1963 Session 0: Character Creation

31 March 2018 Session

Pre-Session preparation included:

• Reviewing the first half or so of Our Ladies of Sorrow, getting me at least midway through the second scenario
• Printing out the first scenario
• Annotating the print out with the conversion notes for Trail, which I am not in entire agreement with
• Figuring out which rules hacks I'm using from Fall of Delta Green and elsewhere

Rules Hacks

• The fixed Stability chart I've been using since the first full game I ran after Cat created it. SO useful! When I ran Eternal Lies, I had to explain Every Single Time "this is a standard / mythos Stability Test, which means that the Difficulty is 4 / 5" at which point we're all pulled out of the fiction and into the numbers.

• Fall of Delta Green's Bonds instead of Trail of Cthulhu's Sources of Stability. Among other reasons, this gave players an extra source of points in a pinch.

• Fall of Delta Green's rules about Revelation, which I forgot to read all of, so we may be using a gentler version than intended, but then, the PCs aren't agents and the players tend to take pleasure in making their characters' lives miserable.

• Fall of Delta Green's rules about disorders, addictions, and so on.

• Adding Inspiriation as an Interpersonal skill because of the Bonds (I didn't add Negotiation as that's clearly Bargain).

• As per Fall of Delta Green, PCs started with 5 free Sanity, 4 free Stability, and 4 free Health, which seems only sensible to me regardless of genre. I didn't use any of the other freebies because it's not a Delta Green game.

• Renaming Cthulhu Mythos "The Unnatural" as per Fall of Delta Green, as that's more accurate for Our Ladies of Sorrow and justifies both high and low Unnatural scores for both beginning and continuing characters.

• The Cthulhu Ctherries from Pelgrane's site.

• Rough Magick's rules for Magic.

The campaign has four parts, and I sketched out a vague plan that let us have it all ways with the 1960s.

• Part 1: 1963 NYC
• Part 2: 1967 Mohave Desert
• Part 3: 1968 or 1969? The question is how close to Stonewall we want it.
• Coda: I'm thinking 1969, around the time of Apollo 11, but we'll see when we get there.

Now, decisions that needed to be made for Part 1 included:

• Just where is the Three Sisters building that's the heart of the scenario?

• Before, during, or after the JFK assassination?

Given the type of bohemian neighborhood I wanted, Greenwich Village was the obvious location. This meant that I could not use the address of 401 21st Street (and anyway, it would be East or West 21st Street, but never mind that). Sean suggested 177A Bleeker Street, where Dr. Strange lived because the person creating the comic lived there. And, a quick query to the internet told us that the first appearance of Dr. Strange was July 1963.

So, we have a location and a start day.

The characters are:

• Joyce Summers, horror survivalist, who's been through the events of Masks of Nyarlathotep in the 1920s, Eternal Lies in the 1930s, the 1940 leg of Dracula, the 1948 Carmilla Sanction, and the hunt for the Fountain of Youth in Night Forms a Cover for Sinners in the 1950s. Technically 60 years old by the calendar, the player is considering her "tv 50", aging, but still in remarkably good shape.

• • Drive: Thrill Seeker
  • Bonds: Bob and Joan; Simone Rivers, protege, butch, 20 (third bond burned for points)
  • Pillars:
  • Revelation: Extreme Violence, hence Adapted to Violence (fighting the Mythos since the 1920s, fighting in the Spanish Civil War and World War 2...)

• Martin Locksley, unintentional wizard, who's been through the events of Eternal Lies in the 1930s, Asylum in 1939 or 1940 or so, and the hunt for the Fountain of Youth in Night Forms a Cover for Sinners in the 1950s. He's now about 52.

• • Drive: Follower
  • Bonds: Vivian de Gennaro, 25 (3); Rosemary Archer, 25 (3); Gabriel Archer, 52 (3)
  • Pillars: Above All, Love and one other TBD
  • Revelation: Things Man Was Not Meant to Know (I think with disorder Depression?) (Becoming addicted to a mythos drug for a time, learning magic, bending time and space to save his boyfriend and the world, doing his level best to avoid paying the bill for saving his boyfriend)

• Jeremiah Rhodes, antiques dealer, who's been through the events of Eternal Lies in the 1930s as an NPC, and as a PC through the events of Asylum in 1939 or 1940 or so, and the hunt for the Fountain of Youth in Night Forms a Cover for Sinners in the 1950s. He's about the same age as Martin, I think.

• • Drive: I want everyone to go home safely (Protection?)
  • Bonds: Vivan de Genarro, 25 (4); Johanna Smith, overprotective friend (4); Gabriel and Rosemary Archer, family friends who live in Westchester (4)
  • Pillars: Domestic Life Is Sanctuary, Relationships Are the Building Blocks of Society

Revelation: Captivity / Isolation, hence Adapted to Helplessness (spent time as a brain in a Mi-Go brain cannister after being murdered)

• Isidore Nazim, alienist, joining the group. He's 43.

