Remain Calm. Trust in Science. Atomic Robo Overview.

My gaming group has been experimenting with Evil Hat's Atomic Robo RPG. I've been itching to try out Fate for ages. I'm somewhat surprised to discover Aromic Robo as the setting, being as it is a comic book series I only had peripheral awareness of. Essentially, what I'd heard of the RPG as a good introduction to Fate got me to check out the RPG, figuring even if I didn't use the setting I could mine it. But the RPG is designed to greatly emulate the comic which caused me to go on a Comixology binge and obtain all of the digital Atomic Robo collections. I was hooked pretty quickly.

I'll be talking about the RPG in the future (I hope - I also still plan on writing about some of the Delta Green stories I've read and my update frequency has been horrible of late.) Here I'll want to talk a bit about the Atomic Robo comics.

Atomic Robo is the creation of writer Brian Clevinger and artist Scott Wegener. Atomic Robo is the creation of Nikola Tesla, "born" in 1923. The comic books follow his life through different eras of history. Though physically he does not change, Robo's personality does change depending on the era. Stories set in the 1930s have him acting like an older teen rebelling against the father he still loves. The 1940s see lots of war stories, with Robo matching up against Nazi super-science. After the death of his father Tesla Robo founds the Tesladyne Corporation which evolves into an organization dedicated to science - action science. Lots of smashing things, dealing with various threats such as horrors from other dimensions, leftover Nazi superweapons, mobile pyramid monsters, artificial intelligence dedicated to destroying all life, etc. As he grows older Robo becomes more confident of his ability to handle crises and becomes a mentor to the employees of Tesladyne (though still often goes out in the field, being near indestructible).

The key to these stories is both the planning and execution. The stories bounce throughout Robo's life. Some all take place in one period and others span multiple periods, such as when he confronts a monster  from beyond space-time. The creators have mapped out (and even published) this timeline, avoiding the dreaded cosmic retcon so common to comic books. Beyond the great planning the stories are just fun to read. They embrace the eras they are set in with guest stars like HP Lovecraft, Charles Fort, Thomas Edison, Carl Sagan, Bruce Lee, Annie Oakley, etc. The stories are optimistic - to quote the creators -

ATOMIC ROBO is not a comic that will be 100% sunshine and jokes, but we aren’t going to delve into melodrama either. You are not going to see Robo mope about his lack of emotions, or pine to be human, or throw a tantrum over daddy issues.

The creators also have a "no cheesecake" clause. Women are drawn will realistic proportions and wearing realistic clothing. Women Action Scientists wear the same outfits in the field as their male counterparts, an all female fighter squadron in the aftermath of World War 2 wears normal aviator clothing with their mechanic wearing a non-formfitting jumpsuit. I do wish they would make use of more historical female characters - the historical domain guest starts have been overwhelming male but the original female characters have been written and drawn excellently.

The stories have a love of science. That seems obvious but with all the mistrust placed on science in the political arena over the past several years it is refreshing to see. We see Tesla embracing failure as a step in the path to knowledge. The stories don't shy away from the fact that science can be used to build weapons but our heroes use science for the betterment of humanity (even when they destroy things with science - they're bad things!)

And the stories themselves are fun to read. Lots of action, fun dialogue, and awesome baddies. My own favorite is Dr. Dinosaur, an intelligent time-traveled velociraptor right out of Jurassic Park. He claims to be a velociraptor but Atomic Robo doesn't believe him, pointing out he's little in common with the fossil record and a lot in common with Jurassic Park. Robo suspects him to have been genetically engineered but as of now his origin is still a mystery. However he's always a blast to read with his obsession with crystals and his bizarre logic.

I can see why Evil Hat wanted to do an RPG based on Atomic Robo. Fate, with its emphasis on narrative play and player control is an excellent fit for the setting.

Reading what I've written it seems I've written a commercial for the comic book. No one asked me to - it's just a ton of fun. And the good thing is you can check it out for free - the Atomic Robo website has its Free Comic Book Day comics archived. Also if you use the ComiXology app they have the Free Comic Book Day comics for free as well as all issues and collections. Completed stories are also collected into volumes which you can find at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.

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RPG Review: The Big Crime

This post isn't a first impressions review of the new Spectrum Games RPG The Big Crime.

A few disclaimers. The first is that while I've never met one of the authors, Cynthia Celeste Miller, she is someone who I've corresponded with a lot on Facebook and I admire a great deal. Moreover, our interests are pretty close together - 80's cartoons, comic books (especially of the Silver and Bronze ages), etc.

The second disclaimer is more administrative just in case I never get around to a more full review reflecting actual play or additional details (I have some Delta Green reviews I'm meaning to do as well). Life of late has been more intense than usual. My wife's school closed down at the end of last October and being a person who has anxiety problems in the best of times, the last few months have been rough. The past week or two has seen an improvement - I've been paying more attention to my own mental health and my wife has secured a long-term sub position that starts next week which has been preceded by being a daily sub for that school. Plus she's been working part-time as a tutor. Meaning money has gotten a bit less tight but time has gotten awfully crazy.

Anyways, let's talk about The Big Crime. It is an RPG dedicated to mimicking the film noir genre. Films of the 1940s and 1950s. I can't say what the book is physically like as I only have the PDF. It's a book of 183 pages with a fairly small page size and a largish font. It looks nice - not so large that you think they're trying to increase the page count but keeps this dude's aging eyes from straining. The background is a rather appropriate gray and it is heavily illustrated with some very appropriate public domain images of the city, criminals, detectives, etc. The size of the book makes it work nicely with smaller sized tablets like my 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX. My only real annoyance with the presentation is its lack of bookmarks - as someone who has become increasingly digital over the past several years, I really prefer PDF files that are well-bookmarked. Makes "flipping" through the book much easier.

The book begins with a discussion about what film noir is. This is probably more needed here than it is in other genres as it is a term that gets thrown around a lot. There's a quote about characters that I really that I think sums up rather well who you'll be playing:

For the most part, the characters in film noir were normal, everyday people just like you and me. They weren’t action heroes in the modern sense, nor were they always individuals that could easily be labeled as “good guys” or “bad guys”. Those concepts were relatively rare in film noir. No, the characters found here were normal folks, albeit normal folks with a turbulent future ahead and, just as likely, a turbulent past as well. In most cases, they were flawed (sometimes cripplingly so) and morally questionable. The characters had gambling problems, alcohol addictions, abusive tendencies, hateful demeanors, or a weakness for dishy dames with long gams.

There's also a list of eight essential film noir examples, with an eye towards making them useful for gamers. They are:

• The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
• Double Indemnity (1944)
• The Big Sleep (1946) - one of my favorite films!
• Raw Deal (1948)
• Scarlet Street (1945)
• Born to Kill (1947)
• Out of the Past (1947)
• Touch of Evil (1958)

The game system is designed to closely emulate the genre. There's deliberately no rules for advancement which may be a sticking point for some, though examples of film noir tend not to have sequels and even if someone like Philip Marlowe appears in multiple films there is no attempt at continuity between them. Like many RPGs, adventures are intended to be broken into three acts though unlike most RPGs the rules ratchet up the level of danger from one act to the next.

Characters have several types of traits:

• Shade - How deep a shade of grey is your character
• Abilities - Normal RPG stuff like Body, Finesse, Smarts, and Spirit. Three ratings - Poor, Normal, and Good.
• Aspects - Skills for the most part. Each is attached to a specific Ability and is binary - you have it or you don't.
• Temptation Tracks - Measures how corrupted you are in Guilt, Desperation, and Alienation.
• Hooks - Three things that make you unique. Can be physical traits (in a wheelchair), related to your background (war veteran), goals, personality, or psychological problems. You get rewarded in Genre Points for playing these out.
• Genre Points - A sort of hero point tool for the game.

