Final Thoughts - Serpentine

OK, so far I've talked about the basic shape of the chronicle and followed that up with a discussion of the kinds of scenarios that make up any chronicle, whether in this or a different system. I said there were three types: Foundational, Plot Specific and Climactic.

What exactly is a Foundational scenario?

A Foundational scenario does two things. 

• They elaborate on the established Building and put some flesh on its bones. 
• They also provide the initial clues which the characters will follow up on for later plot.

Let's go back to the first post and use the examples there for Foundational purposes.

The Strazzaruola are the other family business, the rivals, the no-goods. If a Strazzaruola did it, it must be wrong. Worse than wrong. You never met a Strazzaruola you didn't hate.

Four things:

• The Strazzaruola run loan sharking in the Night Market and there are few stalls that don't owe them money or favors - often both.
• Isabetta Strazzaruola is a sorceror, or at least everyone says she is. Dripping with corruption, no doubt.
• Baldo Strazzaruola is a notorious duelist, when he's not drunk off his ass. Dangerous, certainly - but unpredictable when drunk.
• Monstrosity: Several Strazzaruola are Drowned.

OK, so already there's some meat on the bones. We know the Strazzaruola are loan sharks; that must mean they have plenty of debtors, and some heavies to help them collect the debts. We know a little about Isabetta and Baldo, enough to put a little plot into them. The next step is to devise some Strazzaruola plot hooks that provide initial clues which can be followed up for later plot.

It'd also be helpful if that same scenario helped make the setting feel more alive, solid, real. If it helped create a situation in which the characters get to explore the world a little and see what's out there. 

Probably you've been to New York, or at least a major city. You know that feeling, when you stand on the street and realize that there's a whole world around you, teeming with life and stories of which you can only be the smallest part? It's easy to think, if you're sat alone at your desk, that the world is your desk and only your desk; that there's nothing more important than what you're doing, thinking, feeling right now. Being in a big city and just looking up shows you that you are, at best, the smallest part of a much larger story. That you and yours don't amount to a hill of beans, but that sometimes you can see a glimpse of the larger reality.

Casablanca

That's what you hope for in a foundational scenario: that the characters see the larger world and understand a small part of it, a fraction - but that's enough. For now.

If I was to take any of the Four Things to make a Foundation I'd pick one of the first three: the loan sharking, Isabetta, Baldo. The Fourth Thing, the Monstrous thing, is where the clues in that Foundational scenario lead.

In any scenario, even the simplest, there's the main hook, the main objective, possibly a Twist, and a conclusion. Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series, must-reads for anyone who wants to get into swords and sorcery, are very like this. Take Bazaar of the Bizarre as an example. There the heroes are hired by their sorcerous mentors to put an end to a nefarious threat. The main objective is that same threat. The Twist is that one of the heroes has been bamboozled by the threat. The story is about how that situation is resolved. It is as simple as it is possible to be, plotwise, and it's incredibly engaging, fun, and thrilling.

Foundation: Baldo's Triangle

Paulina the sword-swallower from Zavatera's Marvels is pissed off with Baldo. He's spending a lot of time with a mystery woman but he swears blind that isn't so. Paulina wants the heroes to check on Baldo's story.

Now, the heroes may want nothing to do with a Strazzaruola, but they want to stay in Paulina's good graces and they figure the best way to do that is to at least play along with Paulina. 

The truth is that Baldo's sister Isabetta's been plotting behind the scenes. She doesn't like how Baldo spends all his spare time with Paulina. Isabetta prefers it when Baldo is out making money for the family, collecting on debts and roughing up fools. Isabetta also doesn't like Paulina much. However, Isabetta hasn't been able to break Baldo's affection so she came up with a scheme that she thought was foolproof. Isabetta would make Baldo think, through sorcerous means, that she was Paulina. That way she could get Baldo to do what she wanted when she wanted. 

Trouble is, she hadn't accounted for Baldo's passionate nature. When Baldo has a little drink in him, he wants a good time. Isabetta, as Paulina, has found it harder and harder to keep Baldo from her bed.

Isabetta's doing all this by means of a peculiar little puppet that she keeps in her rooms. So long as she keeps that puppet, she can make Baldo think she's Paulina. If the heroes get hold of that puppet ...

The next step is to add the clues that lead to the Monstrous, which in this instance is the Drowned.

From the main book: the Drowned are humans who are puppetted and possessed by an underwater fungal hivemind somewhere in the city. They can instantly communicate with each other and use this hivemind communication to focus on and efficiently eliminate one enemy at a time. The Drowned seek to put themselves in positions of influence and power, all the better to promote the fungal intelligence’s inscrutable plans.

It wouldn't be helpful to have either Baldo or Isabetta as the Drowned, but there are plenty of other Strazzaruola. Let's say that Isabetta's maid and assistant, Sarafina, is a Drowned and she's been trying to recruit Baldo by infecting Baldo with wetlung. So far Isabetta's sorcery has kept Baldo, and the other senior Strazzaruola, safe. However, this new thing with Baldo and Isabetta gives Sarafina an opportunity to advance her plans - unless the heroes discover it and stop her. They might not like Baldo, but do they want him to become a monster?

