Posts tagged Andrew Hooks

A Certain Tendency in Investigative Horror Scenario Design

RPG Life RPG Campaigns

So…remember that last blog post, in which I threw aspersions and praise on Arc Dream? (Me neither, but let’s pretend!) It occurs to me that my entire take on the published investigative horror scenario might seem negative. It’s one thing to go poking at scenarios in hopes of exposing their decrepit foundations. It’s something else altogether to have anything constructive to say about what you discover.

Here is a hypothesis: the more complex a mystery is, the more simply it must be laid out for anyone other than its contriver to understand it. And yet, the tradition of classic Cthulhu-type scenarios is baroque on every level, especially in the presentation of information. It’s probably got something to do with all the flapper girls, Model T’s and other Roaring 20s semantic elements that Chaosium used to colonize our consciousness. Cthulhu games often feel like they are shooting for qualities like excess and decadence. (In fact, I’m half-tempted to get into another lecture about why investigative scenarios so disproportionately seem to happen to rich, stylish characters…certainly not to anyone who’s truly poor—unless you’re playing Cthulhu Dark or something like that—and let’s face it, not enough of you are.)

Everything in mainstream investigative horror scenarios is rich and overstuffed, especially the copy! Content may be limited by all important trigger warnings, but few ideas, characters, or words are—even extra letters are left in…outside of investigative horror scenario writers, wtf says “amongst?” (If you just indignantly said “I do!” but don’t write horror scenarios, then may I suggest that you have just found your true calling.)

Most investigative horror scenarios seem to proceed from a notion that mystery is equivalent to complexity. In terms of a good, solid investigative scenario, I would, in fact, argue for simplicity since, the GM and players will certainly complicate any mystery just by playing through it. So there’s often little justification for lengthy NPC bios, elaborate bits of cosmic lore that have no chance of coming up, or dense descriptions of places the PCs may never visit. I think that most of these ideas about mystery and complexity are derived from mystery fiction, wherein the Twist is often the thing, (just ask Chubby Checker) and the accrual of narrative material adds gravity and an air of unpredictability to the mystery.

But the GM who bought your scenario wasn’t shelling out for a collection of your short stories. They’re shelling out for a scenario that they can run at their table, and to expect them to do a lot of work to translate your short story into an RPG scenario isn’t necessarily unconscionable, but, well, I think you should feel pretty bad about it.

If I sound like I’m being that one asshole in your novel writing workshop, I apologize—because the writing is not the only thing about these scenarios that is overly busy. The graphic design often lines right up, with redundant sidebars, stat blocks, and props. The unfortunately predominant state of mind seems to be: this scenario is good, therefore it can’t be short.

As a GM, I want my scenario to be short, but deep. Give me a good clear summary of a situation and some evocative possibilities about where it might go. If you sketch it well, the GM will gratefully unroll your scenario in front of their players, and then, it is likely that everyone will have fun. But here’s the thing, in my opinion: sketch. Leave room for all of it to breathe— the players, scenario, and especially the poor GM who shelled out for your work. Your name will be sung gratefully in these parts!

As to what that sketching might look like…well, I‘ll try to get to that soon, but I am pretty certain that it will involve a magical concept known as bullet points…

The La Brea Tar Pit of Investigative Horror Scenario Design

RPG Life 1 Comment

I thought it would be a real fun idea to run the 96-page Delta Green scenario Jack Frost at a local bar. So I set out to prep it for about 3 weeks. To be blunt, it was a  headache. I run this kind of mystery/horror scenario quite frequently, but have gotten out of the habit a bit just recently. Jack Frost is an excellent reminder of why I got tired of prepping these things. First of all, working with a scenario like Jack Frost feels more like excavation than preparation. The story concepts are very compelling, and if you focus on them in isolation, then you may find yourself pedal to the metal, making arrangements to get some players, print out sheafs of props and cheat sheets and whatnot—most of which are thoughtfully provided by Arc Dream Publishing—and get that monster rolling at your table. 

