Playing With Real Toys: Battleship Kate (Bookhounds)

 

Sourced from MFA Boston

Battleship Kate is a piece of American modern art - an accidental piece. 

Physically, she's a paper-mâché knock-off of a more famous work, Hiram Powers' Greek Slave. 

Knock-offs of this type would have been very, very common in the later 1800s and early 1900s. They would have appeared pretty much anywhere, for any purpose. In this case she was intended as a storefront display, one of many, many thousands made at about the same time.

This particular one fell into the hands of August “Cap” Coleman, the most celebrated tattoo artist in U.S. history. He used it as a practice dummy and later an advertising piece, showing off his work in miniature and displaying it in his store front. 

The great thing about a piece like this is that, while Coleman's is unique, the many, many 'Greek Slaves' out there means that there must be hundreds of statues like this still in existence even now, some of which would have been used as Coleman did his Battleship. Not to the same level of success, mind, or the same level of artistry. 

But there would have been some tattoo artists who followed Coleman's example. 

They might have gone almost anywhere. 

London, let's say.  

The Tattoo

An American tattoo artist is dead.

Sam 'Pacific' Quatrell's body was found in his East End shop three days ago. The door was smashed and the place ransacked but, given the way he kept it, you'd be hard pressed to work out whether anything was stolen. The one thing everyone can agree is definitely gone is his model, the paper mâché doll he used as an example piece. 

Now there's a host of less than reputable cultist types who are very interested in finding his book of tattoos. It's said that some of his work has magickal qualities, and the buyers are keen to carry on his tradition. 

Robin Lea, who the Hounds may know well, is especially keen to track it down. He says it's to make sure nobody with evil intent gets hold of it. Whether Robin has any skill whatsoever in artistry, never mind tattooing, is an open question. Still, for once in a way Robin has money. Actual cash. In gold, not notes. 

Perhaps it will be worth the Hounds' while to find this tattoo book - or the paper mâché doll Pacific was so fond of. But who killed him, and where is the stuff now?

Option One: Cock Robin. For once in a way, Robin Lea is to blame. Not entirely by choice, but his typical accidental flailings brought about Pacific's death. However, it also brought to life Pacific's paper mâché doll, and it's the doll who stole the tattoo book. Now the doll is looking for a new home, a new master, but once it gets those things it wants revenge on Robin Lea for causing all this fuss. Whoever it picks as master will be given a task to prove their worth: kill Robin Lea, and anyone helping him.

Option Two: Atlantis Resurgent. Pacific was a member of the Hseih-Tzu Fan, led by Atlantean sorceror Kathulos. Like so many, Pacific angered his cult masters, and met the fate reserved for all traitors. However, before his untimely passing Pacific hid his secrets in his tattoo book and used his paper mâché doll-servant to hide the book. Now the Fan want it, and Robin Lea wants to keep it out of their hands. Meanwhile the doll is looking for a place to hide, and the Hounds' shop might be the very spot. So many shadowy little corners to hide in; what more could a heavily tattooed near-nude ask for?

Option Three: Malevolent Thing. The paper mâché doll is actually a Jenglot (Dracula Dossier), a vampiric entity that, until recently, was living off of Pacific. He picked the thing up in his travels and it's been dominating him ever since, supping his blood as the need arises. However, Pacific got a little too independent for its tastes and so the sailor had to go. Now this busybody Lea fellow might be a reasonable replacement, but if Lea proves to be unsuitable there are these Hound people ... perhaps one of them would like a touch of Magickal power in exchange for a little blood, now and again ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy! 

The Bookseller of Crémieu (Night's Black Agents)

I had something else in mind this week, but I've been sick as a dog (woof woof) so ... 

Recently I had an article posted in Pelgrane's Page XX, Nosferatu. The medieval village of Crémieu features as a backdrop; let's play with that idea a little.

Crémieu is tiny, perhaps a few thousand souls, with a long and somewhat glorious history. Its heyday was long, long ago; it played host to a royal castle, monasteries and nunneries, a coin mint, and was an important trade hub. In more recent times its glory faded, but it still appeals to tourists, artists and lovers of history. 

In Nosferatu, Crémieu is the closest township to the tech startup Nosferatu, which makes a specialist kind of security system that apparently is designed with vampires in mind.

Pelgrane's Resource Guide gives several new creature types, among them the Fetch:

Fetches are the embodied ghosts of those killed by vampires. When a vampire drains and murders a living human, it can trap the victim’s consciousness in the dead body. The result is a fetch. Fetches look much like they did in life, only greyer and somehow diminished ... 

