You've probably seen this but...

Keeper Ruminations

So it's been a while but life got in the way in the form of film conventions, music festivals and a trip to Morocco followed by the normal being no well thing associated with flying Ryanair.

I've hit my first major block. The first documents produced a real momentum and there was a temptation to just run with the campaign that they were producing but I promised myself I'd see how things went if I followed the campaigns central conceit. This has led to a certain amount of flailing as my players and I try to decide what happens next.

I decided fairly early on that The American Preservation League would at least be a red herring but as we progressed it seemed like a good idea to bring them in as a possible ally but not one you'd want. From this it was easy to make Jahraus an even sadder little racist than the text showed but show that he has a weird fucked up point. It's sort of playing around with Lovecrafts racism which I believe was the point of the text. This gave us a slightly uncomfortable but quite entertaining session with Martins Kalabos milking the anti-Mexican stuff for all it was worth. Nothing groundbreaking but interesting all the same.

At this point I have to address something that's always confused me about Lovecrafts racism. It was extreme even for his day but I've never got over his hatred of eskimos! I know nowadays PETA may hate them but generally as a racial group I've never seen that much bile directed to them. It's always seemed that eskimos, inuit or other tribes, have always been looked on fondly but Lovecraft really hated them. That's just fucked.

Train in vain, Boston I love you but you're bringing me down, your racist friend

Our stalwart heroes decided to continue the investigation in Boston for two reasons. They were interested in the documents mention of The American Preservation League and Dawson had ascertained that the dead investigator mentioned in the same document was none other than our good friend Shambles!

Taking the train to Boston, Kalabos using his own 'ticket', they quickly made their way to that Preservation Leagues address only to find that it was a rundown brownstone with apartments full of families. Ascertaining that the League obviously worked from their founders home address our investigators decided that the best thing to do would be to rent a room around the corner so they could watch any comings and goings. It was only after they were all safely ensconced in the boarding house, De'ath was staying uptown at the Boston Hilton of course, that Shambles brought up the fact that they had no view of the Leagues front door. Our experienced PI Dawson, who had chosen this building, seemed unfazed and stated that at least they shared the large backies and could sneak in the back of The Leagues building if necessary. A complicated plan involving mirrors to spy around the corner was briefly discussed before being rejected.

It's interesting to note that Shambles was very careful to check that the boarding house wasn't owned by a Mrs Wilmer and rejected constant attempts by Dawson to get them all to investigate factories in Boston.

Retiring to the local diner the investigators ran into none other than Fred Jahraus the head of the American Preservation League. A long discussion followed in which Jahraus convinced them all to sign up and talked at length about the foul practices of foreigners, Kalabos excepted as he was clearly one of the good dirty Mexicans, and how they were infiltrating America and would bring it down. He seemed a little delusional as he talked about seeing half-breed fish things when he was a merchant sailor, that Mexicans and Eskimos were trying to bring back ancient evil gods to destroy the world and that the British aristocracy were actually lizard people and they had agents in the US government. Our heroes listened politely then left as soon as possible.

It's interesting to note that when he signed up to join the League Shambles didn't want to give a real address so used the one of another boarding house up the road. The boarding house of a Mrs W Callahan.

Keepers Ruminations

I wasn't going to comment about the stupidity of using a bear trap or the ten minute discussion that arose when Martin brought the idea up but then I decided to have a wee go of Fallout: New Vegas last night. Fair enough it's done in the game and Martin did have another media reference but I stand by my decision that it's a stupid idea that won't be allowed ever again in my games. Unless I'm running Buffy and you spend a drama point of course. Anyway we've come to the end of the first two documents and how do I feel it's gone?

The first advice I'd give somebody new to Trail of Cthulhu is to run at least one one-off before going on to The Armitage Files. The way the campaign is set up means there's a rather big info-dump at the start and the players are then the ones deciding what direction everything goes in. Sorting out the rules at the same time is an extra ball that you really don't want to have to juggle. In the last session I went for a fag with a player and as we chatted I realised he'd missed something I thought was really obvious about the combat system which I could have made clearer if I'd done a less intense introductory session. The only problem with this is I can only advise designing a scenario yourself, adapting a CoC one or buying Arkham Detective Tales. The scenario in the main rulebook doesn't quite work and the free scenario at Pelgrane Press, The Murderer of Thomas Fell, whilst absolutely great is very much a hardcore Purist one. It's a great adventure and it's made me buy other Graham Walmsley adventures from them but you really wouldn't expect the characters from there to then go on to investigate more. I'd like to see a free Pulp adventure offered by Pelgrane at some point to balance the whole thing out.

Saying that I'm downloading Cthulhu Apocalypse as I type this so please don't ignore the fantastic Purist stuff.

My only other real complaint is that this campaign desperately needs an index. It's annoying when the players suddenly decide to do something and I have to quickly find something.

As to the campaign so far I'm loving it. Having the Yacht Club as the first starting point meant I could borrow a spine from the book but the way they veered from that path proved interesting. I'd had the Yacht Club break-in as the midpoint of the adventure but that really proved to be the cave exploration. As the game moved on the break in came to the fore as the climax and it ended up being quite a good one for what we were running. My original climax idea included much death, madness and monsters in a subterranean temple but the assault with no monsters and rather heavy foreshadowing of things that may yet come proved really satisfying for all of us. To be honest there's enough there at the moment to go on with a great campaign, and there's a slight temptation to do that,but the Files keep drawing you back.

We've had one more session in the interim but that was only to go over the new document. The only thing of interest is that Dawson has started losing and gaining time at points. I'm sure it's nothing.