Rip It & Run! Occult Investigators

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...