Bookhounds?

[Grafster]

Glad to see a sudden uptick in interest!

Glad to have everyone onboard. 4 players seems about right. Appreciate people responding to my questions (in retrospect it seems a bit draconian but all the responses help me get a good idea about where people are coming from.)

I want to have another day or so to think about the character concepts. They look fantastic on a quick skim. I want to let them percolate a bit and see how they knit together in my head in terms of narrative.
It's a certainly that I will come back with questions for people as well.

> Yes, I've read the sample adventure. I've read all the ToC adventures.
That's slightly daunting. I've read about 2. But two folks have read the the adventure so we will improvise away from it.

Just quickly
>Type of bookshop: one that makes money by working both sides of the law.
>Something fairly seedy. Credit Rating 3 at most, in the City, the fringes of Covent Garden, or Soho.
+ Dr B's bordom-induced "occupation" makes me think that the group will be semi-overty criminal (as a means if not an end). Am I reading into it too much?

It's fine if no-one plays the bookseller, I feel that PbP games can push boundaries a bit more (since people have more time to think their way out of an issue, and there is no requirement that a 2-3 hour session have a strong flow since we aren't getting together to play)

However I do want to orient the game around a bookshop, which means an NPC "owner" of the shop. The book owner NPC falling under the Keepers control means potentially offers great potential for weirdness and drama; especially if they don't know about all the stuff being done under-the-counter. A "mostly absentee eccentric"?

The Group Currently seems to be (sorry if I have something wrong, I haven't really immersed myself yet)
Anthony T.E. (Terence Erasmus) Llewellyn -- aristocratic scam artist
Luke Carse -- "Booklegger" former military (great war veteran)
Capt Jory Penhalligon -- former military Book Scout (who grew up in the Raj)
"Unnameed" -- Author/Jornalist/Professor (academic type?)

[Seon]

1.Have you played CoC before?
2.Have you played ToC before?
3.Have you played PbP before?
4.Are you familiar with the bookhounds setting? (have you read the book?)
5.If you have read the book did you look at the adventure in back?
6.What are your expectations for a game?
7.How frequently do you think you will be able to post?
8.What kind of character are you interested in playing? (occupation? drives? etc)
9.What kind of bookshop would you like to run?

1. Nope.
2. Nope.
3. Yes.
4. Nope :p
5. ...nope...
6. I just want it to be personally fun.
7. Quite often given the right amount of motivation.
8. A surprisingly intelligent street vagrant who knows a lot of tricks.. Drive is Thirst for Knowledge.
9. Fairly seedy, seeing as it will be run by a criminal :p. I expect is to be understocked or full of books of "questionable material." If he actually gets his hand on good literature, he's more likely to read it himself :p


I guess his... actually her name will be Laura Fulleron. She would be an orphan who educated herself out of sheer will but is still a street vagrant because, well, she's a woman.

More on that later.

[Grafster]

OK. Lets do this in chunks.

The bookshop.

Two methods: Player led or Keeper led.... preferences?

[AndrewTBP]

Kelvin Grant

Bookseller

Kelvin Grant was born in 1874 in Saltaire, Yorkshire. He won a scholarship to the City of London School, and moved to London, where he lived with his uncle who owned Willey's Military Bookshop. Grant worked in the bookshop while at school and afterward and knew the clientele's tastes well. He inherited the bookshop in 1902 while serving in South Africa as a volunteer.

Since then, the bookshop has gradually declined. Renamed Grant's Military Bookshop in 1922, it is no longer the fine Victorian establishment where his uncle, a lifelong bachelor, provided specialist literature to officers, cadets and other ranks. Only the hard-nosed acumen of Mrs Grant, who caught Grant's attention at the Empire, has kept it on an even keel.

Drive: Scholarship

[AndrewTBP]

The bookshop. Two methods: Player led or Keeper led.... preferences?

I'd prefer a player-led bookshop, so I've outlined a Bookseller for approval.