When acting you roll a variable number of d6, d8, or d10. Poor gets d10, Normal gets d8, Good gets d6. By default you roll four dice, though Aspects, Temptation, and other circumstances can add or subtract from the dice you roll. You are trying to get as many matching sets as you can. 

The game supports different kinds of scenes with its rules:

• Drama Scenes - Verbal interaction, with a goal of trying to get your opponent to collect four setback tokens. Nice to see verbal sparring given as much attention as physical. Bogey is a master of this.
• Fight Scenes - Whipping out he guns and fists, again trying to give your opponent setback tokens.
• Chase Scenes - Just what it says on the tin.

To improve your odds in the short-term you can give in to various temptations - but doing so requires acts of betrayal, dirty tricks, immoral actions. 

Genre and Director points allow the PCs and Director (the GM) to modify the game. As the game goes into different acts the Director gets more points. In Act Two PCs become vulnerable to death (and Act Three may prove a bloodbath - after all the protagonist does not always win in film noir). There's rules for replacing PCs in a hurry should you lose one before the climax.

Next up are rules for character creation. Your characters Shade plays into how much (if any) temptation you start with, you've got various rules for tweaking your characters, and Special Rules - a lot like stunts in Fate RPG - where your background gives you various rule-altering abilities.

After this we've got guidance for PCs and Directors - probably more useful here than in many other games as it discusses various genre conventions and how best to inject them into the game. The Director guidance includes advice on both creating the mood (camera tricks, sets, characters) and on how to build your own films (adventures). 

Finally we've got "Search by Night", an example film ready to play. Speaking of examples, one thing we've got in this whole book that I really like is lots of examples after a rule is introduced. 

Impressions? This looks like a fun game to play. It is strongly dedicated to emulating its genre. I'm not sure of its suitability for long-term play but I'm also not sure that's even an intention of the game. But I could easily see running numerous one-offs with this game, perhaps all related to one another, sometimes using the same characters or rolling over characters from one story to another. The film adaptation for Frank Miller's Sin City comes to mind as I think of it. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get my cigarette, whiskey flask, fedora, and trench coat.

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Remembering Aaron Allston

Aaron Allston passed away this past week. Allston was a prodigious game designer and author. In the roleplaying world he was best known for his work for Hero Games, TSR, along with Ghostbusters International for West End Games. He later moved on to producing fiction, best known for writing several well-received novels set in the Star Wars universe.

For many in the gaming world he is best known for his Hero Games work but I was most familiar with his work for TSR, most notably being the force behind three of the most noteworthy D&D products of the late 80s and early 90 (along with several other products he wrote):

• GAZ1: The Grand Duchy of Karameikos (1987)
• Dungeons & Dragons Hollow World (1990)
• Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia (1991)

The Grand Ducky of Karakeikos was a detailed look at the default starting area of play in the D&D "known world" (later renamed Mystara). The Hollow World gave us a good measure of pulp with the lost civilizations of the known world (as well as dinosaurs) finding their way into the inside of the globe.

It was the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia that was his masterpiece. My brother and I, both D&D fans, wondered how he got TSR's ok to produce it. While the AD&D 2nd edition game was just beginning to produce its first "splat books" the Rules Cyclopedia for the parallel D&D game was (and remains) one of the most complete gaming books ever made. Over 300 pages of small-font rules, optional rules, monsters, other planes, magic items, information on the default setting, paths to immortality. Armed with that one book you could have a complete game lasting for years and years. It was not an introductory book that gave you the basics and expected you to move on to other books - it was incredibly complete. Allston took nearly two decades of D&D games and versions and consolidated it into the most complete version the game has ever seen (or has seen since). Wizards of the Coast has been reprinting many of the old TSR versions of D&D and AD&D - I really hope this is something they get around to reprinting.

Eventually Allston moved on to producing fiction - some of it his own, the bulk of it being media tie-in fiction, largely in the Star Wars universe. I'm not a huge consumer of media tie-in fiction, though once upon a time I was. I did I followed the early Star Wars tie-ins like Heir to the Empire but the volume was far more than I could keep up with, something that became especially true when the New Jedi Order series came out. Allston wrote the Star Wars novel Betrayal, taking place after the New Jedi Order and he had the difficult challenge of launching a new series that would be accessible to people who were not familiar with much of what had gone on before. I actually did read Betrayal several years ago and found it an enjoyable read, showing the first steps of a man going down a dark path with the best of intentions.

I never had the opportunity to meet with or correspond with Mr. Allston but he made contributions which brought me a great deal of joy - indeed, which continue to do so to this day.

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Film Review: The Warriors

New York actor Roger Hill passed away about a week ago according to the New York Daily News. He was best known for playing Cyrus from the 1979 film "The Warriors".

I first encountered "The Warriors"on television in the 1980s. It was a perfect movie for me. By this time I was settled in Connecticut but still had a healthy love for my native city of New York and still went back there quite often to visit and stay with family. I have prints of old maps of New York City in my house here in Massachusetts - one of Colonial-era New York and another of the 1970s New York City Subway map. What got my attention as I was channel surfing was the frequent scenes taking place in the subway. 

"The Warriors" tells the tale of a gang (named the Warriors oddly enough) that travels from their home turf in Coney Island to a meeting of gangs in the Bronx. They have been assembled under a flag of truce by Cyrus, leader of the biggest gang in the city. Cyrus has a vision of bringing all the gangs together and taking over the city. However the meeting falls apart as Cyrus is assassinated and the police raid the assembled gang. And worst, unbeknownst to the Warriors, at least at first, is they have been blamed for Cyrus' assassination. All the gangs are gunning for them, as are the police, with their home in Coney Island far away.

The story itself is inspired by the Greek soldier/writer Xenophon's tale Anabasis, a tale of Greek soldiers serving as mercenaries under Cyrus the Younger in Persia. With Cyrus' death the Greeks find themselves deep within enemy territory.

One of the things which makes "The Warriors" notable is its portrayal of New York City and its gangs. The gangs are very stylized with little attempt at realism. They tend to be multiracial with firearms extremely rare. They are also very stylized. For example you've got the Baseball Furies, dressed like a strange cross of baseball players and mimes and armed with baseball bats. The city is New York at its worst. Graffiti everywhere. It is not the New York of the glitzy Times Square that emerged in the 1990s but rather the New York of the 70s and 80s with everything falling apart and someone out at night is considered to have been "asking for" any tragedy which befalls them, 

Almost the entire film takes place at night, with the sun only rising as the survivors reach Coney Island (with one final confrontation to face). The rest of the film takes place at night, with sparse subway stations, parks poorly illuminated and dark streets with stores and bars closed and barred shut.

Our protagonists aren't the nicest people, often looking for fights, one member of the Warriors going after a woman in a park with an intent to at best harass her and far more likely to rape her should she prove unreceptive to him. 

Yet despite, or perhaps because of, this bleak setting and morally-lacking protagonists, it is an absolutely engaging film. You find yourself rooting for them and against the police which are, quite correctly, after them. 

To geek out a bit in keeping with the main subject of this blog... How does the film work for those in the gaming world? I think it's a pretty darn good inspiration. It immediately brings to mind the various White Wolf World of Darkness games. Vampires from Vampire: The Masquerade or Vampire: The Requiem would fit right into this setting. Werewolf: The Forsaken has the concept of territory of utmost importance, much like it is to the various gangs of "The Warriors". And most White Wolf games would recognize the concept of belonging to a certain "gang" (or tribe or clan). Though it is a near-modern setting, the likes of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser would fit right into the New York of "The Warriors" and would understand the ethics the Warriors operate under. Truthfully it also models your typical roleplaying group rather well - as the gang conclave falls apart and the Warriors lose their leader and they are being chased by police they still manage to find to argue with each other as to who is in charge - hello inter-party conflict.

