Pulp China, Southern Gothic, Dreamhounds of Paris

[PelgranePress]

Which of these supplements would you buy?

This bald question is the easiest way of measuring the relative popularity of supplement.

[Blackburn]

Well, both my wife and I want the Paris one so that's where our combined vote goes on the poll.

But if scheduling for that would be an issue for the authors, then our vote is for Southern Gothic.

I personally prefer Pulp China a bit more, but my wife really likes the SG idea and anything that gets her feeling like running a game (which she has never done before and which both DP and SG have done) is a really good thing.

[PoC]

Currently very early days, with Dreamhounds of Paris in the lead, could it be...?

[tutunaku]

I would buy them all.

[heresiarch]

In a shameless attempt to influence the community towards the attractions of Pulp China, might I be allowed to point out some of the wonderful attractions. The Forbidden City, the southern reflection of the Forbidden City at Beihai. Shanghai and the Bund. The Heaven and Earth Society, the Righteous Harmony Fists, and many others. For those requiring the combination of yellowness and royalty, may I observer that yellow silk is traditionally the exclusive garb of the Chinese Emperor.

Might I draw also your attention to the Commercial Handbook of China, US Commerce Department, 1919, with 1187 pages of descriptions of: Provinces, Cities, Agriculture, Mineral, Communications and Railways, Treaty Ports, Newpapers and much more. Plus fine photographs:

1. The Bund at Shanghai: International Settlement 1
3. Water Gate, Canton , 77
4. Street scene in Canton 110
5. Residence of wealthy Chinese, Macao Ill
14. Part of the floating population on Soochow Creek, Shanghai 174
17. A Chinese jeweler's shop 193
20. The Dragon Throne under the Tsing Dynasty 212
47. Gate affording entrance to walled city of Nanking from Siakwan 587
etc.

OK, so I'd like to see a Pulp China supplement. (To be fair, if I have the cash, I'll probably get all three, so it is more about the order in which they appear). But there is also a serious point to this.

Much of the factual material you would need for a Pulp China sourcebook is included in the Commerical Handbook. And indeed you probably couldn't afford to publish an 1100+ page sourcebook. Since the Commerical Handbook is a work of the US Government, it is not copyrighted, so parts - pictures or text - can be resued. (17 USC 101).

Is there some value in thinking differently about how one might create a Pulp China sourcebook? The sourcebook should be the plots, the characters, and the crunchy mythos reinterpretations. Leave out all the bare facts - or point the reader at the something like the Commercial Handbook. This gives you more pages for plots. What do people think, what do you want in a sourcebook? Would you be willing to refer to a (free) internet resource, in addition to (say) a plot-book, or do you want everything in one place?

The reason I got to thinking like this is a friend has been running a Torchwood campaign set in Victorian London, using this sort of approach. The sourcebooks are Gazetteers and maps of London c.1900 and Who's Who. So if you want to know if there is a wine merchant on a given street - you can look it up. The GM then provides the twisted plots ..

(I'm not sure if this is the right place for this debate, but it seems like a good discussion to have)

[Blackburn]

It's reasonable to expect your audience to have a certain level of understanding of a topic, but a setting book has to be accessible to everyone, not just experts. The bare bones facts are excellent as jump-off points and peaking someone's interest in the setting. Not including them makes it more confusing and even daunting for someone else to join in, especially if you tell them that they need to go absorb a 1100 page book from the 30's in order to get the context. It would be like creating a source book that started without introduction and instead jumped straight into describing the weapons available to a member of Delta Green without explaining what Delta Green was or how it operates, or removing all explanation of who or what Nyarlathotep is from Masks and telling the Keeper to go research it for themselves, or taking out all maps, schedules or history of the Orient Express from Horror on the Orient Express. Sure the info is elsewhere, but it isn't fair to ask people who buy a source book to go do more research before they can grasp even the basics of the material.

After all, I love 1930's horror films, but I don't mind that Shadows Over Filmland take up page space to discuss tone, setting and scenery, even though I could have done that myself. I can use those for reference or refreshers if need be and they did double duty to make someone who doesn't watch black and white horror films a much better understanding of what the setting is all about.

I have no doubt that whatever they do next, Pelgrane will do a great job with it, as they struck a fantastic balance between context and game setting material and made London extremely available to people outside of it (and England) in Bookhounds. Being a Canadian who has never lived in London, I don't think Bookhounds would have been an attractive buy at all if it didn't give me the skeleton of the history of London and the book trade to drape things off of. I don't have a lot of time to do research for a campaign, even though I enjoy it, and I would rather spend that time focusing on the meat of the facts surrounding the investigations and campaign than having to do it to get the setting itself off the ground. If Bookhounds had set itself in London but then just splatted down Monsters, Tomes, Cults and a discussion on Tone, I probably wouldn't have bought it. I would have no interest in Many Fires, The Big Hoodoo, The Black Drop and even Castle Bravo (to a lesser extent) if those adventures didn't take the time to help you understand the basics of the setting, especially when they aren't settings I don't already have a fascination with. I would include Hellfire and Repairer of Reputations to that list except I already had an interest and good understanding of the settings.

Hell, I wouldn't have bought Trail of Cthulhu in the first place if it said that it was based in the 30's and then didn't spend time giving historical context to what that meant.

