Play@YSDC

Posted: **Mon Oct 31, 2011 2:11 am**

I'm provisionally interested in starting a Bookhounds game; structured like a character driven TV show (i.e. a bit more driven by player background and desires and less by "we are playing this adventure").

Random Thoughts,I am doing it partially because I want to kick the tires on ToC (and there only seems to be one ToC game) -- There will be a learning curve since I've never played it yet myself. I am flexible about the tone of the game. I have biases but they are numerous and broad. However I don't have interest in deviating from the core premise of the setting, [u]the book hounds are somewhere between abjectly poor and just scraping by[/u]. Poverty and the threat of it (along with their [i]Drives[/i]) regularly drag them into the deep end. If we go Pulp think expect it to be Noir-ish. The far end of the scale that I could go --> the 1st 10 minutes of the 1st Indiana Jones movie (with a book instead of a whip). I love the idea of weird books and strange intersections of education and thought. I will try my best to come up with lots of weird/random books. I encourage players to do likewise. I am not huge into high magic for CoC PCs. I know it's floating around in Trail, Bookhounds and Rough Magics but I am not keen on seeing PC spell casting as a key theme). Everything is up for discussion; things I specifically want to discuss [*]Pillars of Stability? (like the concept, but I don't really want full on soap opera, I'd prefer the game to focus less on "my adorable cousin" and "my old grandmother who is a font of wisdom" and more on conniving book scouts and back room auctions. [*]Degree of anachronism -- I am fairly disinterested overtly limited gender/racial/culture roles. I have seen some really great atypical investigators in past CoC games (an Egyptian scholar, a Turkish Catholic Priest, etc) and I have limited appetite for the "you must play a white guy or you are at +2 difficulty to life". But I am open to discussion. [*]Level of PC power I am tempted to go with 55 points instead of 65 points (which is more thematic? and suggested by the book?) but I don't really know what that means in game terms. PS My preferred place to do this would be Google Wave (I hate having to play with HTML for 20 minutes just to make a readable post; as evidenced by the mess that is this post) but I think that is a non-starter.

If you are interested please fill out the questions below.

Posted: **Mon Oct 31, 2011 3:23 am**

I would be interested.

Posted: **Mon Oct 31, 2011 11:02 pm**

If you are interested please fill in the following questions
There are no "right" or "wrong" answers, just trying to get a sense of potential players backgrounds/interested.

Have you played CoC before?
Have you played ToC before?
Have you played PbP before?

Are you familiar with the bookhounds setting? (have you read the book?)
If you have read the book did you look at the adventure in back?

What are your expectations for a game?
How frequently do you think you will be able to post?

What kind of character are you interested in playing? (occupation? drives? etc)
What kind of bookshop would you like to run?

Posted: **Tue Nov 01, 2011 12:34 am**

Hi Grafster.

Good luck with your game. I've decided not to take part in any games as a player, at least until both of my own games are back at full speed.
But otherwise I'd definitely be interested. I own ToC, but haven't had chance to fully read it yet. I really want to spend a weekend reading through it sometime though, even if I just steal a few things for my BRP CoC games. (I'd also like to see some of the extra rules from the new French version of CoC).
I'm not familiar with the bookhounds setting at all though.

Posted: **Tue Nov 01, 2011 11:26 am**

R,

I'd be happy to hold a spot. I think I've already talked about how much I've appreciated/enjoyed Masks so I won't go on at great length.

And this is definitely a "kick the ToC tires" kind of enterprise.

Bookhounds is a "campaign frame". Like Delta Green and other popular CoC evolutions it is focused on explaining why characters might repeatedly encounter mythos elements. In this case the frame has some key elements

1. It's squarely focused around mythos tomes
2. characters are driven by poverty in the depression (they are book sellers specializing in rare tomes)

and thus it easily justifies the kinds of behavior that that characters in an rpg to engage in
a. Repeatedly encountering the supernatural
b. following people around, lying, breaking and entering

while still keeping their motivations relatively modest. (i.e. they aren't necessarily out to "fight crime" or a "globe spanning conspiracy").

I've followed Hite since his Out of the Box column way back and that's part of the interest.

I feel sure that there are a lot of great choices for characters in the setting.

Posted: **Wed Nov 02, 2011 7:18 pm**

I'd be interested in playing this!

I've played CoC and both played and run PbP. I haven't actually played ToC as of yet, but I'm fairly familiar with the system.

I've checked out the Bookhounds setting, and I've glanced over the adventure, but I haven't really read it in-depth (so there'll still be surprises).

I'm on night work and currently we have a pretty insane scedule, so for right now I'll probably only really be able to post in the afternoons.

Character -- I'll have to think more on it as to specifics, but I believe I'd like to deal with Celtic mythology/folklore in some manner. Maybe some Celtic stuff in the bookshop.

Posted: **Fri Nov 04, 2011 7:37 am**

Dr. B,

Glad to have you on board. And academic specialty or interest(s) is practically a requirement. Celtic myth/folklore sounds great. I think the "bookstore owner" occupation (on vacation right now, can't easily refer to the books) can litterally pull random items out of the back of the shop (called "the squiz"?). That's one way to make sure you can have periodic access to a useful player defined (celtic-flavored) items.

There are other ways to pull that into the game; an academic (or a forger!) with a specialty would naturally find items headed their way.

I hope for regular posting but I'm not picky about the time. I probably will be on a daily schedule myself but things can be unpredictable.

If people aren't familiar with it I will probably weave in at least some of the adventure; I don't see that necessarily happening right away.

Posted: **Fri Nov 04, 2011 1:43 pm**

Hey there!

I'd love to join if you have space. In short, have been playing CoC since the first edition was published, have been doing PbP forever but have not played ToC although I have the rules.

Have not read the Bookhounds rules but have access to them.

Umm, what else. I am really more character and atmosphere focused, and can post daily if need be but the current game I'm in is moving a bit slower than that.

Was thinking about something of an ex military officer, ex boy scout type, well prepared and resourceful but a bit rogue... However, I'm not wedded to the idea.

Andy

Posted: **Sat Nov 05, 2011 6:39 am**

The more that i think about it the more i like having characters with military backgrounds .

I see several awesome areas having a military character opens up a) potential overseas experience (India, opium war(too far back?),) b) access to society without being of that social caste (maybe you saved someone wealthy, or infamous?) c) old comrades (great source of NPCs/adventure hooks) d) "war books" (there are a -lot- of books about war, military strategy, memoirs, military history, etc).

A retired book-loving military officer living on a modest pension, an unscrupulous logistics officer who illicitly acquired a stash of scrolls while serving overseas (or fighting in Europe), a foreign officer who skipped his own country to set up shop in a new life as a mild mannered book seller, etc are all very much "in genre". (IMHO anyway)
Those are just examples btw. You could play a character with one of those concepts or they could be contacts you have.

So military stuff is fertile with great hooks (and a big part of the history of the UK); also the Great War (! Huge!) however - while it depends on the players choices to some degree - bookhounds tends to swing away from guns 'n hard charging action.

I do want to be clear (just because I've seen it once before in an online game) that just because a character has 8 points in "dynamite use" and 8 "weapons (katana)" doesn't mean it will be a game filled with dynamite and katanas; any more than a character with a naudical background will be sailing around on a boat every session.

Obviously CoC doesn't typically cause that kind of confusion but just wanted to mention it.
(sorry if that comes off poorly; there is nothing wrong with that play style it's just not the style I have in mind for this game...)

Posted: **Sat Nov 05, 2011 7:28 am**

Andy is probably already aware of this but just so I've mentioned it: the Preparedness stat does a brilliant job of helping to abstract the "my character might have had this kind of thing in his bag/car/house but as a player I didn't have time to keep track of everything.

I am traveling right now so it's tricky to review the books but IIRC you bid and roll to "just happen to have X".

Posted: **Sat Nov 05, 2011 9:21 am**

Right now three folks have expressed interest

Seon
Dr. Bloodworth
andyw666

I would be willing to start with three people, but I'd like to spend a little bit of time talking about the game and characters before we launch. I will probably keep the game open for a while (potentially indefinitely) to allow new people to join.

And there are some "big picture" things I'd like to briefly review/discuss.

Posted: **Sat Nov 05, 2011 1:25 pm**

Big Picture Stuff - for discussion

I prefer that the players develop the bookshop, at least partially. If Dr. B goes through with the celtic angle that is an element. The occupations chosen will also impact how it is developed. If a player isn't a Bookseller (occupation) I will have to develop the owner. If there are no bookscouts there will need to be some main providers of books (either way there will be minor characters doing some of that), etc.
Changes/Additions to Core Rules (from the Bookhounds book)

.

Posted: **Sun Nov 06, 2011 1:38 am**

Here's a quick character idea I threw together, didn't actually develop him mechanically. BTW, the Llewellyns are a family I've played several members of in CoC games, both as PCs and NPCs, along the lines of how HPL had his families like the Whateleys and the Marshes and such.

