Session Recap, 21-Apr-2012

13-Aug-1924


The investigation of the MacAllister building continues. Many of the paranormal occurrences seem to be tied to The King in Yellow, but the play itself is impossible to find. Even information about it is in short supply.

The investigators have some good ideas, such as going out into the artistic community. Only one person, a theater director at small Bohemian theater, has ever head of it -- and only due to a former friend ranting and raving about it shortly before he was committed.

They return to the building that night and continue to explore the mysterious floors that appear only at night. A few experiments are conducted that seem to establish that continuity and persistence of reality is hazy at best -- items left at certain places are sometimes there upon return, and sometimes not. The same door, opened in quick succession, sometimes opens onto two completely different rooms.

They retreat to the local eatery and discuss. Although not directly related to the plot, they learn the tragic backstory of how the father of the neighborhood deli owner was banished from England and brought his family to America in shame. (Backstory listed in the first comment, below.)

Going back into the building the following night, strange things continue to beset the investigators and slowly drain away their sanity. They focus on two things: Finding the missing girl, and trying to discover who or what is behind the play. Many of the strange events in the building have some kind of puppet imagery -- is there a puppet master? If so, who? There is some concern, entirely justified, that finding out might be physically or mentally fatal.

Some specific events:

- A dog, a large mastiff, is found running down a hallway on one of the night floors. It appears friendly. Sir Richard puts an improvised rope collar and leash on it, and takes it out of the building. He lodges it in a kennel. So apparently things can be brought out of the night floors. Are there any consequences to taking things out of the night floors into the real world? They certainly didn't feel any barriers being broken.

- A locked and shuttered window is found in a living room that opens upon a dining room with a similar locked and shuttered window at the other end. That window opens upon a conservatory with a locked and shuttered window at the other end. That window opens upon a tea room, and so on. The rooms appear to go on endlessly and clearly cannot be contained within the building's external walls in any way.

- A hole is found in a wall that leads into a large series of caves. George Platt wanders them, marking his path with chalk. Unfortunately his chalk marks appear to be getting altered by someone or something and now he is truly lost. He comes upon a room with a series of alcoves, all containing ornate and unique bottles. A strange sommelier hails him and hands him a bottle with Platt's name on it, and a corkscrew. When Platt takes them, the sommelier collapses into his robes -- his hands, feet, and face were nothing more than crude mannequin constructions, but there was no substance to him. Platt opens the bottle and hears a whisper: "You are the cause of your friends' death." Or maybe it was "friend's death;" it's impossible to know which one for sure. Platt's electric torch starts flickering and he is barely able to find his way out back into the night floors.

- They find an elderly man claiming to be the manager. His name is Henri de Cavaldo Castaigne, and he has never heard of ARTLIFE, Cynthia LeChance, or any of the actual managers. Castaigne has a slight accent and claims to be from a country called "Carcosa." 

- Professor Hawkins finds a large mirror. In the mirror, he is wearing archaic party clothes. Behind him, visible only in the mirror, is a large crowd of similarly-dressed people. At the back of the crowd but standing apart from it, is a huge and tattered figure, draped in yellow robes, whose face is completely obscured by a ragged hood. Is this the mysterious King? What is underneath the hood?

Again a retreat to the outside before dawn. More questions than answers. Luckily they have all the time in the world, right?

Session Recap, 7-Apr-2012

12-Aug-1924

A few days of investigation and research.  Talking with the apartment manager reveals that all of the tenants -- not just the missing Abigail -- are three months behind on their rent and facing eviction.  Curious.

Interviewing the neighborhood business indicates that the tenants have completely withdrawn from the community.  They have not patronized shops, bought groceries, etc.  Curious.

Sir Richard receives a family request to negotiate a business deal back in Boston and had to leave.  The transient population of Manhattan is safe, for the time being.

The rest of the trepid heroes -- George Platt, Evelyn Joans, and Herr Doktor Professor Victor Hawkins -- decides that a night spent in the missing woman's apartment might provide insight.

Session Recap, 10-Mar-2012

08-Aug-1924:

An telegram from Jackson Elias!  They travel down from Boston to New York to meet him in his posh room in the Chelsea Hotel.  He welcomes them in, and asks them to look into something for him -- he has a friend, a retired police captain, whose daughter, Abigail Wright, has gone missing.  She was a painter, living in a Manhattan in a building for artists.  Jackson would, of course, check it out himself except that he is leaving shortly for Kenya to do more research on his next book.

The party heads out to the apartment building, having gotten the keys from Jackson.  The woman's room is a shambles -- hundreds of random items glued to the walls, carpet ripped up, etc.  They decide to itemize the room's contents and find a few odd things....

Review: Terrors From Beyond (Chaosium, 2009)

This is a rarity for Chaosium in recent years, a book of six non-campaign scenarios.  Not counting MULAs, they haven't done this since 2007's Mansions of Madness (2nd ed).  If you ignore second editions, you have to go all the way back to 1999's forgettable Last Rites.