And it is a monster—make no mistake. In fact there are several of them, ranging from predatory reanimated animals to the the most lethal of men in black. It all ends in a show-stopping full blown manifestation of the Great Old One, Ithaqua, the Walker on the Winds, that is beautifully set up throughout the scenario, so that when it lands, it is with dreadful impact. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s the best full blown confrontation with Ithaqua I have seen in an RPG scenario.

That said, remember my reference to excavation above? Here is the problem with Jack Frost, from my very practical perspective: in order to have the scenario ready to actually run, I had to first perform an autopsy on it. Not just read it and take notes and prepare a cheat sheet or two—I had to scoop out its narrative innards and then set them aside from loads of what I felt was superfluous data about mission command structure, and folkloric background material that was so anonymous as to be irrelevant. Given the volume of material, it was hard not to become impatient. I briefly considered chucking most of it, and just suturing the good parts into my own unrelated scenario, but so much time had been invested in Jack Frost already—and, as I said, the basic concepts are so good that I hated to let any of them go. So I waded through badly presented story elements, with far too many sidebars interrupting blocks of text. I flipped pages and fumbled about trying to follow the line of text I was reading, and just made due. (By the way, I bought print and PDF, and found the print scenario easier to deal with, but only just barely.)

So my verdict for Jack Frost is 5 stars for imagery, set pieces, and concepts (including some fantastically researched scientific material); 1 star for layout, organization, and textual restraint. It is an amazing scenario, but I can’t recommend it. I have powerful feelings about it…I am inspired. At the same time, it reminds me why I am sick of the standards of organization and presentation in published investigative scenarios. It’s time for somebody to just really take a blow torch to the whole form. Maybe if we melt and reshape it enough, it can evolve out of the 1990s and into something that feels less like a sloppy short story and more like a playable RPG scenario. In the meantime, I am going to think twice before I shell out for another scenario that’s going to take me weeks to process—not because of the scope of the ideas therein, but because there are such low standards for the editing and presentation of scenarios.

ON COGNITIVE DISSONANCE WHEN GMING IN VOLUME

RPG Life Tips

For several years now, I have run at least two weekly TTRPG sessions. I tend to mix up systems and settings a great deal, while coming back to  some games out of preference, convenience or some combination thereof. I consider myself lucky, because I’m generally able to run whatever I want without worrying about getting a table full of players, and I’ve tried to take advantage of this luck to explore as much as possible. That said, you can become a victim of your own ambition when GMing, just as you can in anything else. As a matter of fact, GMing has many, many pitfalls—many ways for your hubris, lack of self-awareness, curiosity, etc. to take you down—and I ran up against one of these this week.

My desk where I prep the games I'm GMing

Everybody likes Mörk Borg, right? That’s a rhetorical question. I’m aware that there are people who do not, but my impression is that almost everyone would at least extend grudging respect toward Mörk Borg. I will go on record as being an enthusiast. I consider it a guilty pleasure, but in the context of TTRPGs, there’s almost nothing but—whatever else you may aspire into in this arena, you gotta acknowledge that games are games. So Mörk Borg is fun. Sure, it places style so far above substance that it can get nearly impossible to orient yourself—if you’re using the default setting or one of the more veritable hacks. But it is clean and practical enough to knock out a very fun gaming session in a way that feels almost effortless.

And yet, however elegant Mörk Borg may be as a game engine, a diet of nothing but can leave you feeling sluggish and slow when you return to other games. No matter how many times you’ve run, say, PbtA games, you may still find yourself fumbling about, if you are returning to them after a week and three straight sessions of Mörk Borg—which is exactly the situation I found myself in this week. I returned to a recently established Masks game, after two weeks off, and found the game to be alarmingly blurry. Whenever a ruling materialized, my responses ranged from just adequate to fumbling. Fortunately, I had a table of players who were patient. When I got lost in my cheat sheets, once out twice, they helpfully steered me in the right direction. I was a bit embarrassed, and it isn’t how you generally want a session of GMing to go, but everyone was cool about it. And the story, at least, I had a solid grasp on, and overall, everyone seemed to have a lot of fun.

