Yesterday I began a series of blog posts featuring William Hope Hodgson's occult detective Thomas Carnacki written up as a player character for some of my favorite RPGs starting with Fate Accelerated Edition (FAE). One thing that came up in the G+ discussions was how much FAE exists in the language space and how you don't really need to know the rules of the game to understand who the character is and what they can do just by reading the character sheet. In fact, I was able to pull directly from the FAE character write up when building the next incarnation of Carnacki presented below. Dead of Night is in my opinion a brilliant yet very underappreciated rules-lite horror roleplaying game from Steampower Publishing. It's meant more for one-shots rather than full campaigns with each session played being essentially a horror movie (although sequels with the survivors are possible). Character creation is fast and easy (it didn't take me very long at all to come up with the stats below) and the game is designed to keep GM prep to a minimum. It features a very clever tension mechanic that paces the game in a way reminiscent of the tension buildup/release/repeat model found in all good horror movies. Thanks to a series of "dials" the GM can tweak, Dead of Night is equally at home doing slasher flicks, Hammer Horror, Asian horror, Lovecraftian horror, psychological horror, and even black comedy. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend checking it out. Here's what a Dead of Night player character looks like:
Thomas Carnacki, Ghost-Finder (Dead of Night) CONCEPT: Renowned Occult Detective Practicing the Empirical Method
I thought it might be a fun exercise this week to stat up one of my favorite literary occult detectives in several RPG systems I like just to see them side-by-side. I want to not only re-familiarize myself with the game mechanics of these systems but to compare and contrast how each system handles different facets of the character. I've chosen William Hope Hodgson's Thomas Carnacki for this purpose as I've recently revisited the collected Carnacki stories while embarking on a personal project to trace the roots of the occult detective archetype in fiction, a genre that includes such notables as Dr. Martin Hesselius (Sheridan Le Fanu), Abraham Van Helsing (Bram Stoker), Dr. John Silence (Algernon Blackwood), and Jules de Grandin (Seabury Quinn). Hodgson's Carnacki stories are now in the public domain (first published in 1913) and you can read them at Project Gutenberg.
First up is Fate Accelerated Edition from Evil Hat Games:
Thomas Carnacki, Ghost-Finder (FAE)
ASPECTS High Concept: Renowned Occult Detective Practicing the Empirical Method Trouble: Apprehensive and Irresolute at Times
Creature of Habit
State of the Art Gadgets
Extensive Occult Library
STUNTS
Because Carnacki invented the electric pentacle, he gets a +2 when he Carefully defends when within the device’s protective circle against spectral manifestations.
Because Carnacki studied the Saaamaaa Ritual and an ancient text known as the Sigsand Manuscript, he gets a +2 when he Cleverly creates advantages when confronted by supernatural influences.
Because Carnacki possesses a sixth sense, once per game session he can choose to go first in a physical conflict with the supernatural.
We are now in the month of April so my monthly recap of the things I enjoyed in February is long past due. I spent most of February in nightly rehearsals for the musical Cabaret (which ran successfully in early March to good reviews and audience reception), so I had a few false starts on some of the things I began to consume (Lovecraft Country I am looking at you) but intend to return to those in the near future. I still managed to finish a few things I started and present my favorites below. (Spoiler: I spent most of March in rehearsal for Arsenic and Old Lace opening next weekend.)
BATES MOTEL SEASON 5
Bates Motel has been one of my favorite shows since it first premiered, so when the final season finally dropped on Netflix in February, I stopped watching everything else and jumped right in. I rarely have enough time to binge-watch a show in an entire day or weekend, but I will do mini-binges of two or three episodes at bedtime (I usually fall asleep by the middle of the third or fourth episode and pick up from where I left off the next night). With Bates Motel, I found myself staying up later than usual, eager to jump right into the next episode.
This season did not disappoint. I am going to avoid any spoilers, but I have to admit the temptation is great. As always, the acting was first rate. Freddie Highmore (Norman Bates) is as intense and believable as always, and Vera Farmiga (Norma Bates) is probably one of my favorite American television actresses of all time, right up there with Edie Falco. Without really giving anything away, my favorite part of the season was when the events of the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film adaption of Robert Bloch's novel Psycho began to unfold (money stolen from the bank right before the weekend up to the infamous shower scene), and were then turned completely on their head. Really well done!
All in all, the series conclusion left me satisfied with no loose ends or disappointments. I'm glad to see Freddie Highmore having continued success with his new series, The Good Doctor.
