Keeper Discussion for 'The Armitage Files'

[Beedo]

[Heavy Spoiler Alert]

My TOC group has played through a number of one-shots - I've run the conversion of The Haunting, we did Devourers in the Mist, and are halfway through The Black Drop right now. They're ready to make their own characters and start a campaign. When presented with 'Shadows Over Filmland'(SOF) or 'The Armitage Files'(TAF) as a potential campaign, of course they chose TAF. I love the vibe in SOF, but 'averting the end of the world' is such a compelling hook...

Anyway, I've seen some threads and blogs where players have recounted their TAF sessions, but haven't seen any threads for the Keeper side of things.

If you've been a Keeper for TAF and would be willing to share some experiences, please chime in! I've got plenty of questions as we get started with our own version of the campaign, and will post some of them in the succeeding threads. And hopefully this becomes a good discussion that helps other Keepers as well.

I expect this will be [Spoiler Heavy], so if you're a TAF player, stay out! Incidentally, do we have spoiler tags or something similar to use? Whiting out spoiler text?

[WatsonSE]

This might be an interesting thread to follow and perhaps post in. I had planned to finish my upcoming ToC-campaign using the The Armitage Files, but I am still uncertain whether I will go down this path. I am all for an improvised game style in general, but I feel that I might not like it in an investigative-style game in general or in a Cthulhu-game in particular. Don't get me wrong, I want to like it and I would like to run it - I just have to see whether I can find the right motivation to do it. I kind of lack the spark to start the fire, so to say. If I can find what I am missing about an all-out improvised ToC-campaign using The Armitage Files, I will tackle it and go for a very unique end of my campaign.

[Beedo]

Okay, I'll get started with some general questions.

Improv vs preparation: it seems to me that the Keeper needs to be really prepared to improvise the first session after a new file is dropped, but once the group has started down a path, the time between sessions can be used to flesh out the spine a little more.

One thing that concerns me - in COC and TOC, players are used to getting hard copy clues. How have you handled detailed clues in an improvised game?

As a Keeper - to you generate a spine for each major reference in the file? Example - if document 1 has 3 references in the book, did you end up sketching out a spine for each?

And a pacing question... the tone of the documents gets more excited to say the least, as a Keeper, have you ramped up the intensity of the Mythos threats in the investigators time-line as the action in the documents escalates?

[Ken_Hite]

[Heavy Spoiler Alert]

Anyway, I've seen some threads and blogs where players have recounted their TAF sessions, but haven't seen any threads for the Keeper side of things.

You may want to check Rick Neal's blog. He's currently devoting most of his posts to the Dresden Files RPG, but you can see his TAF stuff tagged at: http://www.rickneal.ca/?tag=armitage-files

[Beedo]

You may want to check Rick Neal's blog. He's currently devoting most of his posts to the Dresden Files RPG, but you can see his TAF stuff tagged at: http://www.rickneal.ca/?tag=armitage-files

Wow - fantastic read - great to see how another Keeper approached it. I loved the prologue scenario with Danforth's journal and the Dyer cover-up - great stuff. I'd recommend this read to any potential TAF Keeper.

If I break down Rick's approach to starting the Armitage Files:

• Gather pre-gaming information from the players on which document references (leads) sound interesting.
• Invest some prep time outlining the big-bad and the potential adversaries related to the leads.
• Use improv during the session to guide the clue gathering, adversary responses, and scenes.

That's a good compromise to a fully improvised session, and it answers one of my own concerns, coming up with a compelling big-bad and nefarious mythos plot on the fly!

It's one thing if the players offer a gift, "Oh, I bet this has something to do with ghouls", and the Keeper quickly improvises ghouls into the scenario to incorporate the player suggestion. But that whole bit about Chaugnar Fahn in Rick's game would have been hard (for me) to generate on the fly and wouldn't have been nearly as mysterious or dark as the layered approach in the session.

Another thing I gleaned from the campaign notes - PACING - in Rick's campaign, session 1 was characters; session 2 was a prologue; session 3 was the first document reference; session 4/5 were investigating a second document reference.

I've wondered how long it would take to run through an Armitage Files campaign; obviously you can let the group exhaust every lead before releasing a new document, but it could also be paced fairly quickly - 1-2 one-night investigations per document, with the campaign projected at 10-15 nights of play.

[GBSteve]

Rick's going to be putting up another post soon about his overall impressions of running from the Armitage Files. That should be worth keeping an eye out for. Although I haven't used the material in this supplement, it does very much mirror the way I've run some games of Trail of Cthulhu. I've started writing an LJ post about my experiences and hope to have something finished before Gen Con. Perhaps it can go in See Page XX, or here.

One thing I can say is that he seems to take a more measured approach than me, although I possibly do more prep up front. Most of my actual scenario design in the more improvised games comes between sessions 1 and 2 and if you look at my LJ, quite a lot goes on in that time.

[Rick Neal]

Rick's going to be putting up another post soon about his overall impressions of running from the Armitage Files.

The new post is now up. In fact, it looks like Beedo read it before making the comment.

For those who are interested, here's the link:

http://www.rickneal.ca/?p=649

Thanks for the interest and the kind words, folks.

Rick

[Beedo]

Nice! I actually made my guesses about your approach just by reading the campaign reports, but I see that I was fairly close.

