Dragonflight game highlights

Last weekend I went to a local gaming convention, Dragonflight. It was a ton of fun. Because of my work and sporadic volunteering, this was the first game convention I'd attended in something like 5 years where I was actually off-the-clock and free to sign up for a full event schedule. Man, it was nice. I played the following games, including quite a few that were new to me:

• Night's Black Agents - The first of 2 different NBA sessions I played in, each set in a non-typical era for this RPG. Usually, it's a game of burned superspies hunting vampires in the modern day. Instead, this scenario was set in 1870 in the Ottoman Empire, with everyone playing real-life historical figures instead of modern superspies. I played George Stoker, surgeon, officer, and younger brother of the author of Dracula. 
• The Captain is Dead - a brightly colored cooperative board game about everything going wrong on a space ship all at once. The game was really solid. I have some minor concerns about replayability because there are card decks where every card in the deck gets played every session of the game... but I'm still probably going to buy The Captain is Dead in a paycheck or two.
• Prime 20 - Tim Beach's ultra-streamlined version of the d20 system, GM'd by Tim Beach himself. He did something fun for character creation: we built Lego minifigs from a big bag of Lego parts, and then quickly stat-ed those minifigs in Prime 20 mechanics. The adventure was a rescue mission that evolved into diplomacy when we learned the "abducted" villager had actually eloped.
• Thanos Rising - The first of many pick-up games of this Marvel-themed cooperative dicefest that I played this week. OMG, I played so much Thanos Rising. Every hole in my event schedule was filled with a round of Thanos.
• Night's Black Agents - My second NBA session of the weekend. This one was set within 24 hours of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. We had a pretty cool chase/combat scene in a Berlin subway station.
• Cthulhu 7th - The new rules features in Cthulhu 7th Edition were enjoyable and meshed well with my gaming style and tastes. It seems like a more forgiving version of the game. That said, the GM had the Phobia Deck handy for when I found myself face-to-face with mind-bending horror. I drew the outburst of Violence card, and it colored the rest of the session. Pretty cool.
• Urchin - A recurring staple of my Dragonflight experience is the Saturday Midnight Urchin game. All those years when I was a volunteer or board member for Dragonflight, the midnight Urchin was the one game I'd make sure I always got to play. As is my tradition, I re-curred my favorite Urchin character, an outrageous over-the-top musician name Rory Wanker, who is forever chasing his (imaginary?) former glory in the music industry. I'm getting the band back together!
• Thanos Rising - So much Thanos Rising. Seriously, this game has no right being this good. It's a movie-tie-in by USAopoly that came out right after the movie did. That could have easily been a design disaster. How on earth did it end up being such a solid game? Shut up and hand me the dice.
• Dr Who: Time of the Daleks - This is a semi-cooperative dice game with some card and board game elements. It really nails the theme. If I had played it for the first time maybe half a year ago, I probably would have fallen in love with it. Unfortunately for the good Doctor, it's mechanics kind of scratch the same itch that Thanos does, but you can finish three games of Thanos in the duration of one Time of the Daleks, and Thanos is easier to teach to new players. Given all that, I just don't see myself buying Time of the Daleks.
• Gaslands - This game is everything I ever wanted Car Wars to be, but more elegant and much faster-paced. Our introductory death-race ended in a three-car-pile-up and massive explosion, in under and hour. I foresee myself buying and modding a bunch of Hot Wheels and Matchbox Cars in the near future.
• Thanos Rising - And we closed out the Con with another nail-biting Thanos struggle.

That was a fun weekend.

The Last GwenCon

Gwen Con X, the last Gwen Con ever, was this past weekend. After some troubles with a bus Friday night, Sarah and I were able to make it over there for 4 RPG scenarios and a couple short games of "Are You The Werewolf?" Overall, it was a great weekend, and I'd have been happy if any of these games had run twice as long as they did. All the games had some meaty in-character inter-party-conflict, with PCs arguing with one another in a way that echoed the bittersweet dissolution of our favorite Con. Happy to be there, saddened to go, there was a real sense of "let's go out with a bang" which manifested in some delightfully dysfunctional scenarios. Here's some highlights:

• We played in both of Tim Beach's lego games this year. Tim does these bizarre RPG mash-ups, with light rules so you can ham it up in-character. One of the games was a blend of several sci-fi franchises, with bits of Star Trek, BSG, Firefly, Terminator, Dr Who, and Galaxy Quest. The other was a "best of" game featuring characters and lego sets from the past 10 years of Tim's games at Gwen Con. Pretty crazy stuff, revolving around the love affair between Ash (from Evil Dead) and Catwoman (from DC Comics), while Dragons attacked Fort Legoredo and Zorro's horse played charades. In a lot of ways, Tim's games sum up the heart of Gwen Con for me, being scenarios you'll just never find anywhere else.
• For a more conventional RPG experience, I played Vampire: The Requiem for the first time. I've done lots of Masquerade in the past, but this was my first actual test of the "new" system. The rules are really a streamlined improvement over the older system, and it looks to be relatively easy to house-rule back in the setting elements of the previous edition that you might feel are missing. I took to it far better than I thought I would. Session was too short, but with solid character acting all around, and the most "personal horror" I'd seen in 10 years or so. My character nearly shot himself in the head, and three out of the 4 PCs really struggled with the beast within. The fourth quickly embraced that beast and became a real monster, which served as a great roleplaying foil for the other three.
• The academy award in the disfunctional party category was taken in a Cthulhu-meets-Cloverfield game that Michael Lee ran on Saturday night. It certainly wasn't a subtle scenario, and he really could have used a back-up character for the PC that died early, but it was a great game none the less. Two PCs were treasure-hunting archaeologists in it for the fame and glory, two were the Miskatonic University biologists who'd screwed them over, and two were the FBI agents investigating the other four. The scenario itself was short and sweet, and mainly just a pretense for the 6 players to bicker and threaten one another while a monster rampages in the background. You'd hate to have that conflict for a long-term game, but as a one-off it was a pretty clever device.
• The two games of "Are You A Werewolf?" were likewise short and faux-argument-laden, but extremely enjoyable as a result. One of them was the most ridiculous game of Werewolf ever, with literally zero normal townsfolk, and special identities for everyone.

A great send-off to the Con series that first caused my wife and I to move to Seattle. Saying "good bye" to dozens of "once a year friends" was hard, but in several cases it at least motivated us to finally exchange contact info and make some efforts towards seeing certain people more frequently.

We'll miss Gwen Con dearly, but at least it rode off into the sunset gracefully instead of burning out or imploding.

Tekeli-Li: fun, but muddled and sloppy

A couple weekends ago I played a card game called Tekeli-Li. It's a Cthulhu-themed card game. Or, at least, it's trying to be. And that's the problem for me, it's the Cthulhu theme, but applied really lightly, and without much skill. Had it been the same mechanics with no theme at all, I may have been happier. Had the scoring mechanics been less clunky, or had anything to do with what the cards represented, I'd have been a lot happier. As it was, it was fun, but it left scratching my head.

It's a trick-taking game, which means you already know roughly what the play style is like. I'll start with a brief analysis of the remaining mechanics. Most of the cards are worth zero points. A handful, however, are negative points. They range from (IIRC) -10 to -240. So you don't want to take any tricks. There's a few cards that do weird things, like cancel each other out, or make you round differently.

Oh right, rounding: at the end of each hand, you divide the negative points you took by 100, and round towards zero. You then get a number of tokens equal to the absolute value of that number. Tokens are bad, the winner is the person with the fewest tokens after a certain number of hands.

Why negative scoring? Why then take absolute value? Why divide by 100? Why have inconsistent rounding? They could have just printed the cards with 1/10th the value, and it would have affected nothing, but that's at least a mistake common to many games. The negative value is, I think, so that it feels like sanity in Call of Cthulhu and other Lovecraftian games - except you wouldn't then expect to start from 0 sanity, would you? And then this whole rounding thing - you round up towards zero, which is the same as rounding down after you take the absolute value, so it's good for you. Unless you have a particular card, which makes you instead round up, which is down, which is bad for you. Which is way more complicated than it needs to be, given that the card in question would be functionally identical if it were just -100 points. You'd get the exact same result in 9 hands out of 10, without having to change the way you round when you get a particular card.

It feels like a lot of superfluous and needless math, even if it's not terribly difficult. It's mainly just a hurdle to be jumped in trying to teach the game. If you went with positive points, with no rounding or absolute value nonsense, the game would be far easier to pick up and explain. Not to mention easier to spot-check people's totals if you thought someone had made a mistake or was cheating. I suppose I can accept, however, the idea that the unwarranted complexity is intentionally designed to make it all a tiny bit confusing, so it feels like a descent into madness.

Perhaps, then, it's intended to push the flavor and theme. Too bad the theme was applied so sloppily to rest of the game.

