Tutankhamun: Evil Under the Egyptian Sun

This time last week I was in Egypt. Or at least, a thinly disguised Retford pretending to be Egypt as part of the annual weekend freeform. This year it was Tutankhamun: Evil under the Egyptian Sun and I played Rudolph Valentino. So how did it go?

Tutankhamun is set at the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1923 - and as you can expect it’s a game full of archaeology, pharaohs, curses and magic. And also a bunch of Hollywood types making movies. As Rudolph Valentino, I was playing one of the movie people.

Tutankhamun: Evil under the Egyptian Sun was written by Fi and Paul of Mystery in Mind. They wrote and ran Masquerade, a game set in 1762 Venice back in 2011, which was also a lot of fun.

Highlights

Making movies: As I mentioned in my 2018 Shogun report, performing in theatre in a freeform is a bit of a challenge for me. It’s really a long way outside of my comfort zone - so I’ve only done it once.

So when I wrote on the casting form that making movies was something I would be happy to do in Tutankhamun, I wasn’t really sure what I was letting myself in for. As it turned out, what I was letting myself in for was laughing - a lot.

As Rudoph Valentino, I got to star in three movies. One of them even one the inaugural Egyptian film awards. (I can’t remember which one - they all became a bit of a blur. That may be because they all had a very similar plot, and my character fell in love with Aziza Amir, played by Penny, in every one!)

Return of the Pharaoh: Me being stabbed by my adviser,
played by Alfred Hitchcock (played by H)

The movies were made using an iPhone with the Silent Film Studio app. The director booked the camera (iPhone) out, and worked out the story. We then shot our film and recorded what we wanted on the captions, and then handed it back for the GMs to splice together.

The results were hilarious - and the app made it really look like a 1920s silent movie, with cheery piano music, wobbly projection and everything. Best of all, the movies meant that I could share some of what I had been doing over the weekend with my family - normally they only get to hear about my adventures.

Rick O'Connell (Graham)and
Lady Evelyn (Suey) who accompanied us
into The Tomb of Five

Tomb of the Five: The GMs had done a serious amount of work on props and scenery for Tutankhamun. Unfortunately, as a movie person, I saw almost none of it. My character sheet had no interest in tombs and Egyptology - but luckily, some of the people around me did.

It turned out that my wife Natacha Rambova (played by Nickey) had a sinister reason to go on a dig, and despite her trying to keep me from it I found out about it. Good job I did, because she was short of funds but I had enough to completely fund the dig.

So we went on our dig where we went into a tomb, took the artefacts and then had to escape from the sand piling in all around us. It was most perilous! Finally, once we were out of the tomb we were then shot at by mysterious thugs.

The tomb was set up really nicely, and we needed to cut away the artefact from a mummy prop holding it, using scissors representing an ornate knife (which I stole).

That was my only archaeological adventure - other players encountered moving mummies and zombies and all sorts of other craziness.

Murder! Unusually for me, I was not playing my usual good guy: I was a murderer. I had three murders in my past, and I knew they would catch up with me. (More on the investigation rules below.)

On Saturday Natacha questioned me about cyanide that she had found (she didn’t know that I had already used it to murder two women). We had a lovely scene where I tried to explain (badly) what was going on, and she became increasingly frantic as she found out the worst. (Well, what she thought was the worst - I didn’t tell her all of it…) Amazingly, she stuck by me.

Happily married: Rudolph and Natacha.
(Until she shot me in the back.)

Agatha Christie (played by Clare) caught up with me on Sunday and I was dragged away for execution. When it came time to be executed, I tried to escape and was shot like the villain I was. (To my surprise, my wife was one of the people who shot me. That’ll be true love, then.)

GM-driven scenes: I enjoyed a few scenes with the GMs and NPCs.

