Friday, January 29, 2016

A Campaign Idea- The Good Neighbors

This week, an idea stuck me for a very unconventional Victoriana campaign. I’ve had an itch to run a 1950s UFO conspiracy game for a few years now, but I just don’t have enough player interest. After reading “Lords and Ladies” by Terry Pratchett last week, I have a fun spin that could make for a series of unorthodox Victoriana adventures. Forget the 1950s and UFOs, it’s the 1850s and fairies.

In ancient times, the peoples of Britain sent the fey folk away to the Other Place. The rules and folklore that had kept their evil at bay is now forgotten by most. The wards keeping the door to the Other Place closed have been neglected and some fairies have crept through to prepare for the day when the way is open wide enough for the rest.
 The adventurers are ordinary men and women noticing the signs of the fairies’ return, the cracks in their glamour, and are fighting to uncover the truth. They can investigate disappearances in the country, secret government buildings in London, research ancient lore, and try to close the door to the Other Place. This campaign could work well with the Aetheric Branch, Selenium, Society for Spiritual Repose, or Star Chamber associations from the Victoriana 3rd edition rulebook.

Luckily there is a ton of overlap between Fairy Lore and UFO conspiracy theories to inspire adventures. Here are some examples:

According to legend, fairies have a hypnotic ability to appear beautiful or turn invisible, called “glamour”. Their glamour also gives control of humans under their spell. How can you fight invisible fairies? Are they invisible or do they just look like everyone else?

One of the most well known bits of fairy folklore is the story of the changeling. Fairies steal a child and leave a duplicate in its place. Adult men and woman are also supposedly kidnapped or led to Fairyland only to return days or years later, aged too much or not aged at all. Some don’t remember their experiences and or have “missing time”. Can their memories be unlocked? Is it really a returned person, or something else? What is the changeling left behind to do?

Some humans returned from fairyland have strange marks or scars on their bodies. What was done to them and for what purpose?

Perhaps some of the most powerful families in England have some long dormant fairy blood. If fairies can activate it, you could have an instant conspiracy in the British government, or a select few immune to the fairies glamour.

Fairies supposedly glow brightly. Could the strange moving lights in the night sky be fairy glamour? Or some sort of craft.

A fairy ring is a naturally occurring bunch of mushrooms growing a ring. According to folklore, the rings of mushrooms are caused by fairies dancing by moonlight. It’s not much of a stretch to go from rings of mushrooms to crop circles made by more intricate dances with sinister intentions.


I admit this is a bit of an oddball idea for a campaign, but the more I think about it the more I like it. It’s obvious and surprising at the same time. You can use classic UFO tropes and still leave the players guessing. There is so much rich material to mine and explore, from X-files to Midsummer Night’s Dream to keep this game fresh for a long time.


Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Happy Anniversary


One year ago I succumbed to my dear sisters assertions that I should start a blog. Sixty-eight posts, one original scenario, and thirty-two character portraits later, today is Skullduggery in the Smoke’s one year anniversary!
Thanks to everyone taking the time to read my posts. I could not blog without your weekly views. Look forward to another year of fresh content, old research, and better grammar.
Coincidentally, this week my gaming group begins a new Victorian campaign after a half year hiatus, which should provide crunchy game mechanics, house rules, and session reports for your reading pleasure.
This week, I’ll post an idea for a campaign inspired by ancient and modern folklore, and then in February I’m starting a series of Restaurant Write-ups to make your adventures more delicious. I hope you enjoy.

Friday, January 22, 2016

Victorian Paranormal Societies- The Society of Phantasmic Inquiry


In the Victorian age, scientific pursuit met the craze for spiritualism. Professional men, laymen, and the idle rich gathered in mutual fascination to explore the unknown. Clubs, societies, and cabals formed undertaking strange experiments, and bizarre investigations to understand paranormal phenomena. And that’s just the real world. Imagine what these groups would be up to in the World of Victoriana.
In the next few weeks, I’m presenting groups devoted to exploring the supernatural. From séance-busters to mind enhancing experiments, each group is described for use in your games. Each group could be an association, an employer, the main villain, or a just a mob of protesters blocking the street during a chase.
Some information (like the Sinister Ideas and Benevolent Ideas) is contradictory and will be dependent on their use in play. The terms Private and Public describe the club’s activates. Public describes activities the club willingly lets the general populace know, and Private describes activates and pursuits known only to initiates and the group’s leadership.
Reputation modifiers (Notoriety and Propriety) are applicable to any member of the groups (NPC or PC).