• The negative point cards depict various eldritch horrors, from Deep Ones up to Azathoth. That much makes sense. If I have a face-to-face with gnarly hotep, I expect to lose something from the exchange.
• The zero point cards are ordinary people. Construction workers, doctors, even little girls. Sure, you need these folks in any good Mythos tale, but they're not terribly exciting.
• Perhaps that's just right, given that they are zero points. But here's where the first bit of the flavor starts to fail. Tekeli-Li is the sound made by the horrible things in Antarctica in both Lovecraft and Poe. The characters depicted on the zero-point cards aren't wearing cold-weather gear, and don't have jobs that correspond to the characters in those stories. Neither are the monsters restricted to the denizens of the Mountains of Madness. If it was all Shoggoths and Old Ones, with human explorers and professors, the name of the game would make sense. Instead, it feels like the name was chosen because "it has something-or-other to do with Cthulhu". They're making a game ostensibly for Lovecraft fans, but show very little knowledge of the actual Lovecraft tales.
• Minor gripe: The cards are arranged into suits: red/fire, blue/water, black/earth, and white/air, with corresponding imagery in the margins. Any real student of Lovecraft will tell you that August Derleth's elemental associations for the various Great Old Ones was spurious, contradictory, and definitely not in H.P.'s original concepts. Why make that a major part of the game?
• The cards with special abilities are equally weird. The most common of these is doctors. If you play a doctor, it cancels the previous doctor. I guess that's getting a second opinion? Why should Azathoth be captured by 1 doctor, but not by 2? I can't quite grok what the card plays are supposed to represent.
• The Necronomicon appears on two cards. In Lovecraft's stories, it's a book that gets referenced a lot, but doesn't do much other than reveal horrible truths that you'd rather not know. So, I'd expect it to cost you some sanity just like the monsters, but perhaps less. Instead, if you have 1 copy of the Necronomicon in your score pile, it's zero points - as dangerous as a little girl or a construction worker. If you have both copies of Necronomicon, however, it's worth positive (good) points. We kept joking that the book of ultimate evil has a really uplifting surprise ending, which will make you feel all better if you just stick with it through the dense second half.
• But the strangest of the cards with special rules is the telephone. That's right, the telephone. It's the card that makes you round away from zero (so, down, but up when you're taking the absolute value, and so overall it's bad for you). I can think of one Lovecraft tale where the protagonist was worried about people eavesdropping on the "party line" that was the only phone line in Dunwich - so maybe that's it. Someone please explain to me why the telephone is as harmful as 10 Deep Ones, more ominous than the Necronomicon, and more random than Nyarlathotep.

It's like someone with a very casual and fleeting knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos (someone who'd read one or two Derleth stories, and maybe once played in a Call of Cthulhu one-shot) took the card game Hearts, obfuscated the scoring system with arbitrary mathematical functions that serve no purpose, stapled a Squid onto it, and said "I bet the fan boys will spend $14.95 on this!"

For the record: I could be talked into playing it again, but I certainly wouldn't spend money on it. It's a game that could use a major overhaul and revised second edition. Which is a shame, given the great artwork on the cards. The visuals of the game are the best part, slick and very professional.

Azathoth Upstairs, Cthulhu Downstairs

One of the other players in Fordyce Hall (a Cthulhu by Gaslight scenario I played in at Gwen Con) put up this lovely picture of me about to bash another PC's brains in. They put up a short video clip as well, and a brief Live Journal entry about it, too. Click here for their full coverage. Pretty sure that's the journal of a person named Erik, who was playing the character of the Housekeeper (or head Maid or head Cook or something along those lines - in charge of the female staff of the manor house in the game).

The big blur in the photo is me, suddenly swinging an imaginary shovel at Gwendolyn Kestrel, host of GwenCon. (In the background are Stan! and Sparky.) This image was prior to Gwen's reaction. She apparently wasn't expecting my bit of LARPing at the tabletop, and jumped. You would too if the crazy guy sitting next to you suddenly swung an imaginary shovel within a couple inches of your face. Sorry, Gwen!

The game was great fun - everybody's roleplaying was top-notch, with lots of accents and affectations, appropriate levels of in-party conflict and good humor. We were the servants of a nobleman who had just inherited some creepy old manor. It was our job to prepare the house for his arrival. It was Cthulhu, though, so only about half the staff escaped with their lives and sanity. I started the day by saving Gwen's character from an ice-cold demon-filled well, but by tea-time I'd had a full transformation. I went crazy, nearly killed Gwen's character, and ran off into the woods never to be seen again. One of the other PCs (played by Genevieve, not pictured above) ended up taking bad advice I gave her, and got captured or possessed by some powerful evil entity. All the PCs lost their jobs, at least.

My only misgiving about this very excellent and enjoyable scenario was that there was an awful lot packed in for a mere 4-hour block. By my count there were at least 7 supernatural fiends - a ghost in the manor house, a hob in cat form we managed to placate, a second hob that killed one of our horses, the clawed thing in the well, the tower-creatures that dragged off genevieve, the dark presence in the woods, and the thing at the center of the hedge maze. And I'm not sure if that list counts whatever it was that tried shoving Mary into the oven, or whatever reanimated the dead horse. The property was huge, as well, with carriage house, collapsed woodshed, hidden well, underground tunnels, hedgemaze, woods, free-standing tower, and a 3-wing 80+ bedroom manor house. Then there was a mystery about a suicide off the grounds, our surprise that the realtor wasn't awaiting us at the train station, and the fact the townsfolk wanted nothing to do with the manor. It was a pretty amazing example of highly-detailed verisimiltude-rich sandbox gaming, but there was no chance in heck of us accomplishing or unraveling anything. Luckily, it was Cthulhu, where resolution is more likely to involve madness and death than victory. Had we serious intentions toward the goal of solving or winning the scenario, it would have been way too much plot for the time.

Infallibility in Trail of Cthulhu

The other night, we wrapped up the second mystery/adventure of my Trail of Cthulhu campaign. This session exposed elements of the mechanical base of ToC's GUMSHOE System that I hadn't really noticed before. I knew that it was "impossible" to fail at an investigative task if you think to use your skills, but I hadn't really realized just how much power the players have in regards to combat mechanics. I guess I knew it in theory, but seeing this in action had more impact than I imagined. If anything, I would have imagined this to be a "bug", but I now think it's one of the coolest features of a system I'd already fallen in love with. (That said, this feature I'm raving about works best in the Pulp idiom, and would seem a lot less wonderful if I were trying to run a game within the hard-core Purist idiom.)

The adventure revolved around a fairly nasty monster that had, until recently, been human. There were several possible solutions / conclusions to the adventure. There was the firepower solution, the spellcasting solution, and the noble sacrifice solution - not to mention the very real possibility of failure and death.

Given the nature of the player character in question, Sarah decided the noble sacrifice was the best way to go. An Elephant Gun, a Tommy Gun, and a Tome containing the spell that summoned the critter were all available in the scenario, but she felt the character was most inclined to go the "I can save you" route, which was essentially a "bell the cat" scenario.

Thing is, neither of us realized that the noble sacrifice solution really didn't require a sacrifice. I'd previously established, during a spend of Cthulhu Mythos Lore, that there existed a magic amulet that would protect a person from becoming possessed by a particular entity. The amulet forces the entity out of our dimension, basically. An NPC casting a dangerous spell without that amulet had resulted in the creation of the monster in the first place. Therefore, putting the amulet on the monster should at least greatly weaken the monster. However, first you have to face down the beast, and get close enough to bell the cat.

Difficulties in Trail of Cthulhu range between 2 and 8, with hitting a target typically being a 3 or 4. I set the belling action at a 6, knowing that the monster would get at least one attack first. I was certain it was suicidal, but if the PC wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, she could. Wanting to keep a sense of mystery in the conflict (she was about to wrestle an inhuman monster, after all), I kept the difficulty secret. If she wanted to bell the cat, it'd take a leap of faith.

First, she sets up a safe haven, and invokes the once per session refresh of traits, returning her athletics pool to 7. Then lays an ambush of the monster. It shows up, and smells her. Having a higher action pool, it acts first. Being a big powerful monster, it rushes straight at her. The attack eats up her health points, not enough to knock her out, but enough to raise the difficulty of all the PCs actions by 1. Then she takes the very nasty Stability test for being attacked by a supernatural creature. This drops her into "Shaken" territory, which applies another +1 to the difficulty of all actions. Finally, it's the PCs turn - and the difficulty has risen to 8, on par with the most difficult of possible actions, and both her Health and Stability are in the negatives. It's all or nothing time, if she were to fail, she'd be dying in vain. So she spends all 7 athletics, which, unbeknownst to her is exactly the amount needed to succeed even on a roll of "1".

