Beat the Boss I: First Thoughts

Beat the Boss puts you in the role of the organizer in a struggle for social and economic justice. The bulk of the action takes place in the most normal of places: living rooms and dining rooms. Organizers talk to workers about hope and the future. If you use this game for training, you'll use your own rap for the conversation and other players will fill in for the workers. - Beat the Boss, p. 7.

Beat the Boss is my latest backed Kickstarter. Written by Doug Geisler, an American union organizer, BtB is a game about activists organizing a union in their workplace or organizing within their community. The opposition, as the title implies, is the Boss - the face of the employer of workers trying to unionize - or Decision Makers - the powers that be that are stifling the struggle for economic and social justice within a community. This post and those following will be variously a read-through, a review, and some vaguely related thoughts on the book and subject matter. The game is available on drivethrurpg, here.

Physically, the book is pretty spare. Illustrations are good, but minimal; the cover is just black-and-white text; and the internal text is more or less decent word processor fare. Purely stylistically, I think a bit more work could've been put into formatting - having each Tendency (the type of Organizer you are) on a separate page or pages, for example, would have cleaned up the book a bit and made it easier to print each one off like a playbook in Apocalypse World. I will note, though, that playbooks are available as a PWYW separate file on DTRPG.

I was, by the way, disappointed right at the outset that the PDF version doesn't come with this keen cover. But anyway.

I will say before going any further that I appreciate what Beat the Boss is trying to do, and I don't regret backing the Kickstarter; if nothing else, it's an interesting take on an often-neglected aspect of modern life. I do think there's significant room for improvement, though, and I'm approaching BtB with hopefully constructive criticism.

Beat the Boss is squarely within my wheelhouse. A role-playing game about union organizing? Yes please!

I'm sure there's a union card joke to be made here somewhere.

Except Beat the Boss isn't really a role-playing game - or, at least, that's not its primary purpose. It describes itself as a "roleplaying game, a training tool, and the seeds of the revolution." It's an ambitious agenda, and the book has a lot of heart.  My concern with Beat the Boss is that it is too much a training tool to be a stand-alone game, and too much of a game to be a stand-alone training simulation. By this I mean there doesn't seem to be enough of a game here to satisfy gamers, and it's not accessible enough as a tool for non-gamer activists. As an example, the game suggests that union activists can develop campaigns (and associated Moves) based on their own industry or community, but it doesn't really give guidelines on how one would do that. I'm pretty familiar with trade unionism in the health care sector, but I'm new to PbtA games, and the rulebook doesn't help me adapt BtB's system to that industry. Were I a non-gamer, I'm not sure I would have any idea how to proceed. All told, were I using this as a training tool I would really want things explained much more clearly for non-gamers.

(The book has an introductory chapter, but advises early on that those who have played role-playing games should jump ahead to Chapter Two. I think that's a mistake; Chapter One does subsequently have some important information on things that non-union-savvy people might need (here's what we mean by "union buster") and things that those experienced in gaming, but not with games Powered by the Apocalypse, might need (here's what we mean by "Moves").)

The book does suggest that sample campaigns can be found on Practical Fox's website, but I couldn't find any there as yet, so I don't even have an example to work from. Honestly, I think it's a major failing of the book not to have a sample campaign set out within it. I know that organizing can differ dramatically from industry to industry, and from workplace to workplace; organizing taxi drivers is vastly different in practical terms than organizing a school district's educational assistants. But without a default campaign or starting point, it's tough to know how to craft your own. Like the Playbooks, there is a PWYW Campaign Template file on DTRPG, but a sample predesigned campaign would, in my view, really help BtB - for both organizers and gamers.

Chapter One gives a pretty clear sense of what BtB is about. It sets out what is at stake for workers in modern America and paints a (realistically) bleak picture of the forces arrayed against workers seeking a collective voice, or communities seeking to deal with profound social issues.

The rules are made to reflect the real hardship of workers coming together. Each Campaign Stage is full of opportunities for workers turn back from their higher selves and remain in their self-interested silos isolated from the community around them. Organizers are marked by anger; fear, and frustration that swirls in clouds around workers fighting bosses. (p. 7)

The lack of options for alternative settings also limits BtB's use as a game. The game is strictly tied to modern Wagner Act-style, specifically American, trade unionism. (Obviously U.S. labour legislation has changed significantly since 1935 but the basic model has remained the same.) This means that it would be tough to run a BtB game about, for instance, coal miners or railroad workers taking on the Pinkertons in the nineteenth century American West, or loom-wreckers taking on factory owners in eighteenth century England. Adaptation may be possible but it would seem to be a lot of work.