CRIME SCENE d20 SOURCEBOOKS
Back at the start of the new millennium when Dungeons & Dragons was still in its third edition, British RPG publisher Hogshead Publishing released Crime Scene, a series of sourcebooks focusing on modern criminal investigation. All you needed was a copy of the D&D Players Handbook and you were good to go—the books included character classes, skills, and feats appropriate to the genre. Oddly, Hogshead never jumped on the d20 Modern bandwagon when Wizards of the Coast released that game based on D&D.
Crime Scene titles included Police Investigation, Feds, and Forensics, but there were two titles that particularly grabbed my interest at the time: Supernatural and Sheriff's Office: Red Pine Hollow. Red Pine Hollow is a fictional small town in the Pacific Northwest. You could use it for straight up drug/vice squad action and organized crime, but you were also encouraged to combine it with Supernatural to give it a Twin Peaks vibe. Similarly, Supernatural let you decide if psychic abilities, aliens, dark magic, etc. really exist in your campaign or are merely the delusional beliefs of cults on the FBI watch list. I decided to revisit these, particularly Red Pine Hollow, because I've been toying with the idea of formally writing up my personal default modern horror setting that I've used in many of my games over the years.
One of the criticisms of the Crime Scene line was the proliferation of skills, many seeming to cover similar ground. While there is some overlap, I never saw this as a huge problem. In a crime scene/police procedural game, you are going to have player characters who all do similar things and the increased number of skills helps to differentiate them and give everyone something to do and a specialist area to shine in. Pelgrane Press's GUMSHOE games do something very similar with their investigative abilities today (and do it very well). And while the Crime Scene titles are set in the United States, the authors unwittingly let some British-isms sneak in. A common colloquial unit of measurement in America is the football field—describing something as three football fields in length, for example; Crime Scene Supernatural amusingly used football pitch instead. Still, the books were well researched for the time but are now almost two decades old so "modern" might not fit as a descriptor anymore.
Inspired by Jack Shear of the Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque blog, I thought this year I would do a monthly recap of some of the roleplaying game products, books, movies, and television shows I enjoyed consuming in the month prior. Jack's monthly recap always introduces me to something new and interesting, and hopefully I'll be able to do the same for others as well. I'll try to keep these related to the theme of this blog unless something really knocks my socks off.
A Note on Spoilers: I will do my best to avoid these when possible and merely whet your interest.
Here are some of the things I enjoyed in January 2018:
KIDS ON BIKES RPG
Kids on Bikes by Jon Gilmour and Doug Levandowski was the runaway RPG Kickstarter success story of 2017. Inspired by the hit Netflix original series Stranger Things, I eagerly backed this at a level that will eventually score me a hardcover expanded edition copy (plus a shit ton of modules designed by some of the biggest names in the indy RPG scene). I received my first backer reward in January: a PDF copy of the core rulebook (basic, not expanded). I dove right in and have to say I'm pretty impressed with the game.
This is a narrative-style RPG clearly influenced by Fate, Apocalypse World/various Powered By games, Cortex Plus, and perhaps more. It features collaborative setting building and player narrative control and hits all the right notes with regards to diversity and respect for the wishes and boundaries of the participant players. There are six stats—Brains, Brawn, Fight, Flight, Charm, and Grit—each of which is assigned a value of one of the following die types: d4 (your weakest stat), d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20 (your strongest stat). These stats are what you roll when you attempt to do something in the game (Stat Checks), either against a difficulty number or another character's opposing roll. There are degrees of success that decide outcome and narrative control of outcome, with an emphasis on "make failure interesting". When you fail a roll, you earn an Adversity Token you can apply as a bonus to future rolls.
What I particularly enjoyed is how the game handles powered characters, the role of Eleven in Stranger Things for example. The powered character is shared between players as well as the GM. Each player gets some aspect of the powered character to roleplay and make decisions for, be that the power itself, a personality trait or flaw, or how they react to other characters. Any player can activate any of these aspects at any time they feel appropriate during the game, but the player controlling that aspect is responsible for making it happen. The GM can introduce things about the powered character as well. It's very clever and a viable solution to the potential problem of every player wanting powers in a game that includes powers.
I also want to give a shout out to the inspired artwork by Heather Vaughan.
DARK Dark is a German Netflix original series recently dubbed into English and released in the United States.
Pros: A clever science fiction/weird science story with a mystery to unravel akin to Lost, Twin Peaks, or Wayward Pines with hints of Stranger Things.