By the way, I would give the Masks core rule book some credit for game’s narrative flow, which is probably something worth talking about in the future—the value of games that present you with a solid approach. Rules are nice, but without some thought about how to apply them, it doesn’t really matter how perfect they are. Games don’t run or play themselves.

Anyway, if I may offer some wholly unsolicited advice to whoever would care to take it in: take a few days off between intense run-throughs of different systems, if you can. Then take a solid session of prep to re-read some rules. Otherwise, while you’re trying to fall asleep and escape memories of the day’s humiliations, the spirits of NPCs Past will come back to laugh at you!

Assembling the Super Team!

RPG Life RPG Campaigns 1 Comment

In Masks, the players take the part of young superheroes, generally 16-20 years old. By default, you all live in Halcyon City, a metropolis that has been living with superheroes and villains since the 1940s, along with the various peculiar occult, futuristic, and just plain bizarre things that go along with a tradition of super heroism/ villainy.

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New Year, New Blog Posts…

RPG Life News

I plan on updating my blog more frequently in the upcoming year. I thought it might be useful, to anyone who stops in and reads, to know what I do and how I do it. My intention is to offer a sketch of how I come into each game I run, and then a reflection about how the game actually plays out—a sort of “Before/After” snapshot. I thought my reflections might be useful, or at least distracting, for some of you who know me. This here will be the longest entry that I will make. (I promise!) But I feel like I need to provide some context before I move forward.

So I am a GM, first and foremost. I aspire to other things—mostly to do with game design—but at the moment, GMing is mostly where it’s at. By almost any standard, I GM in high volume, which is to say I average two games a week, but sometimes end up doing up to five games, and these games run the gamut from storytelling games like, say, Dialect, (which, I know, is GMless, but come on…) to traditional RPGs like everyone’s favorite (haha sort of) Mörk Borg. I have run Bluebeard’s Bride, Hypertellurians, Dread, Better Angels, the Everything of Cthulhu, and, of course, The World’s Most Cough Cough Speak Not Its Name…

I have run a lot personal games at my house, in which the players and I have gone all over the place, doing all sorts of things, and that overall experience has been amazing. I’ve also run a lot of public/gig-type games and learned to appreciate the shotgun wedding nature of a good, random one-shot. I like to think that the time I’ve put in has granted me a certain amount of patience and, maybe, insight—not so much because I’m the brightest bulb in the box. More to the point, if you practice as much as I have—eventually something useful takes hold.

I also like to think that all of this GMing hasn’t dulled my passion for the whole experience—even if, at times, it’s led me to become a little more pragmatic. TTRPGs are awesome, to my way of thinking. They can be a frontier of consciousness, where you are whatever you want to be and/or catch glimpses of who or what you could be. They are also a habit that can lead to aberrant and antisocial behavior—oh yeah, and they’re a bankable, if somewhat picayune, industry.

I’m a cog in this wheel, but who cares? I’m looking forward to the games I currently have lined up for 2023. If nothing else, my friends and I enjoy them, so I thought it might be worth telling you about them, from the GM’s perspective. So next time around, I’ll describe my upcoming mini-campaign of the super-hero game Masks, which will kick off the year for my public group. I’m really looking forward to it. I am mostly a guileless person, and I’ll tell you upfront that I’m amped about this game, because it is about being young and figuring things out. It seems like a great place to start a new year. I’ll let you know what my setup is sometime soon. Then, if you’re still reading, I’ll tell you how things go, somewhere down the line.

Meanwhile, Happy New Year!

New Year
My game wall from mid-pandemic…about the only thing I miss about running my games online

Eternal Lies – Session 25

Uncategorized RPG Life

JANUARY 1, 1935, TUESDAY: Amid the bloody chaos at the Mercy Hill Mental Institution, the Investigators convinced their former guide ABAI to travel to London. Once there, he would wait for them to get him out of the country. James “Tick Tock” Cohan expressed hope for and disappointment in Abai.