It was a beautiful thing to behold. Like a perfect moment out of the movies, the hero who faces down the Big Bad without dodging, and takes a serious wound without flinching, surviving out of pure willpower. Breathtakingly cinematic, yet with no fear that one bad roll would have undone it all. The PC lost a little Sanity in the process, and the contorted former-monster is irretrievably insane, but the player got exactly the win she deserved, and didn't have to die to get it. She had just enough points left in other skills to get out of the monsters path while the amulet did it's thing.

Afterwards, I just sat there going "wow, these mechanics are cool." I wish I could say I'd planned and carefully orchestrated this - but honestly, I'd been hoping she'd take the ritual sorcery solution. This sort of scene is how I'd always wanted Scion to work, but instead I get it in a Cthulhu game. Not sure what to think of that... other than "GUMSHOE rocks!"

Fourth-Dimensional Lifeforms

I just finished a big page on 4th-Dimensional Lifeforms over at ArcanaWiki, and I'm kind of proud of it. It took a little bit of library research, and a lot of brainstorming / extrapolating. I'm definitely going to have to work a 4th-dimensional monster into a game sometime soon, or maybe run a one-shot based on Flatland.

One reason why I did this reading and made the page was because Trail of Cthulhu mentions that the Titans / Great Old Ones may be higher-dimensional beings, and I wanted to know what implications that would have.

I'm putting the text of the ArcanaWiki page here, as a back-up. However, the formatting is a lot nicer over at ArcanaWiki, and the links will work there (whereas here, the links just look like random capitalization mid-sentence) so it's definitely the better place to peruse this. Go There Now. Thank you.

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Fourth-Dimensional Lifeform


This page is about creatures or intelligent beings native to the Fourth Dimension, particularly the spatial interpretation. Read that page too, as the basics it gives you on how the next dimension up works may prove helpful in explaining why the Fourth-Dimensional Lifeform can do what it can.

We Live In A Fishbowl. Let's hope the cat doesn't notice us.

That is to say, our three-dimensional universe occupies only a tiny sliver, infinitely thin, within the greater fourth-dimensional context. For the sake of this page (and the fun implications for gaming), we'll assume that there are life-forms that exist naturally in four-dimensions. We may be beneath their notice, thinner and less pesty than the tiniest ant in comparison to them. Or, they may turn their microscopes upon us, and mess with our reality. We may be more noticeable than we imagine as well, being as obvious to them as man-sized paper-thin silhouettes pressed between two mile-wide planes of glass would be to us.

So one day, they may take note and decide to intrude on our reality. If we're lucky, they may be smart and compassionate. Alternately, they might regard us the way a cat does a goldfish in a bowl.

Either way, by virtue of being fourth-dimensional, it's going to have some creepy powers over us.


SuperSenses

The fourth-dimensional lifeform has a better vantage point. At the very least, it can rotate around our little slice of reality in the same way a cat can maneuver around the outside of a fishbowl to get a better look at the helpless little swimmer. Now give that cat X-Ray Vision, and you'll begin to approximate the way in which a 4D critter will be able to spy on us. It can see around corners. It can look through walls. It can see what's in your belly. [1][3] [4]

Even if it's got no greater intelligence than a germ, it's likely to sense us before we detect it.

Out-Maneuvering

It has the ability to move via the fourth dimension, to step out of 3-D space, and then re-enter it somewhere else.

If there's a 4D thing coming after you, don't rely on walls or obstacles to protect you. You can run, but you can't hide, and you can't take shelter. Three-dimensional prey trying to flee from a fourth-dimensional predator is going to have a very hard time.

This isn't quite the same as Teleportation, but it may feel like it. It will have a few restrictions on the 4D movement that might save you:

• It won't be as fast as teleportation. It can pop in and out of our reality pretty quickly, but still has to move through the 4th Dimension to get to the vantage point from which it will step back into our reality. On open terrain, or sliding down an embankment, you'll be able to keep pace with it - unless it's also a speed-based predator back home, or has a fourth-dimensional motorcycle, or some similar speed boost.
• The main advantage it has is the ability to sidestep three-dimensional obstacles and hazards. While it wouldn't be able to materialize inside solid matter, but it would be able to step out of our reality, move beyond where a 3D wall is, then reenter our reality on the other side.
• If fourth-dimensional space is made up of infinite sheets of tightly-packed parallel 3D universes, then this movement may be slowed significantly. It may have to move through hundreds of parallel worlds to find one without the wall that you just "took shelter" behind. As it moves through these parallel worlds, it may become distracted or choose to dine on a parallel you instead of returning to our universe.
• If, on the other hand, 4D space is as empty as our 3D universe, then there may be a large void between us and the next nearest 3D world. in that case a shift out of our reality and back again is like leaning or sidestepping to it, much easier than using the door or climbing a cliff. It could choose to move 50 feet to the door, a foot through it, and then 50 feet back to where you are. But why not just lean an inch perpendicular to our plane, then a foot parallel to our plane, and an inch back perpendicular to just suddenly appear between you and the wall?

Should you try to stand your ground and fight it, it won't be easy. It has the ability to remove itself from the 3-D frame of reference. Probably pretty easy, as instinctive as a dodge. A bullet may be fast enough to hit it, but if it understands the significance of you drawing a gun, it'll just vanish and watch from outside our plane until you let your guard down. See Fair Escape.

There is some small chance that if you can get it into a freefall, it won't be able to move into or out of our reality. Maybe. Assuming the freefall extends to it's whole body, the majority of which will already be outside our reality. Not really the sort of thing you want to test by jumping out of an airplane without a parachute while a monster from beyond is chasing you.

Variable Size and Mass, possibly even Shape-Shifting

To us, the fourth dimensional being will have variable size, and thus variable mass. The 4D character won't perceive any change, it's just a matter of how much of it's body extends into the 3D frame of reference. There's a number of tricks this allows:

• By reaching just a couple limbs or digits into our reality, it may give the impression of being more than one creature. We see half a dozen wormlike creatures intruding into our reality, but they're actually just its fingers.
  
• What you're seeing, by the way, is just a 3D cross-section of the creatures body. Or maybe even a cross section of its' clothing. Depending on the size of the thing in the fourth dimension, it may be able to radically change it's appearance and coloration, which you'd perceive as a limited form of shapeshifting. It may or may not be aware of what is visible to you, depending on how clearly the boundaries of our three dimensional space are demarcated from its point of view.
• Assuming it's intelligent and has knowledge of its own anatomy, it can keep its vital organs outside our reality, making a critical hit impossible. Our weapons may pass right through it from our point of view, looking like a mighty cleave, while making only a shallow wound as far as the creature is concerned.
• It was pointed out that it can see inside us. It can probably reach inside us as well. It may get automatic critical hits.
• Even an unintelligent 4D beast might be lucky enough to have the metaphysical blubber to be Immune To Bullets, especially if it's body extends a great distance in the fourth spatial dimension.
• If tool-using, it may only extend weapons or probes into our reality. Especially if it hunts 3D prey, what we encounter might in truth be no more than the point of a spear or fishhook.
• Likewise, it can "shrink down" to an unnoticeable size (from our point of view) for stealth purposes. It may have enough energy to exert great force even when manifesting only a tiny presence in our reality. Or, it may be limited to only having the force derived from the portion of it's mass that is in our frame of reference. The GM has some flexibility here: either it gets tiny but is weakened (so it will choose to manifest as largely as is practical), or it has a tiny stealth mode (like pushing with just your fingertip) where it can pull all kinds of poltergeist nonsense.

Plucked from our own Dimensions.

The 4th Dimensional being may have the ability to yank us out of our frame of reference and out into the greater reality. This could yank us into parallel worlds, or just a big void outside our universe. An angry 4D Being might maroon us in a radically different environment. Our senses won't be adapted to it, and we'll have a hard time figuring out what we're looking at.

It may even throw things at us, knocking us out our frame of reference. Or it could anchor us, leaving us rooted between worlds or fixed in space. And what if it just exhales steadily into our 3D space? Can it blow us loose without ever setting foot in our reality? Can it scramble our organs with a trans-dimensional bronx cheer?

Let's say the 4D being is kind enough to put us back. There's still some ways this could mess you up.

• It can pluck people and things out of our dimensional plane, flip them, and put them back. If it did this to you, your left-right symmetry would be reversed. Your face would look just a little different ("Is that a new hairdo?"), your heart would now be on the right side of your chest, and your handedness would change.
  
• Whether or not the flipping of the right and left hemispheres of your brain has other effects is pretty much up to the GM. You could ignore it, or it could justify some major personality alterations.
• Rather than a full flip, it's possible it might be able to just tilt you out of sync with our reality. You'd be facing handicaps that were inversely related to the fourth dimensional beings advantages. You might be split between multiple worlds, each cross-section facing a different parallel reality.

Fun With Forces.