Cons: You really have to pay attention, more so than you did for Lost. There are many generational characters in several different families over three time periods separated by 33 years—2019, 1986, and 1953*—with some characters played by different actors depending on when the story is taking place**, and then they travel through time. Also the dubbing into English is awkward in many places. It's not as bad as a 1960s Japanese Godzilla flick, but with some characters speaking in English with an accent and others more American in style, at times it reminded me of a dubbed-into-English-from-Swedish Pippi Longstocking movie.
*Don't read anything into the order I listed these. Or do.
**The Wikipedia article has family trees now. Somebody should add stills of the actors. *thumb on nose* Not it! AMERICAN HORROR STORY: ROANOKE
Out on Netflix. Mildly entertaining, but I think we've jumped the shark now.
THE THRILL OF DRACULA BY KEN HITE
If horror roleplaying games have a master authority, it would probably be Ken Hite. I've always enjoyed Ken's work, from the horror roleplaying bible Nightmares of Mine to GURPS Horror and more recently the GUMSHOE RPGs like Trail of Cthulhu and Night's Black Agents. I picked up The Thrill of Dracula as part of the recent Dracula Dossier (for Night's Black Agents) Bundle of Holding.
This book starts with an overview of the original Bram Stoker novel themes and characters. It then goes through almost every Dracula movie made—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Each movie is presented through a synopsis, how it differs from and/or pays tribute to the original novel, some thoughtful criticism, and a section on things you can take away and use at the game table. This last section is not only useful for Night's Black Agents campaigns but any game where the Count makes an appearance. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and discovered a few new Dracula movies I hadn't seen before and now I'm hunting down to watch. MRS. AMWORTH
This half hour long vampire tale is from a very short-lived 1975 British television horror anthology series entitled Classics Dark and Dangerous. I learned about this forgotten little gem from a post on a folk horror site. Actress Glynis Johns (famous for her role in Mary Poppins) does an admirable job in the title role having previously appeared in the 1973 horror anthology movie The Vault of Horror. I enjoyed watching this, if only for the original take on the vampire's identity as a beloved member of the community. I only wish it was a little longer to give the quaint English country village where the story is set a chance to grow more as a character in its own right. It might make an interesting campaign setting.
Below are some of my house rules I've used to good effect in my CRYPTWORLD games. I'm sharing these so other Crypt Masters (CMs) can give them a try and decide if they appeal to their tastes. Feel free to pick and choose (or totally ignore).
STARTING SKILL SELECTION
In CRYPTWORLD, the number of skills a Player Character (PC) starts with is randomly determined by rolling 1d10 and consulting the table of p. 11 of Chapter 2: Characters. While this works perfectly fine, it always felt a little too random for my tastes, especially considering that the starting number of paranormal talents has a little more verisimilitude to back it up by linking the values of Basic Attributes (specifically PCN and WPR) to the number of paranormal talents a PC can access. Below are three alternate ways of determining a PC's starting number of skills I have used, with my personal preference being the last.
1. All PCs start with 5 starting skills (the average number of starting skills rounded up). Recommended for games set in the modern era and beyond.
2. All PCs start with 4 starting skills (the average number of starting skills rounded down). Recommended for games set in earlier eras.
3. Starting skills are determined by a PC's PCN (Perception) score. Note that with this method Basic Ability scores, profession, and one profession-related skill must be determined BEFORE selecting other skills in the character creation steps. PCs determine number of starting skills from the following table:
PCN
Starting Skills
26-39
3
40-59
4
60-69
5
70-80
6
IMPROVISED WEAPONS
Steve knows!
Who doesn't love a good bar fight? Smashing a beer bottle on the bar and wielding it like a knife, or throwing a bottle of Jack Daniels at someone's head? And during the zombie apocalypse, sometimes you need to protect yourself by grabbing whatever is handy to use as a makeshift weapon, be it baseball bat, 9-iron, or garden pitchfork. You could even break the blade handle off of an office paper cutter and use it like a machete. Here's a quick rule of thumb I like to use:
Any character may use an appropriate object not normally classified as a weapon as an impromptu melee or missile weapon using their Unskilled Melee score or DEX score (for missiles) at a -20 penalty modifier. If they have a relevant Combat Skill (e.g. Dagger/Knife when using a broken bottle, Short-handled Weapons when using a baseball bat, Sword when using a office paper cutter blade handle as a machete), the penalty to their Unskilled Melee score or DEX score is reduced to -10.
CONCLUSION
So there you have it, feel free to give these for a spin the next time you break out CRYPTWORLD. If you do, please let me know what you thought in the comments, or feel free to share some of your own CRYPTWORLD house rules. Thanks for reading!