• The resurrected corpse: I found myself watching the local acting troupe (led by Mohammed Beyoumi played by Nick) try to resurrect a corpse. The corpse was played by Paul (the GM/writer) but as it came to life (with a nice jump-scare) the ritual was interrupted by Harry Houdini (Colin) who denounced it all as a hoax. I decided that I wasn’t sure what I had seen.
• Ambushing Ludwig: Ludwig Borchardt (Nathan had an incriminating document that he was using to blackmail Alla Nazimova (Lise). So a group of us (myself, Alla, Natacha, and Rick O’Connell (played by Graham) decided to ambush him to beat him up and get the document. This didn’t go according to plan, and ended up with Ludwig fleeing and being rescued by his arch enemy Biggles (played by Matthew). I was spectacularly useless, being distinctly outmatched by everyone else.
• Fighting Daniel de Saulles: But I got to beat up Daniel de Saulles, played by David (who spent the weekend playing NPCs), who turned up to exact his revenge (he blamed me for the death of his brother, who had actually been killed by his ex-wife who I had had an affair with so I can sort of see where he was coming from). We had a short brawl in which I was victorious and at which point the red mist descended and I was about to kill him when Charles “Wag” MacDonald (played by Sam) pulled me off him. (Valentino was described as having “a bit of a temper”. Well, yes.)

Not so good

There were a few things that didn’t work quite so well for me.

I, murderer: I was fine with having murder in my background - I knew I was going to get my comeuppance by the end of the game (and I ended up with a satisfying death scene as I mentioned above).

But, I also hated my ex-wife Jean Acker (played by Jenny). She had caused me such pain in the past that I wanted her dead. In fact, my main reason for being in Egypt was because I followed Jean and wanted to kill her away from the American authorities.

I’ve played villains before - but in the past they have wanted power (occult or political) and didn’t care who they trampled on to get it. I don’t think I’ve played someone who’s main motivation was simply revenge before - and I didn’t find it very easy.

As a result, I found it difficult to interact much with Jenny. I was supposed to hate her, and I’m a bit too reserved to chew the scenery. And Jenny herself is too nice to really hate, which didn’t make it any easier. So we had mostly separate games - if she appeared I generally made myself scarce, or scowled at her.

And of course I didn’t kill her. On Sunday, as I escaped my execution I lunged at Jean in a murderous rage and died in hail of bullets.

Goals done by Friday: Apart from dealing with Jean and keeping my past a secret (!), I was pretty much done with my character goals by the end of Friday evening. So I spent Saturday making movies and going on a dig as mentioned before. But while I had a few slow spots on Saturday, none of them were bad enough for me to need a random encounter (more on that below).

Hiding the budget: The props were great. Fi and Paul had set up a wonderful Tutankhamun’s tomb, with dog statues and a chariot - and of course a sarcophagus with a mummy. But, it was tucked away in a side room which meant that it was hard to see. I only saw it on Sunday just before they had to take it all down to make space for lunch.

It seems a bit of a shame that they couldn’t have put it somewhere a bit more public so that everyone else could see more of it, although I do realise that some unsavoury types were stealing artefacts from it which would have made that a bit tricky.

Unwrapping the mummy: On Saturday there was a timetabled event for a public unwrapping of Tutanhamun’s mummy, led by Lady Evelyn Herbert (played by Sue). Lots of people gathered, expecting something dramatic to take place. The mummy appeared, a lovely prop all bandaged up, and Sue did an excellent job of narrating her way through the unwrapping.

The Mummy (thanks to Charlie for letting me use her photo)

But nothing happened. No sinister omens, no strange lights, and definitely no mummies coming to life. Which was a shame, as that’s what we were all hoping for.

Doing things differently

Fi and Paul did a few things differently to most weekend freeforms, and I think some of them could easily be adopted.

A cashless society: There was no cash in the game. Everyone had money (I was fairly well off) and it was noted on our character sheets. The GMs trusted us to manage our money ourselves - we simply amended our totals as required..

I wasn’t aware of any cheating, and it was nice to be trusted. It also sent a message as to how important the GMs thought that money was in the game - not very important.