Anthony T.E. (Terence Erasmus) Llewellyn
Drive: In the Blood
Born: July 20, 1913 (age mid 20s)

Anthony is the wayward member of the Llewellyn family of West Anglia and Wales. In 1930, his family sent him to University College in London, and he later moved to that city on a permanent basis, getting himself a townhouse on Cumberland Terrace, on the outskirts of Regent's Park. However, he soon fell in with the criminal element, using his great wealth, trustworthy exterior, and extensive web of contacts - both criminal and legitimate - to aid in the illegal book and knowledge trade. Eventually, he will inherit his family's ancestral estates near Aldwick, Somerset, and his father secretly hopes this may help redeem Anthony.

One of Anthony's chief scams is to finance an "expedition" led by fake archaeologists (having their papers forged, if necessary, to make it seem more legitimate), then to create false copies of "artifacts" they've supposedly found; these copies are then sold at a high sum to some unsuspecting university or museum (preferably smaller local ones, which can't afford authentication).

The Llewellyns have had a disturbing number of run-ins with the weird and supernatural over the years, and Anthony fears he is to be no different.

Contacts: Phil Simpson (forger of false academic degrees), Prof. Gordon Welleston (Celtic historian at the British Museum)

Posted: **Sun Nov 06, 2011 4:17 am**

Dr. B,
I prefer "non mechanical" initial character development, especially in something like bookhounds, so I am fine without stats.

That is a great character concept, very much in the genre. In the blood is a particularly "bookhounds" drive; if you choose to take it in lieu of a more personal drive it will probably be very much like a curse, hounding him constantly. Love the "lineage" element.

If he's due to inherit the family estates what drew him to the criminal elements?
Does he hate having to wait for the money?
Does he just like tricking people as an intellectual challenge?
Just a way to stave off boredom?
Thrill of adventure?
An almost irresisable desire to lie for lyings sake (an almost genetic predisposition towards lying, one might say)?

In terms of his scams and their relationship to the game it can go two ways (broadly speaking)
1. Background -- Anthony's schemes are going around mostly off camera, you got a squiz as a result of a scam, you need another PC to help you forge or validate something for your current target, an old mark/relative of a mark/betrayed coconspirator/con man angling for the same mark is coming after you
2. Foreground -- other players are key participants in the scams, the bookstore is an element of them (and is effectively primarily a criminal enterprise in terms of where it's operating revenue comes from)

Posted: **Mon Nov 07, 2011 10:24 pm**

I figure it's probably just boredom. I think of something similar to how the Hellfire Club/fake Satanist types took off... so bored they'd just do anything for a thrill. And I'd think most of his schemes would be in the background.

Posted: **Mon Nov 07, 2011 11:48 pm**

Outstanding! Give me a day or 2 longer and will present something a bit coherent! - Andy

Posted: **Thu Nov 10, 2011 1:31 am**

(sorry for being off for a bit, cold+work)

Dr. B.,
Boredom is very in genre. Background offers more opportunity for the group to play what they want.

With regard to Background... I'd like to think about having the scams have an impact on play, if the most recent scam has gone poorly a general die pool might be lower than it's full value at refresh. If it has gone well you might have a "free" squiz, etc. What do you think?

I see your character playing the planner/mastermind role for a small group of confederates (who also do their own thing) less of a gang and more of an ad-hoc Oceans 11 type thing. Does that match what you have in mind?

Andy,
Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

No response from Seon so s/he is probably out. We have a some development work to do (bookshop, contacts, etc) so I think we are fine with proceeding and planning on picking up another person or two before we launch.

Posted: **Thu Nov 10, 2011 2:45 am**

Hey there!

After looking a bit more at the Bookhounds rules, am thinking I'd quite like my PC to be a Book Scout. Here's my general idea:

Capt Jory Penhalligon

Jory's family were once well to do Cornish gentry, but had fallen into scandal, disgrace and poverty many years ago. In desperation, Jory's father took a low paying but socially acceptable position as a Colonial Officer in India, far from gossiping tongues. Jory's childhood was largely spent in the exotic British Raj. A naturally curious child, Jory became an accomplished explorer, and adopted the style of General Baden-Powell's new Scouting movement, to always be prepared. Jory was also exposed to and became fascinated with Indian mysticism and its multitude of religions.

Managing to wangle a scholarship to Cambridge, Jory returned to the Mother Land, but by the time he had completed his degree (in some species of English Lit), the Great War was well underway. Jory was able to obtain a commission, perhaps more by unscrupulous skills than honest means, but his strengths in preparation and observation served him well, and he finished that terrible war as a captain (possibly a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps?).

Jory remained in the Army until the mid 1920s, serving back in India, until his more exotic and unusual interests and curiosity started to cause the spread of rumour. Rather than risk real disgrace, Jory resigned with his reputation not too harmed, but very limited funds.

I see Jory's Drive as Curiosity but am not wed to it. Greed would also work (and is, of course, good).

Jory is something of a Can Do man. Although his background was that of the gentleman, he has always been prepared to do what it takes, within some loosely defined bounds.

Let me know how that suits.

Cheers,

Andy

Posted: **Thu Nov 10, 2011 6:45 am**

Hi there,

I'd like to introduce Luke Carse as a character for your consideration. Luke falls somewhere between PI, Catalogue Agent, and Criminal - he is a transatlantic Book Smuggler, aka "Booklegger".

It's not always appreciated that liquor was far from the only thing banned during Prohibition by the cousins across the pond. Thanks to organisations like the New England Watch and Ward Society and the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and the related Comstock Laws, the US's east coast states could neither buy nor mail order vast swathes of publications; not just pornography and erotica, but also controversial modernist and jazz age literature such as Joyce's Ulysses, the works of Oscar Wilde, Cabell's Jurgen, etc. These publications have occasionally been banned in Britain as well, although their printing in France tends to circumvent such bans quite quickly.

This has created a thriving underground market, in which East Coast quality will pay premium prices for discretely sold, unbowdlerised European editions of these books and other, more explicit, (and sometimes occult) works. More generally, the American rich and bourgeoisie are still aping J.P. Morgan and attempting to become known as collectors of great and historic literature, creating a further market for antique European literature - or at least, things that look like antique European literature.

Luke’s freethinking politics, British literary education, and War Veteran tough-guy poise have enabled him to carve out a niche in this odd market: high culture at one end, low pornography at the other, and a profit to be made between. He works to ensure that his American clients - upper class, lower class and outright criminal - get what they want, without getting their names in the papers or any undue problems with the Customs authorities. He is motivated by a sense of adventure, also by his libertarian and nihilistic beliefs, but mainly by greed, or at least survival.

Personal background: Luke is a WWI veteran of the 1917-18 campaigns, who made a few American friends from the wrong side of the tracks during the North Russia Intervention and Operation Polar Bear. After the war he was able to access a scholarship scheme for WWI veterans to gain entrance to the University of Brichester, where he began to study law and literature; however, the Geddes Axe budget cuts of 1922 saw his scholarship and studies cut short. He later bribed a university clerk to obtain a fake B.A. degree, which hangs prominently on the wall of his place of employment. Despite having moved to the Smoke, he still maintains some connection to Brichester: Brichester's seedy Ultimate Press provides him with some of the more lurid publications requested by the American market, and the books he brings back on the return trip he usually sells to American Books Bought and Sold, a Brichester bookshop specialising in American literature.

Further reading: Gertzman, Jay A. Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920-1940, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999

PS: In answer to your questions:
CoC: Very familiar: ToC: have read the rules; Bookhounds: Have read the manual, including the adventure, sorry! Wanted to run it myself but my group opted for something different. Would probably be able to post every two or three days. Since I'm in Australia I doubt any real-time play would be possible for me.
Type of bookshop: one that makes money by working both sides of the law.

Posted: **Fri Nov 11, 2011 1:33 am**

Grafster wrote:

Have you played CoC before?

Have you played ToC before?

Have you played PbP before?

Are you familiar with the bookhounds setting? (have you read the book?)

If you have read the book did you look at the adventure in back?

What are your expectations for a game?

How frequently do you think you will be able to post?

What kind of character are you interested in playing? (occupation? drives? etc)

What kind of bookshop would you like to run?

Yes, since the 1980s.
Yes, both as an Investigator in a PbP game and as a Keeper in a face-to-face game and a PbP game.
Yes, both as an Investigator and as a Keeper.
Yes, I've read the book repeatedly.
Yes, I've read the sample adventure. I've read all the ToC adventures.
I expect the game to be atmospheric, diverting and mysterious.
I think I can post once a day, usually late Sydney time.
I don't mind being a Bookseller and running the shop, but I've played that, so something different like Author, Journalist or Professor is more fun. A drive like Scholarship or Thirst for Knowledge sounds fun.
Something fairly seedy. Credit Rating 3 at most, in the City, the fringes of Covent Garden, or Soho.

Posted: **Fri Nov 11, 2011 2:58 pm**

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?)

Posted: **Sat Nov 12, 2011 4:06 am**

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.

Posted: **Sat Nov 12, 2011 11:49 pm**

OK. Lets do this in chunks.

The bookshop.

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

Posted: **Sun Nov 13, 2011 5:02 am**

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

Posted: **Sun Nov 13, 2011 5:04 am**

Grafster wrote: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.

Posted: **Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:42 am**

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.

Posted: **Sun Nov 13, 2011 12:18 pm**

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
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).

Posted: **Sun Nov 13, 2011 12:51 pm**

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?

Posted: **Sun Nov 13, 2011 1:48 pm**

Seon wrote: 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.

Posted: **Sun Nov 13, 2011 9:13 pm**

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.