At the hotel, Dorothy perused the comic she purchased at Yellowtree Books and was drawn into a state of heightened arousal. Chantelle Perreault kept watch over Dorothy, while Luke Davis and James meditated in their room. In the morning, the group met PROFESSOR ORWELL SANGSTER at Brichester University. They headed into the countryside to find Deepfall Lake, the center of a dense body of local legend. The lake was lined with trees, and on one side, six houses stood. These were built in the 18th century by the followers of a strange pastor named THOMAS LEE. They came seeking something called GLA’AKI, which they venerated, but they soon disappeared. The houses were also the site of a series of disappearances happened in the area in the 1890s, and the houses have been abandoned ever since. Their last owner, GILBERT CELESTE, was accused of murdering the missing people. He was dubbed “The Ripper of the Lake,” and was executed in 1893.

As they approached, Sangster lectured them about the history of the area. He and James parked the car up the road from the houses and kept watch, as the party had noted strange, human-shaped forms moving in the trees across the lake. James noticed the water stirring and smelled a terrible odor coming from the lake. Beneath its surface, he saw the outlines of strange buildings, but these disappeared. Later, a large eye stalk emerged from the water to look at him. The human-shaped figures moved closer. One of them appeared to be missing archaeologist HUSAIN SOLIMAN still strangely transformed.Orwell Sangster fired his gun at Soliman, who appeared to catch a bullet and flick it aside. Soliman told them to leave.

Meanwhile, Dorothy, Luke, and Chantelle went about exploring the derelict houses. Aside from dust and an air of abandonment, they found a scrap of paper wedged between some floorboards. It mentioned “the green decay” and warned its reader to leave. The group also found the remnants of a base camp, probably belong to the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities. It appeared that a scene of violence had occurred, leaving an outer wall and one of the bedrooms badly damaged. Strange writing lined the walls and stairs. Words had been spread around in a strange green and silver medium: THEY HAVE STOLEN THE BOOKS LAUGHTON SAW THE HELIX TRUTH. In another house, new furnishings had been installed, but peculiarly organized. A neatly made bed was in the kitchen, while an unplugged refrigerator with rotting food rested in a bath tub.

Hearing gunshots, Dorothy, Luke, and Chantelle emerged to find Sangster and James engaged with Soliman and the other strange forms. Terrified, the group got to their car and fled. Suddenly they found themselves driving in a different area, near Brichester and several miles away from Deepfall Lake.

Eternal Lies – The Alexandrian Remix

https://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/eternal-lies/

Eternal Lies – Session 24

RPG Life

DECEMBER 31, 1934, MONDAY: The Investigators returned to Brichester University to meet PROFESSOR ORWELL SANGSTER of the Classical Languages Department. As an expert in the ancient Roman presence in the area, Sangster is also an authority concerning local folklore. He described the Severn Valley as a nexus of sorts for bizarre pagan beliefs and noted.

Sangster also confirmed that archaeologist HUSAIN SOLIMAN had questioned him concerning several locally mythologized landmarks, among them remote, wooded Deepfall Lake. The Investigators believe this is the lake which appeared in the dream of Chantelle Perreault and in warnings they received at Mercy Hill Institution for the Mentally Disturbed. A 18th century cult believed it to be a site of significance to the entity known as GLA’AKI. It is a godlike being that may be related to the 1924 ritual that took the life of VINCE STACK and possibly the mind or soul of WALTER WINSTON. Sangster agreed to travel with the Investigators to Deepfall Lake on New Years Day.

The Investigators returned to Mercy Hill in hopes of speaking with ABAI, their guide from Axum. He had been traveling with Hussain Soliman, and they were hoping to question him about the recent activities of the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities, the mysterious organization they crossed paths with in Axum. The Investigators suspect these activities are linked to whatever has caused Abai to be institutionalized and has led to the transformation of Soliman into the strange mossy figure they have seen following them in both their dreams and waking lives.

On arrival, the Investigators found Mercy Hill in a state of chaos. Terrified staff members told them that a madman was running loose with a knife. Several corpses lay in the halls of the asylum. They had been stabbed repeatedly. The Investigators eventually found Abai and convinced him to hand over his knife. Before he gave it up, he cut the corners of his mouth open with its tip.