Investigating crimes: I was interested to see how the criminal investigations worked, partly because I had murder in my past, and partly because I had contributed some ideas to Fi (based I think on this article I wrote a couple of years back). Tutankhamun had a few ideas that I liked:

• Crimes were investigated using crime sheets, where the evidence was kept.
• Evidence itself was scattered throughout the game - items, witness statements and the like. They were stamped “Evidence” to make it clear. (I started with two myself!)
• The level of evidence needed varied depending on the severity of the crime. As a major crime, murder needed six pieces of evidence.
• If a player committed a crime during the game, they were asked to complete a crime sheet so that the GMs could track what was going on, and also allow the investigators to catch up with you.

Overall I think this was a success. I’m not sure how many of the in-game crimes were solved, but at least the possibility was there. It also meant that I knew what to do when my hotel room was burgled - I complained to the hotel staff and they investigated. They didn’t find anything out unfortunately, but at least they were able to check.

I want to find out from the investigator characters how they found the system - I may end up updating my old article.

Random encounter: Sometimes you can find yourself with not enough to do in a freeform. We have the paperclip rule for players to signal to other players that they are looking for help (and I came across someone with a paperclip this time - and duly tried to bring them into our game). But for Tutankhamun the GMs had a random encounter, which I gather would be tailored to you. While I was very tempted to find out how they worked, there was always just enough going on that meant I didn’t need a random encounter.

NPCs: The GM crew included two people doing nothing but playing NPCs. These worked really well, and I can see them being used again. (I’ve talked previously on the Freeform Games blog about using unused characters like this, but I’ve not actually done it.)

I can imagine Tombstone working with a couple of people playing NPCs to be shot, robbed, beaten up, tried and hung all weekend.

In Tutankhamun, the NPCs played some significant characters - as well as Daniel de Saulles (who was significant to me but nobody else) they also played the mysterious Mr or Ms Wolf.

Tailor-made characters: Fi and Paul use the casting information when they write the characters, which means you get the kind of character you asked for. This seems amazing to me - as Tombstone took five years between starting and its first run.

One downside of Fi and Paul’s approach is that they run their games only once. That’s a bit of a shame - I’d love to see Tutankhamun run again (I’d like to see the Egyptology side of it if nothing else) and I’d love to play in Masquerade again.

And finally…

And now we're back to normality and the day job. It's only been a week, but already Tutankhamun seems a long time ago...

Rolling dice

I’m currently running an Achtung! Cthulhu one-shot using Fate Accelerated. Our heroes are investigating a legend about three ancient crowns protecting the Normandy coast that the Allies need dealing with before the invasion.

I’ve noticed that when I’m running a game, I don’t roll dice all that much. I’m almost not engaging with the rules at all - we could be playing pretty much anything. I’m sure I’ll use the rules when we come to the exciting action scenes, but not yet (the players are still gathering information).

So the times I am rolling dice is to answer a player question when I’m not sure of the answer. Or when it doesn’t matter.

• Is there a phonebox nearby?
• Does the town have a museum?
• Have I been here before?
• Can I see any cats?

I normally just roll 2d6 and use my judgement. A high roll works is good news for the players, a low roll bad.

Sometimes I ask the players to roll...

Yesterday, the players sourced a copy of the Necronomicon, and when they saw it one of my players asked “As a published medieval historian, have I seen this before?” So I asked him to roll.

He rolled -4 (four minuses - the worst roll you can get in Fate). Heh heh heh.

So I explained that yes, he’d seen this book before - in his dreams. When he was younger he had had recurring nightmares involving an old book (this one) that stole his life essence and prematurely aged him.

And they’ve got to take it with them...

Levelling up?

I was listening to an old episode of the excellent Grognard Files recently (episode #3, all about Traveller) and Blythy, I think, criticised Traveller for its lack of an experience system. I think he said (I was driving at the time so my memory might be wrong) that for many players character advancement and levelling up was really important.

Really?

As I've said before, I cut my roleplaying teeth on Traveller. I was a science fiction fan, so I bought a science fiction RPG. I wasn't inspired by fantasy and so D&D passed me by. (I do remember buying the Monster Manual and enjoyed reading that - but I don't think I used it.)

