never open a door without knocking at least twice; knock only once, or not at all, and you might find something nasty waiting for you on the other side.
Except that the difference between a legend and reality is that legends can't hurt you. Reality, on the other hand, can; and who knows but that Yog-Sothoth, the key and guardian of the gate, may wait behind each and every door, waiting for someone who forgets to knock ... or perhaps someone who knocks only once.
Sunday, 7 October 2012
September
... was a very busy month.
On the plus side, there should be something of mine for Trail out very soon. I shouldn't say more than that right now, but I think I'm safe in saying that, if all goes well, it should be out in October.
On the other hand, it meant I didn't have a lot of time to post here. Thankfully September is over and done with. October is a brand new month, with new things to say!
Incidentally if you happen to be going to Hammercon this year and play the Cthulhu Cup, you'll be pleased to know I'm writing the scenario this year. Again, I can say nothing. Nothing, I tell you! Except that it does reference one of my obsessions ... full fathom five, and all that ... but I shall say nothing!
I've enjoyed working for the Hammercon folks. It's even a paying gig; not a fortune, but it all adds up. Hopefully you'll enjoy the scenario!
On the plus side, there should be something of mine for Trail out very soon. I shouldn't say more than that right now, but I think I'm safe in saying that, if all goes well, it should be out in October.
On the other hand, it meant I didn't have a lot of time to post here. Thankfully September is over and done with. October is a brand new month, with new things to say!
Incidentally if you happen to be going to Hammercon this year and play the Cthulhu Cup, you'll be pleased to know I'm writing the scenario this year. Again, I can say nothing. Nothing, I tell you! Except that it does reference one of my obsessions ... full fathom five, and all that ... but I shall say nothing!
I've enjoyed working for the Hammercon folks. It's even a paying gig; not a fortune, but it all adds up. Hopefully you'll enjoy the scenario!
Sunday, 9 September 2012
Cthulhu Dark Ages: A New Jerusalem
I'm amazed I have power.
Hurricane Leslie was supposed to be a Category 2 storm at this point, and to have hit the island full-on. That was the prediction as of Thursday. As it happened, Leslie dwindled to a mere Tropical Storm and passed to the east of us; it may pick up the pace and whallop Nova Scotia, but thankfully that is someone else's worry. Even a Tropical Storm ought to have knocked out power & internet at some point, but it would seem that - so far at least - that risk is minimal.
So I figured I'd hop on for a very quick post about HammerCon. These guys have used scenarios of mine for the last two years in their Cthulhu Cup competition. Last year's scenario was a Call of Cthulhu Dark Ages scenario titled A New Jerusalem, and as I have a .pdf version I thought I'd share it with you.
A New Jerusalem is set in medieval Normandy. The action takes place in the town of Chavigny-sur-Scie, which at the time of the scenario is only eighty years old. The Town's leaders are asking for help: a series of horrific murders has them baffled, and the citizens are on the edge of panic. If this disrupts the Cloth Fair to be held in a few weeks time, it would be catastrophic for the town's future prospects. Can the protagonists solve the mystery before the killer strikes again?
The pregenerated characters are:
Belle, a hardworking matron and concerned citizen.
Guy de Troyes, a knight on the make.
Jehan of Burgundy, scholar and architect.
Laban ha Kohein, goldsmith and concerned citizen.
Martin Froissart, unlucky soldier.
Sister Herleve, nun and mystic.
I hope last year's players enjoyed this as much as I did writing it! I have submitted an idea for this year's Hammercon; it's up to them whether or not they use it. If they do it will be the first time I've ever used the Cthulhu Dark rules ... but that's all I'm prepared to say about it for now!
In the meantime if anyone would care to run A New Jerusalem feel free, but do let me know how you get on!
Hurricane Leslie was supposed to be a Category 2 storm at this point, and to have hit the island full-on. That was the prediction as of Thursday. As it happened, Leslie dwindled to a mere Tropical Storm and passed to the east of us; it may pick up the pace and whallop Nova Scotia, but thankfully that is someone else's worry. Even a Tropical Storm ought to have knocked out power & internet at some point, but it would seem that - so far at least - that risk is minimal.