We already know, because it's part of the Four Things of Sag Harbor, that the only time Sag Harbor feels clean is when it rains. "In downpours people come out to stand in the rain as if it were a crystal-clear waterfall, filling whatever containers they have with rainwater. It's the only way to guarantee freshwater supply." But maybe the Drowned don't care about that, or maybe there's something in the rainwater that they really don't like. So the one thing that gives Sarafina away is her reaction when it rains: she hides and doesn't try to collect the rainwater. Why is that, the heroes might wonder? Well ...

The main hook is the love triangle. The main plot objective is countering Isabetta's spell, which she cast on Baldo and is now regretting. The Twist is the Drowned, which in turn will lead to Plot Specific scenarios. It has the additional benefit of adding one of Sag Harbor's Four Things, which in turn helps develop the campaign's ongoing narrative. 

That's a Foundational scenario. 

Plot Specific scenarios function in much the same way. They have their main hook, the main objective, possibly a Twist, and a conclusion, the difference being that where a Foundational scenario hints at the greater world around it a Plot Specific scenario reveals definite things about that greater world and gives clues that lead to the Climactic scenario. 

The Climatic scenario is broadly along the same lines as its brethren, with this key difference: where before all attention was on the ordinary stuff of the setting - the meat and drink - and there were clues that led to Monstrous, now it's all Monstrous all the time. In Twilight Zone terminology, the eyeglasses have broken and now it's time to face the consequences. 

Time Enough At Last

If the Strazzaruola, say, were infected by Drowned before but not all of them had fallen, now all of them have fallen. If Rattakan were persecuting Zavatera's Marvels because Paulina was protecting those pesky orphans, now most if not all the orphans have died and Paulina may well be a Rattakan host, and so on. The adventurers have to deal with this situation as best they can, and how they choose to deal with it will determine whether or not this campaign ends on a high note, or a low.

What I'm getting at is a bit different from, say, Horror on the Orient Express, where the characters have been following a set path down a particular route, and while they may have made choices along the way the ultimate destination was always the same. The whole point behind the Building, and the Four Things technique, is that the players determine which elements of the setting they choose to engage with. In that sense it's more like Dracula Dossier or Armitage Files gameplay, in which there is a defined structure but the ultimate destination, and the route chosen to get there, is determined not by plot but by player engagement. 

The Building provides 'rooms' - encounters, NPCs, setting elements - and the Four Things helps you furnish those rooms. The players then decide for themselves which of the Four Things they engage with, and that in turn leads them to other rooms and more Four Things, and so on. 

Next week - something different!

Enjoy!

 

Floating the Dragon (Swords of the Serpentine)

 Sag Harbor

The swampside docks off the upriver end of the city are in the worst industrial section of town. This is the area where the unmentionable businesses are: the tanneries, the slaughterhouses, the nightsoil collections. It’s where sludge from dredging finds a temporary home, mostly because there’s a surreptitious market for people who want their enemies’ homes filled with the stuff ...

Night Markets

Daytime Sag Harbor is a sprawl of slums and unsavory neighborhoods. Nighttime Sag Harbor (at least along the edges of the District) is a riot of Night Markets. Every night when the sun goes down, the lanterns light and market tents pop up intertwined with the harbor docks and the sprawls of fishmongers, tanners, dyers, outlanders, and other lowlifes. Roving pubs pitch their tents and tap their kegs ...

Family Business

You may be a prestigious member of the ancient nobility, the merchant princes behind a major Mercanti guild, or even a close-knit family of commoners who have taken up a life of crime. For you, family is everything — and when family and friends get threatened by personal or political enemies, you turn to heroics to get your own back ...

Last time I populated the Building. Time to add some layers.

Broadly speaking there are three kinds of scenarios in any campaign: foundational, plot specific, and climactic.

Foundational scenarios are the groundwork. They elaborate on the established Building and put some flesh on its bones. They also provide the initial clues which the characters will follow up on for later plot. When I discussed Bookhounds games, and horror in general, many moons ago I said that "the first act [must] establish the setting, the characters and the overall mood of the game. Whether the players are veterans, novices or a mixture of the two, they've never played in this game world before, because it's your game world, fashioned out of your ideas and imagination. They don't know what to look forward to, or what to be worried about."

That's what a foundational scenario is. The first act. It doesn't have to include anything overtly Monstrous at this stage, because although this train is headed down Monstrous tracks this is just the first act. The establishing shot. The moment where the players get settled in to the story you're telling.

Remember that this is just as much foundational for the players as it is for you. They have only the sketchiest idea of who their characters are. Sure, they know the characters' stats and they have a more or less detailed backstory, but a character isn't defined by backstory. It's defined in play. Just like real life; character isn't about what people say, but what they do. You need to see what the characters do, before you know who they are.