The fourth dimensional being may be able to bend or ignore various forces and properties of the natural world. It may resist gravity, electromagnetism, and/or the strong nuclear force or weak nuclear forces. For an explanation of why, see Riemann's Bookworms.

If light is is a fourth-dimensional vibration, then it's possible the 4D being might appear as if it were made of light, or it might emit light with every motion it makes. This would be consistent with theories that it takes a lot of energy to breach dimensions. While I mentioned the ease with which a 4D critter can move into and out of our reality, there is the high likelihood doing so will take enormous amounts of energy. It's 4th Dimensional nature may give it that power, or it could be an extreme effort for it to interact with our reality.

If light is instead cast from some higher dimension, or cast from a different source withing the 4th Dimension, then we can assume a 4D object will cast a 3D shadow over three-dimensional space. In fact one way scientists attempt to visualize 4D objects is by contemplating their 3D shadows.

Time Travel

Because of how vanishing and reappearing dodges 3D understanding of Causality, it may seem that the 4D creature is a Time Traveler, moving into the future when it's actually just stepping outside our reality. Relativity and Spacetime are full of weirdness like that.

It's also possible to have a creature that moves freely in the Temporal Dimension instead of (or in addition to) a spatial dimension. Such a creature would combine the advantages listed above with genuine Time Travel, for a truly superior foe that kills you before you're even aware of it.

One other notion involves parallel universes and branching time. Let's assume the model of temporal physics where every action or decision creates multiple parallel worlds, one for each possible outcome. The Fourth-Dimensional Lifeform may drift between them freely, and it's actions may create such alternate worlds. In fact, it may have an infinite food supply made up of a single person (or a specific animal) that it likes to eat. Each time it snatches up that meal, it creates another world just like that one, except where the favorite meal hasn't been taken yet. If you think about it, our world could be just the latest variation on another - one that's identical except it's version of you is now a missing persons report. Meanwhile, just out of phase with our reality, the thing that eats only you is napping. Should it awake and grow hungry, it will hunt and devour you. Doing so will create a new reality, where a duplicate you exists, who's read this paragraph, and laughed it off, and another world with a duplicate you who read this paragraph and started trying to figure out how to fight back against the fourth-dimensional horror. Which you do you want to be?


Psychological Impact

Trying to anticipate the actions of a fourth-dimensional foe will be mind-bogglingly difficult, testing the limits of even a battle-hardened warrior with a degree in astrophysics. It's enough to drive you batty. See Alien Geometries and Go Mad From The Revelation for more ideas on how unnerving it would be to be hunted by a time-traveling dimension-hopping Eldritch Abomination.

Always A Bigger Fish

For added fun, there may be Fifth Dimensional creatures that can do to the 4D beasty all the nasty things it can do to us.

Sources
Wikipedia on the Fourth Dimension
Wikipedia on Spacetime
Hyperspace by Michio Kaku
Flatland: A Romance Of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott
Some of the works of H. P. Lovecraft, in particular From Beyond, depict creatures that might be Fourth Dimensional

Since very few resources exist that give serious thought to what the ramifications would be of a 4th Dimensional predator, I've had to extrapolate a bit. I feel pretty confident that I didn't mess anything up, but I should mention that I don't have a degree in physics. The parts I extrapolated are mostly couched in terms like "it may be possible", or "if light works this way", so that I don't pass off my own conjectures as certainty or scientific theory. Things I've read as bonafide scientific theory are phrased (above) more like "it can" or "you can't", more definitive than my own speculation, even in cases of theoretical things that haven't been proven yet. In other words, if a scientist tells you something on this page is just wrong, be inclined to believe them over me. If they claim something is wrong that I foot-noted, it may be time for someone (me? you? them?) to read up on the subject. Luckily, Hyperspace and Flatland are both quite enjoyable reads as well as being highly informative.

The version on ArcanaWiki has citations embedded indicating which source contributed or corroborated which ideas.

Game and Story Use

• To make a Monster or Alien really creepy or, well, alien, make it fourth dimensional.
• In Trail of Cthulhu, it is suggested that the Eldritch Abominations, or at least the really nasty ones, are fourth (or higher) dimensional beings. Not all of Great Cthulhu is shaped like a cross between an octopus and a dragon, just the part of him that passes through three-dimensional space is. See also Alien Geometries.
• Shadow People might be the sentient shadows of greater 4-D creatures that look down upon our reality, but never enter it.
• Alien Greys might be 4th Dimensional. It could explain UFOs that vary in size or vanish suddenly. They'd be able to abduct you without a trace, and you'd be powerless to move against them. See We Live In A Petri-Dish.

Using Cthulhu Mythos (aka Mythos Lore to us Old Schoolers)

The cliff hanger I left off with in monday's session of Trail of Cthulhu was the realization that a monster was creeping up behind her, and she's got a long hard sprint back to the boat. On the plus side, the PC did spend Cthulhu Mythos to figure out what the monster was, which also clued her in to a possible weapon against it if she can just escape this encounter. It cost her 4 Stability and 1 Sanity to pull that clue out of Cthulhu's butt, and she hasn't even seen the monster yet. Which is creeping up behind her.

Prior to this session, I was a little dubious about the Investigative Ability called Cthulhu Mythos. It seemed to me like a cludge, a way for the Keeper to skip out on making a well-layered mystery with interwoven clues. I understood that some GMs might need that (he says, looking down his nose as if he himself never had a plot hole, deus ex machina, or mystery that was beyond the PCs ability to solve), but it struck me as cheap. Now I understand the real purpose of it, and I wish the rules had spelled it out just a tiny bit more clearly.

As the GM, you never want to set up your mystery so that PCs have to spend Cthulhu Mythos to put clues together - that'd be cruel and unfair since doing so saps their Stability pretty hard. Neither is it intended to let PCs skip doing legwork and jump ahead of the plot. Instead the Cthulhu Mythos spend exists solely as an escape valve for PCs, who have already jumped ahead of the plot by dumb luck or clever intuition.

Normal police procedures involve raids and arrests, but that's not always an option in Cthulhu. Cops just have to figure out whodunnit, then call in the cavalry. A Cthulhu investigator has to figure out whodunnit, whatdunnit, whether or not their weapons can hurt it, how to banish it without going crazy in the process. You're on their own, and you have to work fast - or else the world might end! Once you know whodunnit, there's a lot of motivation to confront them before they can grow any stronger (or summon something stronger). When you've figured out who the villain is earlier than the GM anticipated you would, you may no longer feel any need to track down seemingly unrelated clues. In Cthulhu, though, those unrelated clues are what usually hides the means to foil the the cultists plans, defeat the monster, etc.

If, in your rush to solve the mystery you've put yourself in dangerous proximity to some nasty thing without being properly prepared for it, Cthulhu Mythos is the emergency shut-off valve. Either it gives you the weapon you need, or suggests where you can find that weapon, or points back to the line of clues you skipped over that will eventually lead to that weapon, or it just hits your sanity enough that you faint and don't have to worry about the monster for the moment.

In other words, you don't spend Cthulhu Mythos because you aren't getting anywhere - you spend Cthullu Mythos because you got too far, too fast.

Don't Try This At Home

You know it's a good Cthulhu session when, 15 minutes after the session wrapped up, your wife takes great pains to specifically spell out, without prompting of any sort, that there's no chance of any amorous contact that night because she's way too creeped out.

The session in question had featured a sequence where her character went to great efforts securing her home from intrusion, only to discover that the crazed cultist / would-be rapist was already hiding in her bedroom. She fought him off (and eventually got to her gun and put two bullets in him), but I sure didn't make it easy, nor sanitary. The light mechanics of Trail of Cthulhu helped keep the battle narrative, and the scene really captured the feel of a horror film or urban legend. As I said, it made for a great Cthulhu session, and it was a worthy experiment in staging a scene. Mind-rending horrors from beyond time and space just aren't as horrifying as the threat of the fate worse than death.

Just the same, it's probably not something I should ever repeat. Also definitely a no-go if you don't know your players really damn well. Some players get very caught up in their characters being an extension of themselves - and it's really easy to misjudge where someone's comfort zone ends. Having explored it once, may advice is don't try this one at home, kids. Luckily, I knew exactly where to draw the line. That sofa gets cold and lonely at night. :)

2 out of 3 have climax

Heavy gaming week for me. Wednesday night I ran Trail of Cthulhu. Last night I played in a Savage Freeport game. Sunday I'll be running Deadlands.

Wednesday night's Trail of Cthulhu for my wife was mostly a wrap-up session. Campaign's not over, but that story arc was essentially post-climax. I'd been tempted to just jump ahead to the next story, but there was still some possibility for her to screw it up and let the bad guys off the hook (she didn't), so we kinda had to go through the motions. I kept it short, and freely dispensed with relevant facts in the few minor areas of inquiry she had to track down. Having effectively disarmed the villains, she was able to hand them off to the police without having to expose the authorities to any supernatural elements. Good moves on her part.