Eternal Lies – The Alexandrian Remix

https://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/eternal-lies/

Eternal Lies – Session 23

RPG Life

DECEMBER 30, 1934, SUNDAY: While visiting the small English city of Brichester, the Investigators received a letter from a woman they’d never met named TRICIA PIPER. In it, she claimed to have psychically glimpsed them. She referred to dangers around them and asked them to come visit her so that she might speak more clearly to them. The Investigators went to find Tricia at her address—a room at the Mercy Hill Mental Institution. The desk staff were not surprised by the Investigators’ arrival. Tricia had said they would be arrive that day.

Ward Attendant TOBY WEAVER escorted the Investigators through the pale green linoleum halls of Mercy Hill’s “new building.” Tricia was waiting for them inter private room. She was a young, pretty woman, serious and preoccupied. She spoke of an intelligence that was using her to communicate with the world. She said it had led her to write down a part of its living testament, but she said that another powerful intelligence was attempting to mislead her. She spoke of how its feral hunger had obscured the hard, clear voice she had heard perviously. She warned the Investigators about the dangers of “the lake.” The Investigators believed that she was most likely referring to Deepfall Lake—a local landmark known to be of interest to the archaeologist HUSAIN SOLIMAN and the EMPORIUM OF BANGKOK ANTIQUITIES, the shadowy institution for which he works. The lake is also rumored to be home to the mythic, inhuman entity known as GLA’AKI. (Presumably related to The Prisoner of Gla’aki—a mysterious force the Investigators have tracked since their stay in Los Angeles.)

The conversation with Tricia was cut short when the injury on James “Tick Tock” Cohan’s finger opened up, revealing a small mouth. The mouth shouted threats and obscenities at Tricia. James and Chantelle Perreault left the room, so Dorothy Howard and Luke Davis could continue the interview, but not much more information was forthcoming. In the hall, James was not himself. His finger was now silent, and to Chantelle, he appeared badly shaken, but otherwise stable. Inwardly, the stress of the last month, combined with the intimate, inexplicable horror he had just experienced, and he seemed, briefly, to lose himself.

Toby Weaver took the Investigators to meet a couple of inmates in the old building as well—one American and one Abyssinian. Both had been committed under strange circumstances. The American was an older, Black woman from Louisiana. Half her hand had been raggedly torn off, and she claimed to be writing a volume under the direction of Gla’aki as well. She expressed contempt for Tricia Piper and warned the Investigators of the dangers seen to be found at the lake. The Abyssinian turned out to be ABAI, the guide the Investigators had hired to take them to Axum. He appealed to James to save him from dark forces, which he said had attacked himself and his employers, members of The Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities.

Eternal Lies – The Alexandrian Remix

https://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/eternal-lies/

Eternal Lies – Session 21-22

RPG Life

This one covers 2 sessions…investigating is slow work and I’m trying to catch up!

EARLY DECEMBER, 1934: The Investigators decided to leave New York and travel to an area in England called the Severn Valley. They were following leads drawn from their experiences in Ethiopia, including references to an obscure occult text called Revelations of Gla’aki. Spanish archaeologist BARTOLO ACUÑA had said that he’d learned where to dig in Ethiopia by poring over the Revelations. The Investigators were also aware that Oxford educated archaeologist HUSSAIN SOLIMAN was rumored to be traveling to the Severn Valley with the mysterious Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities.

Before they departed, they tended to some other affairs. Chantelle Perreault met with her mother DELPHINE, who’d (perversely?) chosen the Christmas holidays as a time to visit New York. Concerned with the effects that the Nectar trade was having on Murder, Incorporated, James “Tick Tock” Cohan introduced some of his friends to the ascetic meditation techniques he learned from MUHOHO while in Ethiopia.

In hopes of resolving their recent argument, Luke Davis went to meet with his mentor RICHARD NEWMANN at the professor’s Miskatonic University office. Newmann was behaving strangely, and seemed especially agitated by Luke’s associations with Soliman, Acuña, and missing archaeologist GEORGE AYERS. (The latter being a cultist who evaded the 1924 Los Angeles massacre by luck.) Newmann attacked Luke, who escaped unharmed and headed back to New York.