The Society of Phantasmic Inquiry
In 1853, a few Cambridge dons met to discuss ghosts and other paranormal events. Their meetings grew in attendance and frequency leading to the founding of the Society of Phantasmic Inquiry, and the relocation of their meetings from Cambridge to London.
Many important men of letters interested in myth, folklore, and history joined the Society, bolstering its resources and giving publicity to the Society’s efforts. The Society of Phantasmic Inquiry has become one of the most famous and well respected groups investigating the paranormal in London.
Public Goal: Use modern scientific methods to examine folklore, haunting, and other bizarre phenomena
Private Goal: Discover how ghosts are connected to specific locations and replicate their supernatural abilities
Membership: 20-30 (No female members officially, but each member is allowed a guest); Membership is by invitation only, all members are men of means, both high and middle class, with scientific and literary interests
Meetings: Regular Thursday meetings in rented banquet halls, parlors, and dining rooms (Public- visiting journalists occasionally describe meetings in newspaper articles); Séances, private illusionist performances, visitations of known haunted houses (Private)
Sinister Ideas: A search for the secrets hidden behind fairy stories, bizarre vigils in dark places, men of influence using their resources to tap into terrifying histories,
Benevolent Ideas: Men of perception helping lost spirits find closure, scientific and folkloric curiosity
Notoriety: 1 (Some humorous second hand stories about a disastrous night in a supposedly haunted tavern have made the rounds)  
Propriety: 2 (many member’s have distinguished artistic and scholastic reputations in the public eye) Sample Members: 
 Harry Bradshaw (Dwarven journalist concerned with civic improvement and the true lives of the underprivileged)
Bransby Wattwright (Respected eldren mathematician and mechanical engineer with a curious but skeptical mind)
Leah Katherine Garret (A trusted bearfolk magnetist often consulted by the society, fearful of the Guild)
Leadership:
Richard Aburrow (Famous human author and journalist whose enthusiasm for the club has doubled its membership)
Professor Howard Spofforth (Serious-minded gnome professor of astronomy with a preference for quiet contemplation)  

Plot Hooks
A few members of the Society took a holiday to the country to research local legends. They are now missing. Their last telegram describes three-legged hoof-prints around ancient standing stones.

Ghostly presences in a library pull books off the shelves to make strange geometric stacks. All the books are on the same subject. Who or what is behind it and what is its purpose?

Small winged humanoid skeletons found in recent excavations could be proof of the existence of fairies. The Society has a chance to independently authenticate the remains.

Friday, January 15, 2016

Victorian Paranormal Societies- Specter Catchers

In the Victorian age, scientific pursuit met the craze for spiritualism. Professional men, laymen, and the idle rich gathered in mutual fascination to explore the unknown. Clubs, societies, and cabals formed undertaking strange experiments, and bizarre investigations to understand paranormal phenomena. And that’s just the real world. Imagine what these groups would be up to in the World of Victoriana.
In the next few weeks, I’m presenting groups devoted to exploring the supernatural. From séance-busters to mind enhancing experiments, each group is described for use in your games. Each group could be an association, an employer, the main villain, or a just a mob of protesters blocking the street during a chase.
Some information (like the Sinister Ideas and Benevolent Ideas) is contradictory and will be dependent on their use in play. The terms Private and Public describe the club’s activates. Public describes activities the club willingly lets the general populace know, and Private describes activates and pursuits known only to initiates and the group’s leadership.
Reputation modifiers (Notoriety and Propriety) are applicable to any member of the groups (NPC or PC).  

Specter Catchers
In the rookery, where constables won’t travel in groups less than four, evil festers and preys on the poor souls stuck in the slums. The destitute and desperate look for help from their only defense against the unknown: a small cadre they call Specter Catchers.
Specter Catchers is a group of ordinary men and woman banding together to protect their neighborhoods. Some want revenge, knowledge, or trophies, others just want to make a better world for their children. When a rumor of something dangerous spreads in the rookery, Specter Catchers’ members close shops early, leave the baby with mother and prepare to hunt.
Most members’ training and equipment are poor but their connections and know-how gets the job done. Known members of Specter Catchers are very highly regarded in the community. After a successful investigation gifts of food and spare clothing are always forthcoming.  

Public Goal: To keep the streets safe from violent supernatural threats  
Private Goal: Same  
Membership: 5-10; mostly lowerclass working men and woman and a few specialists fallen on hard times
Meetings: No regular meetings, they assemble and plan in any space available to them (living rooms, pubs etc)
Sinister Ideas: A benefactor with a malevolent goal, members extorting rewards from those they help, a blind quest for revenge
Benevolent Ideas: Plucky unsung heroes stand against evil, practical and methodical monster hunting
Notoriety: 2 (untrained upstarts digging into things they cannot understand; it’s criminal and pathetic)
Propriety: 2 (a noble cause with little reward, very well regarded in the Rookery)
Sample Members:
Avarice Wellington (Young catfolk pickpocket with a bossy attitude and a devious mind)
Carl Chalmers (Devout church-going ogre with a pugilistic past)
Father Douglas Peabodie (Idealistic dwarven priest eager to help his parishioners with spiritual matters)
Leadership:
Mother Sweets (Middle class dwarven widow, charity worker, and conjurer)
Jack Mcbride (Human rat catcher with eyes on the street, and a friend in every bar)

Plot Hooks
An influential Guild scientist died violently in a local house of ill repute. The Guild and the police are focusing their investigations elsewhere to avoid bringing scandal to his name, despite three similar deaths nearby.