Posted: **Mon Nov 14, 2011 1:29 am**

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?

Posted: **Mon Nov 14, 2011 3:30 am**

Grafster wrote:
Seon wrote: 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.

Posted: **Mon Nov 14, 2011 4:53 am**

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.

Posted: **Mon Nov 14, 2011 5:06 am**

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.

Posted: **Mon Nov 14, 2011 1:49 pm**

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.

Taavi wrote: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).

Posted: **Mon Nov 14, 2011 2:28 pm**

I have some suggestions for everyone.

Do not take both Athletics and Fleeing. That way madness lies.
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.

Posted: **Mon Nov 14, 2011 11:24 pm**

Grafster wrote: 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.

Posted: **Mon Nov 14, 2011 11:50 pm**

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?

Posted: **Tue Nov 15, 2011 6:45 pm**

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

Posted: **Wed Nov 16, 2011 12:05 am**

AndrewTBP wrote:I have some suggestions for everyone.

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...

Posted: **Wed Nov 16, 2011 12:50 am**

Taavi wrote: 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...

Yes, but if I try to re-create Martin Harvesson in the online character generator, it tells me I have "Overspent by 4 of 16" so ... the official sample character is dodgy if not illegal.

This doesn't surprise me, because I've found sample characters in most games are slightly off. Trail of Cthulhu does need a good re-editing in places.
In any case, I was just offering suggestions, and it's Grafster's call as the Keeper to approve Investigator builds.

Posted: **Wed Nov 16, 2011 12:54 am**

Luke Carse
Drive: Adventure. Occupation: Catalogue Agent (Booklegger)
Pillars of Sanity: Pride: A hard man with brains can deal with anything; There's always a way: Seize the day, make your own luck; Family: Support dear old Ma and my sisters back in Severnford (not so much Da, the drunken communist dock worker).

Investigative Abilities:
Academic:
Languages 1 (Probably french)
Bibliography* 5 (Banned and censored books a speciality)
Law 1 (incomplete university studies)
Library Use* 1 (ditto)
Occult 1 (I don't believe it, I just sell it)
Interpersonal:
Assess honesty* 3 (Can I bribe this guy?)
Bargain*! 3 (How much should I offer?)
Credit Rating 2 (Not more than a tenner) including 1 free point from Occupation.
Intimidation*@! 2 (Maybe I'll just lean on him instead) (substituted for Flattery).
Streetwise*! 3 (Then again, that's a Docklands Tong sign; I'll pay peacable like) (personal speciality)
Technical:
Locksmith! 1 (It was open, officer)
Bookshop Stock 1
1 point in reserve

General Abilities:
Athletics@ 8 (ex military): Hit threshold is 4
Auction* 4 (my client wants this one)
Conceal*@ 5 (search my bags as much as you like, officer)
Disguise* 2 (Msieu, I am a respectable french businessman)
Driving@ 3 (If it's got wheels, I'll drive it)
Electrical Repair 1 (get that radio working, Corporal Carse!)
Filch 2 (No, lieutenant, I don't know where your boots went)
Firearms@ 3 (ex military)
First Aid 1 (Yup. He's bleeding.)
Health 10 (1+9) (Wirey)
Preparedness 4 (be prepared)
Sanity 9 (5+4) (Is it worse than an army of starving bolsheviks?)
Stability 9 (1 + 8) (Level headed)
Scuffling@! 5 (Don't mess me about, sonny)
Sense Trouble! 5 (Why's it so bloody quiet?)
Shadowing! 3 (Let's see where he's keeping the stash)
Stealth!@ 2 (Keep still unless you want a bullet in the head)

* Catalogue Agent (Occupation)
@ Military soldier.
! Criminal.

Notes:
I've substituted Intimidation for Flattery, hope that's ok.
I'm not sure why Catalogue Agents get Disguise and would rather have one of Scuffling, Sense Trouble, Shadowing or Stealth as an occupational instead.
Similarly the Catalogue Agent special ability seems rather weak as good roleplaying would do much the same (unless we are really playing up Old Blighty's caste system), so I'd rather take the Military Veteran or Criminal special ability; but this is up to the Keeper, if Grafster thinks the Catalogue Agent ability is useful/good then I'll stick with it.

Posted: **Wed Nov 16, 2011 3:22 am**

Can someone show me the guide for creating a character using ToC rule?

I think I saw a PDF on it somewhere, but now I cannot find it anywhere.

Posted: **Wed Nov 16, 2011 3:38 am**

Seon wrote:Can someone show me the guide for creating a character using ToC rule? I think I saw a PDF on it somewhere, but now I cannot find it anywhere.

It was a See Page XX article.
http://www.pelgranepress.com/seepagexx/ ... harGen.pdf

Posted: **Wed Nov 16, 2011 3:54 am**

Seon wrote:Can someone show me the guide for creating a character using ToC rule?
I think I saw a PDF on it somewhere, but now I cannot find it anywhere.

If you send me a message with your email address, I will email you a copy of the Player's Guide, which covers this.

Bookhounds has some changes to the Hobo/Tramp Occupation:
"Hobo: Called a Tramp in Britain. Tramps may take The Knowledge as an occupational ability; unlike American hobos,
they have no special ability to make contacts or find out the lay of the land. They may, however, use Streetwise to
identify doors and gates “usually left unlocked” (narratively similar to Locksmith), and use their Streetwise pool as
though it were Stealth when piggybacking with other Investigators on a Stealth test in an urban area."

The Knowledge is the special insight into London you get from having been born there and lived its mean streets for years.
"The Knowledge (Academic):
Since 1865, London cab drivers have been tested by The Knowledge of London Examination System, or “The Knowledge” for short, covering 320 routes through the city, encompassing 25,000 streets within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross Road. With this ability, you know the streets of London like the back of a cab-driver’s hand. You can:
• recall details of any landmark, bookstore or other business, club, restaurant, library, attraction, or other point of interest in the London area, including clientele, hours of operation, management, and rear entrances
• find the fastest, least-observed, or otherwise best route between any two points in London, by car, bus, or train
• recall social, ethnic, or economic details of any London neighbourhood or street – who lives there, where they came from, who collects the rent
• identify important social or business figures associated with any London neighbourhood or street: criminals, clergy, union leaders, rising politicians, tradesmen, professionals, etc.
• know anything else about London geography that seems relevant: sewer lines, hidden rivers, roofed-over mews, empty lots, etc."

I'm guessing that Laura is one of those annoying people who constantly comes in to read the stock and keep out of the cold, who never buys anything, and over the years we've become accustomed to sending her out for tea, leaving the shop in her care while we get lunch, etcetera. Does that sound about right?

Posted: **Wed Nov 16, 2011 4:52 am**

Sounds about right, yes.

Posted: **Wed Nov 16, 2011 9:03 pm**

Anthony T.E. Llewellyn

Drive: In the Blood or Ennui (haven't decided)
Occupation: Dilettante
Health 9, Stability 9, Sanity 10

*Archaeology 4, Assess Honesty 3, Bookshop Stock 1, *Credit Rating 7, Disguise 3, Filch 5, *Flattery 4, Fleeing 5, *History 6, *Languages 4, *Library Use 4, Law 2, Locksmith 3, *Oral History 3, Preparedness 4, *Riding 5, Scuffling 5, Sense Trouble 3, Weapons 8

Posted: **Thu Nov 17, 2011 4:35 am**

Sent PM, Taavi

Posted: **Thu Nov 17, 2011 7:06 am**

Credit Rating 7? What're you doing wiv the loikes of us, gov'ner?

Posted: **Thu Nov 17, 2011 8:36 am**

Guys, just trying to look at the PCs so far and see what other skills I should focus on for Jory. Think Luke has Auction, Biblio and Sense Trouble well covered. Jory can spend a few more points in that case on Bargain, Evidence Collection, Streetwise and The Knowledge. Plus he'll still have a good Preparedness

What other investigative skills ahve we missed?

Andy

Posted: **Thu Nov 17, 2011 11:33 am**

andyw666 wrote: What other investigative skills ahve we missed?

This is where the Keeper's Investigator Matrix comes in handy.

Posted: **Thu Nov 17, 2011 1:09 pm**

Plan on being a bit more active than I have been things periodically align such that work gets extremely busy. Though it looks like things are going very well without me, very good sign.

Dr. Bloodworth wrote: *Credit Rating 7,

Taavi wrote:Credit Rating 7? What're you doing wiv the loikes of us, gov'ner?

This is something we need to discuss a bit. In general Bookhounds is a "low rent" game. In fact the CR of the bookhound is generally limited by the bookshop +1 (in the case a CR3).

It's a game about economically challenging times forcing people to make difficult choices. At the same time Llewellyn seems to be a strong character. He uses his name to deceive people and, while he is destined to inherit a family estate he isn't cash rich now, he finances his current lifestyle with scams.

I like the idea that Dr. B. can buy a CR past 4 but spending past 4 opens up the chance of exposing the fraudulent nature of his current wealth. Thoughts?

Posted: **Thu Nov 17, 2011 1:16 pm**

AndrewTBP wrote:
Taavi wrote: Actually, if you look at t...1.5 build points to get 3 rating points on a number of stats. ...the official sample character is illegal...
Yes, but ... the official sample character is dodgy if not illegal.
In any case, I was just offering suggestions, and it's Grafster's call as the Keeper to approve Investigator builds.

