Play@YSDC

Whooops, i forgot to open an OOC thread. Done it now There's maybe one more player joining in, waiting to see if he posts again. In case, I'll have him join the party as a late guest

Put all the investigators together in a single topic, will also update the topic as you make spends, lose health, go horribly crazy, the usual sort of stuff

I'll bring the party scene to a closing soon, I think we're ready to move past the prologue

easiest way to do dice is

"[dice]"1d6"[/dice]" naturally you remove the quotes and change the die depending on your prefernce

[dice]0[/dice]

[dice]1[/dice]

Quick Question about Stability/Sanity.

With regards the discovery of the body. I actually rolled my die before I realised I could add stability to make it more likely I'd pass. I'm not worried about losing SAN, but when do we get to recharge stability? Is it a matter of having to see Sources of stability? When you say? or Scene/Story end?

This is not expected to be a very long game, so expect to recover Stability mostly due to enforced drivers. I will probably give you one chance along the way to recover Stability by spending time with a Stability Source, but I'm not 100% sure yet - I'll have to see how things work out.

As for point-loss: do we keep it in our character-posts (as in editing them)?

It probably wouldn't have been worth spending Stability points to improve the roll when the loss is only 3. You'd have to spend 3 Stability just to guarantee success. Spending less than that means there's a chance to lose even more.

krzyspmac wrote:As for point-loss: do we keep it in our character-posts (as in editing them)?

I've made a post called The Investigators and I'll keep it updated throughout the game

Cearlan and Krzspymac, are you still with us?

Sorry, I'm here. Got caught in work for the last three weeks but it's all clearing up

Yep I'm here

Well, try to participate more

Andrè has found occult books with notes on them in the library. He can't understand them, but perhaps someone else can

I've collected all the clues found so far on a single post, so you can reason on them more easily

That was great Cearlan. Loved it

Overlord87 wrote:That was great Cearlan. Loved it

Thank you kind sir!

For my next action in the tea room, would you prefer it if I were to stick to spoilers or just "blurt it out" as it were as I'm thinking that may be what Andre might do in these circumstances - especially following the loss of stabilities I have endured?

Cearlan wrote:For my next action in the tea room, would you prefer it if I were to stick to spoilers or just "blurt it out" as it were as I'm thinking that may be what Andre might do in these circumstances - especially following the loss of stabilities I have endured?

Do as you think it's best for your character

Sorry I've been away for a couple of days - had a death in the family that needed my attention. In fairness I haven't been able to think about this at the moment, but will pick it up over the weekend if that's alright with everyone.

Cearlan wrote:Sorry I've been away for a couple of days - had a death in the family that needed my attention. In fairness I haven't been able to think about this at the moment, but will pick it up over the weekend if that's alright with everyone.

My condolences. Don't worry about the game, it can wait.

Likewise my condolences mate.

My condolences as well :/

Sorry guys, I got ill and the last week is a blur...

This scene split the group and some of the players didn't have the chance to participate much (I'm thinking especially of ghill). Sometimes, it goes like this. I hope you didn't get too bored, time to jump back in

Nope, I don't feel a need to be in every scene, had no issues with it and am happy to watch. It didn't make any sense for Francois to go in. Had I been quicker thinking I would have, had him walk into the cafe imediatly after events unfolded but Cest la vie.

A quick Q about skills arising from tea analysis and the question of which skill is appropriate. I thought the whole point was not to worry about what skills you had but simply how to use them, so I could use spend streetwise to get a chemist friend to tell me what the composition was or Bureaucracy to get someone int he school Biology department? Is this not how it works?

ghill wrote:A quick Q about skills arising from tea analysis and the question of which skill is appropriate. I thought the whole point was not to worry about what skills you had but simply how to use them, so I could use spend streetwise to get a chemist friend to tell me what the composition was or Bureaucracy to get someone int he school Biology department? Is this not how it works?

Well, this is an interesting point. Technically, you need the correct skill to perform the analysis yourself, and this has the additional advantage that you can be 100% sure the results weren't tampered with. That said, obviously you can always find someone to perform the analysis if you lack the proper skill - especially if the game is set in a large city as it is the case for this one.
I would probably say that it's difficult to find an expert available to perform the analysis with the urgency you require. Most people aren't available to pick up an unexpected job and complete it in 24-48 hours, postponing anything else they were doing. So, if you rely on someone else, you might have to wait longer or make a spend to speed things up (this case is different since Jacques is a high ranking officer and there's an open investigation ongoing - if it was a personal request, I could have requested a Credit Rating spend to use his rank to speed things up with the gendarmerie's laboratory).
The whole concept of GUMSHOE is that the players will always find the core clue they need, and the Keeper should always allow the players to come up with a clever solution. On the other hand, there's always a right ability for the job, and the players should be rewarded for having created a balanced party that covers most of them. Otherwise, we would only need 3 or 4 skills, and the game would be poorer.

