Thoughts on Running “Horror on the Orient Express”

    I recently did something I’d been debating for a long time. I plunked down the $75. for the new edition of Chaosium’s classic Call of Cthulhu campaign, “Horror on the Orient Express.” I got one of their ‘damaged’ copies which saved quite a few precious pennies. And it’s in fine shape. Looked like it could have come right out of the delivery box at a store. A slight crinkling on the box near one corner is all that could be seen as ‘damage.’ And the box is a monster. It’s over-full, with a daunting amount of material to sift through.

    Here’s the thing, though. I’m not really a pre-made adventure guy. Since I started running roleplaying games when I was a lad, I’ve almost always written my own stories, and improvised the rest. I’ve read published adventures from companies, but usually to get ideas. I’ve played in some, but the best ones didn’t seem pre-made, because the game master (storyguide, DM, whatever) made it his own (I have, sadly, not had a female GM to the best of my knowledge/memory). Once, long ago, I ran the haunted house scenario from the Call of Cthulhu basic book, but I guess I re-worked it enough that the one player familiar with the scenario didn’t recognize it for what it was until the climax. So, I’m worried about the idea of running not just a published adventure, but an entire campaign. The reports I’m seeing on this game is that it takes a year or more to go through the whole thing (real time). That’s huge.

    The obvious thing to do, and what I likely would do, is to run a shorter published campaign or some adventures to get a handle on the process, and on how I would make them my own.  But there, I’m still running into my old problems. I’ve been bad about connecting with the gaming community in my area ever since I moved here 8 years ago. And I haven’t managed to do a good job of convincing my friends to try it (other than a brief, dramatically failed attempt a couple years ago). Yet, the draw of the hobby keeps me going; keeps me hoping and spit-balling.

    So, start small, huh?  OK.  This new version of the campaign has several side adventures that are scattered across time, going all the way back to ancient Rome.  One of the first is set in Victorian London.  That got me to thinking, maybe I could run that side adventure as a kind of preamble.  That’s a start, I guess.

    And, with a scenario set in the late 1800s that leads into the greater Orient Express campaign, it got me to thinking about connections.  One of the challenges that face a lot of RPG groups when a scenario or campaign begins is ‘why are we all together?’  But the Call of Cthulhu RPG takes place, typically, in a time when social groups were common; gentlemen’s clubs and the like.  That presents a solid way to join the characters together.  Add in a few bits, and it’s not too hard to have them be members of a group that’s large enough to use for replacement characters (should the nearly inevitable event of character death/madness happen).  A few more bits, and you could have a club with some ties or interests in the occult.  In the case of “Horror on the Orient Express” it even gives a link across the years between the events of the 1800s and the primary campaign in the 1920s.  And of course, Professor Smith, as another link between the eras, can be linked with the social club.

    Now, the 1890s and 1920s were hardly times of enlightenment.  Women (all women over 21) didn’t get the vote in England until 1928.  But, while that was the reality, and I don’t like to completely shy away from real life evils, making some things a bit more pleasant for potential female players is also a concern.  Since Call of Cthulhu typically favors more intellectual and artistic characters, and those people tend to be on the forefront of social progress, I got to thinking that making an element of the characters’ social club women’s suffrage would be interesting.  I think adding some era-grounded politics will help set the stage.  Especially since there are some red-herrings about communists and the like in the campaign.  Because I always like to dream bigger than I should, it also might work to help set the stage for a future campaign.  If “Horror on the Orient Express” turned out well, I’d love to follow it up with another London based campaign, “Tatters of the King.”  Again, I’m getting ahead of myself, but I love to plant seeds in one story that might bloom in a future story. So, even if I have no idea how this trip on the Orient Express might go or how it might end, I figure I’d try to drop in a few bits to introduce themes from “Tatters of the King.”

    I have no idea if I’ll eventually run this campaign or not.  No idea if it will go the distance, or if it will be successful enough to demand a follow-up.  For now, it’s just a lot of reading and dreaming.  

-Matthew J. Constantine

Dork Hero: Fibonacci

The Medieval mathematician Fibonacci (Leonardo Bonacci) was born in Pisa in 1170. He introduced the Hindu-Arabic numeral system to Europe. 

Thanks, dude.

-Matt

Comic Review: The Chimera Brigade Book One

    Regular readers will know that I love the pulps, and a lot of pulp inspired stuff.  Movies like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Raiders of the Lost Ark; comics like The Rocketeer and Hellboy; and of course adaptations of the originals, like Doc Savage, The Shadow, and the like.  I also enjoy a good referential, alternate history story, like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  So, The Chimera Brigade is right up my alley.   Set in an alternate 1938, where Europe was profoundly changed by the arrival of what seem to be superheroes and villains after the Great War.  Across the Continent, forces are gathering, spies are spying, and trouble is brewing.