Regardless of whether you're looking for inspiration or just a fun film "The Warriors" is well worth your time. Can you dig it?

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No Power in the Verse Can Stop Me - Thoughts on Firefly Gaming

Yes... Yes... This is a fertile land and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land and we will call it... This Land.

- Wash, Firefly Episode 1: "Serenity"

With a new Firefly RPG out this month I've been rewatching some episodes of the sadly short-lived television show. There's a decent chance I'll at the very least be taking it for a spin - I have some pretty good memories of the the older Serenity RPG, the basis for which Margaret Weis Productions (MWP) created the Cortex System. Cortex System had a decent amount of similarity with the Savage Worlds RPG.

With the Smallville RPG, the Cortex System evolved into Cortex Plus. Though the character sheets might look rather similar, the engine changed quite a bit to be a far more "narrative-based" RPG. For example, one of the most important aspects of a character in Smallville is his or her relationships with other characters. For example Clark Kent could use his rating in his relationship with Lex Luthor in his interactions with Lex or in other situations where that relationship could be helpful. While the Cortex System seemed somewhat similar to Savage Worlds Cortex Plus seems to be more a cousin to the Fate RPG.

So how does this relate to a Firefly game? To my mind there's two broad ways you could run such a game (I'm pretty sure one could rattle off a lot more as well as find hybrids of what I propose.) On one hand, you could run, for lack of a better term, a gearhead type of game. Careful tracking of the multiple stars, planets, and moons in the Verse, tracking money, fuel consumption, etc. This is the model one finds in countless Traveller games and I remember similar logic when using FASA's Trader Captains and Merchant Princes supplement for their Star Trek RPG. The appeal in such a simulation is as a player you can truly get a feeling of being in control of one's destiny, of making decisions which have a logical outcome. On the other hand, there are some players who find such a simulation as exciting as a tax return.

The other side of the coin is to try to simulate the drama of the television show. Serenity is short on funds because it is interesting to be so. Simon can persevere against incredible odds not primarily due to skill but out of the love he has for his sister, River. From reading the pre-release materials for the new Firefly RPG it is clear that this is the direction they have taken. Their previous Serenity RPG certainly had this in mind but the mechanics dud not fully embrace this the way the new Firefly RPG does. The trick I find with such games is to avoid a game where the players serve as actors in a story defined by the GM. The players really need to have the ability to drive the narrative themselves, to scatter the designs of the GM in all directions (Dan's GM-ing Secret Number 38 - I actually enjoy it when players in my games go massively away from what I've planned - it's a huge challenge to be sure, but awfully fun.)


What would I do with a Firefly game? Probably the first thing to decide would be if I wanted to run a Firefly-like game or a Firefly game. For example, one could very easily create a similar setting, perhaps more customized to one's individual tastes. The Diaspora RPG, using the Fate engine, excels at creating a setting for your group - a cluster of systems linked by jump routes. The group shares responsibility for defining the systems of the cluster. Despite being a very narrative game, it embraces fairly hard science fiction. One could also shamelessly borrow the cluster creation of Diaspora while going for a more space western feel of Firefly.

Going away from a narrative game, one could simply whip out Traveller and very easily construct a sector with a strong resemblance to the Verse in Firefly, whether in the Official Traveller Universe or in one's own setting. A sector recently brought under one government with some disagreement as to if that is a Good Thing.

Setting in the official Firefly Verse seems a pretty reasonable idea. One danger I do see with it is science fiction fans love to define things and Firefly, for a show that ran about half a season plus a Big Damn Movie, has had a lot of definition. For example, I love the various products that Quantum Mechanix have produced - maps of the Verse, blueprints of Serenity, etc. But if you're going for a more dramatic/narrative realization of the Verse it becomes important to not let those details limit you. Joss Whedon has freely admitted to science not being his strong suit and it shows in Firefly and the move Serenity. Until the movie Serenity it was unclear if the Verse was one system or several - and even when Serenity seemed to settle it as one (admittedly huge and scientifically impossible) system you still had the Operative making references to the galaxy.

I'd be pretty tempted to expand the setting with my own ideas - and invite my players' to make their own contributions. For example, why does the Alliance have such a huge navy? Just for Reavers and pirates? The answer can certainly be yes, but even that answer has its own implications. Is it possible there are other powers in the setting beyond the Alliance? Not all Westerns took place in the United States, with a fair number taking place in Mexico and there's often foreigners paying visits. I've often considered the possibility that there might be other star systems accessible by some sort of "jump gates" at the edge of the system. With the Verse being so huge doing so would in no way contradict what's been shown on the show and film. This need not contradict the slower-than-light exodus from Earth That Was - constructing jump gates might require construction at both sides of the gate and not be something that robots can do. Sure the Alliance got the best system, but there might be visitors from the Holy Russian Empire just waiting to pay a visit.

Also there's thing suggested in the show that never really had a chance to be fully developed. The opening scenes of the pilot episode "Serenity" suggested criminal tongs. One might get inspiration from the tong wars of San Francisco in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From the film Serenity we know the Alliance botched at least one social engineering project at Miranda, along with attempting to create human killing machines. Mal referred to River as a "reader", the existence of such a term suggesting her abilities might not be unique in the Verse. And might there be a moon settled by a gazillionaire who used dinosaur DNA to make his own little Jurassic Park. Perhaps he called it... This Land...

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Delta Green Fiction

In my last post I spoke a bit about Delta Green. After posting I realized that my familiarity with Delta Green is solely through RPG supplements and I was very unfamiliar with the Delta Green. To be honest, I have a tendency to avoid most "gaming fiction" - I read and enjoyed Dragonlance and Drizzt once upon a time but generally speaking I tend not to enjoy it. However, I was curious as to the Delta Green fiction so I asked around on the Call of Cthulhu RPG Google+ Community.The people there spoke very highly of the Delta Green fiction, even those who, like me, generally don't read RPG fiction. With that in mind I've obtained some ebooks of what seemed to be available and did some searching online to compile a list of what seems to be available in chronological order. After I finish the first anthology I'll post a review. However in the meantime I thought it might be worthwhile to share what I've been able to find.

Delta Green: Alien Intelligence. An anthology, out of print but available as a PDF from DriveThruFiction.com. It appears to be the earliest published fiction available though I believe some may have been printed in The Unspeakable Oath magazine.

Delta Green: Rules of Engagement. A novel by John Tynes (who is one of the creators of Delta Green and wrote some fantastic material in Call of Cthulhu d20). This book is out of print though it can be found within Strange Anthologies (below). I've linked to the Amazon listing for this book which appears to have some copies at a decent price.

Delta Green: Dark Theaters. Another anthology. This one sounds interesting, what with covering the raid on Innsmouth that gave birth to Delta Green and covering the tragedy in Cambodia which cost them their official recognition. Sadly, also only available as PDF. (I much prefer eBook formats but hey...) It is listed as the third Delta Green book and it lists the novel Rules of Engagement (above) so I'm guessing I'm placing it correctly.

Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy. A novel by Dennis Detwiller, another of the creators of Delta Green. He also was a co-creator of the Superhero RPG game Godlike, a very gritty take on WWII superheroes. Denied to the Enemy is set during World War II and seems to have been originally published in 2002. The version I link to is to the Kindle version from Amazon. Right now it is available for only $0.99.

