Play@YSDC

This is the OOC thread. I will watch both threads so you can continue the conversation over there or come over here.

Location: Yes, Taavi, Seven Dials is right next to the Charing Cross Road. The Road runs from Tottenham Court Road at it's top end to Trafalgar Square at the bottom. On the way down (just up from where Leicester Square Tube station is) it is crossed by Shaftesbury Avenue (at Cambridge Circus), two roads into Seven Dials run off from there so it would be completely possible to have a shop on Charing Cross Road and still be on the outskirts of the area. It is then only a quick walk to Covent Garden, Piccadilly and various upmarket areas as well as to theatreland which works for more respectable patrons whilst still having the strange 'drop in and find something' allure of Charing Cross. It is only a relatively brief walk to the British Museum as well which gives us access to their collections. It is probably the most famous location in bookselling London and nicely central. It was/is also home to quite a cast of eccentrics into which this shop would nicely fit.

EDIT: Thinking about it I reckon we could be 70 Charing Cross Road. There appear to have been no other bookshops at that address in the 30s/40s. Turn left and left out the front door and you are on Long Acre which will take you straight into Covent Garden. Turn left and head down a little way (past Leicester Square tube) and a left puts you onto Cecil Court, Booksellers Row. Head out right and you hit Cambridge Circus on Shaftesbury Avenue and from there you turn left and hit Piccadilly Circus. Equally right out the shop, right and second left and you are smack in the middle of Seven Dials. it gives us a nice spread of locations and is the right kind of area for up and down market clientele alike as well as a certain amount of foot traffic as well (even if they take one look inside and never come back...). No trams I'm afraid but pretty much everything else fits I think.

That address puts us just down from the excellent G Smith and Sons, one of the best (the best?) tobacconists in London, and next door at 72 is Henry Danielson who, according to David Low was 'discouraging browsers in his shop and camaraderie with his neighbours. A tall man in a dark suit, never without the bowler which he wore in the shop too, he strode down the Road never seeing anyone. English Literature was his speciality, and in 1921 he had written an excellent bibliography of modern authors. He was an authority on the writers of the nineties and if it had not been for the bowler, there was Baron Corvo written all over him. Corvine too the way he lovingly handled his books, and the beautifull pencilling in of the price.' The other side is 68, Albert Jackson and Son 'where old Charles's nephew Richard was in charge. The original Albert Jackson had started the bookshop in Great Portland Street in 1873, then after a couple of years in Albany Street, NW1, his son Richard brought it to 68 Charing Cross Road in 1910. He died in 1924, and it was now his son Richard who was in charge.' His assistant was Albert Thomson who came to the shop straight from school after WWI 'with the same gentle smile, during the worst years of the trade depressions of the early thirties...'. And of course we are only a few doors down from the legendary Marks and Cohen at 84 and crucially on the 'right' side of the street, the busy side.

There are some lovely photos of the area and of the period by Wolfgang Suschitzky.

That's a nice looking shopfront at 70 Charing Cross (Google Streetview) with the entrance to the rear courtyard next and all. It isn't knocked together terraces at all though. There's a basement and 5 floors above the shop. We'll have lots of neighbours. Shall we have the basement? Shall we have the floor above? Are the upper floors offices or flats?

I found a blog post about the shop we can see in Streetview closing: R.I.P. Ian Shipley Books

Once quick note: I have every intent of immersing myself and trying to do the best to bring things to life. However I'm not planning on doing accents, or to put it another way the only thing worse than everyone talking in an American accent is an American doing accents badly. Effectively everyone will sound more-or-less like an American.

I realize that for the players who are more familiar with the setting this may break immersion, but I'm not sure that there is an alternative.

Taavi wrote: PS: Remember everyone has to put an investigative point into Bookshop Stock

I think this is right btw. So please make sure you have a point in Bookshop Stock (comes from the investigative pool). I should probably have made that explict in the beginning.

Ok so I took a very slight diversion on my way into work this morning, jumping off the bus at Shaftesbury Avenue and walking down through Seven Dials back onto Charing Cross Road to have a look at the buildings. I think I might have a solution to the design/location of the shop.