From all that:

The Bookseller of Crémieu

When Nosferatu first relocated to France, it attracted attention both international and local. 

One of those in Crémieu who paid it more than a little mind was the bookseller Adolphe Monteux. His shop La Librarie Antique on the Rue Saint-Jean is a decayed little fixture of the town, established by Adolphe's father soon after the War. It has a reasonable reputation as an antiquarian bookshop but has struggled in recent years, and anyone who looks at it can see why. The place is shabby, its collections disorganized, and the place stinks of damp. 

Adolphe is a local character. A perennial candidate for local offices who never once wins a race, a blogger on local history, a scandal-monger who manages to sniff out some of his neighbor's most guarded secrets, and a lover of conspiracy theories. Particularly if those theories involve aliens, alien technology, or alien infiltration of the government. He's the kind of local irritant who never quite hits what he aims at, but who throws enough shots to occasionally be embarrassing.

He has self-published a few pamphlets on local topics, ghost stories, witches and the like. He's also contributed to the Association for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Isle Crémieu (E.P.I.C), though his contributions to EPIC aren't always warmly received. Adolphe tends to let his passions guide him which doesn't always sit well with EPIC's editors. 

What happens to Adolphe depends on whether Nosferatu is Innocent, an Asset or a Minion.

If Innocent: Adolphe attempted to dig up some dirt on Nosferatu's partnership. He concentrated on Sue Choi; he'd heard about her peculiar experiences in San Francisco and speculated that she was being puppeted by alien masters. While none of this is true it did attract the attention of a French Conspiracy node. The node was curious about Nosferatu's intentions and background, and while it didn't see Nosferatu as a threat it did want to keep an eye on Nosferatu just in case its status changed. Adolphe became a Fetch soon after, installed to keep an eye on the tech startup. Sue Choi is aware of Adolphe's actions but not of his current status; to her, Adolphe is an annoying little man who tried to poke around in her private life.

If Asset:  Adolphe is being run by the other side. Before the War, Crémieu was host to a Conspiracy Node that, as luck would have it, was wiped out by the Germans who mistook it for a Communist resistance cell. Adolphe is the sole survivor of that Node; he's had to remake his identity as his own son to keep the pretense up. He was re-absorbed into the Conspiracy in the 1960s, but the Conspiracy hadn't much use for him until recently. The relocation of Nosferatu was a lucky break for this creaky antique; now the Conspiracy expects him to keep close tabs on the tech startup. His spy skills are dusty, rusty, and antique. However, his money spends as well as anyone else's, and he's been able to bribe a few Nosferatu workers who supply him with intel. He knows what Vermillion workers are and his superiors are becoming interested. Whether they become interested enough to send a strike team is, as yet, an undecided question.

If Minion: Adolphe has been a Fetch since the 1890s. Up until that point he was an investigative journalist in Paris, but his researches earned him a little too much attention. The vampire who created him kept him around for a while but forgot to keep an eye on Adolphe. The former journalist scarpered and made a home for himself in Crémieu, where he hoped to fade into the background forever and ever. After all, so long as his creator lived, so would he. Neither Adolphe nor his creator anticipated Nosferatu. As luck would have it, Adolphe's creator is one of those vampires sent to Nosferatu on punishment detail, expected to eventually succumb to one of the tech startup's test programs. This poses an impossible dilemma for Adolphe. After all, if the vampire dies, so does he. The former journalist turned bookseller has to decide whether he wants to risk it all to rescue his creator, knowing that if he's successful he'll be returning to a life of bondage. Or whether he wants to tip the scales and make sure the vampire dies, ensuring his own death in the process. What luck some Agents have arrived to complicate the situation; Adolphe may be able to manipulate them to his advantage.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

Troy Town (RPG All)

A delightful air of romance and mystery surrounds the whole subject of Labyrinths and Mazes.

MAZES AND LABYRINTHS, W.H. Matthews, 1922 Longmans

I was recently reminded of this and thought it would repay a revisit.

Most of you know what hedge mazes are. They can be used to good effect in horror. Stephen King famously used one in the Shining, with Torrance stalking through it in search of his boy Danny. King has his version patrolled by peculiar hedge creatures, but in the film it's just an evocative location - probably the better fit, TBH, though I doubt King would agree.

However, that's not the kind of maze I'm talking about.

