Back into the action, beartraps are melee weapons?, burning down the house!

So we left our intrepid group of idiots with Dawson having completely fucked up the PLAN.

Dawsons first impulse was to drive the van somewhere quiet to examine the contents but this changed rapidly when two robed figures jumped into Walsh's car and gave chase. To confound them he chose to drive around the yacht clubs drive, possibly hoping to make them dizzy.

Back at Walsh's yacht Shambles observed his two body guards coming out to investigate the cries of alarm. Completely failing to sneak up on the pair he decided the only way to avoid death by bullet was to jump into the sea which gave time for Kalabos and De'ath to do the blighter’s in. For some reason Kalabos decided to use a bear-trap he had in his possession for just this type of circumstance. In a one-off absolutely never to be repeated in any game I ever run again attack he managed to set the bear-trap off on a bodyguards head killing him instantly. I repeat that this will never ever happen again. De'ath despatched her foe with more conventional weapons.

Dawson meanwhile continued to drive around the front of the club managing to pick off some robed figures who had been distracted by the opportunity to shoot emerging hobos like fish in a barrel. Then breaking hard to make the trailing car smash into the back of his van making the crates fall back and break open on it's bonnet he drew Bess, his trusty pistol, and prepared for a desperate fire-fight

Kalabos and De'ath sneaked up to the yacht clubs office and looking through the window they spotted Walsh and Gardner having an argument. Seeing his chance Kalabos borrowed a stick of dynamite from De'ath, attached his home-made detonator and swiftly relayed his new PLAN to her. After a quick discussion about how this plan was even stupider than the previous one De'ath agreed to go ahead.

Meanwhile Shambles had pulled himself out of the water and decided to climb a trellis to the first floor, the second floor for those in the colonies, so he could sneak in unnoticed. We'll come back to that.

Dawsons fire-fight continued. It was dead exciting and stuff but would probably look better than I describe it. Think Bogart in The Big Sleep only in a van. If you don't like the nicely low-key fire-fight in that movie I recommend finding somebody doing a Feng Shui blog, it's more good Law stuff just with more gun fu. Anyway I digress.

Kalabos enacted the new PLAN. De'ath broke the window with her rifle and he threw the dynamite through shouting that he'd blow everybody up if they didn't surrender. Unfortunately the wire connecting the dynamite to the detonator fell out and a fire-fight ensued. This was probably just as well as the detonator was carved out of balsa wood and couldn't blow a nose. Unnoticed there was a wet thump and curse in the background.

Shambles picked himself up from the ground and decided a more subterranean access route might be in order. Spotting the storm doors through which the crates had been brought out our vaguely unintelligible investigator strode forth.

On the ground floor all was action and excitement. With her trusty rifle and the quick pass of a Purdey De'ath despatched the nefarious duo just as Dawson finished the last of the robed cultists. Breaking in through the door they noted whilst Walsh was satisfyingly a normal corpse Gardner had already began melting in a weird bubbling way. They quickly took a sample which had unfortunately melted into nothingness before dawn. Knowing time was not on their side our heroes took all the documents they could from the safe and went to check on Shambles.

Shambles had discovered a strange and shocking thing in the cellar. Against the far wall was a vat containing large, luminescent green fish eggs. Examination and talk with Dawson showed that it was this substance that had been crated up to be transported to God knows where. Steeling himself Shambles made sure to take a good sample of the ungodly substance and our heroes prepare for their escape. With sirens in the distance our heroes took just enough time to rig the house with dynamite and gasoline before escaping in De'aths yacht just moments before the authorities arrived.

The next day brought a meeting with the Armitage Inquiry though Armitage and Wilmarth were not present as the aged librarian had to have a lie down and Wilmarth was watching over him. The Inquiry agreed that a grave threat had been stymied and revealed that Miskatonic biologists had examined the fish eggs and discovered that they contained things which looked disturbingly like human foetuses. On hearing this our Mexican friend Kalabos dug deep into his knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos and realised that these eggs were meant to implanted in human woman and perhaps were meant to be taken all over the US. Shocked to the core he mentioned this and wondered if travellers such as salesmen or carnivals could be involved in such work.

At this point Wilmarth burst into the room shouting that whilst Armitage slept it seemed he'd dozed off himself and in the interim a new document had appeared in the room !

Breaking News!

Meta-Cthulhuing

So a more generalised look at my feelings about Trail of Cthulhu.

I've been asked about what the transition is like as a long-term CoC GM to the new system and it's been interesting. The big selling point used by Robin Laws has been the whole don't roll for a clue thing which has caused quite a furore in places like rpg.net where peeps have said that a good GM does that anyway. To be fair I've dabbled with that in the past but it's nice having a system built around the idea and the cries of good GM's don't do that are a little over the top. Check out the audio games at Yog these guys are goods and experienced and the issue still comes up. Don't check them out for just that though they're loads of fun. In the end the clue system brings about other things which I find much more interesting.

For quite a while I've been wanting to talk about how the Gumshoe rules change the shape of the game. Different things become prioritised which changes how a session plays out. I've been struggling to find a way to describe this then Robin once again shows what a smart bastard he is by saying most of what I wanted to say. There's an inherent shape, or structure, to a Gumshoe game that can't help but come out during play. I sort of wish I'd run a pre-written scenario beforehand but it wouldn't be the same as finding the shape as a group. I'm sticking to using the word shape, structure works if you're writing the scenario beforehand but shape is what something like the Armitage Files creates.