Delta Green: Through a Glass Darkly. Another Detwiller novel. And the covers have suddenly gotten creepier. The link is to the Kindle version, the physical version appears to be in print as well. First published in 2011. I'm very much unfamiliar with this one. Reading the description, it seems to be about a Delta Green case that starts of in January of 2001 and serves as a bridge from the "classic" Delta Green era of the 1990s to the more modern (2010s) era. Also from reading the reviews it seems this one is a lot less standalone than the previous ones with lots of references to other works,

Delta Greens: Strange Authorities. This collection by John Tynes contains both short stories and the novel Rules of Engagement. Two of the short stories can be found within Alien Intelligence and Dark Theater. Looking at the copyright dates of all of the stories it appears that all of these were written prior to Through a Glass Darkly.








So I'm going to be plunging through these pretty much blind. I'm actually looking forward to it. As I work through them (which can take from weeks to months to years I'd imagine knowing me) I'll add links to reviews that I make.

Flipping through them I find myself looking forward to the upcoming Delta Green RPG that is in development. As most of my experience with Delta Green is after 9/11/2001 one reason I've shied away from it is it has always appeared a bit dated. While culturally I view the 1990s with some fondness, one thing which seems clear to me is just how close the 1990s were to the 1920s - a pleasant-enough seeming decade on the surface with a number of problems that were soon to manifest themselves and set the tone for the decades which followed. I think of how much time we spent thinking about the government hiding UFOs and not worried about an economy headed for some extremely rough times and terrorists getting ready to attack US warships and crash planes into New York City and Washington, DC.

However, I'm finding myself curious about those works set in the 1990s and even more about those set earlier in Delta Green's history. My gaming group has wrapped up its fourth Call of Cthulhu session in our current campaign and its becoming clear that I need a stronger framework to bind the characters together and direct them to their cases. With the game set in Arkham, Massachusetts in the summer of 1928 it seems a proto-Delta Green organization might take an interest in our band of investigators.

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Alternate Mythos Lenses

HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos have had an influence on various forms of entertainment. Many episodes of Doctor Who and Star Trek have had a Lovecraftian feel to them. The early Tom Baker episodes of Doctor Who with stories like Pyramids of Mars, Horror of Fang Rock, and Talons of Weng-Chiang have many elements to be found in the Cthulhu Mythos, like ancient aliens, god-like beings visiting the Earth, etc. Star Trek had references to the Old Ones placed by Robert Bloch in What Are Little Girls Made Of and many episodes dealt with the remnants of previous interstellar empires - the Iconians, known as "Demons of Air and Darkness" come especially to mind.

And looking at the Mind Flayers of Dungeons and Dragons one cannot help but find influences from Lovecraft.

What I've found rather interesting is those settings which go beyond mere influence from the Cthulhu Mythos but embrace their cosmos in its entirety yet put their own unique perspective on them.

One of the best known is the Delta Green setting as published by Pagan Publishing. It takes as its starting point the US Government's raid on Innsmouth, Massachusetts in 1928. The premise is after being made aware of alien beings such as the Deep Ones, would the government simply forget about the whole thing? In the Delta Green setting the answer to this is no. In the aftermath of World War II this organization becomes official as Delta Green. However, it runs afoul of a rival government organization, Majestic-12. Eventually it is disbanded but nevertheless continues to exist as a conspiracy within the US government working against the Cthulhu Mythos. It has a very 1990s "the truth is out there" feel, though it actually slightly predated The X-Files by a year (confession - The X-Files is one of those bits of popular culture that I just never could quite get into). Characters in a Delta Green campaign are working against the Mythos from various organizations within the government, working in cells and unaware of who else might be in the organization. Though a new incarnation is being worked on by Pagan Publishing which will be its own RPG (currently it is realized as fiction and supplements to the Call of Cthulhu RPG) in which in the post-9/11 world Delta Green regains its official status within the government.


Another lens that goes even farther is Charles Stross' Laundry Files. Now technically it isn't fully in the cosmos as created by HP Lovecraft, but it is in one extremely close to it. To quote Stross:

The Laundryverse is not exactly the Lovecraftverse; HPL himself is going to show up as a character in a future story (and be seen to be a dangerously flawed correspondent).

This setting has many of the mainstays of the Chulhu Mythos. You've got your Deep Ones (which have signed a treaty with humanity, though most of humanity is unaware of this). Nyarlathotep is out there. And you've got your mad cultists and evil sorcerers. The big addition is that of computational demonology. Basically, magic spells aren't really magic, they are advanced mathematical equations that can connect universes, perform summonings, provide protection, etc. This is very much in keeping with the science fiction aspect of Lovecraft's writings and in accordance with Clarke's Law of any sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic. While in the past your sorcerer might pour over tomes for decades to learn how to cast a spell, an app on your smartphone can do the job far easier and far faster. Many computer scientists and mathematicians get pulled into the world of computational demonology, where some program or theorem they develop accidentally alters reality. The Laundry is a part of the British Civil Service, an odd crossover of The Office, Delta Green, and the works of John le Carré. Agents of the Laundry are must deal both with bureaucracy and the Old Ones. There's a sort of dark humor to this. Cubicle 7 has published The Laundry RPG along with several supplements. It uses a form of Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying System, the same system which powers Call of Cthulhu.

Chaosium itself has published Cthulhu Invictus, a take on the Cthulhu Mythos at the time of the early Roman Empire. While the Mythos are largely unchanged, the society is very different. This is not a civilization that has a difficult time believing in the supernatural. Richard Tierney's stories about the sorcerer Simon Magus, who appeared in the Acts of the Apostles, are set during this era. This setting offers many possible frameworks, such as citizens of Palestine, self-interested sorcerers, Roman soldiers facing the Mythos, etc.

This is just scratching the surface of some of the lenses that have been used to view the Mythos - should time and inclination point in that direction, I'd like to go deeper into these and others at a point in the future (heck I'd like to run a game in all of these I've listed here...(

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Having a Long-Term Relationship with the Old Ones

The Call of Cthulhu RPG has a reputation for extreme mortality. If you don't die you're pretty much doomed to go insane.

The rules certainly allow for this to happen. Even without adding the supernatural your character is rather fragile. He or she has about 12 hit points. Almost any firearm can kill an investigator with a single hit (sometimes requiring a critical). As of the 6th edition you can only dodge once per round so if your foes gang up on you you're pretty much doomed. Add to it supernatural beings and you become aware of just how fragile your character is. And then you've got the danger of going insane. It doesn't take much to drive an investigator at least temporarily insane.

Reading on various gaming forums you 'd get the idea that your typical character can last but a single adventure or two. I mentioned previously that this uncaring fragile heroism nevertheless gives the game a certain heroism. However, I also have found that the genre is absolutely compatible with long-term play.

First, let us take a look at the mechanics and a history of published adventures from the game. Clearly a character is fragile and one who frequently gets into fights without maximizing the odds is doomed. Indeed, even with extreme caution bad luck can spell doom for an investigator. I find this vulnerability is very much in keeping with the genre. However, a lot of caution goes a long way. Do your research. Do more research. Get all the facts you can. Don't fight fair. Better yet, don't get into a fight.

Looking at published adventures one can see the advantages of a long-term campaign. Chaosium's Masks of Nyarlathotep and Horror on the Orient Express are two famous examples of long-term campaigns. I've only recently received the draft of Horror on the Orient Express so I'll look more at Masks. Without spoiling it for those unfamiliar with the adventure, it is a global campaign against Nyarlathotep, with the investigators facing various incarnations of Nyarlathotep's cult across the globe. There are supernatural foes aplenty, but many of them fall short of horrors that can kill an investigator in a single round. And when one meets such a horror the best advice is not to fight it.

This isn't to suggest that such campaigns - or even individual adventures - should be easy. The genre really demands a true sense of danger. Does the genre support the possibility of long-term survival? The answer is, "it depends".