So I figured I'd hop on for a very quick post about HammerCon. These guys have used scenarios of mine for the last two years in their Cthulhu Cup competition. Last year's scenario was a Call of Cthulhu Dark Ages scenario titled A New Jerusalem, and as I have a .pdf version I thought I'd share it with you.
A New Jerusalem is set in medieval Normandy. The action takes place in the town of Chavigny-sur-Scie, which at the time of the scenario is only eighty years old. The Town's leaders are asking for help: a series of horrific murders has them baffled, and the citizens are on the edge of panic. If this disrupts the Cloth Fair to be held in a few weeks time, it would be catastrophic for the town's future prospects. Can the protagonists solve the mystery before the killer strikes again?
The pregenerated characters are:
Belle, a hardworking matron and concerned citizen.
Guy de Troyes, a knight on the make.
Jehan of Burgundy, scholar and architect.
Laban ha Kohein, goldsmith and concerned citizen.
Martin Froissart, unlucky soldier.
Sister Herleve, nun and mystic.
I hope last year's players enjoyed this as much as I did writing it! I have submitted an idea for this year's Hammercon; it's up to them whether or not they use it. If they do it will be the first time I've ever used the Cthulhu Dark rules ... but that's all I'm prepared to say about it for now!
In the meantime if anyone would care to run A New Jerusalem feel free, but do let me know how you get on!
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Bookhounds Technicolor
Having discussed Sordid and Arabesque London for Bookhounds, the time has come to talk Technicolor. To do that I'm going to reference an example that may at first seem out of place: The Satanic Rites of Dracula, the last Hammer Horror film to feature Christopher Lee as the Count. I picked this up as part of a bundle of 10 films for 10 dollars; included in it were such gems as Snowbeast (Jaws knock-off set at a Colorado ski resort) and House on Haunted Hill (Vincent Price chews the scenery in this locked-room ghost mansion thriller). Satanic Rites deserves to be in that company. It's a pretty standard B-movie shocker with plenty of blood and sexy bits for your viewing pleasure. I don't recommend buying it - not unless you can get it for $1, as I did - but it's worth a rental. Go see!
Now that you've seen it, let's talk Bookhounds.
To begin with, I should point out straight away that apart from the 1970s aesthetic there's nothing here that couldn't have happened in the 1930s. The technology, the style, the characters are all pretty much interchangeable, bar a few hairstyle concerns. Most of it is set in ye ramblinge olde Englishe country home, complete with pleasant woodlands for your walking pleasure. There's very little of the ultra-modern here, which is one of the reasons the Hammer Horror aesthetic works so well for Bookhounds.
In fact, in the main rulebook they reference Hammer Horror by name. There is another London, garish and glorious. This is the Technicolor world of Hammer Films, in vibrant color – and the color is always bright red or lurid green. Cults wear rich robes; monsters radiate unearthly glows; scarlet blood smears jaws and talons and lips and other parts ... All very cinematic, I'm sure; but with that in mind, what does Satanic Rites tell us about a Technicolor London?
To begin with, it tells us that London is London. Every time Satanic Rites wants to establish the scene, it show a quick montage of famous landmarks. A Sordid London might set its scenes in nameless back alleys and Soho nightclubs; an Arabesque can take any aspect of the city and turn it into something glorious. Technicolor London is all about the bling; Nelson's Column, the British Museum, the Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square, the Palace, the Tower. Even the relatively ordinary laboratory of Professor Keeley is in a rather splendid Georgian terrace. If there's ever a campaign in which the characters are trying to find out what really lives in the forgotten tube station under the British Museum, or whether the green men in the Jewel Tower hide some sinister secret, Technicolor is that campaign.
In that London, there are mooks. Hordes and hordes of the little devils; three of them go down in a hail of gunfire or are strangled in the first ten minutes of the film. For that matter there are also minions, slightly higher class mooks who perhaps get to lounge naked on Satanic altars or chant along with the ritual leader, but who don't have any significant plot function and will probably get whalloped by the heroes before too long.