Above the shops on the stretch of Charing Cross we were looking at are flats which, according to the side of the building, were finished 1884. Now owing to a peculiarity of the Road (it is on a slight hill down towards Trafalgar Square) each section of the flats is on a slightly lower level than its neighbours. Underneath the flats are the shop fronts, some of them cross over these boundaries rather than just sitting on one level (Henry Pordes these days for instance http://www.henrypordesbooks.com/). Out the back (accessed through gates on the street) is courtyard space for the flats. Relying a touch on handwaving over architecture/cost/planning permission/actual history my thought would be this:

Dear Uncle moves in 1885, just after the buildings are finished, getting a shop front over 58-60 (Pordes will not be there for at least another 20-30 years). Thanks to a combination of cash injection, connections and hard-nosed negotiation he managed to get a shop and the two (three?) floors above and the basement. The basement is used as storage for uncatalogued books and shop supplies as well as having a small staff kitchen and toilet (which favoured clientele and runners are allowed to use). The Grants have a small space at the very top (couple of rooms) for their living space. The ground floor is the main shop floor. This is where the good books are displayed (under the watchful eye of Mr Grant). Out the back is Harwood's storage room/office with the basement access to allow him to shift up new boxes of stock and down horrible unsaleable dogs (I dally with the idea of 1 point spend bookshop stock 'breakers' - battered, incomplete books which can be cannibalised for plates, pages and bindings to aid forgery attempts...). Out of the shop proper are two staircases (at least...) which lead up to the other floors which have been knocked together into a maze of books. These are less interesting military books, the less outre elements of Malcom's reign (anthropology, my do those Fullerites like their anthropology...psychology, folklore and the like) and then in more out of the way areas the real occult stuff (although not the most expensive items, they are held for the discerning clientele who know to ask about them).

Turning to my Low this would give us a new neighbour: 'At No. 56 Mr A.H. Mayhew, another exception, with scholarly interests. Between 1924 and 1929, he published an excellent edition of The Wayland-Dietrich Saga, edited by his friend, Mrs Katherine M. Buck. Like most second-hand booksellers who became publishers, he learned that love wasn't quite enough...'

I think that combines Taavi's maze, my back room and the Aga off the backroom (well, downstairs a little) for the Cap'n to get his chai. The upstairs can be full of those strange piles of books which might hold anything whilst still allowing for hangover of the glory days with a nicely appointed front of house. No trams alas but Carse can leap off the back of a passing omnibus at least. Charing Cross is nice enough to have had a decent client list in the old days and will still bring in some walk-in trade to keep turnover rolling, it's close enough to Seven Dials to have some dubious friends, near to Covent Garden for the toffs, a brisk walk to the military and other clubs and just near enough to Watkins for a friendly rivalry without being right next door. The whole shop would have a faded gentility/aging military aspect to the customers mirrored at least in part by it's location and in part by its staff and runners. Plus Harwood can escape out to the Salisbury for a pint of lunch with the scouts when the grinning of the African fertility gods, the moving things in bottles and the endless drawings of goat heads gets too much...

Thoughts? I don't want to monopolise the design of the shop by any means or tie us down too much so please feel free to change things if they seem wrong to you.

Bookman wrote:The Grants have a small space at the very top (couple of rooms) for their living space.

Grant may have lived there as a bachelor, and Mrs Grant may have lived there in the first years of their marriage, but they moved away to raise their family. Now they live in a flat with a spare bedroom for when the grandchildren stay over. Perhaps Harwood lives there, or cousin Malcolm?

I am very happy with how things are developing. I think I will be leaning on Bookman quite a bit for suggestions on locations for things.

Putting Malcolm up there is a good choice, PC(s) who room up there, or stay there when they are in London (Luke?) also make for potentially interesting developments.

I think we are pretty much ready to start. I've started (a bit) to seed things with players. I will reach out to everyone else with rumors, etc that your characters are currently aware of.

I plan on opening up the IC thread with people in the shop. Think a little bit about what your character would do on an ordinary day. It will be about 2 weeks after the prequel thread (which is waiting for the attentions of a certain Captain before I post again).

Do people have a preference for a starting time period? I am thinking September 1933.

