October 15, 2015

Fifth Meeting: Thursday, 15 October 2015

Agenda: 1894 Session #2

Folks explored the secret passage in Misselthwaite Manor, the home of Lord Earnest Renfield and Lady Roxana Renfield. Indeed, it had been Lady Roxana's childhood home, and when her family had been forced to sell it, she decided that she would find some way to get it back. Thus, years later, she made sure to arrange matters so that she could strike up a conversation with the man who had purchased it. This lead, unsurprisingly, to marriage, and, perhaps surprisingly, to genuine love between husband and wife.

So, Roxana was understandably surprised to learn that not only was there a secret passage leading to a secret study / boardroom and a secret room with vault-like security and wild roses over the outside of the door, and to a secret exit down by the docks, but that there was a note from the architectural firm that did the work, and that it had done this work for none other than her beloved husband, years ago, when they were on the Grand Tour, including the Paris Exhibition.

Folks agreed that Lord Earnest had a great deal of explaining to do, and that it should be done NOT in front of Lady Roxana's parents who had dropped in because they were planning to stay there, along with Roxana's youngest sister, to encourage her courtship by an Eligible Young Man. And somewhere during this, Lord Earnest's brother Owen showed up.

By the next day, our heroes were much better informed. Indeed, I overdid the infodump. While not disasterous, this is a think I need to watch out for -- it was too easy for folks to get the information.

Basically, Earnest and Owen spilled what they knew, along with handouts. Lots and lots of handouts. So, while I can justify well enough why these two men are spilling a whole bunch of secrets to four people they shouldn't be spilling them to, the players were drowning in information without an action outlet.

Despite that, they seemed to have fun. Liesl and Herman discussed their various theories and planned approaches to test various hypotheses. But, basically, I was infodumping Edom and vampires on them.

So, Owen Renfield was Peter Hawkins, or rather, had created the Peter Hawkins identity. After George Stoker and his traveling companions returned from the Balkans to Britain with proof, of a sort, that vampires existed, Edom, an organization within Naval Intelligence Directorate, decided that recruiting one would be useful to Britain. A vampire was somehow located, a vampire who called himself Dracula. He had agreed to come to England provided his conditions, which his lawyer detailed, were met.

Edom agreed, but, as Lady Roxana noted, Edom had not kept its promises. The secret room was clearly meant to imprison a vampire, and Edom had promised it would not attempt to interfere with Dracula's movements. Dracula had insisted on an agent who did not speak any German or, indeed, any tongue "common east of the Rhine". It is possible that Edom had not intended to break this promise.

Unfortunately, Edom sent Jonathan Harker. Jonathan Harker was actually Immanuel Hildescheim, Liesl's cousin. He had infiltrated Edom on behalf of MINA, a German organization that was blackmailing him -- and paying him well for his cooperation, classic carrot and stick. And, Hildescheim was quite fluent in German, as well as Yiddish, and several other languages. And, Lady Roxana was thinking of vampires much as she thought of faeries. Everyone knows that if you break a promise to the faeries, things do not go well for you.

And, indeed, things had not gone well. Owen was sufficiently disgusted with Edom after having lost several people he felt responsible for, including the crew of the Demeter (some of whom worked for Edom), Mr. Archibald Winter-Suffield, and Jonathan Harker. And so, he had de facto resigned from Edom, killing off his Peter Hawkins identity and closing up the Hawkins home, leaving the keys with "Gertrude" and "Hogarth". He had also requested three men from Special Branch.

And, as I said, justifying Owen's decision to spill the beans was relatively easy. His brother was actively working with Edom -- and had his own reservations about this, given that he had fallen in love with his wife when they were courting, had one son, and had another child on the way, and knew that Edom was not above using any of these to further its plans. Lady Roxana was Owen's sister-in-law, and her son his nephew. Herman was Lady Roxana's half-brother, and, hence, family. Liesl was the cousin of one of Owen's agents. All right, the man was a double agent, but he had still been sent into a hellacious situation by Owen, and Owen felt some responsibility towards him. That left Sebastian, who is not a relative or an agent, but Sebastian was known and trusted by the others, as he was a brilliant, if eccentric, aristocratic detective, and that was good enough for Owen.