If it's OK I'm going to sidestep the whole illegal/legal, accurate/inaccurate thing. I do recall seeing an instance in the book where it looked like they were forcing occupational skills to go up in increments of 2, but I don't see any reason why it would unbalance the game for people to get odd numbers in occupational skills.

So it's fine, from my standpoint, for someone to spend 3 points and get 2 occupational skills at 3 each (6 points total).

It may turn out to be illegal but I don't think it is 1) game breaking or 2) unfair (provided the option is available to all players, which it is).

Posted: **Thu Nov 17, 2011 2:05 pm**

I threw together a Matrix. Please plug your character data in here.

(its google doc but no sign in required. Hopefully that won't be abused.)

Posted: **Thu Nov 17, 2011 7:01 pm**

Taavi mentioned this thread to me and I was just wondering if there was still room for a little one? If so I'll post a character outline and rough out some skills.

Posted: **Thu Nov 17, 2011 11:46 pm**

It's hard to say no to someone with a name like "Bookman" in a bookhounds game.

By my count that is six, so I think we are closed for now.

I haven't adjusted the ToC Maxtrix for the bookhounds abilities. I will do that when I get a chance (or someone can do it for me).

Posted: **Fri Nov 18, 2011 12:55 am**

Grafster wrote:Please plug your character data in here.

I've done Kelvin, whose General abilities are still being tweaked.
I've done Anthony and Luke too, and made the Health and Sanity at the top of the sheet references to the cells in General abilities, to eliminate double entry errors.

Posted: **Fri Nov 18, 2011 1:35 am**

[quote="Dr. Bloodworth"]Anthony T.E. Llewellyn

Drive: In the Blood or Ennui (haven't decided)

Go for "In The Blood"! Do you know what Llewellyn means?

"The name is a compound of two Old British names; Lugus (evolving into Welsh as Lleu) and Belenus, the names of two individual Celtic gods. The compounded name of Lugubelinos evolved into Llywelyn; Lu(gu)-(b)elyn"

Lugus aka Lugh, Lud, Nud, Nodens; Belenus aka Beli, Bran, Byatis...

With ancestors like that, how can you go ~~right~~ wrong?

Posted: **Fri Nov 18, 2011 11:44 am**

Belying my handle, and indeed current profession, I am actually going for a baby bookseller, a new apprentice hired by the Grants to help with the esoteric pile which accumulated under Malcolm's tenure.

Oliver Harwood
Occultist.
Drive: Probably Scholarship or Thirst for Knowledge, not having the original ToC book I am not sure about the difference.

Edit: just got the book, I think he is more of a scholarship kind of guy.

Brought up in an educated lower middle class family in Portsmouth - father a teacher and local church organist descended from the cadet branch of an old baronetcy of the Tory Squirearchy of Kent, mother's family ex-Navy (she grew up in various Colonial outposts). Went to a decent lower tier public school...but not quite decent enough, and this would be the first experience he had of not quite having the right tie. He was just old enough to be called up for the War but it finished just as he was going through basic training (Army not Navy alas...) and since he was not long-term they shelved his OTC place leaving him a private. He ended up spending his military service at Salisbury running admin for returning vets. His lack of combat experience alienated him from the soldiers in the mess and he spent his time abusing his control of the duty roster and R+R book to go for trips studying mystical Wiltshire.

When he was demobbed he managed to get into Corpus, Cambridge (not Oxford...) thanks to an old school master, where he read Theology and fell in love with the Parker Library. Again he found himself just on the outskirts of the 'right' sets because of his background. He graduated (having just missed an upper second) and returned home where he spent some time running around with old friends who had got involved with minor dodgy deals, being just involved enough to say he was without quite totally committing to the life. He moved to London and seemed set to continue the slightly shabby genteel existence drinking in Fitzrovia and working at bookies, casinos and random labour when two things happened.

Firstly his grandfather died and he was left just enough money to take an evening Doctorate in Renaissance Magic at Birkbeck (using the wonderful Warburg library). He was all set to go back to being the most qualified grave digger in the cemetary when an old friend who worked for the Antiquarian Booksellers Association told him about a bookseller looking to take on an apprentice with a large knowledge of the occult to help tidy through some strange and esoteric books in foreign languages which were bought by a useless relative with odd taste. He would be taught bibliographical skills and Ms. Grant would get a (cheap) method of cataloguing the weirdness. He has only started recently and is yet to make much headway, since he is learning from the bottom up he is frequently used to fetch, carry and deliver or used to make tea and clean things but he is starting to get a feel for the task. He plays up the seedy aspects for some crowds and the antiquarian aspect for others - such as his local church where he is trying to court a granddaughter of the Bishop of Durham (they have some really nice libraries up there). Maybe things are looking up at last?

I see him trapped between two worlds and unable to really be part of either. Not quite 'right' enough to be a real part of the aristocratic set he idolises (he dreams about discovering that he does in fact have a title) he namedrops those connections he does have. At the same time he enjoys the seamy side of life (as long as he doesn't get so connected as to risk jail etc.) and drops stories of racetracks and dodgy deals into conversations in order to shock. He likes to think of himself as cosmopolitan and too be fair has some ability to switch accent and conversation topics from 'Saarf o'the rivver' to 'I went to Cambridge, dontchaknow', but he knows he is really neither.

Answers to questions and first draft skills to follow.

Posted: **Fri Nov 18, 2011 12:34 pm**

First of all:

Have you played CoC before? yes and keeper'd (good old White Dwarf when GW still supported a) rpgs and b) other people's systems)
Have you played ToC before? no but I have used the gumshoe system
Have you played PbP before? no (are there any good ones on this forum I could read to get a feel for them?)

Are you familiar with the bookhounds setting? (have you read the book?) yes (and with the history of the trade, the mythos and London generally)
If you have read the book did you look at the adventure in back? yup, 'fraid so, and studied it a little to post on the limited edition thread...

What are your expectations for a game? darkness, strange knowledge that warps my mind, the seedy underbelly of London contrasted with the drawing rooms of the rich, local politics affected by the mythos, the usual...
How frequently do you think you will be able to post? couple of times a day with no real problem, possibly more depending on day and size of post needed

Skills (first time in this system so someone might want to check my numbers)

Anthropology *(1) 2
Cryptography *(1) 2
History *(1) 2
Languages *(1) 2 - Latin and Hebrew (studied the Cabbalah)
Occult *(2) 4 (doctorate from the Warburg)
Theology *(1) 2 (good C of E)
Library Use 2
Credit Rating (1) 2
Streetwise 1 (nah mate, race 3, fix is in, lump it all on the 4 dog, absolute banker)
Flattery 1 (I would not offer this book to just anyone, Lord Hastings, most would not have the taste to appreciate it's value)
Bureaucracy 1 (Another day out of camp? I know, seems strange but there it is on the roster.)
The Knowledge 1 (bookie's runner and strange labour jobs)
Textual Analysis 1
Bookshop Stock 1

Should I think be 16. My one little irritation would be the credit rating. The way I see the character he should be a three - able to rough it (deal with 2s) or to scrub up (talk to 4s) but still not quite fitting in with rich or poor (1 or 5+) however to get that extra point I would have to drop something else (curse occultist being a starting 1). The two that are really only back-up points for other people would be history or textual analysis but again I kind of can't see a doctoral scholar without historical knowledge or who has not learnt to evaluate a text...likewise I could drop streetwise but again I kind of see that as part of the character. Thoughts?

Disguise 5 (slipping between cultures)
Firearms 4 (basic training and a little shooting at college)
Fleeing (3) 6 (Is that the right way to do it with no athletics?)
Health (3) 7
Preparedness 5
Psychoanalysis 3
Sanity (8) 9
Stability (8) 9
Scuffling 4 (the odd bar brawl)
Sense Trouble 6 (always knew when to pull out to avoid the getting caught)
Stealth 3 (definitely no dodging coppers in his past, good grief no)
Weapons 3 (fenced a little at college)

Which I think should be 55. One thing I didn't seem to spot was some sort of gambling type skill, if there is such a thing and I overlooked it I might fiddle a few points round to it to represent time at bookies/racetracks/card tables etc.

Posted: **Sat Nov 19, 2011 2:47 am**

Very glad to have bookman on board. And thank you Andrew for adding the extra character's info.

Just to jump on this.

Bookman wrote:My one little irritation would be the credit rating. The way I see the character he should be a three - able to rough it (deal with 2s) or to scrub up (talk to 4s) but still not quite fitting in with rich or poor (1 or 5+) however to get that extra point I would have to drop something else (curse occultist being a starting 1).

Posted: **Sat Nov 19, 2011 3:53 am**

OK, here's my first take on Jory, hopefully no mistakes!