Plot specific scenarios happen after the foundation is established. They usually involve some kind of plot specific quest, quest object, information or NPC. This is either a goal in its own right or it leads the investigators to a goal. Since this is a Monstrous game, a plot specific scenario will involve Monsters. It might be a reveal, a confrontation, an antagonist reaction. If this were a Night's Black Agents game then the plot-specific scenario would probably involve some kind of conspyramid reaction. In a Trail game the investigators would finally come face-to-face with the entity all those cultists have been chanting about, or find a copy of the Necronomicon.

By this point the players should already have a good idea of who their characters are, so you should be on the lookout for some character-specific reactions. Or take the trouble to create some. If you know that the duelist character is into himbos, then the antagonist for this scenario should be a himbo - that sort of thing. If you know a character is afraid of birds, then this is the time for birds. Note, I said character. It's a very different thing if the player is afraid of birds. Don't be that guy. 

Climactic scenarios often happen at the end of the arc and may or may not involve a big punch-up. In The Hobbit the arc ends with the Battle of the Five Armies. In video games, and Dungeons and Dragons, it usually ends with a boss battle. It doesn't have to be that way. A climactic scenario is a climax; it doesn't have to be a bloody one. Most horror games end in trauma, but it's a mental trauma not a physical one. The chief thing to bear in mind is that the central dilemma of the plot so far has to be resolved. 

In the first chapter of Telltale's Walking Dead, there is no clash of armies, no punch-up. The central dilemma has always been how to raise Clementine, the small child who's been the heart of the series up to that point. Therefore the climactic moment comes when Lee, the main character, resolves her plotline - in the quietest way possible, surrounded by the undead. 

That's the kind of climactic moment I like to shoot for, but seldom get. What happens, happens. But the point I'm getting at is the climactic moment can be as loud, as impactful, or as sinister as you make it. It's perfectly reasonable for the climactic moment to come when the characters realize everyone else in the Night Market is on the Rattakan's side, and they have to decide whether to join in and become one of them or leave the only home they've ever known. It's just as reasonable for a traumatic fight against birds end with the survivors sneaking away in their car. Or for a lone guest to leave the restaurant and stagger towards an uncertain future.

The last kind of scenario we need to talk about isn't really a scenario; it's a stopgap. It doesn't fit with the others, but it's necessary. This is the floating scenario. It can be boiled down to a floating scene rather than a full scenario, but the point is this: every so often events will shake out in a way you didn't plan for and you need some time to regroup. That's when you bring out the floating scenario. It doesn't have to fit with the rest. It just has to kill time while you try to resolve the problems caused by the unexpected bump in the road. 

Let's say for the sake of argument that you've been planning a punch-up with the big bad and the players unexpectedly resolve that conflict early by ambushing the big bad and smothering it while it's asleep. OK, not too heroic, but it gets the job done. Now you're short a big bad and you don't know how to get to a climactic scene when the climax you had planned came a wee bit prematurely. 

Time for the floating scenario. Perhaps at the end of that scenario you reveal that the actual big bad was something else altogether, or that the big bad the heroes slew was the real big bad's son, or that without the big bad some other terrible thing will happen so now the heroes have to do what the big bad would have done had it not been killed. But having the floating scenario available gives you the opportunity to regroup without having a nervous breakdown, and hopefully gives you time to sow the seeds for future climactic scenarios. 

The key thing to bear in mind about a floating scenario is, while it may be located in the plot area - Sag Harbor, in this case - it is not plot related. It's just something you have in your back pocket in case of accidents. A Night Market festival. An unexpected arrival, or departure. A disaster. An opportunity. Hidden treasure. Or maybe everyone gets stoned.

Cowboy Bebop

The ideal floating scenario is one which can be used in multiple situations, even different campaigns or settings, with only the most modest modifications.

Bookhounds, for example, has book auctions. Those appear to be specific to Bookhounds, but think about it: auctions can happen in any setting. You can have an auction in Dungeons and Dragons, or Swords of the Serpentine, or Dracula Dossier. If all you have to do to make an auction setting specific is to change a few names, and perhaps the McGuffin, it's the ideal floating scenario. You can put it just about anywhere and it performs the same function (killing time) while also giving the characters a new McGuffin to chase.  

OK, that's enough talking in the abstract. Next time out, some Foundational stuff.

Enjoy!

Floating Dragon Bar (Swords of the Serpentine)

Sag Harbor

The swampside docks off the upriver end of the city are in the worst industrial section of town. This is the area where the unmentionable businesses are: the tanneries, the slaughterhouses, the nightsoil collections. It’s where sludge from dredging finds a temporary home, mostly because there’s a surreptitious market for people who want their enemies’ homes filled with the stuff ...

Night Markets

Daytime Sag Harbor is a sprawl of slums and unsavory neighborhoods. Nighttime Sag Harbor (at least along the edges of the District) is a riot of Night Markets. Every night when the sun goes down, the lanterns light and market tents pop up intertwined with the harbor docks and the sprawls of fishmongers, tanners, dyers, outlanders, and other lowlifes. Roving pubs pitch their tents and tap their kegs ...