A Troy is a turf maze. There are no walls. The pattern twists in upon itself, straight to its center like Ouroboros. There is only one way forward. Nobody knows why they were made, but at one time there were Troys across Europe and some still exist, in forgotten little places. 

There are several examples in England. Most of the survivors are on private property.

A true Troy is cut to what's called a Greek, or sometimes Knossos, pattern, after the markings found on Greek coinage. It's possible those old coins were used as a direct reference, or perhaps the design survived in books, but however it came to be the people who made the mazes tended to follow that pattern. 

Nobody knows for certain why these mazes came to be. It's said that the original patterns were used for horsemanship games practiced by the Greeks and revived by the Romans. There are any number of folkloric reasons for the mazes; fishermen in Sweden, for example, used to march the Troy to throw off wicked spirits who might otherwise follow and bedevil them. Or they might have been fertility rituals, or tied to the legends of Ariadne, Fair Rosamund, St. Julian of the Hospice, Theseus' crane dance or any of a dozen other tales and legend-bearers.

From Mazes & Labyrinths

However, they exist and have done since memory forgot, and only the dead now know how they came to be. 

They were in use for a considerable period. Right up until the Great War, more or less, there would have been seasonal rituals, fetes, or more private marchings of the Troy. Like so many other bits of lore, the Troys tended to die out with the great withering on the Western Front.  

From an RPG perspective the great thing about a Troy is, because nobody knows why they were made or how they came to be, you as Keeper (or whatever the term may be) can use them absolutely anywhere.

The most logical-seeming fit is in a fantasy setting, of course. Serpentine, Ravenloft, any one of a host of others: any and all can benefit from peculiar rituals practiced in the dead of night or in the heart of some forgotten moor, with creatures or entities flitting the Troy in a dance that seems deceptively simple and in fact is tied to the soul of the universe. Or summons Cthulhu. Or whatever the case may be.

Night's Black Agents and similar supernatural settings could make good use of the Troy. In Night's the obvious uses are Damned or Supernatural but the thing about a hypnotic pattern is it could as easily be used in Mutant or Alien games. 

Quatermass and the Pit

But it could as easily be Cyberpunk, or Mutant City Blues. A neo-pagan movement captures the imagination of Night City and the desperate, the helpless, homeless, forlorn, dance the Troy. Why? Nobody knows. Or a bunch of bangers and gangers devise Troys as a non-combat means of settling disputes, with each side (or sides) nominating a team to dance the Troy, winner take all. The Troy becomes a modern dance movement. The Troy is a means of contacting alien life.

The Troy is, and is, and is. 

I've made frequent references to Rome and its Fourth Thing. A Troy is a pretty good match for that Fourth Thing. It's sufficiently mysterious and alien-seeming that it could be a stand-in for almost anything from fairyland to Leng. It's easily created by one person, cutting turf, but it could as easily be graffiti, or a complex of patterned lights, or a dozen other things besides. 

There's something about a maze that calls the eye and mind. 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Playing With Real Toys: Pod Hotels (RPG All)

… it did give any blog idea for the springtime. A search for news articles about trending pod hotels, similar to the article you did for the techno train or novelty hotels. I was also considering working in threat profiles too …

Well now.

A pod hotel, or kapuseru hoteru (capsule hotel), is basically a collection of very small sleeping pods intended as cheap, overnight accommodation. Maybe you can’t afford anything better, or maybe you only want to be there for a night and can’t be bothered with all the extras you aren’t going to have time to enjoy anyway.

They vary. I see the NYC chain Pod Pads offers quite nice accommodation, assuming you intend to stay a month. Their one bed (aircon, kitchen, sitting area, amenities) goes for a little under $200/night but you need to book for 30 nights. So you’re spending roughly $6000 for a month’s accommodation in NYC. That’s honestly not too awful, for NY prices.

However, if you go for the standard pod for a couple nights then you get a bed, possibly a workspace, and shared bathroom, for roughly the same price per night. Less time = less comfort, but you still get the same location which may be all you want. I know I’ve stayed in places that are less than ideal, comfort wise, knowing that the location is all that matters to me.

After all, Midtown West, just blocks from tranquil Hudson River Park and steps to 8 subway lines is an attractive offer. Plus gym on-site? Tempting indeed, even if the bed is about the size of a modest toolbox.

Incidentally the shared bathroom is probably what will put many people off pod hotels and cheap hotels in general. People will put up with a lot for the sake of a private en-suite.