As might be expected, these mooks are occasionally plot-stupid. By that I mean they'll do daft things, purely for the sake of keeping the plot moving. There's one moment about a quarter of the way through when Van Helsing's granddaughter breaks into the cellars of Pelham House and discovers, to her horror, that there's half a dozen vampires hidden there. Had this been any other picture, she'd have been sucked dry within half a minute; as this is Hammer Horror her clothes get torn but, as luck would have it, all those vampires are chained down - for no good reason I can think of - so she manages to avoid being bitten.
Not that the heroes have plot immunity. Death stalks everyone, and while it does play favorites to a point, there's still every chance that the heroes will get theirs before the final reel. See that nice secretary lady? All she did was turn up in one scene to make the tea but clearly that meant the cult had to mark her for death and, since Dracula's giving her a nibble, it's a good bet she'll be back before too long. In a Technicolor campaign there should be death, and lots of it. Bodies should be turning up in closets, and the butler the characters met at the door of their friend's mansion could easily turn up as a zombie in the following scene.
There should be technology, and you shouldn't be afraid to use it against the players. Twice in Satanic Rites an electronic eye becomes plot significant; there are security cameras everywhere; the cultists use silenced weapons; some of the action takes place at an ultra-modern skyscraper. Don't think for a minute that this is 1970s stuff, so you can't use it. The electronic eye was a viable security option in the early 1930s, the Nazis had security cameras in 1942 - a little out of time, but not by much - the first silencers were patented in 1902, and electronic alarms were common enough to feature as a significant plot device in a 1915 silent movie. So if you happen to be designing a secret Nazi Satanic lair in the heart of London, why shouldn't they be using all of those technologies? Don't feel you have to limit this to existing tech either; if there's one thing the 1930s are famous for, it's death rays, those old pulp standbys that never worked but which fired so many imaginations. There ought to be a mad scientist out there somewhere working on a gizmo or a plague to wipe out mankind; it's only proper.
Or consider architecture; yes, this is the London of bling, but this is also the London of the modernist movement. Why shouldn't that new office building, built by the mysterious reclusive industrialist, hide some terrible secret? Its clean lines and Deco touches could be the facade behind which an ageless evil lurks!
Finally, it should be personal. Dracula, if he had any sense, would have made absolutely sure Van Helsing never got anywhere near his office block; the cult assassin, rather than playing with his victims, would have put bullets right through their foreheads. Yet Dracula must have his revenge, so he risks his entire plot to toy with Van Helsing. The cult assassin must show how clever he is, so rather than blow their brains out he captures them and puts them in a deathtrap. Funny how the heroes always seem to escape from those. The point is, death's too good for those pesky heroes. They have to be humiliated, crushed, the last vestiges of those prized Pillars of Sanity swept away, for the villain to feel as though he's really triumphed. The villains take this sort of thing very personally, and they tailor the demise to fit the hero.
That's Technicolor; fascinating, blatant, sinful and technology-driven. I hope you find this useful! Next time: something completely different ...
Now that you've seen it, let's talk Bookhounds.
To begin with, I should point out straight away that apart from the 1970s aesthetic there's nothing here that couldn't have happened in the 1930s. The technology, the style, the characters are all pretty much interchangeable, bar a few hairstyle concerns. Most of it is set in ye ramblinge olde Englishe country home, complete with pleasant woodlands for your walking pleasure. There's very little of the ultra-modern here, which is one of the reasons the Hammer Horror aesthetic works so well for Bookhounds.
In fact, in the main rulebook they reference Hammer Horror by name. There is another London, garish and glorious. This is the Technicolor world of Hammer Films, in vibrant color – and the color is always bright red or lurid green. Cults wear rich robes; monsters radiate unearthly glows; scarlet blood smears jaws and talons and lips and other parts ... All very cinematic, I'm sure; but with that in mind, what does Satanic Rites tell us about a Technicolor London?
