Other London: Custodians of the Echo

As I've said before, I’m running a short Other London investigation at the moment.

We've started afresh because I want to see what new characters (covered briefly last time) and factions they develop during session zero.

I’ll have a bit to say about how the investigation went in due course, but here’s one of the factions they created (and I then fleshed out).

The players suggested something to do with the English Folk Dance & Song Society at Cecil Sharp House and a secret group interested in folk history. I then filled in some of the details (and put it in my faction format) between sessions.

Custodians of the Echo

• Concept: A secret society of folk music historians.
• Trouble: Extremely limited resources
• Goal: Track down "The Song of the Tree of Albion"

Folk songs are magic.

The Custodians of the Echo is the name given to a secret group of folk historians based at Cecil Sharp House. They are the true power behind the English Folk Dance & Song Society, and the EFDSS's members unwittingly help them complete The Song of the Tree of Albion.

There are always eight Custodians (a sacred number - a “square”), four men and four women.

The Song of the Tree of Albion: According to Austen's 1788 Compendium of British Song and Story, The Song of the Tree of Albion is an ancient piece of music and dance. According to legend, this composition was created by minstrel Aeldric Goodfellow, known as Aeldric the Melodious, for King Arthur. It is said to contain melodies and harmonies that can influence the natural world, heal the sick, and communicate with spirits. The work is composed of both music and lyrical poetry but was torn into seven pieces, each of which has been lost to history.

Lila Hawthorne: efficient EFDSS secretary, Custodian of the Echo, I've always had green fingers

Skilled (+2) at: EFDSS bureaucracy, folk history and lore, gardening and plant magic

Bad (-2) at: Anything to do with technology.

Stress: O O

Lila works at Cecil Sharp House where she runs the administration team. She is a keen gardener whose green fingers are aided by her use of plant magic. She sometimes wonders if one of her grandparents was a fae.

Information, rumours and lies

• The EFDSS's library contains Britain's best collection of folk history.
• The EFDSS library's restricted section contains several works of powerful magic.
• The Custodians of the Echo are all powerful magicians.
• The Custodians are all fae.
• The Custodians command the Black Drummers, an elite fighting unit.
• Modern Morris dance moves are loosely based on Black Drummer fighting moves.
• English ceilidh dances sometimes have occult meaning.

Questions

• What is the Echo?
• Where is the Custodian's library?
• Do the ceilidhs at Cecil Sharp House have occult significance?
• Are the Black Drummers real? Who commands them?

Allies: Desk 17, Whitechapel Coven, Lord Boston

Enemies: The Black Watch, Miniaturists

Location: The Custodians of the Echo can be found at Cecil Sharp House, the headquarters of the EFDSS.

Pre-generated characters or not?

As I said a couple of posts ago, I’m currently running an Other London investigation for my regular group.

When I ran Other London previously, I used the pregens in the book. These are playbook-ish Fate Accelerated pregens. There are five characters, each with options so players can tailor them. They work well at conventions.

Questions on the pregens help tie everyone together, and using pregens means I haven’t got to worry about someone creating a character unsuitable for Desk 17.

As my players had all played Desk 17 before, I decided to let them create their own without using my pregen templates. The result was, um, interesting.

Letting players have their heads

Thomas created a career detective who had been demoted to Desk 17. They’ve upset someone powerful and suffer from the “evil eye”.

Terry created a talented cat burglar who has been press-ganged into Desk 17 after they were caught killing a werewolf.

At this point, we were in danger of Desk 17 turning into Slow Horses, with none of the PCs actually wanting to be in the department. Worse, the PCs so far had no actual magical abilities, which might be a handicap in Other London.

So I asked Jon (who was still mulling things over) for a character who had something magical about them and was also a willing Desk 17 employee. So he created a “street word wizard” (whatever that is) member of Desk 17.

PCs more interesting than the investigation?

While these were great, their backstories were much more interesting than my investigation. I was initially worried that this would derail the investigation, but so far, this hasn’t been a problem. 