No, the real trouble was that the information distribution wasn't properly handled by me.

Regardless, at this point, folks were trying to absorb what they had learned. Tentative plans were made: Owen would leave for Budapest to retrieve Harker/Hildscheim. Lady Roxana's patents would return to the city with her younger sister and the maid who had been attacked by Carmilla, unless the PCs talked them out of it. The PCs planned to go to London as well, since that was likely where Dracula and Carmilla now were.

That night, however, Lady Roxana was led out to the gardns by her son. There, she found that the faerie ring was now wider than ever. The ground was open, and she descended...

Regarding Information Overload

One of my players noted that it has been over two decades since she had assigned reading. Mind, folks playing Dracula Dossier know there is a lot of reading. That said, I mishandled handouts. There are several things to consider here.

Masks of Nyarlathotep, one of our gold standards, has a lot of handouts, about half of which are in the first chapter. But, no single handout is longer than a page.

Ironically, the player who commented on the writing created two very long handouts for MoN, and I used them both, with modifications of my own. One of these was probably overkill for my campaign, but the other was light enough and juicy enough that it worked.

I created a lot of material for Eternal Lies, but the two players who dealt the most with the longer ones were the ones more interested in them. I also provided bullet point lists and frequent reviews of the material.

Also, those handouts felt earned, especially the longer ones. The PCs went through a lot to get them, and this gave them more value than an avalanche triggered by relatively little action on their part, as happened in Dracula Dossier. Indeed, the book I used, The Hawkins Papers, suggests giving a handout here and there, one at a time, as a reward for good play.

Some of the Eternal Lies handouts may have been less clue-y, but these grew out of correspondence. That is, the players had their PCs write letters, creating handouts for me as much as I did for them. It was an active process, and a lot of fun. And, I am sure that it did not hur4 that I offered a mechanical incentive, an extra build/experience point between sessions for write ups of any length or format. Some players rarely did this -- but when they did, the results were amazing. One did the minimum amount to gain maximum advantage, which was all right. And one or two people who were basically playing NPCs via email also did letters or poems. It was awesome because it was participitory.

Now, the default Dracula Dossier, it is true, involves handing players a 400+ page novel with three layers of annotations. But, tgere are several mitigating factors which did not apply here.

Everyone has read Dracula. The Unredacted Dracula adds material and makes some changes, but can be skimmed quickly, especially if one is only looking for the changes. One doesn't need to read it, let alone study it, especially if one has read Dracua at some point. The annotations are an interesting puzzle, but players can pick any annotation or three, any passage of the unredacted novel at random. The GM will build the campaign around what they choose to pursue. And what happened in previous eras is up for grabs--it is painted in vague, broad strokes unless and until the group defines it in play.

But, in an Unto the Fourth Generation campaign, you can't keep the previous eras vague. Your group is playing through them, creating them, and in doing so, the group builds the foundation on which the present day campaign stands. This is especially true of the 1894 leg, as that is the foundation upon which everything rests. I could wish for more guidance, perhaps even a scenario or two for each of the earlier legs, but that rather defeats the purpose of the whole sandbox structure of Dracula Dossier.

But, this means that I'm not handing folks the Unredacted, so they don't have to absorb as much, right? Er, not exactly. See, I gave them the first four chapters, the Harker-in-Transylvania section. And Liesl's player assumed I hadn't changed anything substantial, so wrote a lovely journal excerpt making incorrect assumptions about what her PC had read.

Unfortunately, not only did the authors of the Dracula Dossier make some changes; I, also, made changes. In particular, I rewrote large chunks of the section dealing with the three women in Dracula's castle. And guess what section Liesl chose to comment on in her journal? Yep.

The player requested I send the material electronically and use the highlighting feature to mark changes. I did, and indeed, this is what I should have done to begin with. I still have no idea whether anyone read the highlighted passages. I rather hope so as my campaign makes certain assumptions based on these passages and on the players having read them. I'm not just doing Unto the Fourth Generation; I'm also using The Abhorrent Truth.