Family Business

You may be a prestigious member of the ancient nobility, the merchant princes behind a major Mercanti guild, or even a close-knit family of commoners who have taken up a life of crime. For you, family is everything — and when family and friends get threatened by personal or political enemies, you turn to heroics to get your own back ...

Black Lagoon

Let's take some of the principles we've used for Bookhounds and plant them in Serpentine soil.

Assumptions I'm making: this is a Family Business chronicle set in Sag Harbor, the least salubrious part of Eversink. There's no useful law, no second chances. If you fail here, it's a shallow (or watery) grave for you. 

The Family Business runs a night market stall that sells beers of all kinds, brewed by the family in hidden breweries. Given it's Sag Harbor I'm assuming the local water sources are mostly hard (full of minerals) and better suited for stouts than pilsners. The players, as the owners of the business, get to decide what kinds of stout they make, how they sell it, and all the other things that go with running a successful business.

Finally, of the many possible OPFOR I'm assuming that the Monstrosities are the main villains. Other factions powerful in Sag Harbor are Commoners, Sorcerous Cabals and Thieves Guilds. There are plenty of other options of course, but I don't want to get bogged down in the fantasy version of feature creep. Those four will do. 

I'm calling the Family Business the Floating Dragon purely for illustrative purposes. I'd expect the players to actually name it and come up with its features but this is an example, not a full-fledged chronicle. The Floating Dragon sells beer. That means they need a stall, a place to set out their equipment, advertising, servers, security, maybe a barker. All these are roles the players can take, or they can invent new ones. 

So, where does that leave us? In the Night Market - at least to begin with. That's where the action happens. That's the Building, in this narrative.

A night market is where you go to find cheap, small things, easily portable. You don't go there to buy a grand piano. Street food, yes. Illegal stuff, yes. Drugs, books, toys, ornaments, cloth, jugglers, performers of all kinds. Minor sorceries, perhaps. Peculiar carnivals. Freak shows ...

In Eversink everyone knows about Night Markets (or think they do) and even the wealthy and privileged might sneak out of their walled mansions to wander round a Night Market, perhaps in disguise. More often the people you see there are the poor, the desperate, the ones out for a bargain who don't care how they get it.

The Night Market is the focus of the game, Sag Harbor is the outlying district (ie. the place where things not part of the focus happen) and the rest of Eversink is, from the characters' POV, terra nova. They've never been. They know it exists; they've heard all kinds of stories. But from the chronicle's perspective Eversink is London and the characters are on Great Junction Street, Edinburgh. They might as well be on the moon.

For that reason the Night Market gets four markers, Sag Harbor one, and Eversink one. That is, the Night Market gets four detailed areas of interest, Sag Harbor one, Eversink one. Each of those markers gets four descriptive features, one of which has to relate back to the main opposition - the Monstrosities, in this instance. Like the Brotherhood of the Pharoah in the Bookhounds example, the Monstrosities are where all this is going. All roads lead to Monsters.

The Night Market

The Strazzaruola are the other family business, the rivals, the no-goods. If a Strazzaruola did it, it must be wrong. Worse than wrong. You never met a Strazzaruola you didn't hate.

Four things:

1. The Strazzaruola run loan sharking in the Night Market and there are few stalls that don't owe them money or favors - often both.
2. Isabetta Strazzaruola is a sorceror, or at least everyone says she is. Dripping with corruption, no doubt.
3. Baldo Strazzaruola is a notorious duelist, when he's not drunk off his ass. Dangerous, certainly - but unpredictable when drunk.
4. Monstrosity: Several Strazzaruola are Drowned.

Zavatera's Marvels is a carnival show with fire-eaters, sword swallowers and the Halls of Mystery. They came from nothing and one day they'll go back to nothing. 

Four Things:

1. Stefano the carnival barker is a truly remarkable public speaker (Firebrand) with a novel line in insults. 
2. Everyone knows you can get sucked, fondled and fingered in the Halls of Mystery - but the price can be more than you may be willing to pay. Stefano keeps a little black book full of potential blackmail victims.
3. Paulina the sword-swallower has a thing going with Baldo Strazzaruola. If you want Baldo and he's not in his usual drinking hole, he's probably in Paulina's hole. If so, he won't be moved.
4. Monstrosity: several of the rattakan-fighting orphans (p 264 main book) have found refuge at the Marvels, but only Paulina believes their stories (and she not very much).

Rocco the Scrivener is a bookseller and letter-writer. He's the one you go to if you want a romantic poem for someone you have your eye on, or a nasty letter sent to a reluctant debtor. He's also the Night Market judge; everyone goes to him to settle disputes.

Four Things:

1. Rocco is in deep with the Sorcerous Cabals, though few know this. He'd do a lot to keep that quiet.
2. Rocco is an accomplished forger who can manage almost anyone's signature. They say at least three aristocratic families owe some very favorable wills to his talented pen.
3. Rocco is an art collector and his house, it's said, is wall-to-wall sculptures, paintings and valuable antiques.
4. Monstrosity: Rocco is a front. A Vampire is using Rocco as a go-between. This bloodsucker lives in Rocco's house and is the one who really likes art; Rocco can't be bothered with the stuff.