Many of Lovecraft's tales deal with a doomed protagonist who is presumed to end his life after telling his horrid tale or to plunge into insanity or some similar fate. This is largely what Pelgrane Press has referred to as Purist play.

However, Lovecraft also has protagonists who triumph against, or at least survive, their encounters with the Mythos. Henry Armitage survives The Dunwich Horror and Randolph Carter appears in several tales. I think this quote from Lovecraft serves as a good reminder that his universe is not a hostile one but rather an uncaring one:

Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist— that is, I don’t make the mistake of thinking that the… cosmos… gives a damn one way or the the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.

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Looking Back on the 1990s

With the lights out, it's less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us

- Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", 1991.

"No one holds command over me. No man. No god. No Prince. What is a claim of age for ones who are immortal? What is a claim of power for ones who defy death? Call your damnable hunt. We shall see who I drag screaming to hell with me."

"A Beast I am, lest a Beast I become."
- Vampire: The Masquerade, 1991.

I've mentioned in this blog that I'm very much a child of the 1980's, being born in 1971. However, I became an adult in the 1990's. I went off to college in fall of 1989 so the great bulk of my undergraduate career was in the 1990's. I had my first serious relationship in the 90's, met my wife a mere month before graduation (on an evening dedicated to forgetting about women), began my professional career in the mid-90's, got married, and moved to the state that has been my home for nearly twenty years in the 90's

While I've spent a lot of time talking about the world of the 1980's it seems that the 1990's deserve a fair amount of love as well. This is going to be somewhat random and based upon my own experiences - that of a geeky middle-class white male from suburban southern New England.

I think I'd like to first reflect upon the technology. When one things about it many of the technologies we've come to expect in our day-to-day life began their penetration in the 1990's. While culture and styles and current events always changed, in many ways the background technology you could expect was relatively standard from the fifties through the eighties. Yes, the cars got smaller, televisions became more advanced and cheaper, video recording became commercialized. But a revolution in communications had yet to occur. If you wanted to buy a book you'd go to a bookstore or order it from a physical catalog. While there were some computer bulletin board systems starting in the 1970's, the idea you could become involved in online communication with people across the globe really began in the 1990's and cemented itself in the 2000's. When I look at my Facebook friends and my gaming group they consist of people who I have never met in person, from New York City to Utah to Australia - people whose opinions I have come to greatly value and whose involvement in my life, though virtual, has been beneficial. 

And think of what a difference the cell phone has made - think of how many episodes of Seinfeld or how many horror movies of years past would be fundamentally different now with the possibility of instant communications. I remember needing to make plans to meet with friends in advance with designated rendezvous spots. And actually needing to use payphones. Even when cellphones began penetration the old analog phones were super-expensive, with you paying for each minute of use with no free minutes. When my wife was taking grad courses at Northeastern she'd make quick calls to let me know she was safe at her car and driving back home, with us working to make the calls last less than a minute.

Online  communities really began forming back in the 1990's, where you could go on Usenet and find massive debates on how superior Storyteller games were to obsolete games like AD&D and you could count on a massive flamewar by asking if the USS Enterprise would emerge victorious over an Imperial Star Destroyer. While streaming movies to any device had yet to begin, the idea of quick access to media began to emerge with Amazon.com beginning its presence as a source of books, VHS tapes, DVDs, and CDs. Looking back at my Amazon history I see my second ever purchase from there in 1997 was Chaosium's Escape from Innsmouth Call of Cthulhu adventure/sourcebook.

It's also worth remembering that not everyone had broadband. Living in an apartment until 2000 we had digital cable but high-speed internet was not yet available to us - we first got that when we bought a house in 2000. So it was the dial-up modem connecting to an internet service provider for us. I remember in 1998 waiting two hours to stream the trailer for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and at extremely poor quality. The difference with high-speed internet is amazing - we watched that same trailer at work a day or two later and we were able to watch it instantly and at much higher quality. 

Moving onto music I don't think you can underestimate the impact that alternative or grunge music had on my generation. I won't claim it was universal - again, I'm the product of my white middle-class background and am speaking of my own experience and those of my peers and artists like Janet Jackson, N'Sync, Britney Spears, the Spice Girls, and countless others experienced great success - I amusingly reflect on Billie Piper, for example, being known as a pop star in Britain with her days as a key player in relaunching Doctor Who years in the future. But the likes of Nirvana and Pearl Jam greatly shook up the music scene and the fashion. As the 90's continued there were backlashes and responses to grunge music - for me I became a fan of Nine Inch Nails - one of my favorite concerts to this day remains when I saw David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails performing together in September of 1995.




I also believe that much of the way popular entertainment crosses over into multiple forms truly came into its own in the 90's. Entertainment franchises had long licenses into other areas - for example the 1980's saw RPGs for Star Wars, Star Trek, DC Comics, and Marvel Comics. Star Trek and Star Wars also had comics in those same periods but there was little to no linkage between one franchise and another - indeed, the Star Trek novels line back then treated each novel largely as a standalone work without reference to others in the same line. However look at Star Wars in the 1990's. The RPG became source material for various novels which continued the story from Return of the Jedi. The RPG also covered these new novels. Dark Horse Comics produced comics which were also consistent with the novels and RPG (and were in turn covered in the RPG), eventually reaching a point of a coordinated release for Shadows of the Empire, set between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and being realized in video games, RPGs, toys, novels, and comic books.

This segue into RPGs leads nicely to Mark Rein•Hagen's Vampire: The Masquerade. In my opinion V:TM is a game which massively shook up the gaming industry. It is derided in some circles for moving RPGs into a more story-based style, something which often led to railroad-style adventures where PCs get to watch interesting things happen.but be powerless to influence those interesting things. However, Vampire provided something new - the opportunity to be the monster. Game mechanics allowed you to measure how much of your self-control you maintained - how human you remained. It was likely the first game since the D&D boom of the early 80's to bring an influx of new blood into the hobby (eek, just realized what a horrible pun that was). This revolution in both style and in mechanics influenced a number of RPGs of the 1990's, some of which are largely forgotten while others are still active. Off the top of my head and from a quick glance at Wikipedia reveals games like:

• Deadlands - Alternate history in a horrific weird west with magic mechanics using hands of poker
• Dragonlance: Fifth Age - card-based RPG with mechanics based entirely around the actions of PCs (in other words if an enemy attacks you you are attempting to avoid being hit)
• Blue Planet - a setting and rules based entirely around a water-covered world
• Star Trek (Last Unicorn Games) - a far less tactical take on Star Trek than had been previously seen from FASA
• Amber Diceless - An RPG which dispensed with any random number generation (to the best of my knowledge this actually predated or was roughly simultaneous with Vampire but is definitely indicative of the 1990s style of gaming)
• Castle Falkenstein - A gorgeously-illustrated card-based game of Victorian fantasy and steam-punk
• The End - Biblical role-playing involving those left behind after the Rapture
• Legend of the Five Rings - East-Asian styled RPG supplementing a popular collectible card game
• Fudge - Less an RPG and more a toolkit, led to the popular Fate RPG of the 2000s and 2010s.
• Unknown Armies - Occult role-playing of varying power levels with a system inspired by Chaosium's BRP
• Nexus: The Infinite City - A nexus of realities where walking down the street can take you from Ancient Rome to a cyberpunk megalopolis. Game system later modified into the popular Feng Shui RPG

Looking back, in many ways D&D 3rd edition can be seen as a reaction against this style of gaming - while the games I list above tended towards a very free-form nature D&D 3rd edition brought about a much more rigid style of gaming, a very tactical approach. (Something I'm not downing - I've had fun in a number of D&D 3rd edition and later games.)