In RPG fiction this is typical Cyberpunk accommodation, but isn’t often seen outside Cyberpunk. I’m not sure why. Particularly in fantasy settings the average tavern or inn always has remarkably roomy, middle-class accommodation. If there’s a shared bedroom area, it’s still pretty nice by comparison to a pod hotel.

Nothing like the fourpenny coffin, say. Or the conditions described by Orwell in Down & Out. 

I’ve been reading a chunk of World of Darkness stuff recently, for example, and I don’t recall coming across anything that isn’t resolutely comfortable. Your Brujah, Nosferatu et al have their expenses handwaved as points in a pool, without anyone going into detail about whether they sleep in a bed or a cardboard box. Or what it means to sleep in a cardboard box.

It’s almost as if the intended audience are nice middle class kids looking for a few illicit thrills.

After all, pod hotels in the West, intended for tourists, are almost nothing like the capsule hotels of Japan, intended for salarymen, which in turn bear very little resemblance to the coffin homes of Hong Kong. Intended for those who have no other options. Literally named after cheap, charitable mortuaries. 

Compare that to Berlin’s Space Night Hotel, for instance. Or the Hosho chain. 

It’s all very quirky. TBH if I want quirky I’ll find myself a fun place, not a box that tries to sell itself as a fun place. Still, takes all sorts.

From an RPG standpoint, which game does this suit?

Probably not Night’s Black Agents. Even the Dust version is trying to be a Spy game, not a Tourist game. It’s difficult to picture, say, James Bond checking into a pod hotel. I can’t think of that many spy stories that feature the hotel as part of the plot, not unless the hotel also includes a casino.

Of course, if the pod hotel was an enemy asset, that’s a different story. Perhaps the whole complex is a massive brain-sucking entity or draining psychic energy for future use. Maybe that antenna on top of the building is actually some kind of focusing device for the mind laser.

Pod Hotels work really well in settings that depend on sci-fi or dystopian future elements. Cyberpunk’s the obvious one here; City of Mist spin-off Otherscape would probably also work quite well. I can see pod hotels popping up in Mutant City Blues as a scene location, but probably not a full-scale plot element.

A dream or nightmare-inspired scenario would do very well in a pod hotel location. Delta Green once did something very like with the King In Yellow scenario Night Floors; the characters had to investigate an apartment building where someone had vanished into the King In Yellow’s mysterious domain. Normal during the day, nightmare scenario after hours. A pod hotel that presented itself as resolutely normal and small on the outside, only to become luxurious and vast once you cross the threshold, could be very interesting. 

That said, the whole point of a pod hotel as a location is that it is a pod hotel; to immediately negate that quality seems pointless. It’s a plot twist that could play out at almost any location. You don’t need a special one.

Oddly, the problem reminds me of a scenario I wrote some time back: Sisters of Sorrow, set aboard a Great War U-Boat.

I said at the time:

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 … 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.

A similar solution for the pod hotel, perhaps. You’d need to introduce the characters to their neighbors, somehow. Maybe down in that on-site gym? Or a nearby bar? Then, once they’re all inside and snuggled up in their beds … 

OK, all that said, let's gamify this.

A Place With Many Doors

The characters are in town for a completely separate reason and it does not matter, for plot purposes, what that reason is. Let's say they've been asked to go to X to find a missing person, who for this example will be Sarah Lovett, a lawyer from Chicago who likes to explore places on the cheap. According to her social media profile, her last posts came from a pod hotel in X: The Happiness Quotient.

The Happiness Quotient is a resolutely cheerful place in one of the more expensive parts of town. It has its own bar, its own gym, and is very close to public transport and other amenities. Its color scheme is very, very bright, and frequently features the hotel mascot, a jolly, grinning panda named Frank. The Quotient's user reviews are nearly all ecstatic, and many of them feature photos of the gym, the bar, and the penthouse apartments, all of which have fantastic views of X. 

Lovett's last few posts were all made from the Quotient. According to her profile (and her bank account) she paid for a month's stay in one of the penthouses. 

Investigators who pay close attention to the social media posts notice that some of the penthouse suite pictures show a view that actually doesn't exist at all. According to these shots, the hotel has a view of a park that doesn't exist, yet it can be clearly seen in photographs. AI generated art at work, perhaps?