To begin with, it tells us that London is London. Every time Satanic Rites wants to establish the scene, it show a quick montage of famous landmarks. A Sordid London might set its scenes in nameless back alleys and Soho nightclubs; an Arabesque can take any aspect of the city and turn it into something glorious. Technicolor London is all about the bling; Nelson's Column, the British Museum, the Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square, the Palace, the Tower. Even the relatively ordinary laboratory of Professor Keeley is in a rather splendid Georgian terrace. If there's ever a campaign in which the characters are trying to find out what really lives in the forgotten tube station under the British Museum, or whether the green men in the Jewel Tower hide some sinister secret, Technicolor is that campaign.
In that London, there are mooks. Hordes and hordes of the little devils; three of them go down in a hail of gunfire or are strangled in the first ten minutes of the film. For that matter there are also minions, slightly higher class mooks who perhaps get to lounge naked on Satanic altars or chant along with the ritual leader, but who don't have any significant plot function and will probably get whalloped by the heroes before too long.
As might be expected, these mooks are occasionally plot-stupid. By that I mean they'll do daft things, purely for the sake of keeping the plot moving. There's one moment about a quarter of the way through when Van Helsing's granddaughter breaks into the cellars of Pelham House and discovers, to her horror, that there's half a dozen vampires hidden there. Had this been any other picture, she'd have been sucked dry within half a minute; as this is Hammer Horror her clothes get torn but, as luck would have it, all those vampires are chained down - for no good reason I can think of - so she manages to avoid being bitten.
Not that the heroes have plot immunity. Death stalks everyone, and while it does play favorites to a point, there's still every chance that the heroes will get theirs before the final reel. See that nice secretary lady? All she did was turn up in one scene to make the tea but clearly that meant the cult had to mark her for death and, since Dracula's giving her a nibble, it's a good bet she'll be back before too long. In a Technicolor campaign there should be death, and lots of it. Bodies should be turning up in closets, and the butler the characters met at the door of their friend's mansion could easily turn up as a zombie in the following scene.
There should be technology, and you shouldn't be afraid to use it against the players. Twice in Satanic Rites an electronic eye becomes plot significant; there are security cameras everywhere; the cultists use silenced weapons; some of the action takes place at an ultra-modern skyscraper. Don't think for a minute that this is 1970s stuff, so you can't use it. The electronic eye was a viable security option in the early 1930s, the Nazis had security cameras in 1942 - a little out of time, but not by much - the first silencers were patented in 1902, and electronic alarms were common enough to feature as a significant plot device in a 1915 silent movie. So if you happen to be designing a secret Nazi Satanic lair in the heart of London, why shouldn't they be using all of those technologies? Don't feel you have to limit this to existing tech either; if there's one thing the 1930s are famous for, it's death rays, those old pulp standbys that never worked but which fired so many imaginations. There ought to be a mad scientist out there somewhere working on a gizmo or a plague to wipe out mankind; it's only proper.
Or consider architecture; yes, this is the London of bling, but this is also the London of the modernist movement. Why shouldn't that new office building, built by the mysterious reclusive industrialist, hide some terrible secret? Its clean lines and Deco touches could be the facade behind which an ageless evil lurks!
Finally, it should be personal. Dracula, if he had any sense, would have made absolutely sure Van Helsing never got anywhere near his office block; the cult assassin, rather than playing with his victims, would have put bullets right through their foreheads. Yet Dracula must have his revenge, so he risks his entire plot to toy with Van Helsing. The cult assassin must show how clever he is, so rather than blow their brains out he captures them and puts them in a deathtrap. Funny how the heroes always seem to escape from those. The point is, death's too good for those pesky heroes. They have to be humiliated, crushed, the last vestiges of those prized Pillars of Sanity swept away, for the villain to feel as though he's really triumphed. The villains take this sort of thing very personally, and they tailor the demise to fit the hero.
That's Technicolor; fascinating, blatant, sinful and technology-driven. I hope you find this useful! Next time: something completely different ...
Sunday, 12 August 2012
Bookhounds Arabesque
Bookhounds of London for Trail of Cthulhu has three potential settings: Sordid, Technicolor and Arabesque. Last time I discussed the role of murder in a Sordid game; this time I want to discuss the best example of Arabesque London.