Galeazzo's is the light show. If you want candles, lanterns, candelabra, fireworks, illuminations mundane and magical, you go to Galeazzo's stall.

Four Things:

1. Galeazzo has a sideline in narcotics. She calls them Denari's Holly, little pills that make the cares of the world easier to bear. She says she gets them from a private underground stash which in this case is the truth; the fungus she uses comes from the sewers.
2. Her sky lanterns are her biggest sellers; even nobles come to purchase them. Legend has it if you write a wish on one of her lanterns and let it float up to the sky, the wish comes true. 
3. She owes the Strazzaruola a remarkable amount of money and, while she always pays on time, nobody knows what she spends the money on.
4. Monstrosity: Galeazzo thinks she's working as a spy for the Inquisition and uses the money she borrows to pay off informants. In fact, she's working for the Rattakan, and would be horrified if she knew.

That's enough about the Night Market for the moment, and more than enough to kickstart a few plots.

What about Sag Harbor?

This is where you put the small stuff. Remember what was said in 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?

Four Things:

1. The waters around Sag Harbor are polluted and stinking, and sometimes catch fire. This sudden exhalation is preceded by a peculiar sound, like whales sneezing. Those caught in the blast usually don't last long enough to regret their mistake.
2. The only time Sag Harbor feels clean is when it rains. In downpours people come out to stand in the rain as if it were a crystal-clear waterfall, filling whatever containers they have with rain water. It's the only way to guarantee freshwater supply.
3. There's always barges and carters carrying things to and fro. Night soil, dyes, leathers, meats fresh and not-so-fresh, day in, day out. The best way to get in and out of Sag Harbor without being noticed is by one of these barges, and all the Guilds - Thieves and others - know this. So do the law, but you don't see them poking their noses where it doesn't belong.
4. Monstrosity: the Drowned and the Rattakan are jostling for position in Sag Harbor and while this underground war goes unnoticed by those above, its aftereffects do not. Whole buildings collapse and their demise is blamed on some shifting under-structure; yet those who know the hidden currents understand what really happened.

I could add more about Eversink in general, but hopefully you see the pattern by now. There's enough information to paint a picture, not so much information that the players feel they have no place in the narrative. After all, this picture is about their characters and their stories; it isn't a canvas for you alone.

In each case there are Four Things, one of which is Monstrous since this is a game that ultimately leads to Monsters. So for the Commoners, Sorcerous Cabals and Thieves Guilds - the major factions in Sag Harbor - there will be Four Things. All of them play a part in the narrative too, like cogs in a larger machine. The interaction between these cogs - the Commoners and the Night Market, the Sorcerous Cabals and Sag Harbor, the Commoners and the Thieves Guild and so on - is what provides plot.

Next week I'll start putting some scenario ideas in this Building and see what pops.

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!

The Fourth Element - Bookhounds of London

The East End of London extends as far as Blackwall on the Thames, but it begins at the edge of the City. In fact, the “Bow Bells” (which all true Cockneys must be born within the sound of) are in Cheapside in the City. Jack the Ripper killed one of his victims (Catherine Eddowes) in the City, in Mitre Square, but the others left a bloody trail pointing east. The East End began as marshy ground outside the walls of the city proper, slowly drained by the original “Black Wall” of the Saxons. Since mediaeval times, the East End has been where London put its blood, its stenches, and its death: tanneries, slaughterhouses, and fulling-yards. The docks and canals brought steady work, along with injury and ague; the ships brought crowds of foreign sailors and workmen, and crowds of British whores and thieves. Gin-houses and music-halls sprang up, as did radical politics and dissenting cults. Homes were small and streets were narrow even in Elizabethan times; with factories, gasworks, and workhouses rising in the Victorian era, things got even worse. The East End became “the Abyss.”

Bookhounds main book, p 51

From my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this: the knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could account. The effect was, that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity; yet, however obstinately I endeavored with my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I never could see why it should produce such an effect.

Thomas De Quincey, Murder as considered one of the fine arts, an essay.

OK, so you've decided to set your game - whether it's long or short - in a specific location in London. I'm using the East End, purely as an example. What next?

Trail offers two types of play, Purist and Pulp. Bookhounds refines this further by adding Arabesque, Sordid and Technicolor. Ideally you'd want to sit down with your players in a session zero and discuss tone, and decide as a group which you'd like to shoot for. However, as Director/Keeper/Poor Unfortunate, you often don't have the luxury of coming up with an entire campaign on the back of a session zero. You want to have at least some of the setting outlined in advance. 

But if you don't know whether you're going to be Arabesque, why would you design an Arabesque plot point or location? Surely that's wasted effort? 

No. But then, you wouldn't design an Arabesque plot point or location. You would design the thing, and then assign characteristics as the needs of the campaign develop. Further, you'd have at least some of its characteristics outlined in advance so you can slot them in when necessary.