I agree that ramping up the tension week to week, and driving the campaign to a suitable climax, is only partially laid out in TAF and leaves much to the Keeper. There's this idea of time sickness and lost time, and increasing the severity of the incidents. I think that's a good start. One could have increased ambient wrongness occurring like so much background noise that continually gets louder - folks in asylums everywhere start having similar dreams as the apocalypse comes closer... artists have the bad dreams ala 'Call of Cthulhu' or something similar.

In my own campaign, I would like to see it unwinding similar to the setup in "Twelve Monkeys". Future Armitage has dropped these 10 documents into the past at the same time, but they've arrived haphazardly, and the investigators are struggling with an incomplete vision on how to proceed, touching the trunk and tail of the elephant but never seeing the whole thing, chasing down red herrings or malign events that are not the proximate cause. Only near the end do they realize the final solution isn't "The Army of the Twelve Monkeys" but the solution was there alongside them all along.

To that end, I think I'll introduce some of the references from the final documents very early in the campaign - fairly innocuously - to increase verisimiltude when the reference reappears later, revealed in a more sinister light by Armitage's accusatory field notes.

[DrummerDave]

Improv vs preparation: it seems to me that the Keeper needs to be really prepared to improvise the first session after a new file is dropped, but once the group has started down a path, the time between sessions can be used to flesh out the spine a little more.

One thing that concerns me - in COC and TOC, players are used to getting hard copy clues. How have you handled detailed clues in an improvised game?

As a Keeper - to you generate a spine for each major reference in the file? Example - if document 1 has 3 references in the book, did you end up sketching out a spine for each?

And a pacing question... the tone of the documents gets more excited to say the least, as a Keeper, have you ramped up the intensity of the Mythos threats in the investigators time-line as the action in the documents escalates?

Hey - this is great. I'm running through my campaign on my blog here on YSDC, but I would love to jump in on a keeper's thread too.

The first session, despite my efforts toward getting the players to read the clues ahead of time, was mostly spent building characters and discussing where to go and who to talk to, while I sat trying to be engaged. But yes - when they finally chose Kingsport Yacht Club as a focus, I could start to work on the background. Then I went and worked on a spine for that choice, which has been great so far, except when the party wanders off and explores another clue entirely. Seems to me the game can really play however the Keeper wants - sloppy and loose or tight and focused - the players just pick the direction. But I do the least amount of prep I've ever done for a campaign, really, and it's incredibly freeing.

Just for your question on clues, then, I just try to open myself to whatever the situation brings up, so have not provided any other structured clues in the game other than the main documents. Reading Rick Neal's blog, however, opened my mind to the idea of creating other tomes and clues for the party, so I am clearly still figuring out stuff to do.

For the spines, I've created two because the party have looked into two main clues. I've left the sanitarium as a building that is currently being built, to lay the foundation (as it were) for the developing storyline. Granted, I don't know where that storyline is going - but this, to me, is the crux of the whole campaign. As long as the players/PCs are chewing into something interesting, there's no need to plan the whole thing out. I was just reading forward on the clues (another idea from RN's blog) in preparation for giving them the 3rd document in a few sessions, I realized I could plant APL pamphlets (which don't appear until File 3) at the site of File 2 clues, thus mixing and shifting the story to best suit whatever crazy inspiration of GMing/storytelling I may have. Even if I laid everything out ahead of time, I would want to change it every few sessions. (I even threw out an unusual event that I have no idea what it means, just to bring in a couple of new PCs. Since even *I* don't know what it means, the layer of mystery is quite tangible.)

We're on our fourth session and just getting into the meat of the first story, so I'm still playing with overall pacing. And we're still a relatively new TOC group (though we've played plenty of COC), so the party is still gelling too. But the overall spine theory works really well to lay out some foundations of good story telling, and the pacing so far has been good enough. Just make sure the players don't spend every session thinking about all the things they can and could do. Funny thing - Robin makes this very point in the campaign book, and it's solid advice. Crack the whip on your players and get them to dig in!

[DrummerDave]

Thanks for the interest and the kind words, folks.

Rick

Great stuff, Rick, thanks for posting. It sounds like we're experiencing a lot of the same ideas about just running with the game and trusting the overall campaign to serve us right in the end. I don't think we'll know how it all ends without actually running it until the end (though I would love to hear how playtests ended), and since I'm still only on the first two Files, there's lots of room to grow and explore. But your point about dropping the Files before the party runs out of clues is great and I will definitely use it. Maybe even drop the new File in the middle of a story, just to mix things up. Well, don't want to confuse the party *too* much.

But most amazing is the true difference in each of the campaigns. I read your posts thinking 'Uhh... my players haven't even *asked* about the military base.' So the campaigns are truly individual and separate, which is all the more reason to talk about how we got there.

Please keep up the blog.

[rylehNC]

Please keep up the blog.

Indeed!

[Eibon]

The new post is now up. In fact, it looks like Beedo read it before making the comment.

For those who are interested, here's the link:

http://www.rickneal.ca/?p=649

Thanks for the interest and the kind words, folks.

Rick

Good stuff. I think you might be overcomplicating the issue under "Spoiler #1" :

Spoiler:

Just because the documents are sent from a year or more in the future doesn't mean that's when they were (will be?) written. The very first document says that the following documents are earlier. So the notes themselves might only be from a few weeks (or even a few days) in the future when the PCs get hold of them.

[Rick Neal]

Y'know, I hadn't thought of that. Good advice. Thanks.

Rick

[demoss]

I say canon-shmanon, because it doesn't really matter, but just to nitpick: the book actually says the times refer to time the notes were taken.

[Eibon]

Ah, you're right. It does specify when the notes were written. I'd forgotten about that.