I've been trying to see if I can find out anything about the Gendarmerie's powers

It is a branch of the French Armed Forces which I believe at this point in time is still under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defence.

This is about all I can find;

The powers of French police and gendarmerie forces are constrained by statute law. The rules of procedure depend on the stage of enquiry:

1) Crimes committed in flagrante delicto (in the act), in which a suspect was found committing the crime, or pursued by witnesses, or found in possession of objects from the crime or other probable cause.

2) Preliminary enquiries: it is unclear whether a crime, or which crime, has been committed, but there exist good reasons to believe this might be the case.

3) Judicial information: an investigative magistrate (a judge, external to the police) supervises an inquiry on a case where it is certain, or at least very probable, that a crime has been committed.

In particular, outside of crimes in flagrante delicto, law enforcement forces may not conduct searches or arrests without a specific commission from the investigative magistrate. Depending on legal status of cases, not all law enforcement officers are able to act; some powers are restricted to those with special legal qualifications (see next section). - Which basically means we can't kick the door in without a good reason.

So, apart from Mr. Handy, are the others alive?

I am. I'm just following his lead for now

Alive just waiting to see how matters develop.

Just posting to say I'll open the new topic on the weekend

And I'd like to apologies for not being active. I've went to visit my family. In effect I've lost one week to jet-lag, three to parties, now I'm recuperating xD

Updated the section with NPCs and clues.

Overlord how do you want us to handle this conversation with Juliene. I'm hoping no word by word


Also Cearlan congrats on the new grand-kiddy, (whilst hoping I have at least another 10 years before I need to think about hearing the patter of little feet again)

Well, you can skip some parts, for example:

Francois tells Julien what happened in Verchanne. (Without actually writing down everything that happened).

Or something like that. You might want to ask him something, I don't know.

If you wish to cut it short and tell him nothing, well, that's fine by me, too. We'll close it in a few posts.

Won't be able to follow the forum for a few days. See you on friday

Sorry guys, gonna try to use the internal dice roller here Tried that a second ago, failed, tried to edit the post, didn't work as all my consecutive "dice" entries got added to each other and I could not remove any of them

[dice]0[/dice]

[dice]"1d6"[/dice]

The dice roller instructions are here.

Basically, what you need to do to roll 1d6 is this: The results should look like this:
[dice]0[/dice]

[dice]0[/dice]

Thanks for the help

You're welcome!

Hello Overlord87, have we died a death?

No, I'm still here. I sent a pm to Cearlan about 7-10 days ago, but got no answer. I'm afraid we can consider him out, at least for the time being. Also, I'm afraid we might have lost krzspymac too. I was waiting for a post from any of them, but I'm afraid I was waiting in vain.

So, how would you like to proceed?
1) try to get some replacement players
2) each of you pick up one investigator from a missing player as a "secondary character" of sort
3) I handle them as NPCs, hoping for them to come back

Anyway, if you're still with me, I plan on finishing the adventure. It's not that far off now.

I'd favor trying to get replacement players. If you can't find them, then I'd say run them as NPCs.

It rather depends on how close we are to the end, if we really aren't that far off then I'd suggest just running as NPC's (maybe while calling for additional players) rather than waiting for replacements.

We are not far from wrapping it up. It depends on some choices you yet have to make, and considering the speed of play by forum, It might yet be another six months or so... but we're getting there. Plus, Cearlan's investigator is practically 90% insane by now.

Anyway, I'll see if someone Is interested to join, and move things on asap.

My character so far does nothing I can take amore active role (sorry for not doing it so far :/)

krzyspmac wrote:My character so far does nothing I can take amore active role (sorry for not doing it so far :/)

Hello krzspymac, I thought you had left us actually. Good to see you're still on board

Your character can be as active as you have him be. If you post more and have him take the initiative, you'll be able to participate more, and most likely also enjoy the game more. Also, you should use your investigative skills to collect as many info as you can. For example, in the last topic, you'll notice that there is information available from the dead bodies for anyone who has the Occult skill. As you have Occult, it is your job to collect that info and share it with the others. Also, it is possible for your character to make a spend and get additional info - that is a choice for you to make, as well.

Surely I encourage you to take a more active role

Hi Overlord are you waiting for us to do something?

G

ghill wrote:Hi Overlord are you waiting for us to do something?

G

No, sorry, it's been a busy week

So, guys, I've been thinking about this campaign and I don't think I'm really motivated anymore to push it forward. I think it was actually going well until we lost Cearlan and then krzspymac (who was never really active, but still). Also, Cearlan's investigator was the one that drank the Sapna tea, and some things that I had been building on that got lost as soon as we lost him. I think things are just dragging on now, partly because of me, but partly because it's just not working very well anymore.