Option 1: Devil's Idle Hands. The hotel is the preferred hunting grounds of a solo killer or an entity like Fear Itself's Blood Corpse, something that isn't particularly intelligent but whose actions are being covered up by the hotel's owners and its manager, Theo Salter. They can't afford the scandal. They can't afford the killings. But they keep hiding the evidence and denying the problem, and Salter's dwindling resources will eventually be insufficient to cover up the losses. Meanwhile the solo killer flits from room to room, taking what it needs and going dark for a night or two, until it needs to kill again.

Option 2: Frank's Forest. He may look like a happy little mascot but there's something very nasty hiding behind that relentlessly cheerful smile. Those who pay attention to Frank notice that his posture and demeanor changes the closer it gets to nightfall. After nightfall Frank gets positively shifty and mean-looking. Come midnight, Frank vanishes altogether, from all the walls of the hotel. When that happens it's best to stay tucked up in bed and try not to think about going to that shared bathroom or the 24-hour gym. When Frank's playing games, nobody's safe; and God forbid you should somehow find yourself in that hidden park outside the hotel. You may never find your way back in, if that happens.

Option 3: Penthouse Problems. This issue only affects people who rent the penthouse apartments, and not all of them. However, for those of a sensitive or psychic disposition, it's possible you'll find yourself in the House With Many Doors. You're perfectly safe, so long as you never try to leave the penthouse. After all, why would you? Look at that view. You can see the whole city from here. You can see the park. You can watch people playing in the park, walking their dogs, having a fine old time. They can see you, too. They wave at you. They seem to know exactly where you are, what you're doing. Just never try to leave the penthouse. There are many, many doors in this hotel, and none of them go outside.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

The Clue Trail - Dead, Dead, Deadski (GUMSHOE All)

Beetlejuice

Once upon a time I discussed the Clue Trail and recommended, among other things:

Rule of Four. There are Four ways in: Academic, Technical, Interpersonal, General. What you need is one clue for each of the ways in, so one Academic, one Technical, one Interpersonal, one General. 

Why do it this way? Well, apart from the usual benefits that come with the Rule of Four, you get one extra: split four ways among the four Ability lists, someone in the group will have at least one of those Abilities with points to spend. That means no matter how Scooby Doo it gets one of your dream team will find their way to the mystery. 

I went further and pointed out that this works best when dealing with the unexpected. You didn't think the characters would go to Berlin, say, this week, but here they are, scarfing up the curried bratwurst. What to do when they go looking for trouble?

Now, let's say that this wasn't an accident. Let's say this was planned. Let's say that Berlin was always on the menu and that you had time to design something more in-depth.

Does that change anything?

Not really - but it does allow you to play with the spine.  

The spine, for those of you shaky on the concept, is that part of the scenario structure which holds everything together. It's the bit that connects the dots. The clues characters find along the way are the nerve endings, the capillaries, that wrap around that skeletal structure and put some meat on its bones. Some of these clues lead to valuable information that draws the characters further down the spine. Some are dead ends. Some go unhelpful places. But, in the end, they all lead to the End. The question is, which End?

Let's talk about unhelpful places and dead ends.

Now, in RPGs generally and in GUMSHOE in particular, there should be no such thing as a completely dead end. By which I mean, there should be no such thing as a dead end with nothing fun to do, or nothing interesting to be had. A dead end does not lead any further into the plot. That does not mean it's a complete waste of everybody's time. 

In that sense a dead end is very similar to capture scenes, which I've written about before. The same principle applies: as Director it is your job to make sure the characters have something to do if they find themselves in a dead end scene.

A dead end, strictly speaking, is a position with no hope of progress; a blind alley. Your players thought this clue led somewhere, but it doesn’t. Or that this network contact, this McGuffin, this whatever-it-may-be would have a result, but it doesn’t.

Or – and this is the one to keep an eye on – they ignore a clue that could have led somewhere and, because they did that, now it leads nowhere.

Let’s say for the sake of this example that their network contact Anton was working on [X] and said ‘I’ll have more information for you tomorrow.’ The agents then wander off and commit their usual misdeeds, only remembering about a month later (in game time) that their dear old pal Anton was supposed to be working on [X]. Whatever happened about that? Well, nothing happened. Maybe Anton’s information is out of date. Maybe Anton’s dead. Maybe he’s a vampire now because he got too close to the Conspiracy.

In all those cases what could have been a promising spine trail now is not, because there’s nothing more to be gained by going down that path.

However, just because it’s a blind alley doesn’t mean there’s nothing whatsoever to be gained by going down there. It won’t advance the plot, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with the notion.

Here’s some ways you can do that.