[Dr. Bloodworth]

I'd think it would be more fun to do a player-run shop. I'm thinking possibly Anthony could help from the financial angle particularly, especially since the shop presented above has seen better days.

[Grafster]

I agree that player run is easier/more fun. Appreciate that it be submitted for approval, but I'm most interested in finding out whether the other characters like it.
(I'm more likely to stuff weirdness into things on the fringes than whole sale approve or disapprove of something). For example

For your consideration,Malcolm Willey, During the time between when Grant inherited the bookstore, while serving abroad, and he came back to reclaim it the bookstore was looked after by his cousin, Malcolm. A pale faced boy with a glass eye (from a child accident) Malcolm did, in Ms. Grant's estimation, "a brilliant job of spoiling everything your uncle worked on". He indulged his appetite for esoterica and oddities to a remarkable degree and the back room of the shop is filled with all manner of strangeness. Ms. Grant's hard-nosed practicality prevents any of it from being thrown away. "Something in this mess will be worth something to someone" she says. And it all stays dusted and, more-or-less, sorted with diligently-written-but-uniformative labels like "Wooden boards with little stick-men" and "Nice Leather Book, not-English, terrible handwriting". The bookstore's decline from it's victorian age splendor can be irrevocably traced to Malcolm's short-but-disasterous stint as custodian; a fact that he is all-too-sheepishly aware of. He is often found lingering about the park nearby, or in the persian coffeshop further down the street and almost gleefully happy to stand-in behind the counter if required. Malcolm Willey could be a contact for the occult skill of a PC, someone the group has mind the shop while they are out or just local background.

I am happy to have a character with a wife. How do you see her being role-played? For NPCs like that I tend to think that, in normal circumstances, it's better for the player to post for them in scenes (and less work for me).

[Taavi]

The bookshop as described sounds interesting (and kudos to Grant for daring to be married).

Two questions occur to me: Why has the bookshop gone downhill, and what is a military bookshop doing messing with the occult?

Grafster has put forward one idea but I'd like to suggest another which is more in-period, which can be summarised by one man: British Major-General J.F.C. Fuller. Fuller had his heyday in the mid to late 1920s when his intellectual approach to war and ideas about mechanised warfare led to the formation of the Experimental Mechanised Force, but his own abrasive personality and internal army politics (in particular from the still influential and heavily-nobly-titled cavalry wings) led to it being disbanded in 1929 and Fuller retiring in 1933. After retiring he moved to the far right, becoming part of the directorate of the British Union of Fascists and attending Hitler's parties.

Fuller was also a dedicated occultist, confidante of aleister crowley, editor of crowley's magazines and autobiography and in various other occult circles up to his neck. (In Stross' Laundry novels he is the founder of the Laundry).

What if the bookshop was under Fuller's patronage? In the 20s it would have ridden high with a prestigious and influential general on the list and all his proteges coming in to order their new military theory books; now, with fuller retired, effectively disgraced and moving in very strange circles, his patronage is a lifeline made of lead - it still brings the customers in, but they are right-wing paranoiacs, crowleyite occultists, embittered junior officers who once took Fuller's side and have now had their careers crushed, etc. Who knows what such people might order or want? how do we both sell to them and get rid of them? How long are the spoons we're using to sup with these devils? There's bound to be connections to the Ahnenerbe, the various Occult Orders of the book of the smoke, etc.

What do you think?

[Grafster]

6. I just want it to be personally fun.
7. Quite often given the right amount of motivation.
... criminal :p. ... :p

I am happy to have people with limited experience in the game, and your character concept sounds fine (a bit dickensian but that seems like that close enough to genre for me).

Since I don't know you I am not sure what is "personally fun" for you. Action sequences? Combat? Mental Puzzles? Is there a sort of theme you prefer?
Obviously I can't promise to provide any thing specific, but I like to have an idea...