Thursday night's game I played in (at the weekly Game Feast) was a one-shot that turned into a two-shot due to getting started a little late. Pirates are fun, as is the notion of the Wizard-Lizard. Not much more to say on it till I see how it wraps up next Thursday.

Sunday's game is hard for me to predict. PC's are either posse-ing up with, ambushing, or getting ambushed by, the Big Bad. Way ahead of schedule, to their credit. But that makes getting the balance very tricky. Make him too weak, and it'll be cheap and anti-climactic... which might burn-out the campaign despite significant plot that will survive his defeat. Make him too buff, on the other hand, and they'll feel railroaded or ineffectual. The ideal scenario is probably PC success, at the cost of 20%-40% PC casualties. The plot would then continue into the city they're approaching, where the dead PCs could be replaced by new characters (provided they don't get "lucky" on Harrowed draws). There's a palpable tension for me as GM, as I can either bungle and implode the game, or make what follows far more interesting.

Deputize Yourself

The Trail of Cthulhu RPG has a two-page spread of advice for players, and my favorite bits are:

"the best way to fail is to become defensive and do nothing.... Instead, talk through the most obvious options, quickly pick the one that seems the most appealing, and then execute that plan. Will something horrible happen? Of course it will - it's a horror game! Something horrible will happen no matter what your plan is. "

and

"Passively playing the good citizen won't save you. You must carry the ball into the enemy's court, and part the dark veil of the unknown. A few moments of reluctance is understandable and realistic. More than that is boring."

Sound advice. Frequently, players get "analysis paralysis", or are so fearful of the consequences of action, that they just sit back and let the plot happen. In a game I'm running, at least, that's always a mistake.

Think of it this way. If the player does something, it's got at least three possibilities:

1. Paying off! It's the solution to all your troubles.
2. Ineffective! Despite your action, things keep on the same track.
3. Disastrous! Something bad happens, and you feel like it wouldn't have if you'd not done anything.

Now compare that to what will happen if you do nothing. In this case, there's only one possible outcome.

1. Disastrous! The Big Bad already has plans, and I guarantee you don't want them to happen.
   

Trust me, what I plan to do to your character is far worse than any complications you're likely to get yourself into by taking an action. A Big Bad with wimpy plans that can be survived by turtling or dragging your feet ain't a Big Bad at all. The main plot, left unaltered by player action, will always end in the worst possible situation.

An example drawn from Session 5 of my Trail of Cthulhu campaign. My wife (who previously would often over-analyze RPG situations) took the TOC advice, and Deputized herself in the most recent session. 4 NPCs were hauling stolen artifacts into a warehouse. So, armed with just a two-shot derringer and the "backup" of a 60-year-old NPC librarian, she stormed into a warehouse to face four individuals she suspected might be possessed by aliens or demons. It was a very tense scene, and nearly went south at one point, but by quick thinking (and quick acting) she recovered the truck full of artifacts, and got out without having to fire the second bullet.

Had she dithered and wimped out, even just to sneak back under cover of darkness, the world might have ended in the meantime. I mean, it is Cthulhu, and I have a track record.

Dreams In The Witch House

My Trail of Cthulhu game is chugging along full speed. We're four sessions in, and 3 of them have been fantastic (the initial session was a little wobbly). Last night, I had this lengthy dream about the campaign, just a dream about how much fun the campaign is. A dream about the excitement and energy of the campaign. It was one of the best dreams I've ever had, but words can't seem to do it justice.

It's weird that we're enjoying it so much, because Life is starting to imitate Art... in some fairly eerie and un-enjoyable ways...

• In one session, her investigation took my wife's PC to Arkham Asylum, where a rather creepy patient started stalking her, and had to be beat up and sedated by the orderlies.

A couple days later, in the real world, my wife was followed around the Hospital she works at by a guy just creepy enough that she ended up calling security.

It didn't stop there.

• In two of the sessions, there have been appearances (fleeting glimpses out of the corner of the eye) of The Black Man - an incarnation of Nyarlathotep with ebony skin but Anglo features, and dressed all in black from hat to cloven foot. When I'd described him, I'd added the detail that his eyes were extremely blood shot, as if the darkness were trying to occlude the only light color on his entire body. In one scene, I'd also described him not in the formless wizardly robes Lovecraft mentions, but in fashionable (but all black) attire for the period.
  

Yesterday, when she got home, she told me that she stood next to a man at the bus stop near her hospital that was dressed in all black, from black fedora and black suit coat on down. He was African American, with really rich dark skin, but she ended up not really examining his features beyond his eyes. He had clearly sustained some sort of recent eye trauma that was healing, as his eyes had virtually no whites and were almost entirely blood-colored. Once she noticed that, she took pains not to look at his face or feet.

If this were a horror DVD, we'd be at the point where the viewer shouts at his TV:

"Quit reading the creepy book, you idiots! It's not a source of clues to what's going on, it's what's causing your situation! Dumbass unbelievable characters - no one in the real world would keep poking at the bear like that..."

I'm pretty sure we're gonna keep playing Trail of Cthulhu, despite the way life keeps imitating the game, and the very in-genre implication that such parallels will only grow worse over time. I guess that means horror films aren't that unbelievable after all.

Theodore Gericault

I've name dropped Theodore Gericault in my Trail of Cthulhu campaign. Probably, it's just a verisimilitude-rich nugget of background flavor, but you never know. It came up that the recently murdered Mayor in my setting had previously purchased some unknown works by Gericault.

And yet, for no reason in particular, I wrote up a bit on Gericault over at Arcana Wiki.

Trail of Cthulhu Session Recap

Synopsis: The Trail of Cthulhu campaign I'm running is a one-player game. Sarah (my wife) is playing a newspaper reporter named Ginny Malone. She's the new girl working at the Arkham Gazette, circa 1935. Her primary Drive is curiousity, and her Pillars of Sanity include such things as her Journalistic Integrity, and the belief that "bad things don't happen to good people".

The emotional map of the second session went like this:

• Brief shock/creep-factor, quickly denied.
• Angry fight, with Ginny winning the debate through the use of low-down-dirty tactics.
• Minor frustration over bureaucratic hurdles and delays, solved by clever thinking.
• Encouragement and gains via reconnecting with an old friend. A chance to rest.
• Social ambush, off-kiltered to the defensive, and having to scramble to find a good cover story.
• Relief as an acceptible compromise is reached.
• Finally leading to more creepiness as she perused the ancient tome.

It was great fun going through the myriad forms of emotion for the session, and throwing dramatically different NPCs at her. Sarah responded in kind, putting a beautifully nuanced performance and some great key-turning moments. She was on fire last night, definitely some of her best gaming ever, and it provoked me to some great GMing, if I do say so myself.

The long form of the above:
Ginny Malone has an on-again-off-again tempestuous romance with a traveling perfume salesman named Charles. In game mechanics, Charles is one of her "Sources of Stability" meaning that comforting interactions with him can refresh her Stability pool. However, should he ever get tangled in the Mythos and killed or driven insane, it'll have some serious impact on her characters Stability and Sanity stats. This complicated relationship, and the fact that there were non-distracting mechanical reinforcements behind it, prompted the first of several really good scenes in our second session.

Backstory: In the first session, she'd been called by the Mayor, who offered her a scoop on a story he didn't want to talk about over the phone. They arranged a meeting over dinner, but the Mayor never showed. She got brave / curious enough to go check his house, and found his body. Curled up in a fetal position in the house was a man with amnesia, and a blood trail indicated this fellow had crawled from the scene of the Mayor's murder. Like any reporter would do, she called the police, and then snooped around and took photos while waiting for them to show up. Evidence she found indicated the Mayor lead a rather shocking secret life, which just confirmed her belief that good people don't wind up murdered.

The Mayor died clutching a journal, and that book was full of occult references and pornography. More disturbingly, it included a list of women's names, of which the only one that hadn't been crossed off yet was Ginny Malone (the PCs name). Needless to say, she removed the journal from the scene before the police arrived. The session concluded with her developing still and motion film taken from the site, and skimming the journal. The clues found there-in were deeply disturbing, and she'd compulsively cleaned her apartment (having failed a minor Stability roll) trying to shake it off. It was a neat little improv on Sarah's part.

Session Two started the next morning. She'd had creepy dreams involving the occult proceedings she'd seen on the film the Mayor had shot, and was awoken by a hand on her face. Turns out it was just Charles Harrington, her (currently ex-) boyfriend. Charles had the read the morning paper with her exclusive article about the Mayor's murder, and rushed over to check on her. She was upset that he must still have a key, and we immediately started exchanging verbal blows in-character.

