One
of the hardest things about constructing a “Call
of Cthulhu” campaign is finding a rationale for having the Investigators
band together in the first place. While it’s relatively easy to find an
occupation for a new character,
finding the “glue” that makes a team
stick together is vastly more tricky. A handful of randomly-generated
characters can be forced into a clump by the needs of a present story, but the
moment any one of the characters says “What am I doing here?” the whole thing
starts to fall apart. As well, while a single Investigation may satisfactorily
occupy a group from beginning to end, moving on to a second story is sometimes a problem: will the police character be
able to walk away from their day-to-day duties? Will the psychologist be able
to clear their schedule for the next instalment? Will the reporter be able to
use company resources to poke around once more? A skilled Keeper can usually
overcome such obstacles, but players tend to flesh out their alter-egos with
associative details that suddenly get in the way of just jumping on board the
next tale.
Perhaps
the reporter was just marking time on ‘Crime Beat’ and, now that they’ve proved
themselves, they’ve won the Society Pages position they always coveted? Maybe
the psychologist, at the end of the previous mayhem, declared that they were
taking their reward money and heading for the Bahamas? And what if the cop’s
injuries were so severe that he’s now riding a desk at the precinct in
perpetuity? Again, a skilled Keeper might be able to circumvent these issues
and “get the band back together”, but sometimes the progress that the
characters make in one story preclude such easy reintegration. Of course, the
Keeper may issue a “Star Trek”–like
injunction at the beginning of play and insist that no character moves beyond
their initial set-up rationale, despite anything that happens in the
storylines; however, that seems somewhat artificial and reduces the levels of
potential risk that the players face.
Paradoxically,
for a roleplaying game, “Call of Cthulhu”
asks the players to avoid getting
into trouble at all costs. Implicit in the set-up is the notion that death and
insanity (or both) are inevitable, so adventures are best skirted around. This
means that, in this game, hooks have to hit hard and bite deep: the characters
should have no choice but to engage with the drama, and the costs – if they opt
out – should be commensurate. At the end of the day, the characters should want to get involved; or at least,
should feel that any other option is completely out of the question.
Keepers
learn – usually the hard way – that parties of Investigators will see a red
flag and run in the opposite direction. The adventure, in most cases, has to
come to the party, not the other way around. In one of my adventures, I had the
body of a missing landlady stuffed inside a suitcase in the bare attic of an
abandoned house. My team whilst investigating the building by breaking in,
noted the suitcase and absolutely refused to go near it, fearing something
dangerous or maddening inside, and so the object of their quest continued to
remain a mystery. I should have just laid the landlady’s corpse out on the
floor instead, or had it fall out onto them from behind a door. This was
another instance of the players asking themselves “What am I doing here?”;
their unwillingness to engage revealed that the answer was obviously not at all
apparent to them.
To
overcome these difficulties, it is often wise to establish a rationale for the
Investigators from the outset, before character generation. “Delta Green” does this very
efficiently, by making every character part of a sub rosa organisation bent on very specific outcomes. I once played
in a campaign where all of the original characters were part of an ‘occult
society’ based in Cambridge and whose half-arsed dabblings into Things Better
Left Alone – a worm-can that was very, very difficult to re-seal after opening
- led them onwards into ever more terrifying encounters. In short, a framework
surrounding the group which provides a rationale for their actions is a very
good thing.
A
way to set up such a framework is to have one of the investigators take the
role of an ‘occult investigator’ and have them rope in the other party members
according to the skill-sets that they can bring to the investigation. There are
many stereotypes for such a character in literature and film, but basically
they should have high Credit Rating
and Occult scores with a bunch of
other research-based capabilities added on: think of them as a cross between
the Antiquarian and a Parapsychologist. Alternatively, the
character could be an NPC run by the Keeper, depending on how the Keeper’s
players feel about such a responsibility.
By
having a central character who actively seeks out paranormal situations and
recruits other characters as needed, a structure is imposed upon the campaign
narrative, forming a frame for all of the stories being told. There are some
impressive precedents for such characters too: Stoker’s Abraham van Helsing;
William Hope Hodgson’s Dr. Carnacki; Sheridan le Fanu’s Dr. Heselius; Algernon
Blackwood’s Dr. John Silence; and that’s before we get to non-literary guys
like Karl Kolchak and Fox Mulder. A central character whose raison d’être is to investigate The
Unknown automatically focuses the scope and aims of the investigation, moreso
than a motley group of disparate individuals who are brought together by
happenstance.
Perhaps
all the characters are related, whether they know it or not, to members of a
secret organisation who oppose mystical enemies of humankind and the new leader
of the group (our central character) has to contact them to reveal their
destinies by handing over the sacred flame? Will they rise to the occasion, or
walk away from a familial duty (with devastating consequences)? Perhaps our
central character received a vision identifying the various party members as
somehow crucial to his destined purpose? Once the rationale is explained, everything
pretty much falls into place.
Another
bonus to this set-up is that the players can create several characters each,
covered by the same pretext, and thus have ‘spares’ waiting in the wings should
a horrible inevitability occur. Otherwise, as is natural for ongoing campaigns,
NPCs and other bit players may be taken up by the players as main characters
and integrated into the storyline.
The
shorthand for these types of characters is that they keep the party on track,
focused upon the demands of the investigations (even if - and especially if -
such narratives are scübidüberisms), and prevent the minutiae of the
characters’ existences from derailing or blurring the lines of the story.
I’ve
mentioned this process before – it’s called “establishment” and it’s crucial
for the ongoing success of a campaign. It’s like they say about tiled floors
and men: lay them right the first time and you won’t have any worries
afterwards...
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