From Traveller I went pretty much straight into Call of Cthulhu, and from there to GURPS.

None of those games have "levels". Yes, there's a little bit of skills improvement in Call of Cthulhu and I imagine there is some in GURPS (but I can't remember it now). But there's none in Traveller (well, there's a tiny bit, but the basic premise is that you don't improve).

The reason for this is that your characters in Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, and GURPS start out competent. They don't start out at "level 1" - they already know what they're doing.

So I never got into the whole "levelling up" thing.

One-shots not campaigns

There's another reason I never really got into levelling-up: I mostly played one-shots.

I can't ever remember playing in a long campaign, where levelling up was critical. I think the longest I've ever run a single game was for about 8-10 weeks when I ran Call of Cthulhu that ended up being several scenarios mashed together.

Even when we were starting out and I was at school, we still didn't play campaigns. I can't remember much about my games back then, but I'm pretty sure that we liked to mix things up. We all took turns GM-ing and we never settled down into a long campaign. Character advancement wasn't on our radar, and it wasn't something we missed.

So my experience of roleplaying has been playing and running one-shots. (And even a scenario that may take a few sessions to play though is still a one-shot. But in my head, Masks of Nyarlathotep is a very lengthy one-shot, so I might not be the best to judge.)

Really?

So for me, the play was (and is) the important thing.

And when I hear people like Blythy say that players like to level up and that character advancement is important to them, I have to wonder if that's really true.

Or is that just me?

Monster of the Week again

After a bit of a hiatus since last year, my occasional online RPG group started up again this month, with me running my Monster of the Week one-shot The Seeds of Doom (which I’ve talked about previously here and you can download here).

The game went really well. Neither of my regular players were familiar with MotW (or any PbtA games for that matter), but they took to the playbooks like ducks to water. They chose a Flake and an Initiate. They decided their previous case involved the giant toad of Wigan, which sounded appropriately weird.

Last time I ran MotW I had some problems with the rules in that I wanted to roll for attack - this time I seemed to have overcome that block and was much more comfortable with describing what was going to happen and asking “What do you do?”

The players ran around and investigated the mystery and generally had a good time.

Feedback is good

I did note that the players were a bit too keen to shut down NPCs. I would throw helpful NPCs at them, but more than once they blocked them. That was a bit tricky, as it meant that information I had planned to give them via NPCs I had to manage in a different way.

I did wonder if that’s because players like to think that they’re in control, and aren’t keen on receiving help, but it was a shame as I like to run games with lots of NPCs.

Anyway, I shared my concerns with one of the players between sessions. I don’t know if that helped or whether I adjusted my play accordingly, but the problem seemed to go away in the final session.

Some other thoughts

• Once or twice I suggested that the players imagine that they were in a tv show, and it was okay if not everything was gritty and realistic. Normally when I run a modern-day game (even my Other London games) I try for a more realistic actions-have-consequences style of game - and my players know that. This time, I encouraged my players to be more proactive by making them imagine they were in a tv show and that seemed to work.
• I was a bit worried about them meeting the monster early, but I realised that they were unprepared and it was tougher than they were expecting, so it was fine.
• I still really like the way MotW handles NPC motivations - that worked really well as a simple shorthand for what they would do (often be a victim and need rescuing). MotW does the same thing with locations, but I didn’t find that to be as successful, except where I used the woods as a maze to hide the monster.
• I included a cut scene! Possibly my first. As our heroes were driving their gully sucker up to the lighthouse I cut to a scene showing the monster at the lighthouse menacing some teenagers. I should do that more.
• I bought a new gaming headset that’s much clearer than the old one I was using. However, the over-the-ear cups are so good that I can’t actually hear myself talk through my ears. I can hear myself through bone conduction, but I sound really muffled. That took some getting used to.

More MotW

Happily, both my players enjoyed MotW and would like to play more. So I’ve promised to run another adventure. I need to read up on the in-between moves first though.

But before that I’m running Achtung! Cthulhu which I’m looking forward to.