Most (or all?) of these scenarios are taken from tournament scenarios and are designed primarily as one-shots.  They all provide pregenerated characters, both to tie the characters closely to the plot and to give the opportunity for roleplaying character types that might not otherwise see light of day.  Unlike Mansions of Madness, where all scenarios revolved around a spooky place, there is no real unifying theme.

As a review of a scenario anthology, this will contain multiple and egregious spoilers and is for Keepers' eyes only!  Players, read no further!

Review: Farewell, My Sanity (Chaosium, 2007)

This review was originally published in a slightly different form on RPG Geek.

This is Chaosium's Miskatonic University Library Association Monograph #0346, Farewell, My Sanity, originally published in 2007. The MULA books are limited print run, rough-draft style releases from Chaosium. Their purpose is threefold: one, to test the market on a limited basis to see if there is demand for a wider release; two, to allow authors a quick path to publication in the hobby; three, to save Chaosium money on editing, typesetting, art, etc.

The good news is that you can get more unusual material, or that with limited mainstream appeal, than you would otherwise. The downside is that this is often little more than a step above self-publishing, and they are often expensive compared to official releases in the main line. Farewell, My Sanity is an exception to this at $20 for 120pp, although there is a lot of white space that pads the page count unnecessarily.

Content-wise, this contains two excellent, solid scenarios that capture the feel of both Call of Cthulhu as well as Los Angeles.

Spoilers abound!  Players, stop reading now!

Review: Our Ladies of Sorrow (Miskatonic River Press, 2009)

Kevin Ross has emerged as one of the most prolific authors in the history of the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game.  He became involved during the late eighties and has had his hand in many different products to at least some extent, over the life of the game.  He has produced quite a bit of work in the Dreamlands setting (sadly, most of it not very compelling to me) and its related city of Kingsport (Chaosium, 1991/2003), the latter completing the reknowned Lovecraft Country tour-de-force released by the company in the 1990s.  Ross' stellar sourcebook and mini-campaign Escape From Innsmouth (Chaosium, 1992/1997) cemented his reputation as one of the premier authors contributing to the Classic Era of the game.  In perhaps his greatest accomplishment, he wrote the first official appearance of The King in Yellow that paved the way for the modern interpretation of the Hastur Mythos, in his scenario "Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?"  Appearing in The Great Old Ones (Chaosium, 1989), it has become one of the most powerful modern additions to the Mythos.  Unfortunately, John Tynes' tremendous treatment of the Hastur Mythos in The Unspeakable Oath #1 (Pagan Publishing, 1990) followed by Tynes' and Dennis Detwiller's expansive, utterly definitive vision in Delta Green: Countdown (Pagan Publishing, 1999) would serve to overshadow Ross to an extent.  But Ross came first.

In 2008, Chaosium significantly liberalized its 3rd-party licensing policy, leading to a recent renaissance of new and returning contributors for Call of Cthulhu.  Keith "Doc" Herber and several others started Miskatonic River Press, a publishing company that brought together some of the greatest creative forces to release material for the game.  Ross came on board quickly, first supplying a scenario for New Tales of the Miskatonic Valley (2008), and then revising and releasing a project that he'd had developing for almost two decades, leading to the current book:  Our Ladies of Sorrow.

This review covers material for Keepers only; please treat all information as potential spoilers.  Prospective players, stop reading now.

Review: The Keeper's Companion, vol. 1 (Chaosium, 2000)

(This review originally appeared in slightly different form at RPG Geek.)

This book is the second of four "core" books released by Chaosium in the early 2000s, the others being The 1920s Investigator's Companion (1997), The Creature Companion (1998), and The Keeper's Companion vol. 2 (2002). Like the other three, this is not "core" in any meaningful sense of the word, and is certainly not a requirement to play the game -- all you need for that is the basic Call of Cthulhu

book.

About a quarter of the book is taken, with slight modifications, updates, and corrections, from the original Keeper's Compendium (1996). The majority of the book was written by Keith Herber, with a list of supplemental authors that read like a who's-who list of Cthuloid luminaries (including Aniolowski, Petersen, and Ross).

This book does not has a unifying theme (other than "for Keepers") but is an anthology of material covering a diverse array of subjects. As such, the chapters skip around a fair amount, and also their utility will vary wildly from Keeper to Keeper. This is to be expected. Anthologies in general are not all things to all people and, in my experience, tend to be very hit and miss.

Review: Miskatonic University (Chaosium, 2005)

(This review originally appeared in slightly different form at RPG Geek.)

This is a large supplement written by Sam Johnson and released by Chaosium in 2005. It's the third reworking of official material published about the famous university, expanding upon 1995's Miskatonic University Guidebook by Sandy Atunes, which itself expanded on Keith Herber's groundbreaking Arkham Unveiled (1990). This is not a third edition, as most of the material here is either new, newly collated, or newly rewritten. Johnson put a lot of work into this and it was long in coming -- I think three years past its original projected release.

The main point of this supplement, as stated in the "Clear Credit" section, is to be the complete gaming reference for M.U., pulling in every creature, character, secret, etc. from the history of gaming scenarios and also most Mythos fiction. Unfortunately this has a fairly mixed effect, as I'll go into later.