Conan Doyle vs. Cthulhu?

[Vinegar Tom]

This is an idea I half-developed years ago for tabletop, but gave up on because my circumstances changed and it was no longer convenient for me to play in that format. So it was never finished, but might be worth reviving if there would be a home for it here. I'm just checking whether there are enough players who'd like a new game for it to be worth bothering with, because I can't help noticing that the same few people are in so many games that it kind of looks as though there are far more active games than active players, and almost all of them rely on 3 or 4 people over-extending themselves. If so, you hardly need yet another one, do you?

Anyway, it would be set in Victorian England, using the 6e CoC rules plus Cthulhu By Gaslight. However, owning those rulebooks would not be essential, since, being new myself, I'd keep it newbie-friendly, and anything different from or not covered by other books (including the Quickstart booklet) would be explained. I'd be aiming it mainly at new players who need a game rather than those who are in a dozen or more already, so I'd assume that everybody had enough spare time to keep things moving quite quickly, and expect posts roughly once every 2 days.

The premise is based on the fact, which many people have commented on, that if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had been dramatizing the adventures of a real detective rather than inventing tales about a fictional one, him and Sherlock Holmes would probably have detested each other, because the ultra-rational Holmes would have openly mocked the sincerely-held but ridiculous supernatural beliefs of his extremely credulous creator. In this scenario, that's exactly what happens. Conan Doyle decides that Holmes is deliberately ignoring certain peculiar evidence he sometimes stumbles across because his supremely logical world-view won't permit him to believe in such things. He also decides that it's tremendously important to look into these matters as closely as possible, because it will benefit mankind by advancing our collective spirituality, and the world will be a better place. Of course, in a Lovecraft-inflected Cosmos, both men are wrong - one more disastrously so than the other.

Anyway, for this reason, being too busy to deal with these matters personally, Conan Doyle forms a small private club for the purpose of looking into cases which Sherlock Holmes either refused to take because he thought they were a load of superstitious nonsense, or handled in a way which Conan Doyle felt left out important aspects that were inconveniently weird. The investigators start off extremely idealistic, and none of them, including Conan Doyle (who will be the very last to catch on) have the slightest idea that there's any real danger involved. They'll find out soon enough, and if the campaign proves successful, the tone will get steadily darker. Each chapter will be mostly self-contained, so the death or retirement of all the investigators will just make room for a new lot. Potentially, future installments can take place at any time up to Conan Doyle's death in 1930 (whatever happens, he'll survive until then, and both Holmes and Watson will still be alive at least until the final story is published in 1927).

Each chapter will include as background material one of the original Sherlock Holmes short stories, the assumption being that Watson truthfully stated the facts as he saw them, but there were certain things he never knew about. You don't need to own those books either, since all the stories are in the public domain (except, in some countries, those in the last book, which for that reason I won't use), so I'll provide the tales online. Please note that this is not one of those campaigns in which an NPC far more talented and intelligent than any of the Investigators hogs the limelight! Sherlock Holmes will mostly be long gone by the time you arrive, and if he isn't, he'll regard you all as annoying cranks who believe a right lot of silly old tosh, so don't expect much from him except withering sarcasm.

Since I never finished it in the first place, I won't be able to start this campaign immediately. But if enough players express an interest, I'll get it into playable shape, including a fairly short introductory chapter which should be roughly as survivable as the Haunting, but won't be that over-familiar scenario dusted off for the zillionth time - this is all new stuff! I could have it done in a few weeks - anyway, well before Xmas.

Interested?

[Abdul Alhazred]

Hi Tom,

Sounds very intriguing, and I'd certainly be interested if it kicked off in a few weeks. Right now I'm busy with my own ToC game, so don't want to over commit myself, but a post every couple of days is achievable. I'd have to brush up on my Holmes mind.

AA