And without the highlighting, players can't just pick some bit of text at random and use that to guide me in creating a session, as it is the 1894. So, they have to read this all. This means that everything I give as a handout needs to be something that can be absorbed in a reasonable amount of time -- and something that leads somewhere.

Far too many of the handouts I gave in the Owen infodump didn't really lead anywhere. It was an all too massive "what's going on". The PCs didn't work for it, and didn't have agency as far as getting it, given I dropped it on them. I should have been moving a bit slower, maybe having Owen trying to have private conversations with Earnest. That way, PCs could spy on the brothers.

Or maybe have Owen tell some of the story, but not hand over documents. Have his keys be mentioned, and see if the PCs decided to steal or copy them. Provide opportunities to get information, rather than saying, "Here is your next dollop." This is what we call the Bad Kind of Railroading.

This sort of thing often happens when the GM panics. I was in a mild state of panic for this session, the last, and some of the time leading up to the next because I knew that Roxana's player was going out of town, but she didn't know precisely when. I was trying to make sure that her plotline didn't cut off in such a way that the campaign couldn't continue for a session or two before the player returned, and I was looking for a way to write Roxana out for an indefinite amount of time.

So, at the end of the second session, I'd written Roxana out, explained to the player what was going on, and got guideline from her on a couple of details. And then -- well, the whole sequence, from the start of the campaign to before the session after this one went roughly like this:

Calibrating for Dracula Dossier 1894.
Character Generation Session -- wow, Stoker changed a Lot.
Recalibrating.
Fiasco Playset creation -- I'm being too set on the central 
element. Let's change that up and let everyone decide in play!
Recalibrating.
Yay! That all makes sense. Recalibrating.
Player: So, I'm going out of town for three months.
...Are you making the first actual 1894 session? Yes? Great!
Recalibrating.
You can make a second session? Okay, cool. Recalibrating.
Wait, your departure date shifted? If I schedule carefully, 
you can make a third session?
But, we have written your PC out. Let's not undo this. 
Here are several options.
Player: How about this completely different option?
Yeah, actually, that's... wow... totally cool.
Player: And can I do X?
Er... no, that doesn't quite work, but how about Y?
Player: That sounds fun!
Recalibrating. Okay, got it, but need to work the implications 
out on paper.
Checks calendar for next session event.
Sees potential new player has said she can actually make that session!
Recalibrating.
Right. I need to send out a "okay, so this is what we all agreed 
on for chargen -- keep to the assumption we will have 4 players" email.
Player: So, I'm not making the 3rd session after all. But, here's the 
letter from my PC that I promised to send.
... Recalibrating...

Meanwhile, I created a few bullet point lists summarizing the large bundle o'infodumps in two double sided pages. I know that's how long it is because Herman's player printed it out, one copy for everyone, for the following session.

I also reminded myself that I have have to keep an eye on whether or not to frame scenes more aggressively. On the one hand, I don't want stuff to drag or to have everything happen in one day. If the PCs are going to argue over finding the PC I wrote out, I may need to say, "Okay, guys, you know you're not going to find her because you know I wrote her out. Move along."

But, on the other, stomping on agency is bad. And, while I don't want a long argument over what to do with an NPC, I am not sure I should have another NPC say, "Right, you're going to do X because I say so." In fact, I'm fairly sure I don't. They can stash the NPC wherever they like; I can make horrid things happen anyway given likely loopholes -- or find other NPCs to torment if there aren't any. It's the screech-to-a-halt I want to avoid.

This means that passionate in character arguments are fine. Arguments going round and round and getting old? Not so much. And it's 1894, in a situation where monsters or MIBs attacking isn't as likely. I may have to rely on players being sensible and me saying, "Guys? Decide something, or this will be an awfully boring session."

That said, I knew that I probably did want someone or something to attack at least one of the PCs. This didn't happen in the following session, which meant that I made sure it happened in the one after that. I also decided to keep options open on something intended in the Unredacted material to go a particular way, as there was no reason it had to go that way in my run.