Let's take the Abyss as a starting point. In any campaign design, when you don't know exactly where this is all leading you never tie yourself to a particular endpoint. What you need at the start is a very clear idea of where you are beginning and, after that, a reasonable idea of where you are headed. 

Let's say you intend to start with a small shop at the edge of the City, in the East End but trying to pretend it isn't East End, not really. Nobody drops their haitches in this establishment. You'd want to leave a fair amount of shop design up to the players but that doesn't mean you leave everything else alone. What's on the same street? Who's the main rival? What's the trade like? Is there a secret hidden under the floorboards or up in the attic? Do the drains work and, if not, what makes up the fatberg that's blocking them?

OK, so you've done all that. Well done. 

What about the reasonable idea of where you are headed?

There's no way to know for certain which decisions the players will make. They may seize on the main plot with cries of joy or dash off after some tangent. Don't worry about that. These things come out in play. What you need to think about is where all this is headed, in broad terms.

Pick a plot. Lord knows there are enough of them. The Bookhounds text gives half a dozen cults and an Old One as a cornucopia to pick from. If you don't like any of them there's London folklore aplenty in any number of texts. Point being, whichever of these you pick, that's where all this is headed. 

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

So you've got the start point nailed down and you know where the runaway train is going. The little book store with pretensions on the edge of the City, mired in the Abyss, is going to go on a journey that ends in a very Egyptian denouement. Established. Done. 

The question at the start of this was if you don't know whether you're going to be Arabesque, why would you design an Arabesque plot point or location? Surely that's wasted effort? 

The answer becomes: you design what you need to design and then you add the Arabesque/Sordid/Technicolor extra, as part of the Rule of Four. Effectively, you design something with three elements and the fourth element is the extra.

Let's say we were designing the Crown and Dolphin Tavern which is linked to the infamous Ratcliffe Murders of 1811, which in Bookhounds terms is a little over a hundred years before the start of the campaign. It's that same murder which inspired De Quincey to write the essay quoted above. The alleged murderer's skull is on display at the Crown and Dolphin, according to the Bookhounds main text, and history says the rest of him is buried out in front of the Crown & Dolphin. Cannon Street, where the tavern's located, is in the City proper.  

With all that in mind:

The Crown and Dolphin, 56 Cannon Street

Four things:

The landlord, Horace Glover, is affable and a friend to all; he's also up to his ears in gambling debts and is looking for a way out.

The tavern's brewer, Ashton Gate Brewery Co Ltd, is having a financial crisis and one of the odd effects of this is that the Crown and Dolphin is the only pub in the chain that serves its Dancing Man Premium Bitter. An odd, dark amber brew, it's either loved or loathed by those who know it.

The local Ring likes to hold knock-down auctions in the Crown after hours. If you know who to talk to you can get in on the action but it never begins until the pub shuts. 

Fourth Thing Arabesque: A woman with no known name - everyone calls her Queenie - plays solitaire dominoes every night every Friday, always at the same table and always from 9 till closing. Nobody sees her enter; nobody sees her leave. Nobody dares sit at her table before she gets there, and if a stranger does so by accident they are told to move. 

Fourth Thing Sordid: Horace has turned to drug peddling to pay his gambling debts. He doesn't sell the stuff himself; he lets other people - strange, silent folk - come in and sell their peculiar narcotics. A group of addicts can always be found gathered round the Crown's door waiting for the pushers.

Fourth Thing Technicolor: The ghost of John Murphy, the alleged Ratcliffe murderer, stalks the street outside the Crown and Dolphin. In life John Murphy had hair of the most extraordinary and vivid colour, viz., a bright yellow, something between an orange and a yellow colour according to De Quincey, and it's this color that sets him off; if someone with yellow hair passes by, John Murphy will try to snatch it from their head, with painful consequences for the victim. 

What I'm getting at here is the Crown and Dolphin may or may not become an important part of the ongoing campaign. It may be a side note; it may become a major location. At the start of the game you can't know whether it will be one or the other. 

Therefore you put in just enough detail so you can use it however you need to use it. You have your Four Things, which in this instance is Three Things Plus One Extra. With those Four Things you have enough plot to be getting on with.

But.

What about the Brotherhood? That's where all this is going, after all. 

Easy. You put the Brotherhood in the Fourth Thing. The Brotherhood is ultimately behind the Arabesque, the Sordid, the Technicolor moment. Or the Brotherhood is interested in the Arabesque, the Sordid, the Technicolor moment. The Brotherhood may be the ones supplying those peculiar narcotics, or those dominoes she's playing with could have mystic significance, or the ghost of John Murphy could actually be the result of some peculiar Brotherhood plot or artefact that has the unintended consequence of stimulating ghostly activity and thus provoking John Murphy. 

You don't need to know, up front, how exactly the Brotherhood is involved in that Fourth Thing. All you need to know is that the Brotherhood must be involved because that is where all this is going. The runaway train has a destination, after all, and it will get there. In one piece or several. That's up to the players.

Enjoy!

New Year, New Fear (Bookhounds)

Hello!