Capt Jory Penhalligon

Book Scout

Drive: Curiosity

Investigative Abilities

Bargain 4* (2)
Bureaucracy 1 (1)
Credit Rating 3 (3)
Evidence Collection 5* (2.5)
Language 1 (1) (Hindi)
Outdoorsman 1 (1)
Reassurance 1 (1)
Streetwise 4* (2)
The Knowledge 3* (1.5)
Photography 1 (1)

General Abilities

Athletics 8 (8)
Driving 1 (1)
Firearms 6 (6)
First Aid 2 (2)
Health 12 (12)
Mech Repair 4 (4)
Piloting 1 (1) (Bi-Plane)
Preparedness 8 (8)
Sanity 10 (6)
Scuffling 2 (2)
Sense Trouble 8* (4)
Stability 12 (11)

Posted: **Sat Nov 19, 2011 1:43 pm**

Couple of comments: a Book scout with no bibliography isn't really a book scout - that's how he makes his living. At the moment I'm the only one who knows what a book is actually worth on the market, which is a bit odd.
Bookman, you get 65 general points not 55.

Posted: **Sat Nov 19, 2011 9:26 pm**

Grafster wrote:Caste intractability is one of the major themes of the game/setting. By limiting people to bands you create situations where more characters have the ability to "be social" -- instead of just having a "face" character.
(Obviously pools get depleted so it's not the same thing as having talk 80%).

I am not sure that I want any character to have the ability to span all (or most) social groups.
My feeling is that people by "their" character's credit rating based on the social class they inhabit and if you want to know people outside of that in an area then those are contacts.

Completely agree. I see the tension in my character stemming from the hurt caused by exactly that lack movement between bands. I was thinking about the suggestion in the rules about credit rating that you can get on with the numbers either side of yours. It is less that I see the character being able to bond with anyone across bands, more that he is caught between what he wants to be and what he is. I kind of see 3 working better than 2 simply because 1-2 would seem to be working class, 3-4 middle and the everything else up upper class. He would be an uncomfortable middle class, able to dabble in the lower class whilst still cosy up to people with more money than him. However the real rich would look down on him and the real lower class would see him as a poseur. Having said which I am quite happy to stick with 2. I suppose the real question is which points are more useful for the group as a whole. He doubles a few other skills at the moment (which is not neccessarily a bad thing for back up and for moments of splitting the group) and I can happily shift a few points about if neccessary.

Taavi: Cheers, I thought I read that we were going with 55. I shall have a think about where to put the other 10. Filch and shadow might work for the slightly dodgy background I envisaged.

Posted: **Sat Nov 19, 2011 9:48 pm**

Taavi wrote:"The name is a compound of two Old British names; Lugus (evolving into Welsh as Lleu) and Belenus, the names of two individual Celtic gods. The compounded name of Lugubelinos evolved into Llywelyn; Lu(gu)-(b)elyn"

Lugus aka Lugh, Lud, Nud, Nodens; Belenus aka Beli, Bran, Byatis...

Oh wow, that's really awesome. AQnd somewhat creepy... what arcane forces led me to choose that family name?

Posted: **Sun Nov 20, 2011 5:23 am**

*SHRUG*

There's nothing that actually suggests a minimum Biblio score is compulsory for a Book Scout, maybe he just relies on seedy contacts and/or advice from the book seller? However, for the sake of good roleplaying, I shall amend Jory to give him Biblio 1...

Capt Jory Penhalligon (2.0)

Book Scout

Drive: Curiosity

Investigative Abilities

Bargain 4* (2)
Bibliography 1* (0.5)
Bureaucracy 1 (1)
Credit Rating 3 (3)
Evidence Collection 5* (2.5)
Language 1 (1) (Hindi)
Outdoorsman 1 (1)
Reassurance 1 (1)
Streetwise 3* (1.5)
The Knowledge 3* (1.5)
Photography 1 (1)

General Abilities

Athletics 8 (8)
Driving 1 (1)
Firearms 6 (6)
First Aid 2 (2)
Health 12 (12)
Mech Repair 4 (4)
Piloting 1 (1) (Bi-Plane)
Preparedness 8 (8)
Sanity 10 (6)
Scuffling 2 (2)
Sense Trouble 8* (4)
Stability 12 (11)

Posted: **Sun Nov 20, 2011 6:26 am**

Laura

Drive. Thirst for Knowledge

Hobo

Investigative Abilities:
*Bargain: 2 (1)
*Filch 4 (2) (Yoink)
*Outdoorsman 4 (2) (...Nice doggy?)
*Streetwise 6 (3) (Tell Don Cunnio my regards!)
Credit Rating: 0
Reassurance: 2 (2) (Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Everything's alright, sir. No, sir, there absolutely has been no trouble in the shop, sir. I have not misspelled bibiliography again, sir. )
Oral History: 1 (1) (You see that man over there? Yeah, killed his wife and three children and stuffed'em into the attic. The police don't know cuz he hid them within the boards)
Assess Honesty: 1 (1) (Stop lying to me, damn it.)
Library Use: 1 (1)
Flattery: 2 (2) (Obviously a man of your intellect deserves a book on blah jargon strange words instead of that tiny little book on fishing that you have there)
Locksmith: 1(1) (...Just....Gotta...get....this...hairpin into the lock...)

General Abilities:

*Athletics: 8 (4) (Can't touch this)
*Sense Trouble: 10 (5) (Excuse me sirs, but I can't help but notice that we are completely surrounded with no way to escape)
*Stealth: 8 (4) (Luckily for me, sirs, I have managed to find myself an air duct to escape through. Of course, I am tiny and you all are big burly man so.... see yah!)
Health: 10
Stability: 12 (11)
Scuffling: 5 (5) (*Kick in the groin*)
Sanity: 10 (6)
Preparedness: 8 (8) (Now why am I carrying around this glass shard again?)
Knife: 6 (6) (Right. *stab*)
Disguise: 6 (6) (Er-hem)

Posted: **Sun Nov 20, 2011 12:06 pm**

I totally misread Bookman's post. I have credit ratings on the brain. I was thinking you "wanted multiple credit ratings" not "I am agonizing over spending that last point".

I think we are progressing nicely. Want to hit a couple of more topics before we start (Friday seems like a reasonable time frame to start posting IC, but if people respond more quickly we can go faster).

Involvement in Grant's Bookstore
How is your character involved? Grant/Oliver Harwood are exempted if they don't have anything to add.

We can role-play it, or fill it in, or sketch it out and leave it vague but why is Grant's your character's primary haunt?

Alternatively we can try to run an adventure that "links" people into Grant's somehow, but I worry that it could get a bit heavy handed.

Contacts
I would like at least two from people, as weird or developed or simplistic as you like.

Everyone contribute to the Description of the store
It can be just a line about a smell, or a sensation, or a specific item or a nearby shop that impacts the store somehow. It may get "filtered" (i.e. if it's really wacky I might shift the emphasis a bit) but I want the store to have a bit of all the players in it.

Do we need a practice physical conflict?
IIRC it's recommended in ToC. I can generate a non-fatal physical conflict so people have a quick idea how things run. Of course given how the boards run it would probably take a few weeks to resolve and bit a bit "out of character" for a bookhounds game. Thoughts? Preferences?

Group is low on the technical side of skills
I don't know if I care. It's bookhounds, not CSI. Do people with more experience have an opinion?

Posted: **Sun Nov 20, 2011 12:25 pm**

I think I'll stick with the 2. He has been a manual labourer and bookie and then a student. He is pulling himself upwards slowly and a short period at the shop (read xp into rating) will help make him more respectable but at the moment he is still somewhat shabby.

Thinking about the fact that we have few people that know books, and given that our resident toff has history very nicely represented (ah ancient families and their obsession with the past), I have shifted the point from history to bibliography. Harwood may know the history of the occult and theology but in general, not so much and he has obviously been at the shop a little longer than originally thought.

I've thought about the 10 points I didn't spend in General, if we do have 65, I have upped health to 9 (manual labour does wonders for a man's fitness) and put 5 into drive as we don't have a lot of drivers (he did delivery driving for a wine merchants for a bit, it is always so sad when a nice bottle of wine is damaged in transit, if only those packers had done a better job...). That leaves 3 over, any thoughts as to useful places? If not I may hold them for narrative moments (oh for heaven's sake give me the dynamite, I once sent myself on a demo course to get out of cookhouse duties).

It actually balances quite nicely across the 6 characters. The Captain and Luke as suppliers - one knows the city but not books the other knows the books but not the city. Mr Grant and Dr Harwood as booksellers - one knows bookselling but not the occult and the other the occult but not books. And the two drop-in patrons - The RIght Hon. Anthony Llewellyn (potentially) insanely rich and a criminal because he is bored and Laura bottom of the pile but very driven, a criminal because she has to be.

Re bookshop: 'Everytime I step into the back storage I'm sure something has moved. There are few windows and the light that filters through the smeared glass is coloured by the fumes from the alley behind us. The air smells of damp, dust and formaldehyde. In the half-light I find my way to my makeshift desk and today's pile of disintergrating leather and rubbed cloth and turn on the desk lamp. It doesn't make things any better. Now I can see the unpleasant diagrams in the books much more clearly; the shadows make the statues, prints and bottles around the room much more eerie. There is a very good reason this room is staff only, if any punter saw this they would call the police, or the Ministry of Health, or a Bishop. I flick my eyes nervously round the room, put my tea down and turn to the next book on the pile.'

I'll think about contacts, one will probably be a librarian at the Warburg whom I befriended during my doctorate. I don't mind about combat but am happy to practice.