In the middle of the argument, she notices that her carefully cleaned apartment is no longer so neatly organized. The 8mm projector is out again and reels of film are everywhere. She accuses Charles of snooping, and he insists it was like that when he arrived. "When'd you get into the Nickelodeon business, anyway?" Claims the Landlord had heard the sound of a projector running all night, like she'd been obsessively watching films. Implication being either someone else had broken in and watched the films without waking her, or she'd set the projector back up in her sleep. Either implication is kinda creepy, so she suggested Charles take her out to breakfast.

Sarah and I almost never fight - we're one of those sickeningly sweet couples that everybody else hates - but man did we have a blast pretending to be at each other's throats. The fight continued in Ginny and Charles car ride, and then round 2 at Velma's Diner, with us improvising old points of contention and things they'd done wrong before thier most recent break-up. She had an opportunity to reconcile, but at the risk of Charles becoming aware of this unspeakably bizarre occult mystery she was just starting to unravel. She chose to shelter him from it, but doing so made the fight that much more volatile, as she wouldn't explain her headspace or what she was so spooked by. Very much a soap-opera scene, obviously, not a common scene type for most RPGs. It was a lot of fun to play out thier fighting dirty while trying to keep a public face on it at the restaurant. Eventually, Charles storms out.

Now way too unnerved to go home, Ginny decides to go track down some other leads. She heads to Miskatonic University, to search the card catalog for anything referencing this Goddess named "Mormo" that was mentioned in the Mayor's journal - as understanding whether he'd been a harmless goof or a dangerous maniac would depend on what kind of cult he'd been tied up in. I wasn't expecting her to pursue that clue above various more-pressing ones, but as it turns out, I'd known that an old, half-burned manuscript on the subject was within the rare book room. It took some Library Use skill and minor social finagling, but she was able to get a dottering old professor to arrange a few hours with the manuscript if she came back later. There'd been a recent break-in at the rare book room, and a manuscript stolen, so the University staff was being very cautious now. Arranging to come back at 3:00 when there'd be an extra librarian available to control her access to the rare book room, she headed off on a diferent lead.

There'd been a dozen women on the list in the Mayor's journal, but only one (other than herself) that Ginny really knew: Rosina Tsura. Rosina had attended college at the same time as Ginny, they had taken a couple classes together and frequently gone to the same parties. Two months ago, Rosina invited Ginny to the grand opening of her new art gallery. Rosina had hoped Ginny would be writing a review for the paper, and Ginny had felt a little used. They exchanged only a few uncomfortable sentences at the Opening, and hadn't spoken since. This backstory was delivered as a semi-out-of-character synopsis, where Sarah was allowed to contribute details to their friendship and the events of the opening, as long as it ended with two months of not talking to each other.

Moving into the scene, Rosina was now very happy to see her, and very apologetic for her ill manners that fateful day two months back. She'd been unlucky in love, and the Opening wasn't going the way she'd wanted, etc. Many factors had contributed to her lack of patience at the time, but the Gallery was scraping by now, and she was willing to admit her part in the unfortunate conflict they'd had. This was, of course, designed to strongly contrast against the previous scenes where clues had been dangled just out of reach. Rosina was friendly, ammicable, and revealed a great deal of useful information of a non-sinister nature. After coffee and catching up, Ginny took photos of the gallery, and promised to write up a favorable review. She spent a couple valuable resource points making the article really good, so the Gallery would prosper - and I rewarded her with a two-point Dedicated Pool that could be used in future stories to call in favors and support from her dear friend Rosina. I think this lighter humanizing scene was really important to "selling" the session, and getting the character invested in the setting. Cthulhu can devour humanity any day he pleases, but that's only horrifying if there's at least a couple humans you kinda like.

It turns out, by the way, that Rosina had been involved in a wildfire secret romance with the Mayor for about a month. In that time, he'd plyed her with money and favors, even kicking in the money (and donating a Gericault sketch) needed to make her dream of opening a Gallery complete - but then he broke up with her earlier in the day of her Grand Opening. Rosina was ignorant of the greater implications of this tale, but it wasn't lost on Ginny. Or lost to Sarah, who seemed to be parsing my subtext quite well.

Coupled with some things she'd learned by reading the Mayor's Journal, I believe Ginny has concluded that the list of women the Mayor was crossing off indicated those he'd seduced in a search for a woman with a particular birthmark - a birthmark her character has. He'd gone to great expense to earn Rosina's trust, and then apparently dumped her once he'd gotten what he wanted. He'd reached the end of his list, and the night he was about to put the moves on the last woman (Ginny herself), someone killed him. Obviously, I can't comment on the accuracy of those conclusions - as figuring these things out is part of what makes mystery/investigative game fun.

It was getting close to her 3 o'clock appointment back at the Library, so Ginny bid Rosina adieu. She arrived at the University, expecting to have some more quality time with this old hand-written occult Tome. Instead, what she got was ambushed by the head of the Department, who had not been present on her initial arrival in the morning. Dr. Armitage took her aside to a private room, and applied the screws. Suddenly, she was being interviewed, and not the other way around. A loud in-character interrogation, full of bluster and bravado. Feign ignorance, and he'll write you off as just some pathetic child - go read Poe if you're just looking for a good scare! Show too much knowledge, and he'll decide you're a some crazed cultist. At either extreme, he won't let you near that Tome again, and if you really answer wrong, you just might end up tied to a chair.

I lit the fire under her feet, and watched her dance. She squeaked it out, but it was pretty choppy at a couple points, and she ended up having to give out more information than she wanted to. She has provisional access to the first 11 folios of the tome, provided that Armitage or someone he trusts is present, and she must give him a copy of any articles referencing Mormo before she sends them to her editor. The 12th Folio, and, indeed, the mere knowledge that it even exists, goes nowhere, young lady!

This compromise will, of course, lead to further conflicts both in- and ex-ternal, since her Journalistic Integrity is one of her Pillars of Sanity. That's okay, though, as Sarah indicated before the campaign began that she was looking forward to playing the descent into madness of the traditional Lovecraftian lead character. More fun ahead, no doubt.

I'm really digging Trail of Cthulhu

When I bought Esoterrorists, nearly a year ago, I was excited by the possibilities of the system. Reading the Cthulhu version of Esoterrorist's GUMSHOE system a few months later, I really enjoyed the fresh take on the mythos, and was hopeful I'd get to run it some day. Since then, I'd happily lifted GMing advice from it for use with other games. However, my first session of Trail of Cthulhu was a little shaky, and events in life kept us from getting to the second session until this weekend, so the fate of the campaign was a little iffy.

I'm happy to report that despite that uneven start nearly a month ago, and despite having a lot on my plate this past week, the most recent session freakin' rocked! I'm on a roll.

Seriously, this was probably my favorite RPG session in just over two years. Most of the really good sessions I've run lately were very light and mostly humorous games, and it had been a while since I'd pulled off a more dramatic session that I was really truly proud of.

Those of you who've gamed with me for years are well aware that the style I most like to run is artsy and character-driven, with some pretty weighty method-acting and frequent moral dillemas. Since moving to Seattle some 20 months ago, I've really only successfully achieved that in a single session of a campaign, and I was missing that style of gaming. Since Continuum, I'd been running games that were more about problem solving then character dynamics, and more often over-the-top than fully-realized. Mostly featuring briefly sketched-on-the-surface characterizations instead of the deeper theatre-in-the-round experience. Continuum, too, while featuring very cerebral multi-layered plotlines, had fairly shallow character studies. Trail of Cthulhu, however, is a perfect match for the style of game I'd been wanting to run. The mechanics are really minimal and easy to remember. They mostly fade into the background, and never seem to conflict with gut instinct or real-world logic, so you can focus your energies on setting, story, and character portrayals.

Our session involved only a single die roll - but don't interpret that to mean nothing happened. Most skill uses (in the system) don't involve dice, they just involve reminding the GM that you have the relevant skill, and possibly spending a point of it. It's just like CSI or Sherlock Holmes - they never fail to collect the finger prints or find the bloody murder weapon, as long as they take a moment to search the room where the clue is. At the same time, there's a decent chance the Player Characters will be preoccupied and forget to search the room. First session, I hadn't quite figured out all the implications of how that works, but having several weeks between sessions let me process if further, and better refine how I structured the clues.

It worked like a charm this time. The system is so light, you can concentrate on the clues, the characters, and the scenes - and not worry about balancing monster stats, looking up lengthy combat options, or setting the difficulty and consequences of a search roll so that success isn't guaranteed but failure doesn't completely derail the plot. It was liberating.