In the rulebook, Arabesque is described as follows: In an Arabesque London, anything might happen around any corner. Any or all of Elliott O’Donnell’s mad imaginary cults might exist (p. 61) and be tied in to any or no Mythos machinations. Investigators have touched the strange, the unusual, the uncanny: they do not quite exist in the same quotidian city where the faceless masses on the buses and the Underground dwell.
There is a temptation to leap straight to the Mythos heart and start designing cults and entities to live in that city. After all, cults and entities are the bread-and-butter of any horror game; but what does it mean, to be Arabesque in London? What kind of style is that really, and what kind of city will a Baghdad-on-the-Thames be?
To my mind, the best example of what Arabesque can mean to a campaign is found in the writing of authors like Lord Dunsany, and I'm going to use his short fiction The Beggars as an example. Like many of his stories it's only a few hundred words long, and I recommend you read it before going further.
Now, think of what that means for London. This isn't just a city in which cults and beasties dwell. This is the sort of place where beggars in marvelous garb wander, men who wear purple cloaks with wide green borders, and the border of green was a narrow strip with some, and some wore cloaks of old and faded red, and some wore violet cloaks, and none wore black. And they begged gracefully, as gods might beg for souls. This is the sort of place where anything - quite literally anything, including the street lights and the gutters - can have a fantastical double life, say as a lighthouse that guides the unwary to safe harbor, or as a means by which the remnants of great waters can find their way back to the Sea. Moreover this is the kind of vision that can - and does - vanish in an instant, as if it had never been.
In short, an Arabesque London is the kind of place where anything can happen, and usually does; where the outer shell, so mundane and unexceptional, can hide strange secrets. For did not the shopman in his black frock coat hide strange and dumb ambitions; that his dumbness was founded by solemn rite on the roots of ancient tradition; that it might be overcome one day by a cheer in the street or by some one singing a song, and that when this shopman spoke there might come clefts in the world and people peering over at the abyss? Was not even the smoke that gushed forth from the chimneys the last of the old coal-forests that have lain so long in the dark, and so long still, are dancing now and going back to the sun? This is the sort of place where, in your pocket change, you might find a Spanish doubloon, a Roman denarius or something of even older and stranger minting. Here the solemn and silent stranger in his bowler hat and coat may be heir to secrets that go back to the beginning of things.
Moreover it is the sort of place that is linked with travel, and change, where everything must at last go back to the delectable Sea, and meet the heaving, huge, and travelled ships. Not for nothing is Arabseque London called Baghdad-by- the-Thames. The River ought to be at the heart of every Arabesque campaign; it has served London since the days of flint knives and the first fires, and will serve London long after everyone in your campaign has gone to dust. It brings the flotsam of the world to the city, and washes away its sins. It might be administered by the Crown - or some other agency, that sends odd gilded ships across its face - and it might hide old Gods long forgotten. This is the same Thames that near-drowned the City in 1928, and killed fourteen; the same Thames whose tributaries run hidden under the streets of London; the same Thames that feeds a city of millions with the tonnes of cargo unloaded every day at the dockside. There is no London without the River, but in an Arabesque story - where travel and travelers' tales becomes so important - the Thames is a vital ingredient.
Arabesque, to my mind, is possibly the least likely of all the settings to accommodate Pulp play. It's not that it can't be done; but there is an air of inevitable decline in stories like these, where the City unquestionably survives but its people perhaps do not. Dunsany was also very fond of stories like The Field, where something outwardly beautiful hides a dark secret, or The Ghosts, where outwardly noble and beautiful people carry their monstrous sins with them always. Here sits an old nobleman with his grandson on his knee, and one of the great black sins of the grandfather is licking the child's face and has made the child its own ... No, these are not stories that end well, and the point of Pulp is that occasionally the characters triumph. The point behind Arabesque is that, no matter what else may happen, the City always triumphs. People come and go, but Baghdad-on-the-Thames is eternal, and can never be completely understood even by those who have lived there for centuries.
“Who are you?” people said. “And where do you come from?”
“Who may tell what we are,” they answered, “or whence we come?”