First, housekeeping. I've set up a Mastadon account to replace Twitter but I haven't had much time to play with it yet. You can find me at @karloff@mstdn.social. I'll keep the Twitter live for a bit to give me time to clear out bookmarks and deal with any DMs that come in, but in time I'll deactivate the Twitter. 

Second, thanks to those who responded to the poll! A lot of you like the Bookhounds content so that's what I'll be concentrating on first. There were some votes for Swords of the Serpentine too, so that will be on the menu as well. 

To start off with, something light but tasty. 

In the Forgotten London series I often use my copy of London Curios, a book published long long ago that I picked up for a fiver when I was last in Greenwich. I turn to a random page and use whatever's there as inspiration for a seed. 

Someone was kind enough to give me a copy of a Ward & Lock London Guide Book for Christmas, so I thought it only fitting to try the same trick in the first post of 2023. It was either that or an extended riff on Kevin McCarthy, and I think we're all sick of his Speaker's Odessey by now. Not least because we'll have it all to do again when they kick him out, which should happen within the next month or two.

Page 101: In Buckingham Palace Road are the National School of Cookery, the St. George's Baths and the Free Library; and the Royal Sanitary Institute ...    

The National School of Cookery gets its start at the Crystal Palace Exhibition and for a while is based there. It gets a mention in Dickens's Dictionary Of London where, Dickens says, Miss Mary Hooper was entrusted with the formation of a new series of classes for instruction in cookery and every branch of domestic economy. Mary Hooper is herself a writer of no little skill and publishes a number of cookbooks and novels, particularly children's fiction. The school finally finds a more permanent home on Buckingham Palace Road in 1889, where it stays until its eventual collapse in 1962 due to lack of funds.

It specializes in two kinds of cookery: Plain, for the working class, and High Class, for those prepared to pay for fancy food. The High Class cookbook was a moderately expensive production for its time, with gold-blocking on spine and its green leather cover; this was reprinted many times and later editions were in paperback, but the earliest versions were all hardback. Mrs. Clarke, the superintendent of the school, was the person who compiled the recipes.

Dickens - Boz, the son of, not the author - had several children, among them Ethel Kate Dickens, entrepreneur and businesswoman who died of an overdose in 1936. She would have known Mary Hooper, who edited Household Words, the mid-nineteenth century magazine which her grandfather Charles Dickens, the celebrated author, was involved with. 

From that we get:

Four And Twenty Blackbirds

A Bookhounds of London scenario seed.

Several well-heeled collectors have become convinced that there is a special 1896 errata edition of the High Class Cookery Recipes etc published by the National School of Cookery. These culinary book lovers are joined in the chase by an eclectic selection of melopolisomancers who are convinced the 1896 errata edition can be a useful tool in their craft. Both groups believe the errata edition will be sold at a secret auction at the National School of Cookery on the anniversary of Charles Dickens' death in 1896.

The errata edition allegedly contains an extra recipe penned by Dickens himself - or possibly his son, accounts vary. Those who claim to have seen it - and there are few - say that it describes a peculiar feast involving meats and fruits not seen on Earth.

Those who say the book either assists in megapolisomancy or provides a kind of lever claim that the book itself has direct, deep links to the National School of Cookery, which means it has links to Buckingham Palace Road which means it can be used in any working involving the Royal Mews or Victoria Station, two high-profile London landmarks, and for that matter any number of lesser landmarks also on Buckingham Palace Road. Or it can be used as a kind of divining rod to discover old levers from the time this area was Chelsea Road, home to highwaymen and bandits.

Those who trace the rumors about the book to their source discover that the source is Ethel Kate, and depending on when the chronicle is set she may still be alive. 

A short while before these rumors arose she claimed to have dreamed of a peculiar book, a cookbook, in which the most fabulous recipes could be found. At one point in her dreams her grandfather presented her with a copy of this book, at which point it somehow escaped her dream and became reality. She doesn't know how this happened and is frightened of the result.

Options:

• Ethel Kate is a Dreamer and may or may not have had contact with the Surrealist Dreamhounds of Paris. Her dreaming and waking lives are very different. In her waking life she runs a typists school; in her dreams she is an artist of repute. However, in the course of her dreaming career she found herself in a dream equivalent of the cooking school, where she discovered - or created - this book. Now she doesn't know what to do with it, or why it's here in the waking world. In this version the book is a special artefact which may or may not have the powers ascribed to it by megapolisomancers, but it frightens the hell out of Dickens' granddaughter.
• The cookbook was created by a megapolisomancer who drew on Ethel Kate's dreams of her grandfather to create it. However, the book isn't an artefact; it's a trap, for a rival megapolisomancer. The creator of the book is the one who's spreading the rumors and holding the auction at the cooking school, the intent being to lure the rival out of hiding and bring them to a place of execution - and woe betide anyone else who happens to be nearby. Collateral damage is a terrible thing ...
• The cookbook was created by a Dust Thing who, among other aspects, is partly Charles Dickens Jr., or Boz. In his lifetime Boz was a financial failure, an aspect which the Dust Thing inadvertently draws on. That's one of the reasons why the School of Cookery enjoys such poor fortune; they get it from the Dust Thing. Its original book is a copy of Boz's Dictionary of London: An Unconventional Handbook, which the Director of the School keeps in her personal library; if this book is destroyed the Dust Thing is significantly diminished. The cookbook is the Dust Thing's version of a fund raiser, and the Dust Thing will be the auctioneer. Ethel Kate is aware of this through dreams and is doing her (limited) best to prevent the auction, as she feels it is likely to end badly.