The downside is that a fair amount of prepwork goes into the game. That's less a function of the rules, and more a function of the format of mystery scenarios. Building an investigative plotline that holds water and is bolstered with the proper amounts of verisimilitude isn't easy. There's a delicate balance to be achieved. 95% of the time, you want to give the players just the clues, let them draw their own conclusions. The danger of that is that sometimes they'll jump to some idea that is completely at odds with the connection you expected them to make. In those situations, you need a way to get them back on track, prefferably via an organic and in-character means. Not only do you prep the scenes you're hoping to run, but you also have to put a bit of thought into scenes you hope to never run, scenes where even the unintended red-herrings eventually somehow lead back to the main plot.

And yet, at the same time, failure needs to still be possible - if the players ignore your subtle attempts to redirect and pursue the wrong threads repeatedly, or worse yet, spin their wheels ineffectively or dither, there must be some sort of consequence. The trick, then, is to come up with consequences that add to the drama, instead of short-circuiting it. Trail of Cthulhu and Esoterrorists, with their rules-light approach and solid narrative-building advice, make that whole mystery-crafting process a lot easier than in most games.

GM set to overload

That whistling sound you hear in the background is just me, not a Phaser set on self-destruct / overload. Close enough, though.

• Sunday: 1st Session of Deadlands Reloaded, which I'd never run before. It's a big step up in complexity from vanilla Savage Worlds.
  
• Monday: Wrote a rough draft of a Robot Chicken RPG. Later that day, an old friend sent me a copy of his new RPG, F#, asking for feedback (and eventually a playtest). [By the way: F# reads pretty damn sweet. I'll let you know more when I've actually played it, which I'm definitely looking forward too.]
• Late Tuesday: realized I might just run Robot Chicken the next day, which would mean a bunch more "adventure" prep the next morning.
  
• Wednesday: Ran Robot Chicken RPG at my own birthday party.
• Thursday: Ran Og for the weekly coffeeshop group. It was my second time doing so, and the first time was way back in October. I had to reread the rules before running it.
  
• Saturday: I'll be running Trail of Cthulhu for the second time ever. It uses the very prep-intensive GUMSHOE mystery system.
  

Feeling spread a little thin at the moment... I know, I know, it's a pretty good problem to have.

Are you sure you don't want to search the car again?

For context, read my previous post first. It tells the tale of my first GMing experience way back in the early 80s.

I've carried that dreadful "secret door experience" with me ever since. While I feel like I learned a lot from it, the truth is I've got some scars - my first session of any RPG I'm terrified that I'm going to wreck it before it even gets going. While I like to think my plotlines are far more sophisticated these days, that my NPCs exist for reasons other than to satisfy my ego, and that I know when to roll the dice and when to just say 'don't roll - lemme just tell ya what ya found'. I like to think that, anyway, but I don't always believe it. I get opening night jitters, and have on occasion aborted a campaign because (in my mind) I made the first session suck.

Last night, I was GMing Trail of Cthulhu. Investigators arrive on a scene, there's a car idling in the driveway. They ignore the car, and head into the house. So I have the car's engine conk out, provoking them to check on it. They walk up in the dark, shine a light on the dashboard, and check the fuel gauge. It's indeed run itself dry and sputtered out. Player thinks she's got the relevant clue (that the car's been idling for a very long time), and heads back into the house.

In Trail of Cthulhu (and the GUMSHOE system it's based on), you never roll to gather clues. Instead, clue acquisition is automatic provided you announce you're using a relevant skill in the right place. There's a clue in the car - and it's a pretty vital clue. If she'd said "I search the car" or "I check the glove box" or "I use Evidence Collection on the car" she'd have gotten a very vital tidbit. But she didn't. Somehow, I had convinced myself that meant GUMSHOE players would always get their hands on every available clue - but it just isn't realistic to expect that.

Later, she and an NPC (a more-or-less random NPC that got unexpectedly invited by a PC to the crime scene) are getting ready to leave the site. Knowing that a pretty vital clue has been missed, and that it won't be there in the morning, I try to subtly have my NPC suggest checking the car. I didn't want to be so miserably blatant as my childhood "the elf wants to go back and search for secret doors in room #3 again" blunders, so I fumbled about foolishly having him talk about the keychain in the car. The scene struck me as being stilted, the subtext felt forced and uncomfortable and apparently still too obtuse. She didn't even end up with the right clue (just the keys). I felt like such a freakin' idiot over that scene, like a dumb child GMing his first game, and wondering if I'd possibly just ruined the campaign for her. Eventually, I dropped it, and moved the narrative forward in a different direction.

Other than that mistake, and the session running longer than it was supposed to (my most common error), I think things went pretty well last night. Talking with Sarah about the game this morning, she clearly didn't notice the problem that was staring me in the face. I dodged a bullet, and didn't even know it. If the scene was odd to her, it wasn't so odd she felt the need to mention it even when prompted. Guess I'll just sit quietly and not let on.

GwenCon RPGs - Pure Evil

The second RPG one-shot I played in at GwenCon was Pure Evil. It was a very unique Cthulhu scenario run by Mike Lee. Rules were BRP - that is to say, he was using Chaosium's Basic RolePlaying system, not technically their Cthulhu rules. I've played a fair share of Cthulhu before, and I had a hard time telling what was different mechanically. The sanity rules were a little off (but I think that was house-ruled, not a BRP change) and the skill list was more extensive, but beyond that I couldn't spot any differences. Oh well, the system wasn't the main selling point of this particular one-shot...

We were all members of a Death Metal band called Pure Evil, playing a concert at a creepy mansion near Shreveport, Louisiana. Our last album had flopped, and we were likely going to break up after this one last pathetic little gig. While our albums were packed with satanic iconography, none of us had any reason to suspect the supernatural was real, nor any reason to approach the "mystery" from the angle of trying to solve it. Those of you with Cthulhu experience are shaking your heads already, and with good reason. Our sinister patron was using our music to summon up some horrible body-warping entity from non-euclidean space, and there wasn't a chance in hell of us stopping him.

Out of 5 PCs:

• 1 went insane.
• 2 died.
• 1 went insane, and then died.
• Only 1 PC escaped with his body and mind mostly intact.

Meanwhile, some unspeakable crystaline "god" awoke, ate 200 concert goers, and then rampaged across Louisiana, ushering in a new era of terror on the bayou.

What made the game fun was the PCs. Figuring we were doomed from the get go, we just chewed the scenery. The lead singer was constantly chasing tail, and spent half the scenario in his bedroom. The lead guitarist was a Prima Donna, constantly beleaguering us all with bitchy tirades about artistic integrity. The drummer was continuously drinking and/or snorting coke, and/or brainstorming ridiculous ideas for stage shows. The bassist was just the replacement bassist, and no one could remember his name nor give a damn what happened to him - and the little bass-playing puppy loved us for it. I played the bitter, jaded, artificially sleazy manager of the band, who was secretly siphoning the books and gambling away all the band's profits.

Everyone's character sheet indicated that they hated all the other PCs, and gave good reasons why. On some level, we felt more like a Paranoia party than a Call Of Cthulhu party.

In the end, I switched sides, sold my soul (and the band) to "The King In Black And White", and delivered the PCs up for sacrifice. They knew it both in- and out- of character, but we were all more or less okay with it. I had a blast.

My wife didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I did. She played the lead singer, doing a understated parody of lusty juvenile gamers of the "if there's any chicks there I do them" sort, without ever delivering the too-often quoted line. Watching her chase skirts made me giggle. She repeatedly put character before plot just like the rest of the band did, however, her heart really wasn't in it. She'd signed up for this event expecting a more traditional Lovecraftian problem-solving/mystery game. She'd played in two such games last year, and really enjoyed trying to puzzle them out in time to save the world, but this just didn't have the same taste.


One small criticism on my part, which despite it's seeming triviality, I just cannot stress it enough. When making a one-shot scenario, it's a really good idea to trim down the character sheets to the bare minimum necessary. The character sheet for this otherwise excellent game was a maze of tables and boxes. My character had a 17 intelligence, and I didn't notice till more than 3 hours into the scenario 'cause the sheet was too obtuse and crowded. I'd played him as kind of weak-willed weasel, when in actuality his stats made him sharp and intuitive with double the sanity points of any other character. Oops.

BRP has a ton of skills, and technically you have default ratings in things based on your ability scores. This meant that I had listed values of 30% for Artillery and Martial Arts - and no clear indicator whether or not that meant the character had some sort of military background. I had three skills listed as "Pilot", "Pilot 2", and "Flying" with no clue what the difference was - not that it mattered since all were in single-digits in a game that uses a percentile system... I wasn't about to fly anywhere even if we'd had a plane. But seriously, if there's no plane available in the scenario, why do I need to know if I have a 1% or 4% chance of flying one? Trimming about 40 skills off that list (and alphabetizing those that remained) would have made the relevant items far more noticeable and minimized player information overload.

b3 Delta Green

Last Thursday, I played in a Delta Green one-shot. Or rather, it was the Delta Green setting, but with a home-brewed system called the "b3 System".