Luke and Dorothy Howard consulted the strange and obscene waterlogged tome that had been given to them at the airport. Once again, their immersion into the outré led Luke and Dorothy to have sex. While Luke felt his knowledge of obscure matters deepen, Dorothy found herself feeling empty and alienated after the sex.

The group departed aboard the Silver Sable for London and then made preparations to travel to the Severn Valley, known to be an area haunted by legends, folktales, and strange occurrences—not to mention an 18th century cult, which worshipped the pagan god Gla’a’ki. When consulting maps of the area, Dorothy noticed that, based on established physical scale and distances, the constituent areas of the Severn Valley could not possibly fit within its geographic confines. She was unable to completely fathom what this might mean, outside of a possible distortion of space and/ or time. None of her companions seemed to understand what was troubling her. To them, there appeared to be no discrepancy.

The Investigators drove through increasingly sullen countryside to the city of Brichester, which lies at the epicenter of the myths and tales that concern the Severn Valley. Also, the university library there is known to be improbably well-stocked with strange texts. It was rumored to hold the original handwritten text of the Revelations of Gla’aki.

No Christmas tree lighting ceremony for our investigators this year

DECEMBER 29, 1934: The Investigators checked into Hotel Victoria, located in Victoria’s sprawl, the red bricked center of the city. They noticed a strange man watching them in the streets, but he disappeared with seemingly unnatural speed. Overnight, Dorothy tried to fathom her strange intuitions about the area by making some sketches. She fell into a trance state, during which she involuntarily scrawled an ominous “message,” apparently channeled by another consciousness.

DECEMBER 30, 1934: The group made its way to nearby Brichester University, easily discerned by its dirty white stone buildings. While Chantelle, Dorothy, and Luke visited the University library, James stopped at the chapel. Despite the fact that it was Sunday, he found an old, cramped space, with only a few parishioners and an apathetic priest. James noticed a dirty hymnal in the back of one of the pews. It appeared to have been amended by hand and was stained with a translucent resin. The pages cut his already mangled finger and ultimately led the opening on it to open, as a mouth might. It seemed to whisper. James took the hymnal with him and fled.

At the library, Luke, Dorothy, and Chantelle delved deeper into the lore of the Severn Valley. They also investigated the whereabouts of the original texts of the Revelations of Gla’aki, which they discovered, were stolen in 1930—possibly by a former faculty member named Arnold Hird. The Investigators also learned that the local shop Yellowtree Books is known to have sold printed editions of the book.

The Investigators found references to several other locations—a partial list of which includes Deepfall Lake, which lies in a wooded area nearby, and was the possible location of the 18th century cult’s activities; the Church in High Street in nearby Temphill, where it’s said a rogue group of Knights Templar settled, and possibly formed a cult, after the Crusades; and the Isle Beyond Severnford, a small scrap of land, nearby, in the Severn River, where it is said that the Knights and/or druidic cults worshipped. The head librarian suggested that they consult with University professor ORWELL SANGSTER, an expert in local myth and history.

Dorothy flirted with a librarian, who invited her to have sex. They went to the librarian’s house. The sex once again left Dorothy feeling empty. The librarian seemed to regard the encounter as utilitarian and suggested that Dorothy leave as soon as possible.

Luke and Chantelle left the library and encountered the same figure they’d noticed watching them before. They gave chase, with Luke falling behind. Chantelle managed to stop the figure for a moment and found that he was a strangely transformed Hussain Soliman. He was coated with a phosphorescent moss-like substance, and his cheeks were horribly sunken. Again, he proved extremely agile, managing to slip away into the alleys of Brichester.

The Investigators reunited at the hotel. Dorothy slept with the strange map she’d found some time ago, hoping for some insight. James and Luke both meditated. The Investigators received a letter from someone named TRICIA PIPER that referred to them all by name. She claimed to have foreseen their coming and to be concerned for them, as they were in danger. It requested theater presence at the nearby Mercy Hill Sanitarium.

Eternal Lies – The Alexandrian Remix

https://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/eternal-lies/