Posted: **Mon Nov 21, 2011 3:26 am**

Involvement in Grant's Bookstore
Luke heaved a sigh as he swung off the tram in front of Grant's. The two suitcases full of Obelisk Press' finest from Paris were feeling as heavy as lead, and the customs officer had demanded twice the customary gratuity. Still, they'd be out of his hands soon - Grant's eccentric customers were always partial to a good book about flogging. With luck, Llewellyn would have a commission, or Harwood would have unearthed something that made another trip across the Atlantic worthwhile. Variant illuminated psalters, from ancient monasteries so far from Rome that they generated their own peculiar theologies without being really aware of it, had been trending up; someone in New York was building a collection.

Grant's looked just the same. The same light layer of dust settled over everything, including, Luke could swear, Mr Grant. "He's got to stop reading them and start selling them", Luke thought to himself. Sometimes it occurred to him that he could knock the whole shop over, walk out with all the good stuff and Grant would never notice - but there were limits. If you started knocking over other men from the Service you were heading down a road of no return. Besides, Mrs Grant would certainly spot it.

Contacts
Jack Kahane, owner of Obelisk Press in Paris, publishers of avante-garde literature and fine smut for the gentry. Something of a role model for Luke (real historical character).
Mr Baginelli; seemingly a not-very-prosperous soliciter in a shabby office a fair distance from the Temple, Baginelli is actually a London "agent" of the Commission of Five Families of New York, and a very useful man to know if you want to get something into or out of America without any undue hassles or unexpected accidents occurring to it. Occassionally passes on commissions when someone in NYC suddenly wants to look cultured.
Alfred O'Dwyer-Douglas, 14th Earl of Cirinchester on the Severn; Your classic eccentric (not to say dangerous) English aristocrat, "O'Doggy" (as he is called behind his back is active in J.F.C. Fuller's right-wing political circles, and also building a large collection of Germanic and Old English witchcraft-related literature. Luke secretly despises him, but has played up their shared connection to the West country to become one of his preferred agents for sourcing those hard-to-find pieces.

Everyone contribute to the Description of the store
When Old Man Grant built the store, he bought two adjacent Victorian terraces and knocked out the intervening walls, then panelled the whole thing in oak, now somewhat woodwormed. Some of that panelling now covers otherwise unmarked doors and cupboards, preventing overly-curious-but-underly-paying customers or nosy parkers from accessing certain rooms and storage spaces, or even realising their existence. Despite its small size, the odd half-steps between the two former houses, the gloom of the aging oak, and the unnerving way staff pop through doors you thought were walls, give the place a somewhat mazelike feel.

Do we need a practice physical conflict?
To be frank (sorry Frank), sounds like a horribly boring and time wasting idea; round by round combat on pbp goes at the pace of an arthritic snail, and this wouldn't even be advancing the story. I'd like to take a leaf from Chris Kubasik's excellent critique of combat in RPGs (here: http://www.rpg.net/oracle/essays/itoolkit1.html and http://www.rpg.net/oracle/essays/itoolkit4.html) and suggest that we come up with some serious streamlining that makes conflict have much simpler resolution, like picking a lock or winning an argument.

How bout this: The combatants both toss in all the points and modifiers they wish to spend / have available and do a simple opposed test (roll a die each, add all the bits, etc). The difference between the two totals is the difference in their remaining Health scores at the end of the combat. The winner gets to pick the final level of the loser (did I just give him a good thump and then he lost his nerve and ran, leaving myself unscathed? Did we mercilessly grapple until I strangled him to death, leaving myself dazed and bleeding, but still alive? etc) GM adds bonuses and penalties for clever/dramatic descriptions of tactics.

Group is low on the technical side of skills:
I think lots of farcical bumbling, a la a British incompetent criminal heist movies (Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, etc) is called for, making a nice contrast to the grim mystery of occult shenanigans. CF the "Bookhounds Fiasco" playset: http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=5960. The point is, we're not the ones investigating the crimes - usually, we're the ones committing them...

PS: Remember everyone has to put an investigative point into Bookshop Stock
PPS Seon remember Laura gets "The Knowledge" as an occupational ability.

Posted: **Mon Nov 21, 2011 4:10 am**

Involvement in Grant's Bookstore
My thinking is that Anthony is involved in helping fund the shop and its purchasing of books, and possibly with procuring a few isolated volumes. Perhaps he can use his contacts to provide the shop with some fake antiquities that can be sold at a tidy profit and is in the shop quite often to drop off new "antiques" and browse the historical sections in particular.

Contacts
- Charles Tully Llewellyn-Phelps, one of my relatives (he was a PC of mine in an abortive Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign that never made it out of New York); veteran of WWI and kind of a Severn Valley/west England version of Charles Fort. Books of his include The Goatswood Tower and Other Man-Made Marvels, The Devil's Steps and Other Enigmas of Nature, The Berkeley Toad and Other Tales of the Spectral Severn Valley, The Pale Worm and Other Dragons of Mercia, and The Horns of Pan (a bizarre study of Victorian and Edwardian occult orders).*
- Phil Simpson, a notary (do they have those in Britain?) who tends towards the criminal; forges the academic degrees Anthony uses. Can also forge other documents the group may need.
- Prof. Gordon Welleston, an unscrupulous Celtic historian at the British Museum who forges most of the Celtic antiquities the expeditions "find".
- And of course the servants in my townhouse.

Everyone contribute to the Description of the store
A cluttered atmosphere. Stacks of loose papers and stray books on top of bookshelves. Bits of statuary around (many of which are probably actually forgeries, courtesy of Anthony, but they fool the casual viewer).

Do we need a practice physical conflict?
Don't know. Personally, I think I'd be alright, but if others would like to do one, I'd be fine with that, too.

* You get a big, umm, well nothing really if you can tell which stories and books are referred to in the names of his first four books.

Posted: **Mon Nov 21, 2011 5:30 am**

Involvement in Grant's Bookstore

She did some odd job for Grant's Bookstore, keeping watch of the store or cleaning house at night.

Contacts
- Luciano "Fat Fingers" - A mafia made man who owes Laura a few favors after she warned him of an incoming police raid on his house. She is also sometimes hired by the mafia to be a distraction or to be a spy and generally remains in good terms with the organized crime community.
- Mr. Richardson - A quite insane and eccentric old man who sometimes hires Laura to do some errands around his house. He is a friend of all animals and a flock of birds are always around his house, much to the chagrin of everyone else who lives around him.
-And of course, the faceless mob of other hobos.

Posted: **Mon Nov 21, 2011 6:45 am**

Dr. Bloodworth wrote:Charles Tully Llewellyn-Phelps, one of my relatives (he was a PC of mine in an abortive Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign that never made it out of New York); veteran of WWI and kind of a Severn Valley/west England version of Charles Fort. Books of his include The Goatswood Tower and Other Man-Made Marvels, The Devil's Steps and Other Enigmas of Nature, The Berkeley Toad and Other Tales of the Spectral Severn Valley, The Pale Worm and Other Dragons of Mercia, and The Horns of Pan (a bizarre study of Victorian and Edwardian occult orders).*

I'm seeing the potential for a whole series of adventures here. "The Hound of the Llewellyns". "The Mystery of the Llewellyns' Curse". "The Llewellyns That Time Forgot".

Posted: **Mon Nov 21, 2011 10:25 am**

On the topic of a practice combat, I'd quite like to give it a go, am still definitely new to the ToC rules.

Also, if we are happy that we generally all can post daily, I'd rather stick to the combat rules than abbreviate them. Combat could well be the end of a PC and is important, if somewhat rarer in Cthulhoid settings. And really, who doesn't enjoy firing off a few rounds from their old service revolver at some eldritch monstrosity?

Posted: **Mon Nov 21, 2011 1:48 pm**

Brilliant stuff. Very excited about what everyone is coming up with.

Taavi wrote:How bout this: The combatants both toss in all the points and modifiers they wish to spend / have available and do a simple opposed test (roll a die each, add all the bits, etc). The difference between the two totals is the difference in their remaining Health scores at the end of the combat. The winner gets to pick the final level of the loser (did I just give him a good thump and then he lost his nerve and ran, leaving myself unscathed? Did we mercilessly grapple until I strangled him to death, leaving myself dazed and bleeding, but still alive? etc) GM adds bonuses and penalties for clever/dramatic descriptions of tactics.

I think the system is a good idea in principle, but I'm not willing to "hack" ToC yet. And there are some issues with multiple combatants and so forth.
Lets keep this proposed system in the back pocket for mundane physical confrontations with two persons (or two opposed groups) but expect that we will collectively suffer through the slow grind that is PbP combat in the rare cases when it is necessary.

Posted: **Mon Nov 21, 2011 6:04 pm**

Aargh, customers, all these people trying to buy books are making it difficult for me to post about selling books...

Anyhoo, in no particular order:

Jack Kahane is fascinating, until recently I did not know that Neil 'Drop the Dead Donkey/Between the Lines' Pearson has written the definitive bibliography of the Press. Apparently the man knows his books, particularly the 600 or so . Kahane kind of reminds me of Reginald Caton at the Fortune Press, a similarly shady seeming publisher.

"the unnerving way staff pop through doors you thought were walls" – Heh, 1 point bookshop stock spend to give a permanent bonus to fleeing and surprise rolls for anyone who knows the shop intimately perhaps...?