I honestly couldn't tell you why it was called "b3", other than I think the GM/author's name was Brian. I'm not sure it optimal to learn a new system and make characters and play a mystery plotline in a 4-hour gaming time slot. Pregens and a familiar system would have suited the time crunch better. Of course, one goal was to playtest his system, but with that short a time frame, I'm not sure it was accomplished well.

The system was actually a modified version of White Wolf's Storyteller system - well, kinda. He trimmed the Attributes down from 9 to 6 (3 phys, 2 mental, 1 social). And he mildly truncated the physical and social skill lists, but then seriously expanded the mental skill list. There was a fairly complicated point-buy system for character gen.

He mostly used d6s, with a few d3s and a d4, and none of the usual d10s of White Wolf.

One thing I will say I really liked was that he made Skill dice and Attribute dice different. In standard WW, if you had Dex 4 and Melee 1 you'd roll the exact same 5 dice as if you had Dex 1 and Melee 4, making the more encompassing attributes a better investment than the more narrow skills. Instead, he had special skill dice, where the 6s were 7s. There was an actual benefit to having trained skill instead of just raw talent.

You also rolled dice based on your pool, and then kept the total of just your 3 highest dice (instead of having successes per die). Your total then could be from 1 to 21, depending on how many dice you had. If you were even mildly competent, you'd have at least a 3 on every roll, but even the apex of human endeavor could biff it and roll just that 3.

At first, I really loved both of those mechanics, but in the final scene, I was rudely awakened to the fact that I'd drawn conclusions from them that the GM had not intended.

By this point, it should be obvious that this was a pretty far diversion from White Wolf, and I wouldn't have even spotted it's roots if he hadn't commented on them. While the system was still pretty rough, there were diamonds amidst that roughage. The system had potential. I hope he uses the feedback we gave him (and I wish there'd been time to give him more) to hone it into something really remarkable.

As often happens with Cthulhu mysteries, the PCs wasted a lot of time trying to find clues that weren't there. Poor Brian had to suffer through endless questions, many of them about things he had no way of anticipating we'd pursue. (Add to that the GM being late, character generation and a new system, and as you can expect, we didn't get very far into the adventure.) Overall, I came away with the solid feeling that dark mysteries are not the proper table fare for a pick-up game in a café.

The prior week, we'd had a lot of fun playing Wushu with that gaming group, and the difference was that a light-hearted over-the-top game isn't particularly distressed by people getting up to place drink orders, or players missing a clue because someone else made an amusing hitchhikers' reference.

This time, however, I instead felt the poor GM was just getting frustrated with us. Perhaps I'm projecting - I know how frustrated I'd have been in his shoes. Certainly, the events of the evening conspired to make it a sub-optimal session, and probably failed to function as the useful playtest of his system that he'd hoped for.

You know that guy - the one who does "what my character would have done" even when the player knows it's a big damn mistake and just going to derail the plot? I ended up being that guy. I hate being part of that, I expect better of myself.

I was playing a secret service agent. We'd just burned down a house that had the corpse of some hideous spider-dog-thing, when a black sedan pulled up. 3 "men in black" types (NPCs) stepped out, and we were all packing guns and thus looking very suspicious. Rather than get arrested, I immediately identified us as police. The NPCs wouldn't verbally respond and one reached in his coat (getting out a photo, as it turns out), so I ordered them to the ground. They ignored me. One PC hid, because he knew these guys would mop the floor with us since he'd barely escaped from them in a previous session - but he didn't tell us that in-character. So I'm holding a badge and a pistol, and ordering these guys to lay down on the ground, and instead one of them goes for his gun. I plug him (and since I got a good roll) he dies. The ring leader, however, uses some sort of magic whammy on me, and without even rolling, he gets to interrupt me before my second shot, paralyze me, and boil my skin.

Now, normally, in Cthulhu, I'd just say that's par for the course. In Cthulhu, you can die very easily, and if you have to fire a second bullet, you've already lost the war. But this was the Delta Green setting, and I'd been lead to believe (by the GM, that night) that Delta Green encourages firefights-as-problem-solving in a way vanilla Cthulhu doesn't. What's more, it was a home-brewed system, one in which even the pinnacle of human achievement has a decent chance of scoring a lowly 3, while nearly anyone can hit an 18 with a lucky roll. I was not pleased with being incapacitated instantly without a roll, nor with him simultaneously immobilizing my colleagues get-away car also without a roll. This system allows anyone to botch, that didn't suggest to me that it would support "he's so good he never rolls". In hind sight it seems obvious that it allows for whatever the systems author says it does, but at the time I'd felt mislead.

I hope that I took it all as gracefully and graciously as I think I did. My goal was to take it in stride and leave without the GM knowing I was upset. In retrospect, I wish I'd known him well enough to express my disappointment - I think he could have used the feedback constructively if I'd been able to talk about it unemotionally. I grumbled in my wife's ear the whole walk home after the game, but didn't bitch to the GM.

My advice to him now will likely be as follows:
1) Pregens and Player Handouts are a really good idea for a one-shot with strangers, especially when using a new home-brewed system.
2) Over all, I like your system, but I think rather than replacing the "6" on skill dice with a "7", you might want to try replacing the "1" with a "2" or "3". Or better yet, replace the "1" with a symbol that means "equal to the characters skill level". With such a system, "so good he doesn't roll" wouldn't feel so out of place. Such a change would make skilled characters less likely to bottom-out while still allowing for "beginners luck" to sometimes reward the amateur.

Reviewing Cthu-Clue

You may recall that earlier this year I got The Esoterrorists from Pelgrane Press, and thereafter I reported that I was looking forward to Trail of Cthulhu, the port of Call of Cthulhu over to the GUMSHOE system from Esoterrorists. Said book has released, and I finally got my hands on a copy. It is sweet. It's not as system-minimal as Esoterrorists (they added some chrome to make the system fit the Mythos and the 30s better), but it's still light enough to be something I'll happily run some day. Well worth the Amazon gift card I spent on it. (Thanks, Susan & Bill!) This is quickly becoming my favorite Cthulhu-themed RPG.

Far more than just a port, Trail of Cthulhu has plenty of new material as well. I love the bisociative way Kenneth Hite handles the big bads of the Cthulhu mythos. Each is defined by several intentionally contradictory bullet points / paragraphs. His sources include Lovecraft, Derleth, previous Cthulhu RPGs, other authors who have touched upon the mythos previously, and his own explorations. I particularly relish his notion of using scientific principles such as gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces, etc, as if they were classical Elements. It's a very fresh and interesting take. Here's a sample:

"Azathoth" is the name given in the Necronomicon to "the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space," the illusory personification of the Big Bang, just as "Thor" personifies lightning. The "invocation" or "summoning" of "Azathoth" is occult code for the release of atomic energy.

More like that.

The only thing I don't like about the book is the golden ink used on certain page elements. It catches the light unevenly, and depending on the angles between book/lightsource/eye it shifts between painfully blinding, normal, near-invisible, and wonderfully eyecatching. Perhaps I should just be thankful the angles so far documented have yet to summon the Hounds of Tindalos.

I imagine some Call of Cthulhu purists will object to the very notion of Trail of Cthulhu, for exactly the inverse of the reason it was ported in the first place. In GUMSHOE games, players cannot miss a vital clue because of bad die rolls. Narratively, that total competence is just wonderful. I think any mystery game could benefit from this methodology, as it makes mystery-based RPGs finally able to replicate (without the GM having to cheat in the PCs favor) the experience of mystery novels and movies. However, I can see the point that will likely be made by some, that having a plotline stall out (and/or the world come to an end) because one PC failed a single critical investigation roll (and thus never saw one or more crucial clues / pieces of evidence) is very much in keeping with the bleak tone of Lovecraft's fiction. The trick is balancing the "insignificance of man" so endemic to the setting against the needs of dramatic narrative. CoC tells purer/bleaker mythos stories, but ToC is the better game.

Porting Gumshoe

You could easily use "the GUMSHOE system" from The Esoterrorists in any mystery / suspense / horror setting.

In particular it'd be great for Call of Cthulhu - and, I'm happy to report, Pelgrane has aquired the rights to CoC and plans on a GUMSHOE-based Cthulhu in the near future, written by (be-still my conspiratorial Fortean heart) Kenneth Hite.

On a more modest scale, I think it'd be pretty easy to take the GUMSHOE investigation rules into nearly any other RPG without having to touch the other skills and mechanics. Keep the combat system you love, but GUMSHOE the detective work.

Despite all my blathering (last week) about how cool Dark Heresy is, the fact remains the Inquisition-style of DH could be done better with GUMSHOE mechanics. I may just end up running a really oddball homebrewed version of Dark Heresy using the modular career system from WHFRP and the investigation system from The Esoterrorists.