This has been a rather lengthy (and likely rambling) post so it's time to bring it to a close. I've just given a glimpse of my thoughts on the 1990's. I've skipped over a number of things from the 1990's - things like the Gulf War, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Crystal Pepsi, Zima, Doctor Who: New Adventures, 800-TREKKER, Seinfeld, Michael Jordan, Babylon 5, etc. In any case I hope you found this trip down memory lane interesting.

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Introductions to Doctor Who and Avoiding the Info Dump

About a month ago I was watching the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary special "Day of the Doctor". Jasmine, my eight-year old daughter, wound up joining me and watching most of it - she didn't quite get it having only a vague idea as to what it was about but she still couldn't pull her eyes away. She had a ton of questions and I promised her I'd watch an episode with her that made no assumptions on experience.

Yesterday Jasmine and I watched "Rose", the first episode of the new series. She absolutely loved it. And the format was, of course, perfect. You've got an established franchise but you are relaunching it after a long dormancy. There's some die-hard fans out there who will be watching it but you need to go far beyond that fan-base. So you start with a viewpoint character who is a surrogate for this audience. And you don't dump all the history and lore of the program all at once. Instead you release it as you need to.

Jasmine liked it enough that she wanted to watch another episode so we also watched the second episode, "The End of the World". For this my wife and eldest daughter had just returned from a shopping trip and wound up joining us. My wife is a Doctor Who fan from way back but our older daughter has just minimal knowledge. And despite not being a "science fiction geek" she too loved watching it, groaning as Britney Spears' "Toxic" played as the Earth burned. Moreover it was interesting to see that despite missing the first episode she was still able to enjoy this story on its own merits.

While I love long and intricate stories (I'm eagerly looking forward to the next season of Game of Thrones) watching with my daughter did remind me that sometimes its possible to overdo this and wind up locking your potential audience out. I think this is something that happened with the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie, which began with a massive info dump, had references to Skaro, Gallifrey, the Master, Daleks, the Eye of Harmony, Regeneration, etc. Moreover it started from the perspective of the Doctor. I think Paul McGann did a fantastic job portraying the Doctor but I also feel the 1996 movie was a disservice to his talents - indeed he showed he was definitely worthy of the role in under seven minutes with the recent "Night of the Doctor" web-special.

As a gamer who also every once in a while flirts with writing fiction the, I find the cleverness in how Doctor Who was re-introduced worthy of imitation. Whether in gaming or in fiction, when one creates a detailed background there's a huge temptation to show off all your work. But even in a sandbox style gaming experience it's clear that it is far too easy to overdo this and overwhelm the player (or reader). Even as the new show has progressed it has periodically made certain it has good jumping off points for your new viewer.

Tomorrow it's "The Unquiet Dead" for Jasmine and me. Excellent timing with Christmas right around the corner.

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Heroism in the Cthulhu Mythos

We recently finished a Call of Cthulhu scenario in my group (we'd been playing ACKS but we needed something with a bit of a lower quorum threshold - decided to whip out that old favorite Cthulhu to see how it worked out). Having played The Haunting scenario with this group we played another of the classic adventures, The Edge of Darkness. I'm not going to go into spoiler territory, suffice to say it provides ample opportunities for investigators to meet horrible end. In our playing of it there was one PC death and many more were avoided by making some difficult, at times brutal decisions, including going up against police in order to be able to succeed in a ceremony to banish an eldritch abomination - one of those "for the greater good" circumstances.

I've heard Call of Cthulhu described as a non-heroic game and when you think about more over-the-top superhero and pulp games I can definitely see the point. The premise of the Cthulhu Mythos is that of an uncaring universe full of abominations that could wipe out humanity with ease. Yet I've found that in scenarios against such creatures there is ample opportunity for heroism - being the people that brave such encounters, that hold back the darkness for even a little while, is its own brand of heroism. It's one that demands extreme caution, where bad luck can by itself be fatal and going in with guns blazing and no knowledge will almost certainly be fatal.

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Fiction Review - "The Long Tomorrow" by Leigh Brackett

"No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two hundred buildings to the square mile, shall be built or permitted to exist anywhere in the United States of America."

- 30th Amendment of the United States Constitution


As I've mentioned in my blog a few times, the post-apocalyptic genre is one that filled me with feelings of both dread and fascination as I grew up. Born in the early 70s I became aware of my world in the era of "Ronnie Rambo" and the Cold War heating up one final time. I remember playing the Gamma World Role Playing Game with our primitive mutants exploring the ruins of Pitz Burke. There were films set after the End, ranging from the "Mad Max" series to absolutely dreadful movies like "Threads" and "The Day After". (And I use "dreadful" not in the sense of a bad movie but rather an experience that can fill one with actual dread.)

However there is still the sense of fascination. We humans are an adaptable lot. We managed to survive ice ages and a lack of natural weapons by using our wonderful brains. Indeed many works of the post-apocalyptic genre assume that it is our wonderful brains that bring about our own doom, unleashing genies of nuclear warfare, bioweapons, and nanotechnology. But even with that we like to assume that humanity would find a way to endure and build itself back up. (Indeed Walter Miller's A Canticle For Leibowitz takes this idea and runs with it.)

I'm not sure what the first science fiction set in the aftermath of a nuclear war was. However I'm pretty certain Leigh Brackett's The Long Tomorrow, first published in 1955, is among the first. The Long Tomorrow takes place some three generations after a nuclear war - the elderly grandmother of the primary protagonist, Len, was a child at the time of the nuclear war which demolished civilization.

Many of the tropes that have become hallmarks of the genre can be found in this novel - civilization knocked back to the 18th or 19th century, massive loss of life, expansion of religion. The United States still exists, albeit in a far more agrarian form - and for most people the federal government is a distant thing.

The novel follows our protagonist, Len Colter, and his cousin Esau, as teenage boys from their Mennonite village and out into the larger world where they grow to adulthood. Both of them have an intense curiosity about the world that used to be, something that is forbidden by their society. This is illustrated early on when at a religious gathering (that their fathers had forbidden them to go) the cousins witness a mob killing a man because he is supposedly from Bartorstown, a land dedicated to bringing back the forbidden ways which brought down God's wrath in the Destruction. However Len becomes obsessed with the idea of Bartorstown. The two dabble in forbidden technology and eventually leave their homes.

Settling in the town of Refuge we are introduced to more tension, with the cousins working for a merchant who wants to expand his business, though doing so will violate the 30th Amendment which sets a cap on the size of any community. There is also tension between the cousins, with both vying for the affections of the same woman, the daughter of a judge in the community. You get the sense that Len could build something for himself in the community but he cannot accept the deliberate refusal of progress. The tension eventually explodes, and the cousins are again on the move. It should be no surprise that they eventually find themselves in  Bartorstown.

One recurring theme in the novel is that of fanaticism - religious fanaticism causes many deaths and much destruction in the course of the tale. However, one of the characters later reveals there are other kinds of fanaticism as well. It also deals with the theme of the balance between discontent and finding a home. Obviously Bartorstown is not what Len hoped it would be. Meanwhile Esau finds that he's able to live pretty much anywhere and be relatively happy. There really isn't much of a judgment on who is right. Indeed, one criticism I'd level on the book itself is while I don't need to be spoon-fed everything I don't feel that topic got the closure it deserved.

Another criticism one might level at the book is simply it is a product of its time. All of the religions are Christian-based and there is really only one strong female character in the book and even she eventually becomes passive and follows Len's lead.