Several locals have been cursed, and changed into monstrous feral forms. If the police find them first, they will be killed on sight for public safety. If Specter Catchers can survive long enough to catch them first, they may stand chance.

The Specter Catchers suspect a criminal recently released from prison may be guilty of worse crimes than those of which he was convicted. Will they be acting against a mostly innocent man?

Friday, January 8, 2016

Victorian Paranormal Societies- The Laocoön Club

In the Victorian age, scientific pursuit met the craze for spiritualism. Professional men, laymen, and the idle rich gathered in mutual fascination to explore the unknown. Clubs, societies, and cabals formed, undertaking strange experiments, and bizarre investigations to understand paranormal phenomena. And that’s just the real world. Imagine what these groups would be up to in the World of Victoriana.
In the next few weeks, I’m presenting groups devoted to exploring the supernatural. From séance-busters to mind enhancing experiments, each group is described for use in your games. Each group could be an association, an employer, the main villain, or a just a mob of protesters blocking the street during a chase.
Some information (like the Sinister Ideas and Benevolent Ideas) is contradictory and will be dependent on their use in play. The terms Private and Public describe the club’s activates. Public describes activities the club willingly lets the general populace know, and Private describes activates and pursuits known only to initiates and the group’s leadership.
Reputation modifiers (Notoriety and Propriety) are applicable to any member of the groups (NPC or PC).  

The Laocoön Club (The Table-Shaker-Shakers)
Students taking courses of Empirical Thaumaturgy listened to their professors lecture on the “low” magical traditions and superstitions competing with Guild Hermetic practices. A few of the student’s decided to do something about it.
Students belonging to the Laocoön club secretly gather to sniff out magical charlatanry in London and expose it. Their targets include: séance parlors, fortune tellers, enchanters, and mystics. An evening’s work could range from heckling a stage magician, researching public records, or breaking into a haunted house.
So far, their interruptive investigations have not been discovered officially and shut down. Their professors may admonish their disruptive and dangerous behavior but they always applaud their cleverness and desire for truth.
While some are genuinely interested in unmasking frauds, most Laocoön club members relish sneaking around London, spying their target, and mercilessly taunting their victim after revealing their fakery.  
Public Goal: Discover and publicly denounce magical hoaxes, charlatans, and superstition  
Private Goal: To have exiting adventures, catching the eye of Guild magicians  
Membership: 10-20; All students (males ages 12-18), along with steady girlfriends, outside school friends, and some trustworthy faculty  
Meetings: Planning in dormitories, classrooms and libraries (Private), followed by evenings in theaters, and séance parlors (Public)  
Sinister Ideas: Collegiate vigilantism, harassed or injured magical practitioners and entertainers, know-it-all student’s playing with powers they can’t understand, vengeance from the target of an investigation 
Benevolent Ideas: Genuine scientific curiosity, unmasking confidence men, boy sleuths solving mysteries
Notoriety: 1 (Hooligans up to who-knows-what is a disgrace to the school’s reputation)  
Propriety: 0 (Not very many members, all quite young)  

Sample Members: 
Walter “Piper” Fyfe (bespeckled dwarf on the fast track to be a magician’s apprentice)
Jack Timber (secretly superstitious halfling athlete, who doesn’t like following orders)
Samuel “Chicken” Hawkins (easily led Eldren schoolboy fascinated by mechanical workings)  

Leadership: 
Victor Ludorum (human, prize-winning student, ring leader and teacher’s pet)
Professor Allen Denizen (inspiring and opinionated gnome teacher, with very few friends at the Guild)  

Plot Hooks
A famous stage magician has offered a sizable reward to anyone able to explain his Twin Brother Death Trap Trick. The boast caught the Laocoön club’s eye, but they may need help or the magician may need extra security.
One of their professors wants to stop the increasingly illegal activities of the Laocoön Club. He doesn’t want to expel sons of the most influential businessmen in London and ruin their potential careers, so he asks for help arranging a Séance the club will never forget.
The Laocoön club has bitten off more than they can chew. Their younger members dream terrifying visions and wake with small bites on their hands. A few have quit the club. Does the curse come from without or within?