As an introductory game ToC falls well behind CoC. CoC is just incredibly intuitive, everybody knows what a percentile is. ToC was pretty hard to describe and we're still sorting the game out in our heads. To be fair though our least experienced player is really getting there and the whole spend thing is working as a dramatic device. Shape comes back again.

Leaving the weirdest to last. Whilst stuck in an airport last month I decided to poke around the stats part of the blog, something you normally avoid doing because you don't want to find out that your granny is the only person who ever looks. Checking through I found that out of my two hits, my granny does good, I had one from Pelgrane Press. Bored and full of Dutch beer I went on to discover this.

I'm not sure how to feel. It's nice to get attention an a'that but what if they actually read the blog? I'm not intriguing at all, through my life I've mostly been described as vaguely annoying and rude. When Simon realises how badly I've mangled their baby he'll get Ken Hite to be ironic at me and Robin Laws will come around and beat me up. I don't know why but I've always thought that if I was going to get my head kicked in by a games designer it would be that Laws bloke. It's all a worry.

Keepers Ruminations

Well this was in an interesting session.

It was a lot of fun. I'd hoped to do the Necronomicon stuff via blog but I have lazy players so that didn't happen. OTOH doing it at the session was a lot of fun.

I've started using Ken's suggestions in the corebook to play around with the gods. They're not quite what peeps might expect and I decided to use this to connect to the campaign itself which I'm hoping might pay off but OTOH may leave us stuck on the first documents. There's enough there for a whole campaign so I'll have to try to move it all on.

I was surpised that the van picking stuff up rather than dropping stuff off really threw my players. I'd not committed to either and stuff they'd said about Walsh's connection implied that they thought the former but there you go. I've got some ideas about where it's going and I hope they work.

Dawsons interactions with Dock Vogan have proven interesting. This is a character I originally interested introduced as sinister but is turning out to be at least innocuous and possibly stalwart. I pictured Dawson and Vogans meeting as being sort of like Dan Ackroyd and John Cusacks coffee in Grosse Point Blanke. Tense to say the least.

Character drives are coming into play with De'ath obsessing about breeding.

And THE PLAN went wrong as they always do.I really wasn't expecting this and it kind of threw me. What the fuck was Dawson thinking? This is the first cliff-hanger ending and I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. I love the way players do this to you and it fits into the whole ethos of the campaign.

Final preparations, waiting for action, who is this Pete Tong person you keep mentioning?

Our stalwart group took the two days off to rest up and do research. Lady De'ath spent a little time skimming the Necronomicon for any clue as to what their batrachian foes might be up to. The results only deepened the mystery hinting that Dagon may be more than just a sea god and may be linked more to fertility worship and miscenegation. Thanking God that Miskatonic had the largest collection of dictionaries on the eastern seaboard De'ath studied deeper and became ever more worried. Was this interbreeding somehow connected to the hidden mysteries in her own family line? She left the library a changed person compelled to pull aside the curtain that lay over this evil.

Kalbos hung out with the hobos finalising THE PLAN.

Shambles did whatever Shambles does. I'm not sure but it oprobably involved brandy.

Dawson decided a meeting with Volgan was in order. Over a very tense coffee he convinced Volgan that if Shaw was to be at the yacht club it may be in his best interests not to be there. Volgan agreed not to turn up but warned that Shaw never went anywhere without a couple of men.

Meeting up again the group decided to have dinner at the yacht club before going forward with THE PLAN. This was unfortunately cut short as dawson had decided to disguise himself as a hobo. Gardner, already at the end of his tether due to Kalabos, asked them to leave not willing to believe that two people had invented method acting in the same week. Shambles chose to stay and had a tense conversation with Gardner which only resulted in suspicion being ratcheted up. Shambles departed leaving a long note which unfortunately I can't read, I may scan it in at a later point for those with a better eye and more patience.

Hunkering down in the yacht with good brandy and De'aths gift of rifles for herself and Kalabos the party waited for the perfect moment to enact THE PLAN.

Kalabos quickly went over THE PLAN. When the van departed his hobo cohorts would provide the distraction at the front of the club and using this as cover our stalwart heroes would break into Gardners office, search his safe and other files then burn the building down. Kalabos slightly giggled to himself when he brought up arson.

Watching from the yacht our heroes saw Shaw turn up with two bodyguards and meet with a group of people in black robes. After discussion he sent his bodyguards to his own yacht, The Esmeralda, and went back to talking to robed figures. In a surprise twist for our characters tha van arrived and instead of unloading the robed figures began loading crates onto the van.

At this sight Dawson asked if anybody could sew. Shambles revealed a previously unknown ability and used the yachts stores to create a black robe for Dawson. Donning the robe Dawson sneaked out into the night to find out what was occuring.

After Dawson left De'ath and Kalabos decided to scout Walsh's yacht. After a close call on being spotted they decided to make their move. Kalabos chuckled as he talked about using the nearby gas cans to burn down the yacht.

Before any of this could occur there was a commotion at the club. Dawson had sneaked up to the van and realising that the keys were still in it had decided to adapt THE PLAN. Jumping in he at first waited for the back door to be shut but panicked when a crate was dropped and drove the van into the night.

THE PLAN was surely somethinged!