Review: Bumps in the Night

Last year at Gencon, I was able to pick up a copy of Bumps in the Night while visiting the Pagan Publishing booth.  I've been getting caught up on my Cthulhu reading lately, which means I'll be getting a few more reviews out in the next few weeks.  This one is written by John H Crowe III, a long time Pagan Publishing author.

The book is nicely done - it's a 118 page soft cover with an attractive layout and evocative black and grey art.  It features five scenarios; "The Westerfield Incident", "The Vengeful Dead", "The Bitter Venom of the Gods", "Curse of the Screaming Skull", and "An Unsettled Mind".  Instead of highlighting cosmic horror, these scenarios feature paranormal activities and occult monsters from folklore and mythology.

These scenarios excel in terms of structure and presentation.  One byproduct of spending so much time out here amongst the OSR D&D blogs is an appreciation for module structure and how it corresponds to game-play at the table.  I don't see a lot of the same analysis happening in other genres to land on the best structures for a scenario.  Horror has an agenda; the horror is out there doing bad things, and the player characters are frequently in a reactive role.  It can be challenging to balance the needs of free agency with the time pressure inherent in the horror genre while avoiding a linear design.

Here, each scenario is presented as a situation, with background facts that can be learned through investigation, and an overview of the locales and key actors, as required.  But each scenario runs on its own clock, and the horror is going to progress if the players don't intervene.  This is my platonic sweet spot for a horror scenario - give me a handful of interesting elements, a horror sandbox of sorts, and then give me some kind of event structure that defines what the horror is going to do, and then push the start button on the countdown.

I'm simplifying, of course; the writer provides antagonist reactions to some of the common ploys investigators may try to give the Keeper more guidance, but the underlying structure of each scenario is a simple investigative sandbox + event timeline.  It's really well done.

Like I said, the monsters aren’t the archetypal tentacle horrors of the Mythos, but run a gamut from native American vampires to Mesopotamian demons.  In most of the scenarios, there are enough red herrings to keep the players on their toes, and the monsters themselves appear under unusual or interesting circumstances.

If you play Call of Cthulhu, the Pagan Publishing stuff is already must-own, and Bumps in the Night slides in there as another high quality piece in a long line of strong books.  They seem to be slowly digitizing their back catalog, so hopefully that means some of this author's other works will reach a wider audience through PDF some day - Coming Full Circle and Mortal Coils are both excellent as well.  For now, you can only get this one in print over at Arkham Bazaar:  Bumps in the Night.

Cthulhu Gaming Roundup: Pelgrane and Chaosium news

Here is some hearsay and news coming out of the Pelgrane and Chaosium booths at Gencon, as well as a reader request for more Pagan Publishing news.

Pelgrane Press
I spent some time at the Pelgrane booth, and Simon Rogers, the owner of the company, is always approachable.  Rumors on the message boards have been swirling of excellent play test reports about Pelgrane's epic sized Trail of Cthulhu campaign, Eternal Lies.  They've been suggesting a publishing date of November 2012.  The new piece I heard is that Pelgrane is considering a slip case with multiple books, since boxed sets would move it into a different tax classification.  Personally, I'd much prefer a slip case for multiple books than a boxed set, so that's all good.

Kenneth Hite was at the booth and was willing to discuss his upcoming projects.  Mythos Expeditions is a campaign frame where a university group, like Miskatonic University, sponsors archaeological expeditions to far off places.  I'm stunned it's taken 30+ years for someone to build out a published campaign around this theme of exploration, and I can't overstate how much I'm looking forward to this one.  Many of Lovecraft's best stories invoke the theme; At the Mountains of Madness, The Nameless City, The Shadow Out of Time.  It should be full of ideas that are useable across game systems and genres.  Ken indicated he's wrapping up the rules, initial scenario, and scenario guidelines, and then the Pelgrane freelancers would fill out the remaining scenarios.

Being an OSR aficionado myself, I had to ask about the LOFTP adventure in Ken's queue.  (Mr Raggi roped in Ken to write an adventure as part of his hardcover LOTFP indiegogo campaign a few months back).  Ken described it as a mashup between Apocalypse Now, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; an adventure across a scarred battleground in a fantastic war between godly arcane wizards.   Sounds intriguing;  we don't have a lot of fantasy adventures with the horrors of war in the backdrop, and earth-blasting magic is a viable stand-in for the destructive power of 20th century technology.  Queue Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries".