However, Ms. Brackett does deliver well on the tension between contentment and progress.Len's father is a good man who has found his place in the society he lives in. Len can't find that contentment - indeed he really can't find it anywhere. But his yearning for the old ways - which are also the way to the future - are delivered very well. Late in the book he is, for lack of a better term, seduced, by a woman who puts on a red dress from the time before the Destruction. Both the brightness of the color - a brightness not found outside of leaves - and the cut of the dress - do the job of filling him with desire - both for the woman and for the society that dress represents. (And being a novel of the 1950s, any seduction is far more implied than shown - and to be honest I think that makes it even more effective.)

As you can tell by some of my criticisms I didn't find this a perfect novel. I don't think it delivered the closure it really needed to on Len. But it definitely proved to be an enjoyable read and provided an interesting society, pointing the way to later works like Alas Babylon and A Canticle for Leibowitz. (The former I've yet to read though the latter is one of my favorite novels.)

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Film Review: Frozen

Yesterday, the day after Thanksgiving I took my youngest daughter, Jasmine, to see "Frozen" in the movie theater. This was actually her second viewing, also seeing it on Wednesday with her mom and older sister (poor dad was working from home).

Obviously Jasmine was a fan. Immediately after seeing it with me she asked "Can I see it again?"

So it's got the little one's endorsement. What about dad's?

I liked it a lot. I'm a fan of well-done animation and this is one of Disney's greatest, ranking up there with "The Lion King" and "Beauty and the Beast" - indeed I'd view it as superior as many of the Pixar efforts.

The story is set in one of those fairy tale kingdoms in that nebulous pre-modern fairy tale period. It is a tale of two sisters, the eldest, Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell). They are princesses in the kingdom. They are very close but Elsa has a power - the ability to control temperature and generate snow and ice. When playing together Elsa accidentally hurts Anna with her powers. With the help of some nearby trolls Anna is healed but to protect her the trolls strip the memory of Elsa's magic from Anna. Their parents advise Elsa to hide her powers from everyone, including her sister. This adds distance to the sisters, with Anna constantly wanting time with Elsa she never receives. The palace is emptied out of nearly all servants, leaving Anna feeling even more alone. As the story progresses the parents are lost at sea and we move up to Anna's coronation when the palace is again full of people. Of course at this point the entire land becomes aware of Elsa's powers, which she can barely control, plunging the land into winter (in the middle of summer) and running off to be alone. Anna goes on to follow her to bring her home and end the winter.

Going beyond this enters into spoiler territory so from here I'm going to keep more to my impressions. The great strength of the movie is the relationship of the two sisters. There's romance and adventure subplots, but that is all secondary to the relationship between the sisters. Most of the focus is on Anna, who is desperate for love - wanting to meet a man after living in a near-empty castle and in near-complete isolation - but even more she wants the love of her sister, not knowing what she'd done to push them away. The music and singing is well done and Bell and Menzel deliver incredibly well.

As a fan of superheroes, I found myself thinking how much the movie also reminded me of a well-done tale of a character getting powers they can't quite control.

Overall, it's a superb movie and well worth seeing in the theaters. I am however being serenaded by music from the film constantly....

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Why Spirit of Knowledge Charter School Should Be Saved

It's pretty clear that this is an out of the ordinary post for this blog. I talk about all sorts of geeky stuff on this blog - Dungeons & Dragons, Stephen King, Call of Cthulhu, etc. This post is a lot more personal. I've a hunch the audience for this posting is very different from the normal audience for my blog - but this is my corner of the internet and this is far too long a posting for Twitter or Facebook. It also explains why I've not been particularly active on this blog of late.

When I first began this blog my wife was dealing with partial employment, working as a long-term sub when possible. In fall of 2012 she secured a full time job at Spirit of Knowledge Charter School in Worcester, MA and began her second year there this fall.

[Note - this the remainder of this blog posting represents my understanding of a situation. If I have any factual errors I will most certainly acknowledge them and correct them. i.e. no slander or libel is present here. And while I'm married to a teacher there, this is my own opinion and not hers.]

The school is in dire straits right now. There is every chance that in 48 hours the Board of Trustees will vote to close the school though there are a few paths to an alternate ending.

Does the school deserve that alternate ending? And how did it get to this point?

Let's start with how we got to this point. Spirit of Knowledge Charter School is a STEM school - dedicated to Science, Technology, and Math. Last spring it was put on probation:

The school has “employed four executive directors, has not maintained a sound or stable financial condition, has failed to maintain adequate membership on its board of trustees, has not provided the academic model proposed in its charter, has not shown promising academic results, has a significantly decreased enrollment from what it projected in its application, and will face financial challenges as a result of its drop in enrollment. It is clear to me that the school's board of trustees has failed to oversee SOKCS effectively,” Mr. Chester wrote in his May 10 letter to the state board.

Worcester Telegram and Gazette, Tuesday, May 21, 2013

So that sounds pretty bad. I'd actually agree with a large portion of it - in my opinion the Board of Trustees had been a bit of a mess, especially early on. A large amount of money was lost when trying to purchase a building for the school, with a good-faith deposit essentially absconded with by the builder. And giving such money to a builder instead of an escrow seems at best incredibly naive.

This had a cascading effect. Enrollment diminished. With lower enrollment they have to pay back some of the money initially allocated for this year and future allocations will be less. 

From a financial standpoint  the school will run out of money at the end of the month. They will not be able to meet payroll in November.What could allow them to make their payroll? The line of credit they have with Commerce Bank. The school has reduced payroll such that the remaining funds they'd get from the state for the remainder of the year will be sufficient, albeit delivered in chunks, The line of credit would allow the school to make it between these quarterly lump payments from the state.

But, Commerce Bank has, as I understand things, been a bit concerned about the financial future of the school. I can't say I blame them. I would imagine what makes a loan officer lose his or her job is giving out a loan which is defaulted upon. And I can absolutely see what might a bank nervous. We'll come back to that in a bit.

I would like to talk about why the school should, in my opinion, be saved. "Well gee Dan your wife works there, you want to stay a dual-income family." And it'd be disingenuous to say anything other than of course I want the financial security. However it's an unfortunate fact that our economy values engineers far more than teachers. I think that's a tragedy personally. Don't get me wrong, I love a good salary. But being married to a teacher, being the son of a teacher, and being the brother-in-law of a teacher, I have a very good idea of how much work a teacher puts in. My point is, financially, if I keep my job (fingers crossed - one can never take anything for granted), we'll be fine - not great, but we'll be ok, with my wife collecting unemployment and/or substituting for the rest of the year and hopefully securing a new full-time job in the fall. It's worth noting that is not the case for all the teachers there - many of the teachers are the primary or sole earners for their families.

But a school should not be saved just for its teachers. And that's where I'd like to talk about the kids at this school. In meetings last Thursday and this Sunday afternoon the room was packed with concerned parents and students a well as the staff. Some of the students were even there on their own to speak on their behalf. And to hear the passion all of these people spoke with was awe-inspiring. These are people who want to stay at this school. Desperately so. They feel they are getting a great product.

Why would they ever think that you might wonder. It was all over the local papers how poor the school's 7th grade MCAS scores were. MCAS, for those of you outside of Massachusetts, are our standardized tests. To graduate, a student must pass the 10th grade MCAS tests. (I'm simplifying a bit). It is worth noting that the school's success at the 10th grade MCAS, the final MCAS exam, was above the average for the city. This to me points to the whole point of a school - to improve students. To move beyond where you started. Moreover, what the kids there do beyond 10th grade is phenomenal. There is a large percentage of students taking AP classes. My wife is teaching second year of college-level organic chemistry to many seniors. Student have been recognized for their service to the community. They have had summer jobs at various university laboratories and have assisted in research in areas such as HIV investigations. Many of these are students who did not prosper at public schools. The students and their parents are desperate to stay at Spirit of Knowledge where they have found success - both via anecdotal accomplishments and through measurable means such as 10th grade MCAS, AP students, etc.