Generally when we ask in PbP "how often can you post" it means "in the bad case". Most people post frequently when they are motivated. The point is that you intend to (or your lifestyle enables you to) post x per y.
Personally I aim for daily but usually manage 5 or so times a week.

Also, and this is a personal failing, but I don't understand what the ":p"s are.

[AndrewTBP]

The idea of a military bookshop gone to seed was inspired by a bookshop here in Sydney, Napoleon's Military Bookshop, which moved from a shop front in Pitt St to upstairs above an adult bookshop in York St to a basement shared with a game shop to an online shop that didn't respond.

Ah, cousin Malcolm, he's so unworldly. I wonder if he's ever worked out that Uncle opened his bookshop because he was a homosexual who liked fit young men in tight trousers.

I was going to introduce Fuller as a bookshop regular, so we're on the same page. Your suggestion opens up things nicely and gives Grafster so much to work with. I like it!

Mrs Grant is an off-screen character, like Arthur Daley's wife in Minder. She's younger than Kelvin by 5 years or so, they married in 1903, and they have children and possibly grandchildren by now. I wouldn't be surprised if Laura Fulleron is a project for Mrs Grant and her protege in some way, but that's up to Seon.

I changed Kelvin's Drive to Scholarship, so he prefers to read the good stock, as suggested by Seon, rather than sell it like a hot potato.

[Taavi]

What I want: shadows. Secrets. Unsettling mysteries that never quite close. Plots like a mobius onion. Murders because of the precise punctuation of footnote 46 in the 1751 edition. Quasi reveals that keep me awake trying to figure out what's really going on. And a really BIG reveal at the end.

Shall we, as the colonials say, get down to brass tacks, and crunch some points on character sheets? How many have we got to play with?

[Seon]

6. I just want it to be personally fun.
7. Quite often given the right amount of motivation.
... criminal :p. ... :p

I am happy to have people with limited experience in the game, and your character concept sounds fine (a bit dickensian but that seems like that close enough to genre for me).

Since I don't know you I am not sure what is "personally fun" for you. Action sequences? Combat? Mental Puzzles? Is there a sort of theme you prefer?
Obviously I can't promise to provide any thing specific, but I like to have an idea...

Generally when we ask in PbP "how often can you post" it means "in the bad case". Most people post frequently when they are motivated. The point is that you intend to (or your lifestyle enables you to) post x per y.
Personally I aim for daily but usually manage 5 or so times a week.

Also, and this is a personal failing, but I don't understand what the ":p"s are.

I generally do like mental puzzles as oppsoed to combat and action sequences. The most fun I've ever had in a PbP game was as a treacherous chancellor to an emperor after all. The theme I like are mystery and ethical dillemas. The treacherous chancellor in that game murdered a lot of people to retain her power, but she also stopped the king from committing a genocide with her influence.

Come to think of it, I guess that there's some part within me that just loves tricking people.

You can expect me to post once a day if I feel that my input is appropriate at worst.

[Dr. Bloodworth]

As to posting rate, I can post most every day. I'm on night work, and we've had a fairly crazy schedule lately so I can't post during evening hours (East Coast US) very often. But during the days, sure.

[andyw666]

Grant's Military Bookshop sounds good to me. Jory would have known of it from his days in uniform, and could have drifted back to it after he left the Army.

Wildly off Topic,Oddly enough, I remember Napoleon's Bookshop very well, used to go hang in it on Pitt St in my lunch break when I worked in Sydney, for a few minutes of sanity regaining as I dived into MilLit. Then it moved to York St and I eventually moved away from Sydney. I even know the idiot who bought it and ruined it. Small world.

[Grafster]

Like everyone's story ideas. Obviously the rise of extremism in germany and all the things that go with it (Keynes, etc) float around. I'm not sure how much of that to put in; I worry that if it's too much in the foreground it could pull the game more into black and white morality.

I am happy to put those out as ideas for right now.

Shall we, as the colonials say, get down to brass tacks, and crunch some points on character sheets? How many have we got to play with?