So that's my two sense on what should be in a setting book. I just don't think it would work to focus overly much on the game setting material and leave the context to external research. Especially since books referred to may be unavailable to the reader and something might happen to sites you refer to somewhere down the road. For example, I live in Toronto, Ontario, which is a very large city, and the only way I could get and read a copy of Frank Belknap Long's The Horror from the Hills was a single copy available in a special collection library where I had to read it on-site. If a source book simply explained Chaugnar Faugn by telling me to go read the story, I would never, EVER consider using it since I would only have a name to run on, and I can think up names myself.

[ElijahWhateley]

I don't think Blackburn's point can be stressed enough. While Southern Gothic might be an interesting enough setting for me to buy for myself, a Dreamhounds of Paris sourcebook is a book I could buy for my (CoC player, HPL co-fan, and) wife - and for her birthday/Christmas/whatever. The value of this cannot be discounted.

(And, no, I'm not saying all women have a thing about Paris, but she does, and her friends do, and my players do, and that is plenty for me...)

[bastthecatgoddess]

I don't play trail of cthulhu, but dream hounds of Paris sounds interesting.

[OlderNick]

I voted for Southern Gothic, which is kinda off target since China is such a close second, and I'd probably buy all three anyway...

Still, I'd like to throw in my thoughts on the Dreamhounds option:
I dont like the Dreamlands. Don't get me wrong, I think dreams are very powerful tool in horror stories, and I've seen other RPGs do interesting takes on their own version of the Dreamlands. I just don't like Lovecrafts Dreamlands. I find it to be a rather dull fantasy work. With floating disco cats.
But one of the big ideas in ToC has been to do things differently. Change things to surprise the players. So this is a chance to change the Dreamlands, to make it interesting. To get rid of those darn floating disco cats.
Also, the idea with surrealist painters, in Paris, with Hastur, isn't without its merits. Maybe even with the Dreamland thrown in, since it will get Hasturised anyway. Or better yet, Pelgranised.

[GBSteve]

Talking of which, it's Floating Disco Cats (a small Java animation)!

[rylehNC]

Yes.

In order of slavering desire, Southern Gothic, China, Dreamhounds.

[Jeff_Campbell]

I am interested in Pulp China, then Dreamhounds of Paris, then Southern Gothic, then Chicago.

[ElijahWhateley]

I dont like the Dreamlands. Don't get me wrong, I think dreams are very powerful tool in horror stories, and I've seen other RPGs do interesting takes on their own version of the Dreamlands. I just don't like Lovecrafts Dreamlands. I find it to be a rather dull fantasy work. With floating disco cats.

Obviously I have no idea what Pelgrane is planning, but I didn't assume Dreamhounds would have much of a connection to the Lovecrafts Dreamlands. The Dreamlands seem too strongly connected to Britain/New England, with a whole lot of Middle-Eastern, Greek, and Southeast Asian vibe.

I think the dream elements of Dreamhounds would much more likely take inspiration from the King in Yellow stories set in Paris and the French Decadents that Lovecraft so admired. Throw in Guy de Maupassants "Le Horla" (which is very much a pre-Mythos Mythos story, with a very neat monster, that has been suggested as a huge influence on HPL), the creepy catacombs (tunnels packed with bones running beneath the city, basically ghoul heaven), the Knights Templar, Foucault's Pendulum (an excellent Umberto Eco novel that includes Cthulhu in a very minor way and has a climax in Paris), the real-life alchemist Nicholas Flammel (whose house is now a restaurant, I believe - and, yes, the same Flammel from a certain children's series), Lovecraft's own French-set "The Alchemist", the terrors left behind by pre-Revolution decadence, the Reign of Terror, and Napoleon's popularization of Egyptology, Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, druids, all those unclassifiable artifacts in the Louvre (Leng? R'yleh? Where are these places?), that impressionist painting in the Musee D'Orsee inspired by that one old book, and maybe some Hounds of Tindalos...

[Careless]

Wow, congratulations Mr. Rogers and Pelgrane Press - you've snapped my sensibilities in two.

On the one hand - Being able to trace family roots to a region and growing up on stories of the "Nanjing Decade" does create a rather gigantic bias toward Pulp China. I mean except for some small tidbits on Shanghai (from Trail and Masks of Nyarlathotep), an adventure in Strange Aeons II, and some small mentions in Secrets of Japan - China's been relatively untouched in terms of Mythos connections. I know some Mythos writers make vague references a la Lovecraft to deathless sorcerers - but its usually in reference to Tibet (cause the shadow of Madame Blavatsky and Theosophy stretches a long way over the imaginations of Pulp writers - got a short brown mystically minded man? Stick him in the Himalayas).

It would be really nice to see some folks actually try and take this one on (heck, i'd volunteer for content sake)...

And yet i Know that Southern Gothic is probably a lot more accessible to the average ToC player.

And Dreamhounds of Paris is probably a lot more interesting to the average ToC group given that the applicability of the concept can be spread out even to Call of Cthulhu. That also includes the group i play with!

[Pookie]

Which of these supplements would you buy?

This bald question is the easiest way of measuring the relative popularity of supplement.

What a hairy question.