Academically, I believe the school is doing great work. Were I in charge there I'd certainly work to improve the middle school MCAS scores - I'm not going to say any school is perfect.

This beings us to the concerns banks might have. With lower enrollment the school sees less money from the state. So enrollment dropping further is certainly a risk. However, I believe that the drops the school might experience have already occurred. The overwhelming thread from the parents was "how can we convince people we want our kids to stay here?"

I know the Board of Trustees is working to have the credit line unfrozen, albeit without luck as yet. They've also been pursuing other sources of short-term funding, though with time short their best bet would seem to be in unfreezing their credit line. If I were a loan officer at a bank I think I could be convinced the school is doing good work and the parents and students want to stay there. But there's another issue I think. Even in this posting to the defense of the school it is clear the financial record of the school is murky at best. The action the Board indicated was being pursued was bringing in a management company which specializes in turning charter schools around. I'm hoping that this might provide the confidence a loan officer would need. 

I've a few random thoughts to close with...

Do I hate public schools or have something against them? Absolutely not. My wife has taught in public schools in the past and would gladly do so again. My kids are also both in public schools and are both prospering there. I think the advantage is a matter of different solutions for different kids. 

Why am I writing this? Best case someone with financial authority reads this and it helps them make a decision. But without that, even if the school does close its doors this week, I want to go on record as having voiced my support as best I can. I was truly in awe of the students, the parents, and the teachers. 

Is there someone to blame for the financial mess? Probably. But I'm absolutely not privy as to where things went wrong. And truthfully, even if I were, I'd be hesitant to write about that in a blog - that does start approaching the realm of potential libel. But one of the reasons I like the idea of a management company being brought in is they would be in a position to ask such tough questions and take actions.

And two quotes that come to mind, one from Theodore Roosevelt and the other, back in keeping with my blog, from the television show Babylon 5.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

- Theodore Roosevelt

There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender.

- Babylon 5, Z'ha'dum

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Sandbox Cthulhu

I've had a little time to brainstorm a little as we've skipped a session of our ACKS campaign with the start of the school year and the beginning of organized insanity as the kids and my wife go back to school.

One thing I've discovered in our ACKS campaign is how over time a non-plotted campaign begins to write itself. Right now our band of adventurers has two dungeons it has visited (and may return to either) as well as a third dungeon they are aware of. They've also developed two bases, one an outpost near the dungeons and the other the capital city of the region with better access to equipment, healers, and the like. Having put things in motion I can honestly say I really don't know where the adventurers will go in our next session. Will they finish cleaning out the kobold lair - with its rumored green dragon? Will they return to the dungeon beneath Skull Hill? Or will they venture to the Tomb of the Goblin King - now having a few magic items and possibly having a chance against the undead sure to be there.

All that said my favorite game is still Call of Cthulhu. As a huge fan of history I love the most common era of the 1920s - and had a blast with the Gaslight era. I like the heroism inherent in standing up to an uncaring universe. And I especially enjoy the cleverness it encourages - almost always overmatched I've seen players take some extremely clever and practical solutions, from dynamiting a mine to getting the hell out of the county upon gaining the enmity of a cult.

Joseph Morales, Lovecraft's fictional town Arkham

Thinking about this got me wondering if the lessons of sandbox style play could be applied to Call of Cthulhu? At first glance it seems unlikely - your typical Cthulhu adventure begins with the investigators being hired to take care of some problem or solve some mystery. With that in mind it occurs to me there are ways to combine the two forms of play - and indeed there are adventures which have done just that. The classic Masks of Nyarlathotep from 1984 and reprinted many times since then has a definite starting point but from there on the investigators have complete control how they handle their investigation. More recently The Sense of the Sleight of Hand Man brings investigators to the Dreamlands with a need find a way out.

New York City, 1928. Fairchild Aerial Surveys

What about a more traditional sandbox? Well, the first thing that occurs to me is that our environment is not likely to be the wilderness of fantasy RPGs - rather we are looking at an urban environment - or at the very least, a suburban one. You'd want a base of operations where adventure isn't far away. You could set it in Lovecraft Country, based in Arkham with forays to Dunwich, Innsmouth, Kingsport, and the like. Or you could go more urban and go for a large city like New York City, Boston, etc. It's a bit like the difference between the two television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, set in beautiful suburban Sunnydale, California, vs. Angel set in the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles.

So how does one avoid the cliche of "your long lost cousin writes to you" or "a stranger shows up in your office?" To some extent, I don't think you do - but rather you make it part of a larger whole - and never rely on a need for the investigators to follow some lead.

How do we make it part of a larger whole? Here, I believe, one needs to lay the groundwork. Figure out just what is going on in the town or city. What cults are present? What monsters are loose (or might become loose)? What mundane forces can cause trouble? Are there any sorcerers, mad scientists, etc. who are up to no good? Do they have everything they need and if not, how will they get it? Any artifacts just waiting to cause trouble? Any forbidden tomes in the area?

With this sort of a setup we can more organically have those people show up in the investigators' office. Why is the client's brother missing? Well it turns out he has the Innsmouth Taint and we already established they have a colony in the area. Who robbed the university's collection of forbidden tomes? It was that sorcerer we already dreamed up, he needs that spell to summon Yuggoth - but its not the only thing. In the course of the adventure the sorcerer might make some sacrifices, kidnap some kids, etc. So even if the investigators turn down the first case the sorcerer still does his thing and might appear later in another case.

I'd likely also add a good place in the town or city where characters can begin adventures, meet with patrons, gather rumors, etc. Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series has McAnally's Pub, a place in Chicago frequented by the supernatural but also a place which is guaranteed neutral ground. Angel featured Caritas, a nightclub which served a similar purpose. I could picture in a 1920s campaign a speakeasy which investigators frequent. There would likely be police and private investigators and gangsters who know about it as well and would visit it if they had problems of a supernatural nature which needed addressing. This would provide a place where investigators could pick their missions and also find out what is going on in the supernatural world. This need not be over the top - for example sinister sorcerers might frequent it as well with an uneasy peace - and it is unlikely insane cultists would respect it and the alien creatures of the Mythos most certainly would not. In a more modern game it needn't even be a physical site - picture a specialized sort of  Facebook or Twitter used by the supernatural community. Heck they could even use regular Twitter or Facebook with most people completely unaware of what they are talking about - hiding in plain view.


At this point I'd like to consider what game engine to use for this. Being a fan of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu  RPG that seems an obvious choice. And I am certain it would work well for such a game. Gumeshoe would work well though it might need a little tweaking to make certain investigative abilities refresh properly if a case is ever abandoned or multiple cases are pursued simultaneously.

As I wrote the premise above, it occurred to me I this would also be a perfect match for Fate - whether a general incarnation of it or for a Dresden Files game. Fate Core discusses generating the background and Dresden Files details city creation in great detail. There is no reason that all the work I described up above needs to be done solely by the GM. The players being involved in the process assures that there will be hooks they find interesting. Have a player who loves the Deep Ones? Of course he'll want them to have a colony in the city. While Fate's assumption of heroic, competent characters may seem at odds with Call of Cthulhu (and I'm by no means a purist - I'm still waiting for Pulp Cthulhu) it need not be. Fate's concept of consequences fits in well with the insanity that befalls Cthulhu characters all too often. Just add a Sanity Track with the option to take sanity-based consequences and you've ported a classic aspect of the genre.

In the event of a total party kill in the future I can see our next game...



Copyright Note:

Joseph Morales, Lovecraft's fictional town Arkham, Massachusetts 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arkham,_Massachusetts.gif

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