Re Llewellyn's books – Goatswood is Campbell, as to the Pale Worm – Lair of the White Worm? Conqueror Worm? The Worm Oroborous? The Lambton Worm? The Laidly Worm of Spindlestone-Heugh? I can see our antics getting into the series, although possibly more in the 'What Ho, Llewellyns' kind of style perhaps...

Sidenote: The UK does indeed have notary publics.

Re Laura's contacts – Mr Richardson is a very cool concept, I like that a lot.

Contacts:

Dr Crofton Black – librarian at the Warburg and fellow occultist with whom he co-authored a couple of papers and who can get him access to the Warburg's...interesting collection. (Dr Black was in fact my actual supervisor for Magic, Science and Religion in the Renaissance, I have to admit I am jealous. There is something very cool about being able to put Dr Black, Cabbalist on your business cards, but I digress).

'Black-Hand' Jake – semi-official leader of a group of itinerant workers who particularly work as grave diggers and cemetery keepers (Harwood worked with them for a little while) and well, I suppose they know where the bodies are buried. Ahem. Cemetery keepers always know which graves are unquiet and which tombs are open when they should not be, and someone he knows can direct you to strange inscriptions, famous people and odd happenings.

Father Terence Arbuthnot – youngest son of the Earl of Harpenden. He studied Theology with Harwood and they shared certain esoteric interests. Father Terence should have been on one of those neat fast track paths to Bishop except for his strange thoughts. Instead of a nice rural parish, a sweet natured wife and a sideline in eccentric antiquarian studies of local megalithic barrows he has ended up in a small parish – St Radegund's, Shoreditch – and a position as the Diocesan Advisor on the Sacrament of Deliverance.

Posted: **Tue Nov 22, 2011 12:14 am**

In order to widen our technical expertise a bit, I've decided that Luke is something of a fan of Black Mask Magazine, police procedurals, "true crime" books, books on forensic science, etc. Reads the Illustrated Police News. Probably daydreams about being Sam Spade. Keeps an eye on Ripperology. Collects early pamphlets of highwayman tales, assizes, etc. So all that, in combination with the legal education and the number of bodies he saw killed and decayed in various inventive ways during the War, adds up to a point of Forensics and one of Cop Talk, which will hopefully assist if we stumble across any murders or similar (I'd love to take The Knowledge too, but I'm trying to cover our bases).
I've put all the changes in the Character Matrix, here.

Posted: **Tue Nov 22, 2011 2:19 am**

Grafster wrote: Do we need a practice physical conflict?
Group is low on the technical side of skills

Perhaps a practice combat could be played out in PM as a flash back? Those involved could start the game with contusions.

Bookshop Regulars can make up for technical abilites that Bookhounds don't have. The only ability I thought we were missing was Cop Talk and Taavi has fixed that.

Posted: **Tue Nov 22, 2011 9:34 am**

Capt Jory Penhalligon

Connection to the Bookstore

Jory was introduced to the bookstore by fellow Army officers while on leave and back in Blighty during the War. Initially interested in its military collection, Jory became more interested in its esoterica. After the War, once he was posted to India, Jory would mail order interesting books from Grants and in return send the bookstore interesting books he found in Bombay. Then, when Jory had to resign his commission or risk disgrace, he found himself with few pennies back in London during the Depression. The obvious choice was to make a part time interest a full time occupation.

Contacts

1. Col Digby Lamington-Smythe DSO DFC (Bureaucracy and/or Credit Rating)

The Colonel was Jory's CO in the Royal Flying Corps during the War, but is now in Army Intelligence. Regards Jory dubiously but with resigned tollerance.

2. Rajesh Ranganatham (Streetwise)

Originally a friend of Jory's from Bombay, now living in London's Indian community and working in a laundry. Is well connected throughout London's underbelly, but not ostentatiously.

The Bookshop

In a backroom, books are stacked from the floor to the ceiling in precarious columns that must be treated with respect. Behind the labyrinth of columns lies the kitchen, with an ancient Aga to warm hands and boil the kettle. (Chai for Jory.)

Posted: **Tue Nov 22, 2011 1:15 pm**

I've been trying to place the bookshop using everyone's descriptions. How does Southampton Row in Bloomsbury sound?

Posted: **Tue Nov 22, 2011 5:18 pm**

I don't know, I sort of see Southampton Row as both too nice and not quite right for having the kind of knocked together shop we are thinking about.

My two thoughts would be:

For a more Bohemian, shabby but not sordid shop I would pitch for Fitzrovia, possibly Rathbone Place or Charlotte Street, or if we wanted slightly off road, Percy Street. Fitzrovia has the advantages of being just on the edge of Soho (but not actually part of it), having the slightly Bohemian chic (Dylan Thomas, Julian MacLaren-Ross, Augustus John, Quentin Crisp, etc.), several very good pubs where EVERYbody drinks (including the eponymous Fitzrovia), it has the right sort of atmosphere for down at heel and slumming aristos with intriguing tastes and Orwell features the Newman Arms on Rathbone Place in Keep the Aspidistra, which is a great tie-in for a slightly down-at-heel shop. Plus, and most significant for this kind of gig, our old friend Aleister drinks regularly at the Wheatsheaf so it is slap bang in the right kind of territory for his disciples to pop in and out of the shop to buy his latest recommendations. Also it features in Patrick Hamilton's books and I cannot get enough of

To play up the more sordid, criminal aspect of the shop, as well as the winding houses, Seven Dials, perhaps Earlham Street. It has the edge of Covent Garden (so rich socialite playground) whilst being in a once notorious slum (there is some clean up by this point but Christie's Seven Dials has it as a still poor area), it is on the edge of the Charing Cross Road and thus near the booksellers' run in Cecil Court, it is famous for its occult connections (as flagged in the Liber and Ian Sinclair's writing), it has nice psychogeographic hotspots such as The Angel (lovely tiling) where people stopped for a last bowl on the way to the Tyburn Tree and St Giles church which had a leper hospital attached under the auspices of the Order of St Lazarus (a military and hospitallers order which fielded leper knights at the Crusades), it has the mysterious sundial ornament, it fits the dodgy aspect of the shop without becoming a Soho type bookstore. On the other hand it might be a little close to Watkin's and thus legitimate competition.

The only thing is that both of these might be a little cliche. I think we still want City/Piccadilly area for the kind of clientele and for the type of game, so I hesitate before suggesting Ranston Street off the Edgeware Road or down in Surrey Docks just up from Rotherhithe or similar. I suppose it depends on whether we want footfall traffic or are going to be pretty much word of mouth (in which case we could be down Ely Place by the wonderful Mitre in Hatton Garden, or down Crown Passage in St James which gives us the Red Lion) and whether we see ourselves as Bohemian (in which case Bloomsbury is a good location as well as Fitzrovia), sordid (in which case we might just as well be on Dean Street (mmmm, The French House) or traditional bookseller (in which case Cecil Court is just right even with Watkin's) or selling to aristocratic crowds (in which case we probably want something on Mayfair like Curzon Street but I think that would be out of our price bracket).

I kind of see us as shabby but not sleazy (even with the criminal aspect and French...Art books), with a mostly word of mouth crowd but close enough to get some passersby (even if they rarely come back...). Where that puts us...thoughts?

Posted: **Wed Nov 23, 2011 2:53 am**

Glad to see discussion of location. I like a lot of the locations mentioned.

I would mention one thing to think about it setting the location:

I assume the bookshop hasn't moved since it was Willey's Military Bookshop (Established 189x? 188x?) to serve a military/aristocratic clientele. I see that going two ways
1. Someone (with more knowledge of London and its historical developments than me) could propose a location based on what makes sense given that initial decision by Willey. (i.e. he's not looking for foot traffic, but he does want to be near military gentlemen's clubs, academies, housing, or something similar)
2. We pick a location based on the kind of in game environment we want and just hand wave it by saying "the neighborhood sure has changed a lot since Willey first set up shop here.

The more expensive the neighborhood the more that Grant is struggling to pay the rent and keep from moving.

Posted: **Wed Nov 23, 2011 3:30 am**

Bookman wrote:I don't know, I sort of see Southampton Row as both too nice and not quite right for having the kind of knocked together shop we are thinking about.

I'm a Sydneysider, not a Londoner, so I'm no expert, I liked the image of Luke swinging off the tram. I've since found this map http://www.tundria.com/trams/GBR/London-1934.shtml which should help a bit. I'm pretty sure the bookshop isn't on the Victoria Embankment.

Posted: **Wed Nov 23, 2011 9:47 am**

Equally, my geography of London is very sketchy. I rather like '84 Charing Cross Road', so is Charing Cross Road too expensive I wonder?

Think Jory's only requirement is that there be a nearby decent 'watering hole' but my actual experience of London is that there seems to be a pub approximately every three feet, so that shouldn't be a problem!

Posted: **Wed Nov 23, 2011 12:11 pm**

Most of the Military clubs (United Services, Army & Navy, Cavalry, Guards, etc) whose members would be ideal clients are on piccadilly, pall mall, St James Park, etc, which is probably way out of our class.
What about we go for seedy Soho or Seven Dials and say that our Bookshop is next to a building which formerly housed a, ah, house of ill repute, which catered to military gentlemen, who used to pop in while they were in the neighbourhood, or used visiting it as an excuse?
Being a Melbournite, I like trams, but am happy to do without a tramway, I can always have hopped off an omnibus instead.