• • Drive: Mystery
  • Bonds: JB, former squadmate (4); Tina (Christina), sister (4); Marcella, on-again off-again girlfriend who appears to be in her late 30s or early 40s (Isidore has never asked her age) (4)
  • Pillars:
  • Revelation: Things Man Was Not Meant to Know (disorder TBD) (Periods of amnesia, most from the war, some from before and after which are hardly noticeable given the ones from the war)

Years ago, I started looking at scenarios and asking myself "Could any of these NPCs be replaced by PCs?" So, for creating background, I wanted to know both how everyone knew each other and whether anyone lived in the Three Sisters apartment building -- and how everyone knew Frank Ryder, who, I let the players know, was going to wind up dead. This is what we call premise, and it's usually a good idea to tell the players what the premise is.

Martin and Jeremiah were lovers, and they'd been living in Arkham for some time, raising Vivian de Genarro, the daughter of a mobster PC, Vito de Genarro. Vito had been part of the events of Eternal Lies (after which he decided Martin and Jeremiah would raise Vivian), the 1940 leg of Dracula Dossier, and the 1948 Carmilla Sanction.

We decided that Vito was dead by 1963, perhaps of liver failure. He was the one who pulled strings to make sure that Martin got a position at Miskatonic University. With him dead and Vivian no longer a child, players suggested that the university administration decided it was time to have a word with Professor Locksley about his home life.

The end result, whether it involved a firing or a resignation, was that Martin no longer had a job at Miskatonic.

Jeremiah: F*ck 'em. Let's move back to New York.

And they did. I think they're living in Greenwich Village, though not at the Three Sisters Building? Martin is now teaching languages at City College, while Jeremiah moved his antiques shop, likely to somewhere else in the village?

Joyce had been out of the USA for many years, but after the search for the Fountain of Youth, had signed the loyalty oath required to return, despite, as she noted loudly and often, having fought against fascism and similar evils for longer than the person administering the oath had been alive. The whole business was absurd and offensive, which is why Joyce had only been back in the county for roughly 8 years. She had previously refused to sign it, which ultimately caused a break up with her then lover, Hedy Lamarr.

She had sold her apartment to her old partner, Fred (aka Madison Barnes), and he'd bought a couple more buildings and decided he wanted to open a gay bar in Greenwich Village. Unfortunately, no one would sell that kind of property to a black man, but if he had someone to front for him, like, say, Joyce, that would work out just fine.

Joyce was willing to do this and to tend bar part time. Her actual job was [what? Some kind of helicopter rescue thing?]

So, the bar was in Greenwich Village, exactly location TBD, but possibly not too far from the Three Sisters building. Joyce decided to name it after Billie Holliday, and after trying out a couple of variations, I suggested Lady D, and we liked that.

Joyce: It's not some kind of mob bar, like the _Stonewall_! Jesus!

I asked if Joyce had dated Frances Liston, a fictional actress probably based on Veronica Lake. Liston had died in 1962.

Joyce's Player: No, but she probably came into Lady D's to get plastered, if she's based on Veronica Lake. Bob and Joan were in here too.

Joyce and Martin and Jeremiah had known each other for years, so those connections were solid. But how did they know Isidore, and how did everyone know Frank Ryder?

Now, originally, Frank Ryder came to the USA from Germany with his family, escaping the Nazis. But, he could hardly be in his 70s or 80s if that were so, given we were in 1963. So, I went with Cat's suggestion that his family fled Russia in 1886, five years after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, as things were getting uncomfortable for a lot of people.

Frank wasn't gay, though it's possible he's bi. And, Joyce speaks Russian, so it made some sense that he could drink at Lady D's and they could be curmudgeonly at each other.

And perhaps he'd sold something to Jeremiah? Maybe a first edition of one of his books? Jeremiah is very good at making friends, and clearly, he and Martin, recently in New York again, needed to get out and make friends! So, Jeremiah dragged Martin and Frank (with Martin likely protesting more) down to Lady D's, which is probably how Frank and Joyce met to begin with.

Isidore served as a psychiatrist in the Korean War, and one of his bonds was with his squadmate, JB. JB was gay and patronized Lady D's, and Isidore went there with him. Isidore's other bonds were with his sister Tina (Christina) and his on-again off-again girlfriend Marcella. And of course, Frank lived in the same building as Isidore in addition to going to the same bar.

So far so good, but we needed to pull the net tighter. Might Isidore be one of the other PCs' therapists?

Me: Are you the kind of psychiatrist who thinks homosexuality is something to be cured or not?

Isidore: I live in the village.

Joyce's Player: That's not an answer.

Isidore: If I had a problem with it, I wouldn't be living with them.

Fair enough. None of the PCs were his patients, and I don't think any of them see therapists of any kind.

But there was definitely a collection of folks at Lady D's -- Joyce, Frank, Martin, Jeremiah, JB, Isidore, maybe Fred sometimes, maybe Marcella sometimes, and the first night they were all together at the bar, Jeremiah (and the alcohol) was lubricating the wheels of the social machinery to make sure they were all friends. Friends were great -- everyone should have friends! To friendship!

And at that point, it was done -- the group had a reason for being. Nothing grand, just... a group of people gathering together for friendship.

Stuff I need to do before next time:

• Put all the stats into a PC spreadsheet
• Review the first scenario, correcting the conversion bits I disagree with, mapping likely and alternative paths, and so on
• Figuring out who already knows what
• Figuring out who has how many apples and what poisons to coat them with