• Antagonist Reaction. There are bad things down that blind alley and they want to twist your head right off its delicate little neck. This can be a useful moment to kick off a fight scene, a chase scene, or some version of the Thrilling moment.
• The Nature of the Beast. You don’t get any useful plot clues but you do find out a little bit more about the nature of the things you’re chasing. Maybe they twist time and there’s some evidence of that down the blind alley, or maybe they have necromantic powers and you discover some of their revivified victims. Oh look! Zombies!
• The Nature of the Plot. Just because that laboratory burned down, taking all of its research experiments with it, doesn’t mean you can’t gain something by sifting through the ashes. Or maybe you notice that there’s things missing from the debris that ought to be there. If that safe was empty when the building burnt down, that tells you the records are still out there somewhere, even if you can’t find them at this location anymore.
• The Nature of the Game, aka Rome. There may be nothing down that blind alley, but if it’s an evocative nothing, if it chills the blood and quickens the pulse, then it’s not a complete waste of everyone’s time. This is the moment most likely to cause a Stability check. It’s also the most likely to contain squick. Or, as Stephen King famously said, “if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.”
• The Location of the Plot. This is probably the most useful blind alley, though it may be useful by default. Let’s say that the players had three choices as to where to go next. They went for option A, and it turned out to be a dud. That means the plot’s got to be in B or C, and now they’ve wasted valuable time on A they have less time to deal with whatever’s in store at B or C.

This last option is also the option most likely to frustrate the players so it should be used sparingly. However, there’s juice to be had from building up tension. If the players know it’s a race against time and they realize they’ve wasted some of that precious time following up a bad lead, then their natural reaction is going to be increased motivation spiced with panic.

OK, let's head back to Berlin.

In that example there were the following Clues:

• Academic – History. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus the idea that the NSA left behind some interesting artefacts, buried in the rubble. 
• Interpersonal – Tradecraft. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus some old NSA files, slipped to the agent by a friendly at the local CIA station.
• Technical – Urban Survival. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus some maps and design schematics from back in the day, giving the agent a free Architecture bonus should they want it.
• General – Sense Trouble. One point gets the agent a general recent history of Teufelsberg plus some spooky extras (unexplained deaths, criminal activity, ghost activity, whatever suits best). 

Now, for whatever reason, Teufelsberg is a dead end. Doesn't matter why; it just is. In that case you still have to slip something in there for the players to chew on. It might be an Antagonist Reaction, a clue to the Nature of the Beast, Plot, or Game, or it might be the Location of the Plot. 

For this particular location I favor an Antagonist Reaction. There are enemies at that location, and they will do the characters harm, or try to. 

Now, the players spend their one point of History, Tradecraft or whatever it may be. That means they get to Teufelsberg. 

What if they spend two points? That usually gets them extra bennies, right? What kind of extra benny can be had in a dead end situation?

Answer: advance warning that it is a dead end, or advance warning of what's waiting for them up there. In this case, the creatures lurking up that dead end give themselves away somehow. Maybe the characters notice peculiar shadows or get a warning of supernatural activity. It's quiet. Too quiet. That kind of thing. 

This gives them the opportunity to avoid the antagonist reaction or play into it. Point being, it gives them a choice. 

It gives them something interesting to do, even if this is a dead end.

That's it for this week! Enjoy!

Not Quite Review Corner: Book and Dagger

Book and Dagger: the untold story of the academics who became the Spies, invented modern spycraft and helped turn the tide of the war. 2024, Elyse Graham, Harper Collins

I still don't know what to make of this one. 

It's proven harder to read than I thought. I didn't take to it right away. I found it too easy-going, a little facile. I'm still not sure why the text rubs off on me the way it does. Maybe it's just writing style. If that's the case, then your milage will definitely vary.

However, the story it's telling is remarkable (though I question the 'untold' bit). Well worth your time, particularly if you ever intend to run or play Bookhounds of London, or Delta Green. This is the story of how the intelligence services in the West became true intelligence services. How they picked up those peculiar skills that would become the obsession of spy novelists in the decades to come. 

How the booksellers and academics turned into spies.

Most importantly it tells you who they were and what they got up to. I like to think I know a little bit about the subject matter, but I'd not heard of Adele Kibre before, for example. It's one of those times when you're reminded that actual spy work is not like a Bond novel. That John Le Carre had a point. Here's someone who did very important work, but who did it by talking, by finagling, by paying attention and taking notes. Not for Kibre the daring car chases and escapes across rooftops. She bought or acquired books. Lots and lots of books, and papers, and news. 