Posted: **Wed Nov 23, 2011 12:54 pm**

Not to derail the location discussion....

I think we are very close to being able to begin; I have some questions about characters, but I think we can flesh them out during play over time.

With regard to combat: this is my concern. While extreme lethality is a common part of CoC games it is somewhat mitigated, by design, in ToC. People aren't signing up to insta-kills (at least not without some advance warning).
Because combat is rare, and the bidding system is quite different than "typical" rpg games I am concerned that when we do have a fight the newness of the system may confuse or stress out new players. I think that having a brief conflict in the recent past that involved the characters of players who are interested (the flashback recommendation) is a good way to go.
I think that andy666 and Andrew have expressed interest with Dr. Bloodworth neutral.
So the encounter will have involved Grant and Capt. Jory breaking up a fight between two unruly patrons that becomes unexpectedly dangerous.

We should fix the neighborhood before we start. I am happy to have people discuss it and come to a mutually agreed decision, or we can just vote. I'll leave it til Friday and see what the status is.

When we do start I am going to try to work it so that people are engaged and together, relatively quickly, however some characters have stronger connections to the bookstore than others, so it might take time before people are equally involved. I will try to make sure that everyone has something going on at the get go.

I'll ask Raiko to make a forum for us.

Posted: **Wed Nov 23, 2011 1:28 pm**

AndrewTBP wrote: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.

Volunteer means voluntary military service? Or actual volunteer work. Either way fill in a little bit about what he did in S. Africa if you would.
What was the relationship between Willey and Fuller?

AndrewTBP wrote: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.

Don't follow what "the Empire" is.(Yank... sorry...)

Posted: **Wed Nov 23, 2011 6:13 pm**

I am guessing Empire Ballroom?

Charing Cross Road is legendary for booksellers (although less so as the Council seems to be trying to force them out in exchange for trendy shops to cater to the people who...were coming because of the bookshops...hey ho). Foyles is another of the classic shops, I have David Low's very good autobiography called With All Faults which has a lot of period detail on the Charing Cross Road/Cecil Court of the 30s and 40s. Seven Dials is just off to the side from there, on the way to Covent Garden. It would indeed be the kind of place which would have knocking shops and probably ones which supplied rich types because of that proximity. There was a famous occult bookshop in the area in the 19th century where Bulwer-Lytton was a customer: http://danharms.wordpress.com/2008/10/1 ... hn-denley/ and more recently Treadwell's were there before their move to off the Tottenham Court Road. The Road would be a solid spot for the shop although it is close to Watkin's on Cecil Court would be the (real life) rivals.

Trams are nice, unfortunately most of that central West End area was covered by the underground so there was less need for them. You kind of need to move further out, particularly South of the River where there was less of an Underground presence.

Taavi is right about the military clubs and so on. Pall Mall etc. would be fiendishly expensive and much of the shop frontage is already taken. Piccadilly is the kind of place that Berry Bros and Rudd and Henry Sotheran are based, on one side is clubland and Jermyn Street and the other is Saville Row, not to mention Mayfair on the edge. Serious moneys.

Soho and Seven Dials have the advantage of being close to the action (ten minutes or so walk from the Army and Navy puts you in Soho proper and fifteen in Seven Dials more or less, these are not distances anyone would think twice about in London, Horse Guards is only ten/fifteen minutes or so as well). There are plenty of pubs in both areas. Seven Dials boasts one of the oldest pubs in London, the Lamb and Flag, which used to be known as the Bucket of Blood because of the bare-knuckle matches which took place there. Also The Angel which as I mentioned was a last stop on the way to Tyburn and has great tiling. Soho for instance has the Dog and Duck on Bateman Street also with the most gorgeous interior tiling. Soho at this point has a heavy gay scene, a lot of seedy clubs and large gang presence from Mafia and Triads which may or may not be a problem. According to O'Donnell it is full of secret societies as well. Halfway between the two is the Blue Posts on Rupert Street which I am sure features in the O'Donnell Secret Societies based on his description. There are many more. The Salisbury on St Martin's Lane if you are going to Cecil Court for instance.

Having said which, a Fitzrovia of the period would probably have the odd house of ill repute, has a lot of good pubs (and bad...), nice Bohemian credentials and the presence of Crowley so that would work as well.

I had forgotten to consider the origins of the shop. I actually now disagree with myself. It is much less likely that such a shop would have grown up in Seven Dials during the late Victorian era considering that it was then one of the worst rookeries in the city. Likewise Soho would be unlikely for the kind of patrons there would have been at that point (well, unless we think about Uncle's like for gentlemen in uniforms). Fitzrovia was nicely posh at the time but still affordable for that kind of shop. The artistic part grew from the 20s so the shop could totally have started in one type of place and ended up in another, relying on the memories of punters and surviving word of mouth. Also I really like the Crowley connection (and Evan Morgan, Peter Warlock et al) so I think I might edge Fitzrovia but am open to other suggestions. I would also mention that all of Fitzrovia, Soho, Holborn, The Strand, Charing Cross, Seven Dials and St Giles, Piccadilly, Mayfair, Whitehall, Westminster and so on are all actually very close and easily walkable if you know the area. Add the tube and the buses and the number of locations flies up. The parts of London that people think of as 'London' are very close, it just seems spread out when you only use the underground to get to them.

Edit: I am going to take a point of library use (as we have several people with that) and put it into languages to take Enochian, assuming that is a valid choice. I have been reading far too much Dee recently not too and it fits perfectly with a study of Renaissance Magic, as well as helping read the strange things in the back room. It also works with hanging out with remnants of the Golden Dawn and Crowleyites. A thesis on Dee's influence on or appearances in Elizabethan and Jacobean witchcraft plays would be about right. Lots of magical theory and literature and Latin, Hebrew and Enochian.

Posted: **Wed Nov 23, 2011 8:04 pm**

Grafster wrote: Volunteer means voluntary military service? Or actual volunteer work. Either way fill in a little bit about what he did in S. Africa if you would.

What was the relationship between Willey and Fuller?

Don't follow what "the Empire" is.

Voluntary military service, yes. Grant was a junior officer in a Volunteer Battalion of The Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) during the 2nd Boer War.

Fuller is 4 years younger than Grant, so he may have made Uncle's heart race, but he was just a customer. Uncle was very careful. Grant and Fuller were both in South Africa, but different regiments, so their paths may have crossed only a few times. They've exchanged reminiscences since then, of course. Fuller's been a bookshop regular for 3 decades now.

It's the Empire Theatre of Varieties, Leicester Square's most popular music hall. Grant and the future Mrs Grant were there the night Winston Churchill made his maiden public speech to the "Ladies of the Empire".
http://victoriancalendar.blogspot.com/2 ... mpire.html

PS I don't need a practice combat, but Grant would certainly defend his bookshop and customers.
PPS I'm OK with a Fitzrovia location.

Posted: **Thu Nov 24, 2011 5:07 am**

I definitely vote Charing Cross Road solely because of Helen Hanff and Marks & Co, if it can be done! Otherwise, will leave it to the experts on London.

Jory awaits the combat, with a slight tremor in his breathing...

Posted: **Thu Nov 24, 2011 3:03 pm**

Sorry guys, I meant to create your forum yesterday evening, but didn't get chance to go online.

I'll get the forum up ASAP.

Posted: **Thu Nov 24, 2011 4:29 pm**

I've created your game forum now. Here's a link

As far as I know I've added every new user from this thread to the validated user group. If any of you can't post in the game threads once Grafster puts them up, then either make a post here, or PM me and I'll fix it straight away.

Enjoy your game.

Posted: **Fri Nov 25, 2011 1:18 am**

I don't seem to be able to post in the new forum otherwise would have posted this over there: any one else have thoughts about location? Charing Cross Road would totally work if we wanted to go there. It is a thriving book community in the 30s and is by no means too declasse for the kind of military punters we would have in the original history of the shop. It has the advantage of being next/near to all the classic locations in terms of West End London and having lots of booksellers next door for contacts, local colour and rivals. I still like Fitzrovia but I will admit myself a massive '84' fan. Various members of Marks and Cohen started their careers at Sotheran's so I share a certain affinity with them. If we go Charing Cross I will try to find an easy way to copy the section of With All Faults that deals with Charing Cross Road and Cecil Court because David Low mentions every bookseller on the Road (it seems) and gives a little detail about their shops which might give people ideas for the game.

Posted: **Fri Nov 25, 2011 1:37 am**

Bookman, took a quick look at the moderate panel for the forum but it doesn't seem to include the ability to add users (or if it has I can't find it). Will reach out to Raiko and see if we can get you added.

Posted: **Fri Nov 25, 2011 1:38 am**

Bookman, you said earlier that Seven Dials was on the edge of Charing Cross road; could we be "right on the border" as it were?

Posted: **Fri Nov 25, 2011 2:01 am**

Grafster wrote:Bookman, took a quick look at the moderate panel for the forum but it doesn't seem to include the ability to add users (or if it has I can't find it). Will reach out to Raiko and see if we can get you added.

Done!

Sorry I missed Bookman out by accident when I added the other new members to the validated list.

Posted: **Fri Nov 25, 2011 3:33 pm**

I'm going to jump across to the OOC thread in the new forum (thanks Raiko) to continue the location discussion.

Play@YSDC

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