In the rulebook, Arabesque is described as follows: In an Arabesque London, anything might happen around any corner. Any or all of Elliott O’Donnell’s mad imaginary cults might exist (p. 61) and be tied in to any or no Mythos machinations. Investigators have touched the strange, the unusual, the uncanny: they do not quite exist in the same quotidian city where the faceless masses on the buses and the Underground dwell.
There is a temptation to leap straight to the Mythos heart and start designing cults and entities to live in that city. After all, cults and entities are the bread-and-butter of any horror game; but what does it mean, to be Arabesque in London? What kind of style is that really, and what kind of city will a Baghdad-on-the-Thames be?
To my mind, the best example of what Arabesque can mean to a campaign is found in the writing of authors like Lord Dunsany, and I'm going to use his short fiction The Beggars as an example. Like many of his stories it's only a few hundred words long, and I recommend you read it before going further.
Now, think of what that means for London. This isn't just a city in which cults and beasties dwell. This is the sort of place where beggars in marvelous garb wander, men who wear purple cloaks with wide green borders, and the border of green was a narrow strip with some, and some wore cloaks of old and faded red, and some wore violet cloaks, and none wore black. And they begged gracefully, as gods might beg for souls. This is the sort of place where anything - quite literally anything, including the street lights and the gutters - can have a fantastical double life, say as a lighthouse that guides the unwary to safe harbor, or as a means by which the remnants of great waters can find their way back to the Sea. Moreover this is the kind of vision that can - and does - vanish in an instant, as if it had never been.
In short, an Arabesque London is the kind of place where anything can happen, and usually does; where the outer shell, so mundane and unexceptional, can hide strange secrets. For did not the shopman in his black frock coat hide strange and dumb ambitions; that his dumbness was founded by solemn rite on the roots of ancient tradition; that it might be overcome one day by a cheer in the street or by some one singing a song, and that when this shopman spoke there might come clefts in the world and people peering over at the abyss? Was not even the smoke that gushed forth from the chimneys the last of the old coal-forests that have lain so long in the dark, and so long still, are dancing now and going back to the sun? This is the sort of place where, in your pocket change, you might find a Spanish doubloon, a Roman denarius or something of even older and stranger minting. Here the solemn and silent stranger in his bowler hat and coat may be heir to secrets that go back to the beginning of things.
Moreover it is the sort of place that is linked with travel, and change, where everything must at last go back to the delectable Sea, and meet the heaving, huge, and travelled ships. Not for nothing is Arabseque London called Baghdad-by- the-Thames. The River ought to be at the heart of every Arabesque campaign; it has served London since the days of flint knives and the first fires, and will serve London long after everyone in your campaign has gone to dust. It brings the flotsam of the world to the city, and washes away its sins. It might be administered by the Crown - or some other agency, that sends odd gilded ships across its face - and it might hide old Gods long forgotten. This is the same Thames that near-drowned the City in 1928, and killed fourteen; the same Thames whose tributaries run hidden under the streets of London; the same Thames that feeds a city of millions with the tonnes of cargo unloaded every day at the dockside. There is no London without the River, but in an Arabesque story - where travel and travelers' tales becomes so important - the Thames is a vital ingredient.
Arabesque, to my mind, is possibly the least likely of all the settings to accommodate Pulp play. It's not that it can't be done; but there is an air of inevitable decline in stories like these, where the City unquestionably survives but its people perhaps do not. Dunsany was also very fond of stories like The Field, where something outwardly beautiful hides a dark secret, or The Ghosts, where outwardly noble and beautiful people carry their monstrous sins with them always. Here sits an old nobleman with his grandson on his knee, and one of the great black sins of the grandfather is licking the child's face and has made the child its own ... No, these are not stories that end well, and the point of Pulp is that occasionally the characters triumph. The point behind Arabesque is that, no matter what else may happen, the City always triumphs. People come and go, but Baghdad-on-the-Thames is eternal, and can never be completely understood even by those who have lived there for centuries.
“Who are you?” people said. “And where do you come from?”
“Who may tell what we are,” they answered, “or whence we come?”
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