A few other Pelgrane projects were discussed; Dreamhounds of Paris is underway, Robin Laws is writing that one.  Although I enjoyed Bookhounds, I find I'm much more interested in Pelgrane's adventures than settings, so I'm cautiously interested.  For Night's Black Agents, Ken is working on The Dracular Dossier, a book similar in theme and approach to The Armitage Files, but involving a hunt for Dracula in the modern world, using NBA's spy thriller rules set.  Gareth Hanrahan will take it forward.  My need to mash up Delta Green and Night's Black Agents is currently a faint siren song in a distant room; soon it will be an unavoidable symphony, driving me to madness.  I better start reading Night's Black Agents in earnest.

Chaosium News
The big news is that Chaosium has launched a Kickstarter.  A few days ago, they announced a push to get Horror on the Orient Express, a classic boxed set campaign that's been out of print for 20+ years, updated and back in circulation.  View it here:  Orient Express Kickstarter.  They've neared $40k in two days with a month and a half to go, doubling their $20k goal.  Good to see.

I never owned Orient Express myself, so it'll be excellent to get a shiny new copy of one of Chaosium's classic campaigns.  More importantly, it shows that Chaosium is paying attention to the game-o-sphere and willing to crowd fund some much-sought after reprints.  One can only hope an updated, deluxe version of Beyond the Mountains of Madness is next in the queue.  Alas, Orient Express is targeted to be ready for Gencon 2013, a year away.  Better funding won't necessarily improve their production times.

Pagan Publishing
The guys at the Pagan booth were chatty and willing to talk about various Delta Green campaigns and adventures, but very noncommittal about the timing of the reboot.  (On various podcasts and going back to Gencon 2011, Pagan has been discussing a new version of Delta Green that updates the setting for the post-911 world scene and the USA's 'War on Terror').  My appeal to readers is whether anyone made it to the Pagan Publishing seminar Saturday night and could post some news?  My group hit the road after dinner Saturday, and I had to miss it; there's still a chance it was recorded and will make it out on a podcast feed.

Gencon 2012 Retrospective

I'm still a bit dazed from the whirlwind of Gencon, and since we pulled an all-nighter driving home yesterday, it'll take a day or so to get back to normal.  I visited the OSR booth on Thursday, mainly to say hi to Tavis and find out what were the plans for ACKS at Gencon.  We never did get to drop in on any ACKS games; Bo and I had our kiddos along, and the timing never worked out for us to leave them at the hotel with one of the other mom's that came on the trip.  I didn't fit in any Black City games either;  we ended up doing a massive late night game of Zombie Munchkin instead.  There were a bunch of OSR books I was hoping to see at the OSR booth, but none of them were there this year, so there are no OSR Gencon purchases to hype; my hopes got up when I saw Frog God stuff at the OSR booth this year, but the one I really wanted, The Black Monastery, was notably absent.

I briefly met Roger from Roles, Rules, and Rolls while at the OSR booth, and ran into Trey (author of Weird Adventures) while at a history seminar at the convention.  This meet up was fairly serendipitous - I had listened to one of Trey's round tables on G+ (it was on using "America as a fantasy setting") and he's got a distinctive mid-Southern accent - I want to say, Virginia or Tennessee.  We were sitting right next to each other at the seminar anonymously, and when the guy nearby asked a question, I realized it was Trey from Weird Adventures sitting right there.  Funny stuff.  It's always a pleasure to put a face and a human presence with the online persona.

Night's Black Agents:  Keep your blood on the inside

I had a chance to visit Pelgrane Press on Thursday before things got too busy, and Kenneth Hite graciously allowed me to interrogate question him on some upcoming books he's writing.  I'll get those notes together tomorrow.  I picked up my pre-order of Night's Black Agents and the Zalozhniy Quartet (a mini-campaign for the game) and got a picture of the offspring with the author.  It was a moment of  celebrity author fandomania:

Kenneth Hite and the kid:  celebrity fandom moment

Pagan had a wide range of products, including a bunch of hard-to-find hard backs of Delta Green.  I guess with the move to RPG Now, they're breaking the secret stash out of Area 51.  I was able to get Delta Green, Delta Green Eyes Only, Mysteries of Mesoamerica, and Bumps in the Night, the latter two featuring collections of short scenarios.  I met Greg Stolze and had a nice conversation with Scott Glancy at the booth.  One can't laud the Delta Green setting enough, so expect a review or retrospective this week as well as a discussion of the other books.