I think this is a capital idea, as the, uh, non-colonials say.

Ostensibly the Bookhounds setting is supposed to be "more gritty" with 55 points instead of the normal 65 for general abilities. I am.... fine, if people want to do that, but seeing as how points are really "narrative capital" players can "spend" to affect the story I'm not keen on reducing it pointlessly.

There are 4+ PCs so that's 16 investigative points.

Since it seems like there are other Players who have a lot of system experience I'd appreciate it if people would helping people with less experience during character creation.

I would tend to say that characters should follow the purist rules (Health and Stability are capped at 12. Sanity is capped at 10. Can't buy Mythos/Hypnotism/Magic/etc. Though you may earn Mythos during play).
No pillars of Stability (unless people really want to have them).

[AndrewTBP]

I have some suggestions for everyone.

1. Do not take both Athletics and Fleeing. That way madness lies.
2. Occupational skills are "spend 1 build point, get 2 rating points" so you almost always get an even number. You cannot spend 1.5 build points to get 3 rating points. The paragraph in the ToC rules is very unclear, but that's how the forthcoming online character generator works.

[AndrewTBP]

Since it seems like there are other Players who have a lot of system experience I'd appreciate it if people would helping people with less experience during character creation.

Seon,
Since Laura Fulleron seems to be a standard ToC character, Hobo (Tramp), I can offer the online character generator beta test and leave a few points unspent for The Knowledge and Bookshop Stock. We just need to work out a desktop sharing method and a time of day.

Here's the first cut, showing your Occupational abilites with 1 build point (so a 2 rating) and maximum Health, Sanity, and Stability.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7qhb8 ... FkM2RjNjgw

andyw666 & Taavi,
Since Book Scout Jory Penhalligon and Catalogue Agent Luke Carse both get Bibliography, that leaves Document Analysis and Textual Analysis to Bookseller Kelvin Grant.
So I'm going to put 2 build points in each and 0 build points in Bibliography unless Luke Carse takes Document Analysis as a personal specialty.

[Taavi]

I have a small volume licence for the pdf of the Trail of Cthulhu player's guide. So if those who don't possess/have access to the rules pm me with your email address, I can (legally) send you a copy.

PS does Credit Rating start at zero, or at the lower bound of the profession? And do we each save an Investigative point from our 16 for Bookshop Stock?

[AndrewTBP]

A first run at Kelvin Grant.

Drive: Scholarship. Occupation: Bookseller
Investigative Abilities
Accounting* (1) 2
Art History* (1) 2
Bargain* (1) 2
Bibliography* (0) 0
Bureaucracy (1) 1@
Credit Rating (4) 4
Document Analysis* (2) 4
Languages* (2) 4
Library Use* (1) 2
Textual Analysis* (2) 4
Bookshop Stock (1)
General Abilities
Auction* (6) 12
Conceal (10) 10@
Firearms (2) 2@
First Aid (6) 6
Fleeing (3) 6
Health (9) 1+9 = 10
Preparedness (4) 4
Riding (2) 2@
Sanity (6) 4+6 = 10
Scuffling (2) 2@
Sense Trouble (2) 2
Stability (9) 1+9 = 10
Stealth (2) 2@
Weapons (2) 2@

* Occupational Ability
@ Military: Army Officer

[Taavi]

I have some suggestions for everyone.

1. Occupational skills are "spend 1 build point, get 2 rating points" so you almost always get an even number. You cannot spend 1.5 build points to get 3 rating points. The paragraph in the ToC rules is very unclear, but that's how the forthcoming online character generator works.

Actually, if you look at the example character in the ToC rulebook, he very clearly has spent 1.5 build points to get 3 rating points on a number of stats. The way it seems to have been done is to add all the points spent on occupational skills together, then divide by 2 to get the final cost: hence the TOTAL has to be an even number. If that's not the way the online character generator works, then the official sample character is illegal...