Judging by what is known of her she seems to be the kind of researcher who would have driven Barbara Tuchman to distraction; the kind that accumulated a wealth of knowledge but seldom put anything down on paper. There was always one more scrap to be had, one missing piece, and Kibre, by the looks of it, would rather have squirreled away that academic nut than published a single word.  

Kibre isn't the only character, of course. Graham covers a wide range, focusing mainly on American sources. Her subjects are recruited from their dusty academies, set to training with the likes of Fairbairn and Colonel Applegate, and then off they go to the war, which might be in Spain or Switzerland or France or a dozen other places. There they hoover up knowledge both academic and military, funneling it back to their shadowy bosses. 

From a Mythos perspective, or anyone with interest in running a supernaturalist spy campaign, this is definitely something you want to be looking at. This is Bookhounds taken to its logical extreme, where instead of the profit motive the squirrely bookish types are driven by loyalty to country and cause. Who knows what peculiar secrets they might uncover in that library collection?

I just wish I liked it better than I do. I've gone headlong into the likes of Barbara Tuchman and Liza Picard, and those are far more academically rigorous works. I rank Tuchman's March of Folly as one of the finest works of scholarship in the English language, and that covers about as broad a topic as you could wish for, with as much imagination - far more, I'd argue - than Graham displays here.

I suppose it could be writing style, or it could be a lurking suspicion that Graham's attention to detail is a little off. Never anything major, but several minor clangers that threw me out of the narrative. 

There's a bit in the section about breaking codes where Graham imagines a conversation between two bigwigs shortly after a successful North African campaign. One asks the other whether the academics figured out how to read Hitler's plans from the flutter of ribbons in little girl's pigtails.

"No," the other responds. "They thought they'd break U.N. custom and actually apply intelligence to their intelligence."

Which works as a comeback, just barely, but all I could think was 'U.N.? As in United Nations? But they don't exist yet, surely? Or is this meant to be U.S.N. as in U.S. Navy - presumably Naval Intelligence?'

It's things like that which throw me off. The minute I start wondering whether the author can be trusted to tell the story straight - the author, mind, not the narrator - I lose interest in the work. 

Part of the problem is Graham's use of fictionalized narrative to fill in the gaps, where historical information is lacking. It's a handy device in moderation. However, there's a lot of gaps, so moderation flies out the window.  You're never entirely sure which bit is backed by some kind of record (any kind, please our lord Herodotus) or whether it's emerging full-formed like a Greek God from a historian's head. You have to have a lot of trust in the author before you can easily swallow that kind of thing. 

It's a bit like the rant at the end of Murder by Death: 'You've all been so clever for so long, you've forgotten to be humble. You tricked and fooled your readers for years. You've tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense. You've introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. You've withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it. But now the tables are turned ...'

Murder By Death (1976)

Which brings me back to the likes of Tuchman and Picard. I trust those authors, but they earned their trust by being academically rigorous from the start. Graham never did. She starts with fictitious narrative and carries on in that vein. 

Do I recommend it? Yes. After all, I've recommended far worse works, both fiction and non-fiction, precisely because even the bad stuff can be a source of inspiration. The Book of Spies and Army of Thieves, to name but two, are absolute stinkers. They can still be mined for useful ideas. 

The same applies here. I do not consider this a serious work of history. It's the historical equivalent of a summertime beach read. But it does have some interesting features and has enough of relevance to Keepers and Directors to warrant a read. 

Tho maybe not buy the expensive hardback version? Borrow it from the library; that's the better option by far.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Bar Billiards (Bookhounds)

 

Video sourced from Michael Chartres

My father has a bar billiards table. He got his from an American family. The old fella had been big in Hollywood back in the day and had worked on several films set in England; I believe American Werewolf in London was one of them. He picked up the bug for the game while he was in the UK and, as he had the money, he brought a table to his Bermuda home. However, all things pass and so did he, and the family wasn't interested in lugging what is quite a heavy object back to [wherever they may have been then]. So we picked it up. 

The big thing to bear in mind, as Wikipedia helpfully reminds us, is that:

The play is time-limited. A coin will usually give around 17 minutes of play, dependent on region. After this time a bar drops inside the table stopping any potted balls from returning, leading to a steady decrease in the number of balls in play. The last ball can only be potted into either the 100 or 200 hole having been played off either side cushion. 

Which lends itself to pub play and is probably why the coin slot was invented in the first place. You can't be at the table all day. Someone else has to have a go. 