    Though the book in no way feels like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, that is the most obvious reference when comparing it to something else.  But instead of characters out of Victorian adventure novels, it features a different array of references (from Zamyatin’s We to Orwell’s Big Brother to Meyrink’s Golem), and a very different plot.  I like the setting a lot and am very curious where the plot is going to take the various characters that have been introduced.  The art isn’t amazing, but it’s not bad.  Though not as good, in my opinion, it often reminds me of Mignola’s work on Hellboy.

    Doing a quick bit of research, I found that this is the first of six volumes.  I’m glad that it’s a story that has been completed.  But not I’ve got to wait for it to get translated from the French and published Stateside, which sadly, might take a while.  Because it is only the first of six volumes, this serves primarily as an introduction to the world and to the players, with only hints at the overall story.  It has my attention; hopefully it can hold on to it for however long it takes to get the whole thing out.

The Chimera Brigade: Book One
Authors: Serge Lehman & Fabrice Colin
Artist: Gess
Publisher: Titan Comics
ISBN: 978-1-782-76099-3

-Matthew J. Constantine

Book Review: 428 AD

    When you go through a History of Western Civilization course in school, what do you learn about?  Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, etc.  Those are the major stops.  To say there are gaps would be a major understatement.  But one glaring gap that has festered in my mind for a long time is that missing near millennium between the golden age of the Roman Empire and the coming of the High Medieval era.  It’s like there was Julius Caesar, the birth of Christianity, and then…something about barbarians, blah blah blah…ta-da! Middle Ages!

    So, in the last few years, as I’ve been reading more and more about Medieval times, ancient times, the rise and fall of various religions and ideologies, the advances of technology, the migrations of peoples, etc., I’ve been trying to piece together that missing time that is left out of the general history books.  I’ve discovered the fascinating and nearly forgotten (or expunged) golden age of Moorish Spain, the much more complex than I imagined interactions between Europe and Asia, and the explorations and developments that led to an expanded understanding of our world that continued throughout the so called (often justifiably so, mostly) Dark Ages.  It was a time when Christianity was still sorting itself out, shifting from Jewish cult into a codified religion of its own; when many different ideas of Jesus, what he was and what he meant were explored, and only a few came out alive; and when paganism and rationality both still had a chance of winning out (well, honestly, did rationalism ever have a chance?).  And it was a time of great change sweeping back and forth across Europe, changing borders, languages, religions, and setting the stage for all the complexities of the future.

    The book takes us to a specific year, 428, and uses that as an anchor to explore an era, with the Christianity we know coming to its final place of dominance and with the remnants of the old pagan Empire on its last legs.  It tells the story of a rich time when so much was possible, when shifts in one direction or another could have shaped the world in very different ways.  For such a short book, author Giusto Traina sure crams in a lot of information.  At first this is a serious problem.  The first couple chapters are an explosion of word salad, with places, names, dates, and citations flying fast and furious.  It was somewhat overwhelming and became quite a slog.  At only 130 pages, plus about 70 pages of notes and citations, I expected to blow through the book in no time, but three days later found me still laboring through Chapter III.  Holy crap.  It turned out to be appropriately Byzantine for a section on Constantinople and its surrounding region.  But, once the exploration of Asia Minor was finished, the pace jumped up several notches and the look around the rest of Europe and North Africa became more invigorating.

    With stops in Italy, pre-Moorish Spain, North Africa over into Egypt, and then back east to the Holy Land, we see a world divided and united by various metaphysical ideas.  Political machinations and the pressures of populations and power seekers shaped a time frequently obscured in history texts.  I wonder if some of this near willful avoidance comes from people’s wish to judge history based upon their own politics and religious nature.  This era must be somewhat difficult for many to face, because it’s not pretty, and it’s not neat.  Christian VS Christian, pagan and Christian co-habitation, violent and bloody fanaticism and anti-intellectualism on the part of the rising Christian powers may make the modern believer uncomfortable (though considering the fanaticism and anti-intellectualism that is all the rage today, perhaps not).  I remember reading the response from a viewer to the film Agora, where the writer was appalled by seeing Christians portrayed as murderous zealots as bad as any post-9/11 demonizing of Moslems.  But it is absolutely true that Christianity’s rise to religious and political dominance in Europe and beyond was a blood spattered affair, paved with the bones of countless dead.  They did murder and suppress, burn and wreck historic documents and locations, and generally cause all kinds of hell (not that they were the first or last to employ such barbaric tactics to secure power).  And as is so common of the righteous of any denomination, it was all in the name of peace and love.

    If you can push your way through that first 30 or so pages (doesn’t sound like much, but dang!), this book is a good resource for getting the lay of the land.  The rise of the Church, the fall of classic Rome, the Dark Ages well in progress, and the foundations for the Middle Ages being set.  And as always with a good history, I find myself wanting to read more about a dozen new topics.  And I have more loose threads tied into the greater tapestry of history and understanding.

428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire
Author: Giusto Traina
Publisher: Princeton
ISBN: 978-0-691-15025-3
Pages: 203

-Matt