I have had to ask the players to explain their characters. Some things were left deliberately vague so they could find out during play, and other things are simply opaque. For example, it wasn’t until session 4 that I asked Jon what he meant by “street word wizard.”

We are weaving their backstories and links into the game. I’ve asked them to draw on their backstories and contacts rather than just rely on me, and that’s working well: we’ve met lots of contacts and visited places important to the characters. So that’s working as intended.

More fun than pregens

After the last session, I asked the players how they thought it was going. They said they were enjoying the game (phew!), and Jon said that he was enjoying his character more than if he were playing a pregen, because he’s often not sure how to play a pregen.

I found that particularly interesting, as I really like pregens. Pregens tell me the kind of game the GM is interested in running, and they are usually suited to the game. (At least, good pregens do…)

If I’m left to my own devices, I can easily go off-piste.

The freeform influence

I wonder if I embrace pregens so easily because I play (and write) so many freeforms. The biggest difference between freeforms and traditional larps (and most ttrpgs) is that players create their own characters with a traditional larp/ttrpg, while you are given a character in a freeform. It’s a very different experience.

(And as a result, I’ve played a ridiculously wide range of characters in freeforms – see the list here)

There is a darker, reason I prefer pregens: I don’t really enjoy creating characters. At least, I didn’t used to. Back in the old days, I found character creation a chore. I wanted to get to the playing bit as quickly as possible, and creating a new character always got in the way.

These days, session zero is more structured and includes innovations such as actual bonds linking characters together (not something we did much of in the good old days), and I enjoy it much more.

Playbooks – the happy medium

So for me, playbooks (or partly-completed pregens with options for tailoring) are the best of both worlds.

I love them, and Other London comes with five playbook-style pregens that players can tailor. (I’ve used these when running at conventions and it works well.)

One of the reasons I asked my players to create their own characters is so I can use them to create more Other London playbooks, but I think we’d better finish the investigation before I think about that.

Meanwhile elsewhere...

Interesting blog posts I’ve stumbled across recently.

My comments may not make sense if you don’t read the linked post first.

Indie RPG Newsletter: Being an insider

In this post, Thomas Manuel comments on the Quinn’s Quest review of Vaesen, particularly the bit about players not knowing Vaesen’s folklore and, therefore, the characters not knowing it either.

I have the same problem with many fantasy RPGs; I often stumble because even though my character should know something, I don’t.

When I’m GM-ing, I try to separate character knowledge from player knowledge – and I’ll tell the players things that their characters realise. Unfortunately, not all GMs are so helpful.

The Quinn’s Quest review of Vaesen is really good (I’ve enjoyed all his reviews so far). Quinn’s criticism of Vaesen’s reliance on a couple of key skills reminded me a little of Liminal, where I find that it’s essential to take The Sight and Lore (I know The Sight isn’t a skill, but even so).

The Alexandrian on preparation and scenario design

The Alexandrian is nicer than I am. Rather than criticise The Zalozhniy Quartet’s scenario design too much, he uses it to create individual NPC timelines for the key NPCs and groups.

I’m a big fan of timelines (or countdowns or whatever) and often include them in my adventures, but I confess I hadn’t thought of separating them by NPC/faction. Something to remember, should my timelines get too unwieldy.

The Four Table Legs of Traveller

Sir Poley talks extensively about the four table legs of Traveller:

• Leg 1: Mortgages
• Leg 2: Patrons
• Leg 3: Character Creation
• Leg 4: Random encounters

In essence, he argues that your ship’s monthly mortgage payments drive you to travel and accept job offers that lead to interesting encounters and great gameplay.

I love how everything is interconnected. It feels like Sir Poley has discovered Traveller – because what he unearths isn’t obvious from reading the rulebook.

However, I’m not sure if it’s how I want to play Traveller, as I’m too fond of mysteries and overarching plots. But I can see now how Twilight’s Peak was meant to work. And if I ever get the urge to try a solo TTRPG, this might be fun to try.

(Elsewhere on his Tumblr, Sir Poley talks about character sheets, trade sheets, and other aspects of Traveller. And I agree with him – law level should be added to equipment.)