The table we have used to have a coin slot but someone deactivated it at some stage, presumably because it became too much of a faff to find old British coinage. Even if you can open up the slot and get it back again, at some point someone will lose your only two-half-groat-a-billibong, and then the table's shot. 

The game is practically built for gambling. You bet on whether or not the player will make the shot, you bet on who will win, you bet on how much by, you bet on any number of things. 

Which is interesting, because Bookhounds doesn't include a gambling mechanic. Never mind the Thrilling mechanic that Night's Black Agents uses. More than that, the game (in its current form) is new in the 1930s, which means all those pubs the Hounds go to probably have a bar billiards table. It's the modern fashion. The coming thing.

In Millionaire's Special I faced the same problem with Trail, and I'm going to adapt that solution to this problem as follows:

1. Use Athletics as the General ability if you're playing honestly and Filch if you're cheating.
2. If plot does not depend on the outcome of the game, then whoever has the highest Athletics or Filch wins.
3. If plot matters, then use dice. It can either be a lengthy competition (mechanically, like an Auction scene) or a one-roll game, depending on how important the result is.

With an additional rule if there are books involved:

1. If this game is determinative in an Auction, for whatever reason, then Auction can be used in addition to Athletics or Filch.

What do I mean by that? Well, this is gambling. I can foresee times when a book scout might want to wager, say, some nice 18th century German pamphlets on vampirism on the outcome of the match. That makes the match a species of Auction, which is what the Auction ability is all about. When someone wants to spend from the Auction pool they do that instead of spending Athletics or Filch.

Why do it this way? Well, as Storage Wars reminds us, an auction isn't about meekly standing in a row making bids. It's about showmanship, finagling, angling for an advantage, screwing over the competition. Sounds a lot like a game of chance to me. But as a mechanic it's only worth using if there's a book as the prize. The game is Bookhounds of London, after all, not Poolhounds. 

All that said, let's talk about a scenario seed. To do that, I'm going to set this in a location I've discussed before: The Three Bucks pub. 

This elaborate Edwardian building resembles an Italian palace gone slightly awry, complete with statues of saints and a copper-clad cupola roof. It was built on the site of an old Georgian traveler's inn, as a speculative venture by Gregory Harris in 1908 ... [the pub is haunted by a spirit] obsessed with blood and violence, particularly cutting ... 

Snookered

Book Scout Allan Chessover (main text p85) is known to be a billiards fiend, and the Three Bucks has installed a new table. He’s there every Thursday night without fail, for a round or two with the lads.

The Three Bucks has an unusual reputation as it stands, but ever since the table came in the rumors have been flying thick and fast. People see lights where there oughtn’t be lights, hear the sound of billiard balls clicking when there cannot be players. Not least because Paddy Green and his sons don’t let anyone on the premises after midnight, not for any reason or for any inducement.

The Hounds want something from Chessover. It doesn’t matter what that something is, but for the sake of this example it’s a lead on a book they desperately want to acquire.

Right-o, says Chessover. I’ll do that little thing. If, and only if, you beat me at bar billiards at the Three Bucks. After midnight.

Option One: Action Room. It’s all a bluff. Chessover has no intention of showing up at the Three Bucks, whether after midnight or at any other time. He pays a group of Rough Lads to attend in his stead. The Rough Lads having a sense of humor, they propose a little game of their own: play billiards, and every ball you pot is a bone I don’t break. Miss the pot … well … What none of them appreciate is that the restless spirit of Gregory Harris, the pub’s former owner, will want in on the fun.

Option Two: Dirty Pool. Chessover has his own troubles. He’s been on a losing streak for weeks and is deep in the hole, financially. He owes a remarkable sum to the ghost hunters who frequent the Three Bucks looking for Captain Kidd’s revenant; one of them is a talented billiards player. The ghost hunters have been wanting to visit the Three Bucks after midnight for ages. Chessover can sneak them in but doesn’t want to be blamed for letting them in. Not if he can rig it so the Hounds get blamed instead …

Option Three: Silent Partner. Mike Green, Paddy’s eldest son and a fellow who never wastes a penny, lets a select group into the Three Bucks after hours to play the billiards table. Chessover is one of the lucky few. If Paddy knew about this he’d be furious. There’s just one odd little stipulation. Rather than pay cash for the table, you have to put a few drops of blood down the coin slot instead. Otherwise the table seems normal … just don’t go looking too long at any of the shadows …

That's it for this week. Enjoy!