The book: skim 1 point Dream Lore, no spells; poring over 1 point Mythos plus one spell, Prepare the Feast of Nodens, cost 3 stability minimum, potentially Sanity, summons but does not bind a Nightgaunt who must, within five minutes of summoning, be given a message or appeal to Nodens. The Nightgaunt then takes that message to the God, which may or may not respond. The chance of a response is a percentage equal to the number of stability spent. For every point of Sanity spent, the chance goes up by 5%. Example: the caster spends 6 Stability and 2 Sanity for a total chance of 16%, being 6 plus 10.

If Nodens is inclined to answer then the feast will vanish - the God eats it. If Nodens is not inclined to answer, then a flock of Nightgaunts descend upon the feast scattering and befouling it. Potential Stability loss if the latter happens: +2.    

Nodens can answer any question pertaining to Dream, the Dreamlands or the effects of nightmare. Nodens can also rescue any one person from a Dream-related situation or prison.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

New York, New York

I'm back!

I'm also knackered, but that's usually a sign of a good vacation. This time I did in a week what can be done in a week, as opposed to last time when I did in three days what ought to take two weeks. Fun times, but by God I was wrecked at the end of it.

No, this was a much more relaxed time away. Christmas fairs, shopping, comedy clubs, improv clubs (the PIT in midtown is a lot of fun if you enjoy that sort of thing, and their improv D&D was a blast!), the lot. I didn't see as many museums as I thought I might, but that's mainly because the Frick, which was on the list, is undergoing renovations and I got lost on the way to the Merchant's House. Boy, did I feel like a sucker. I used to know that part of town so well, too ...

Films I recommend:

Framing Agnes

A fascinating glimpse at what it meant to be trans back in the 1950s. The talk show concept kinda didn't work for me; it made the film feel static and a little slow at times. That said, the subject is engrossing and the lives of the people the doc talks about are, well, actual lives. They don't try to tell a morality tale or a good-people-triumph or any kind of mythologizing. It's just the story, neat, no ice no water.

 The Draughtsman's Contract

Mad as a box of frogs. A wealthy, bored and unhappy wife hires an artist to draw her husband's house and grounds while he is away on business. He does so, on terms that include sex. Pretty vigorous and nasty sex, by the look of it. Then the husband turns up dead. It's not a murder mystery, really, not in the Agatha Christie sense, but murder definitely has its place in the narrative.

Both seen at the Film Forum, which I heartily recommend to anyone visiting New York. In the same week I was there the Forum also showed Welles' The Trial, which I also heartily recommend and have seen many times - though not this trip.

Books!

Once again the Compleat Strategist, Argosy and Strand did me good. I shan't go through the list of Christmas books bought, but:

Joe Lansdale, Savage Season & Rumble Tumble. This is one of those nostalgia purchases. I was a big fan of Lansdale once upon a time but I never got heavily into Hap and Leonard, his two detectives; I was fonder of his horror work. I figured this was as good a moment as any to find out how much I might like the series, and I was right. Recommended to lovers of film noir and pulp action.

William Gibson, Spook Country. Bought on a whim on my last day there, I haven't read it yet but am looking forward to it. Again, a nostalgia purchase; like everyone else I read Count Zero, Johnny Mnemonic and Neuromancer back in the before times, but I haven't read any Gibson in years. Time to rectify that.

Paul Vanderwood, Satan's Playground: Mobsters and Movie Stars in America's Greatest Gaming Resort. Brilliant historical romp through the twists and turns of Tijuana's dark past, it opens with a shootout over the cash from a casino group and closes with the end of Agua Caliente back in the late 20s. It's a great resource for Keepers, and a fun read for fans of true crime.

Basil Thompson, My Experiences At Scotland Yard, 1923, covers the turn of the century and Great War period. I think you can guess why I wanted this one. I haven't read it yet but am looking forward to it!

Emanuel Lavine, Secrets of the Metropolitan Police, 1937. Again, I think you can guess why I wanted this one. Good Trail of Cthulhu fodder!

Vampire: The Masquerade - the Second Inquisition. It was either going to be this or the Blood Cults book, and it was a tough choice. Maybe next time, Blood Cults! I also picked up some Vampire dice. Yes, I am a sucker. Mainly inspired by Jacob Burgess' Vampire game over at LoadingReadyRun. 

OK! That's it for this one. As mentioned, I'm going to take a break for the remainder of the year and come back raring to go in the New Year.

Question for the hive mind: I know I've talked a lot about Bookhounds and Night's Black Agents, less so other systems. Is there a particular gaming system you'd like me to explore in the New Year?