Saturday 7 April 2012

The Black Fan. Classic Call of Cthulhu Shanghai Style.

Got the Bank Holiday off with a bang today with a Call of Cthulhu all dayer.  Messrs Bryant & Johnston made the trip to HGA Towers to become their alter egos Henry Proctor & Gabriel Esterhazy of The Shanghai Municipal Police.
Previously these pillars of the community had been involved in the desperate business of "The Box that Sings" an affair that had left Esterhazy temporarily institutionalized and both of them in bad odour with their superiors. Luckily for them a nameless benefactor had used his influence to involve them in the search for a missing bookseller which was to ultimately lead to an upturn in their prospects.
Here are the duo in more detail.








After some confusion at the scene of the crime mainly caused by excessive thinking the wheat was quietly separated from the chaff and the net drew tighter around the perpetrators. A visit to a warehouse owned by The 21 Dollar Mob uncovered further clues to the victims whereabouts, the extraction of which were facilitated by a combination of Esterhazy's violent conduct & Proctor's poor marksmanship. After a brief return to Police Headquarters the by now tired and pissed off duo dropped all pretense of subtlety and stormed into a specialist brothel/ cult centre with all guns blazing and in a stupendous display of marksmanship and pure dumb luck dispatched every cultist in sight, dispelled the magic of The Black Fan & killed The Handmaiden of the Bloated Woman and rescued the kidnapped bookseller. Unfortunately the leader of the cult escaped by bending the fabric of time and space around him but he was denied further  access to The Seven Cryptic Books of H'san by dint of his hurried exit.

All in all a great day was had by everyone, the fact that a whole day passed so quickly being a fair indicator. From my point of view gamesmastering again set me to rights on a few points:
1. If I'm going to get back into old school or for that matter any other kind of roleplaying its going to be
a.) Based on investigation / deduction because thats what my player base enjoy (and so do I).
b.) Its going to be a lot of work for me.
2. Because its going to be a lot of work for me it will have to be occasional  day long sessions rather than frequent i.e weekly or fortnightly evening sessions. Given the nature of 1a & b this is probably a more coherent format.
3. A quick straw poll on the possibility of running a pure old school D&D campaign produced a negative result, but that blow was softened somewhat by the acknowledgement that a one off all-dayer complete with scenery and miniatures and the possibility of in game character advancement would be considered in a more positive fashion. On reflection and considering time constraints etc this is probably  a good result all round, frankly anything else would be prone to just peter out. Better perhaps to go for less frequent but more spectacular efforts, that at least is how it feels at this moment in time.

As it stands those are my thoughts, who knows a good nights sleep may cause a re-think but personally I always feel that first impressions count.

1 comment:

  1. That was a cracking session.
    It will remain in the memory banks for years to come.
    I am looking forward to another excursion for Henry Proctor and his sidekick!
    And that despite Cthulu or any horror not being something I normally enjoy.

    Will

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