Assuming that it is fine for you as well, I think I'd rather shut it down. I'm not particularly happy about it, but I think it's for the best. On the other hand, if you feel like you want to see it through and get an ending, I'll speed things up and try to close it as soon as possible (cutting a few things that were originally planned - along with other things that were cut when the player count went down).

I'd like to finish it, especially since we're so close to the end, or so it seems. Perhaps we can see if there are other players interested in taking over abandoned characters.

Overlord if you don't think its working then I'm happy either way, it has seemed a bit lacking which makes perfect sense if the other players were key to chunks of the scenario. So whichever result makes the most sense for you.

I have read your replies and thought about it a little more. I don't like to leave things unfinished, but I also think that everything that deserves to be done, deserves to be done in a proper way. At the moment, I don't think I could wrap this up in a proper way, partly my fault surely, partly because of reasons out of my control. So, I prefer to close things up now. I'm sorry if this campaign came out as a disappointment. I'll try to do better next time.

Do you have any question about the campaign itself? You have uncovered a large party of the backstory, but there's a few things more. The evil villain is Julien, as you might have guessed. He would have tried to recover the book once you got it back, obviously. His plan was to use the book's powers to make sure the war would continue as long as possible, to increase as much as possible the death count for the Goddess he worshiped. Originally, the book's powers were first tested by Sebastien, Madeleine and Julien together, in Verchanne. Sebastien and Madeleine wanted to help the French win the war, but got scared upon seeing what they had unleashed, and sealed the book away in the Dreamlands. Madeleine and Sebastien knew of them thanks to the Sapna tea (in fact, the experience Cearlan's investigator had while drinking the tea was a short trip of his consciousness to the Dreamlands). The cavern under Paris's catacombs are a way to physically access the Dreamlands - provided you can pay one head to the gatekeeper. Most of this part that I had been building up got lost when we lost Cearlan. The ghouls and their master were somewhat of a neutral force in the matter, although they definitely wanted the Book back in the real world - and possibly in the hands of someone who would use it.
Also, using the book's powers the first time unleashed an avatar of Mordiggian in the world, the one that went around taking the shape of dead people. You didn't go after the clues leading in this direction, so it sort of slipped in the background. The avatar had two main tasks: eliminating all the survivors of Verchanne, and taking the shape of French and British officials, signing wrong orders that would cause a large number of deaths - again, to feed the Goddess of Death, Mordiggian. i think if I want to run this again, I'll need to link this more with the main plot, as probably all players would focus their attention on the Book.

In any case, this is a general overview of what I had in mind. If you have questions or any curiosity, I'll answer them.

I'm sorry to see it end, but I understand. Things make a lot more sense with the explanation. It was because of the book that I didn't pursue the thread that led to the avatar of Mordiggian further. Was it impersonating General Gallieni when I met with him to try to get me to retrieve the book, or was that actually him?

That was really Gallieni. He did not know everything about the book, but he knew Dupont had a secret weapon, and he thought the book contained the plans for it. The test in Verchanne was agreed with the Army, that sent in troops in the breach created by the activation of the book's eldritch power.

In the end, after retrieving the book, you would have the choice of what to do with it. You could have used it to summon the avatar and try to banish/kill it. Or you could have simply destroyed the tome. Returning it to Gallieni would surely speed up the conclusion of the war, but at what price?

Also killing Madeleine was an option. Without her, nobody could retrieve the book. Provided the head is destroyed, of course. The ghouls have a way of retrieving the memories of the dead from their brains, which is why they took Dupont's head - except they needed Madeleine's head instead.

I think I can't have been paying enough attention as I wasn't even aware of the avatar thread or that there was someone out there impersonating dead people. Although to be honest if I had I think I would have just assumed it was a normal ghoul using consume likeness.

That thread was from the survivors of Verchanne seeing people they knew to be dead and then dying themselves shortly thereafter. However, once we got back from Verchanne, we had bigger things on our minds.

It would have been a tough decision for Jacques. He had been ordered by General Gallieni to retrieve the book, and duty is what drives him, but he had also seen firsthand what had happened at Verchanne and was appalled. I was hoping that someone else would take the decision out of my hands by destroying the book.

Yes, Francois would. Francois was also planning on executing (murdering) Madeleine when this was all over, on the basis that she is in his opinion the cause of all these horrors, not much better than the Mordigan cultists who attacked us and now directly responsible for the murder of the Gendarme and he doesn't trust the French Government to do the right thing over the expedient thing.

I tried to play it slowly that Francois see's her first as an innocent dragged in, but the clearer it became that she was implicit in events the harder he turns to her.

As to the dead people, I either didn't read that thoroughly enough or thought they were talking ghostly visions