Gary Gibson on surviving as an author

I recently read Europa Deep, an SF novel set in the next century about a mission to Europa, a Jovian moon. It’s a tale with augmented humans, sentient malware, transhumans, double agents, and weird alien life. It was right up my street, and I loved it. So I went looking for the author’s site and found this interesting post on surviving as an author without the support of a traditional publisher.

It’s interesting in lots of ways, but I was taken with Gibson’s comments on focus, and noting that his readers are fickle: “When you wander away from the style of books for which you built an audience while under contract, most of that audience isn't likely to follow you.”

I’m aware that I flit from topic to topic on this blog. Traveller. Conventions. ALIEN. Freeforms. Other London. Liminal. I’m sure that if I concentrated on one thing, then I’d get more attention. But I don’t have the staying power for that.

I don’t even use this blog to talk about Freeform Games much, and that’s my main income. Instead, my blog is a place for me to reflect on games I’ve played and read, and chunter on about other stuff.

Gibson notes the importance of BookBub to his income. I found Europa Deep via BookBub…

The best RPG cover of all time

Traveller’s little black box was always my favourite-looking RPG. When I bought The Traveller Book, I threw away the Andrew J Keith illustrated dust jacket because I wanted to see the “proper” cover.

Knight at the Opera explains why Traveller’s cover is so good.

Writing RPG adventures: How much detail is too much?

I’m playtesting The Dead Undead, the next Other London investigation for Desk 17, the Met’s occult crimes unit. In The Dead Undead, the PCs are investigating murdered vampires.

I wrote the investigation before Christmas, but it’s taken me a few months to get it to the table.

Draft cover for The Dead Undead

I know I’ve been critical about published adventures on my blog recently, so I may be sensitive to how I’ve written the investigation. But as we played, I wondered whether I’d put enough information in.

It’s a balance. I want to include enough detail but not too much. I want to give GMs enough information to run the investigation, but I don’t want to overwhelm them with details or make them worry about getting it “wrong.”

Reddish sand

For example, I wrote, “Audu’s bedroom contains a coffin containing sandy red soil.” (Audu is a vampire.) That’s all I say about the soil.

As the PCs sent the soil for analysis, I decided on the spur of the moment that the results would show that the soil was from Morocco. As a result, I’ve started to give other elements in that location a North African vibe.

That’s just how I’ve done it – I don’t mind if another GM decides differently and decides that the soil comes from Romania, or anywhere.

But because I’ve decided that the soil comes from Morocco, and as I’m the investigation’s author, does that make it canon? Does that mean I should update the text to include that detail?

Questions that set the scene

I try to write Other London investigations in a way that lets the GM (and players) make it their own. Creating characters is collaborative, and the players decide (during session zero) where the Desk 17 office is located, what makes it unusual, and who the support staff are.

Scenes start with a question to get the players to contribute to the scene. (In this case, What do you find unsettling about the sculptures and artwork here?)

I’m telling the reader that it’s okay for them to make the investigation their own. At least, I hope I am.

So, no, it isn’t canonical that the red soil comes from Morocco, and that detail won’t be in the final investigation.

But we’re all different…

Perfect Organism

Perfect Organism is my scenario for the ALIEN rpg set shortly after the events of Aliens – the Colonial Marines and ICC are investigating the loss of the Sulaco.

I’ve written the scenario in the style of a normal ALIEN cinematic scenario with pregens, acts and events for each act.

However, because I write concisely (and I’m not paid by the word…), I’ve not padded it out with unnecessary details. So the events are merely bullet points that the GM can flesh out to suit their game. (Eg, “On the ground, the convicts start coming around, and radio Kathar Station for help.”)

And of course, one piece of feedback wanted me to expand on those bullet points to make them more like the events in Free League’s adventures. As I find Free League’s adventures to be overwritten, I didn’t do that.

We’re all different

We’re all different.

What is too much detail for me might not be enough for someone else. 

But when it’s my game, I get the final decision.