Quick note - as it happens I'm on leave this week and the local Internet is less reliable than might wish for. Don't expect to hear much from me before Friday. Sorry! Andy

Happy to room above the shop, if the rent's reasonable

I'm not sure I have "typical" days, but I would probably be going over auction catalogues noting market trends and who bought what, buying drinks (or being bought them) for other contacts in the biz, inquiring with regular clients (e.g. O'Doggy, Mr Llewellyn) if they are looking for anything in particular, etc. I think a lot of a Catalogue agent's work is networking.

Malcolm above the shop makes sense as he seems unlikely to be able to sort his own place out and someone needs to be on site regularly. Having a spare room used by people as they go through (Laura when watching the shop for instance) makes sense as well, Harwood has his own place in a not-unpleasant lodging house in Kilburn (although he suggests Maida Vale to the more affluent questioner) and comes into work on the Bakerloo line to Piccadilly Circus, changing to the Picadilly to get to Leicester Square. You couldn't pay him enough to stay over the shop knowing what he does about the contents of the cellars...

His general day starts with arriving at the shop early to set up. If Laura has not been around he will do a quick clean, otherwise his main missions are to get the Aga warming and put the tea on and organise anything needed in the shop proper. After which he heads into the back room to get started on the piles, sorting them into possibly worth something (for Mr Grant to price up), breaker (save the prints for framing and selling), possible aid to a Frankenstein job (building something out parts and making it live again) or utter rubbish. The last two are shifted back downstairs. Anytime he runs out he descends to get more. He escapes at some point for lunch at a nearby hostelry (possibly with a scout or friendly punter) and he covers the shop when Mr Grant needs to get away. His day is sometimes broken up by pick ups and deliveries or to help with general labour. Otherwise he lurks in the backroom with the esoterica until he can escape at the end of the day.

And I am quite happy to supply location and historical info. I shall keep the books on the trade and the byways of London close to hand.

How do we want to handle dice rolling? Players rolling, Keeper rolling, Invisible Castle, what?

September 1933 is fine with me. You may find this site useful: London Weather.

A typical day for Kelvin Grant is opening the shop with Harwood and cousin Malcolm; putting the bargain tables on the pavement; going to the bank; pricing new stock with Harwood; buying new stock from Captain Penhalligon (and perhaps other book scouts); serving customers; reading the nicer stock and drinking tea; lunch; doing the books after closing time (Mrs Grant insists); and depositing the day's takings in the night safe at the bank.

Less frequently, the day includes a call out, taking along Harwood for experience or Captain Penhalligon for expertise; an auction, taking along Harwood for experience; examining the trade journals (The Clique and The Bookseller); preparing specialist literature orders for collection; and the ABA lunch.

Luke would be willing to help with the pricing, and eager to help with the auctions and call outs. Customer service not so much, unless it's "specialist literature " customers. I suppose I bring in new stock from Paris as well.

Dice rolling is invisible castle. I have no interest in rolling for people, I think IC keeps everything simple and above board.
For a role to be "legitimate" please post with the following format

[GMB]<char name>
(i.e. [GMB]Jory)

Combat started in prequel thread. It brings up an interesting question about "who goes first". From the rulebook it seems like in a "free for all" (i.e. multiple combatants) the agressor goes 1st. I considered using Sense Trouble roles to give the PCs an option to go first (which would make some sense since his action, while sudden, was hardly instantaneous) but it seems like sense trouble is more about noticing non-obvious signs of an impending threat instead of "a guy with a knife".

Thoughts?

I am sorry to be doing combat stuff for the first thing, I just want to make sure there is some general agreement. I will launch the IC thread by the end of the week.

A touch off piste but I though people would rather enjoy this:

http://lovecraftismissing.com/?page_id=379 (That should take you to the archives)

Involving strange books, pulp setting and Lovecraft as a character.

Twiddles thumbs, whistles tunelessly.

Apologies. Works been abnormally heavy. It will probably continue for a few weeks and then subside in Jan. Let me get the IC thread up.

IC is up. I've started sending out rumors (recent events, etc). Not everyone has yet. You can also make up your own to add to the mix.

I'm posting more slowly than normal. There have been some unusual developments at work and it's consuming a lot of time. It'll be temporary, things will lighten up and I will be back to full speed near the end of the year.