Awesome Delta Green and horror goodness

I tried to ignore WOTC as much as feasible, but the offspring is struck with Drizz't-love, and we needed to visit the booth and get him some pictures of the giant Drizz't statue and Lolth statues.  It was nigh impossible to drop in on a 5E play test without waiting a few hours on line (assuming you didn't pre-register for it).  We dropped in a few times but split after discouragement by WOTC's staff.  A few guys in our group did tough out the long waits for a drop-in 5E play test, and confirmed it featured super-heroic characters similar in power to 4E guys.  That's probably old news to readers, but I'm trying not to pay too much attention to D&D Next and keep an open mind until books actually get printed - assuming it's going to use actual books, and not another weird online subscription.

One thing new was Dungeon Command, a new D&D miniatures game promulgated at the WOTC booth.  I was dubious about it, but the kiddo insisted on spending some of his own cash to pick it up (the Drow themed starter sealed the deal for him), and it's actually really, really good.  It blends miniatures gaming with a Magic the Gathering style card deck.  If you have a lot of the previous D&D minis, the figures are all repaints of existing sculpts.  Nonetheless, Dungeon Command was one of the surprises of the convention for me, and I'm glad the kiddo got it - we'll have a ton of fun playing.  Plus, he found it for $25 in the dealer hall (WOTC was selling them for $40).  It's non-collectible, too, which is a bonus.  Expect a detailed review.

Dungeon Command:  DDM meets M:TG

I spent a lot more time in the dealer hall checking out board games this year, including extended plays of Star Trek Settlers of Cataan, and the 4E version of Talisman; I ended up getting Trek Settlers for Wifey, as she's a closet Trekkie.  Bo and I also got in a bunch of Heroclix games with the kiddos in the main hall.  Wizkids really ran a good convention this year; there were minimal lines at their events and they were consistently sitting nearly 400 people at a time.  Plus, the volunteers and judges were super nice to the kids.  Below are some of the great pieces we got in the sealed events that we needed for our collection of plastic men in capes and tights.

Heroclix:  plastic toy superhero men!

More details to come this week as I get caught up with work (and sleep).

Cthulhu Gaming Patronage

Pagan Publishing had an amazing run of hit books starting in the late 1990's culminating with their Delta Green setting for  modern Call of Cthulhu.  I keep hearing on the message boards that an update to Delta Green is in the works, as well as a move towards publishing their books in PDF through One Book Shelf.  In the meantime, a few of the authors that contributed to Pagan's catalog have some related kickstarters to check out:

The Sense of the Sleight of Hand Man
This is a Dreamlands campaign starting out in 1920's New York.  Pagan's previous forays into the Dreamlands are more on the nightmare side than Lord Dunsany, so there's no doubt this will be a darker interpretation of the Otherworld.  Dennis Detwiller is a creative double threat here, writing and drawing the campaign himself; he has a lot of cool stuff on his blog to check out:  Nothing Can Stop the Blog.

Bumps in the Night
John H. Crowe III wrote and contributed to a number of Pagan's early Cthulhu books, like Mortal Coils and Coming Full Circle, and is the author on this collection of 5 non-Mythos horror scenarios for COC, Bumps in the Night. Pagan still has a loyal following and this one blew through the goal in less than half a day (both of these kickstarters are going pretty strong).

Pelgrane Press:  Night's Black Agents
Not a Pagan update, but since I'm on the subject of promoting horror gaming:  the next Gumshoe book, Kenneth Hite's Night's Black Agents, is in pre-order and is targeted for this summer (I'm hoping by GenCon).  Players take on the role of spies and ex-military in a shadowy world of vampire conspiracies.  The spy thriller genre is a great fit for Gumshoe's resource management - it should handle secret identities, hidden weapon stashes, underworld contacts, all that spy thriller stuff, really well.  I can see myself using this to do a mash-up of Trail and Delta Green and Night's Black Agents - alien vampires guiding the world towards the nihilistic ascendance of Nyarlathotep.