The face of radical labour "loomed" large back then.
(Luddites, from vice.com)

 

Again, this is perfectly fine for a tool set on training labour organizers today. It's limiting for BtB as a game - and that's okay too. Lord knows PbtA games tend to be tightly designed to fit a specific setting. Beat the Boss is up-front about this:

If you are a seasoned gamer of games, this game may feel like it's railroading the players. While the overall narrative for workers who are organizing is similar to a linear story, there is a great deal of latitude in the plotline. The interaction between characters and the game system creates great fiction. Play on. (p. 4)

So I'm not saying BtB needs to be a generic system for playing as trade unionists. That's not what it aims to do. But I think it's nonetheless an important limitation to recognize for those thinking about buying the game as a game.

I'll also note that I'm Canadian, and Canadian labour law is also based on the Wagner Act, but there are significant differences between our labour law systems. For a start, labour law is predominantly provincial jurisdiction in Canada, so every province (and the feds, for the federal public service and  those limited industries who fall within the federal government's purview) will have slightly different labour relations law. Union election campaigns are much more limited in Canada; some jurisdictions have "card certification", where a workplace can be organized without a secret ballot election at all, and others are "quick vote" jurisdictions, where a vote must take place within 5 or 10 business days. The time limits make prolonged anti-union campaigns by an employer more difficult, and Canadian jurisdictions also tend to place greater restrictions on an employer's ability to campaign against a union than we see in the United States.

That said, it's not like the kinds of things Beat the Boss uses as Boss Moves - hiring a union-busting lawyer, giving benefits to employees who don't support certification, firing workers who support the union - don't happen here in the Great White North. They do, and with increasing regularity as big American companies like Wal-mart move here. So BtB is relatively compatible with the Canadian system, but again some adaptation would be necessary to reflect the arguably more structured Canadian version of the Wagner Act...and unfortunately that probably means less drama, as Canadian law is very much about keeping things nice and contained. So, again, BtB might work as a training module in Canada, but would probably be less interesting as a game...though the Hearing Master Tendency might be very useful.

So to my next point, these individuals should be considered "supervisory
employees" and not "managers" for the following four reasons...

Anyway. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Sheesh. Back to Beat the Boss.

Chapter One also has some useful advice on the use of adult content, setting boundaries, and handling the conversation. It also sets out the general types of Move available:

There are several types of moves: Organizing (outward facing work), Campaign (internal facing work), Special, Boss, and Tendency moves. (p. 11)

 ...and talks a bit about die rolling and a few technical terms like what "+1 forward" means. Which, for the record, I didn't know - another reason for even experienced gamers not to skip Chapter One!

In sum, thus far I think Beat the Boss is a cool idea, but one with a very narrow scope (which may or may not be an issue for your group), and I think the intro chapter could do a better job of walking the line between training tool and role-playing game; as it stands, I'm not sure it really succeeds at introducing the game as either/or.

Next: Characters!

Call of Cthulhu Minis: Cars!

Just a short post. I've finally had a change to run Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed and we have had a blast, finishing two classic intro adventures : Edge of Darkness and The Haunting. It's also given me a chance to use a bunch of my miniatures. I've written before about Bob Murch's Cthulhu line of minis (which I've since purchased, of course) and his "Pulp Figures" line, both of which are great.

But, of course, like a shark (...or at least certain species of shark), my wallet must keep moving to stay alive.

I've been watching and enjoying a lot of Seth Skorkowsky's YouTube videos. I watched his video on miniatures for Call of Cthulhu - not super relevant for my own purposes since I've got a ton of Murch's stuff (Or dare I say...murchandise? I can't possibly be the first person to think of that joke) but one part that did catch my eye was Skorkowsky's reference to Matchbox's "Models of Yesteryear" long-discontinued line of toy cars. He confirmed the opinion I've seen elsewhere that 1/43 scale models are the right size for 28mm minis, even though not quite to 28mm scale (which is technically somewhere around 1/64 scale).

To Ebay!

"This shark-wallet metaphor's kinda tortured, Frank."
(from surferworld.com)

There's a collector's market for the "Models of Yesteryear" so many of the cars are very expensive. But there are certainly some non-mint cars that are available for pretty cheap. I managed to find an Ebay lot that was in "played with" condition, so, pretty much zero interest for collectors. But it was fine for me! A bit of model glue to fix a few broken parts and we're good to go.

So, examples.

Zardon the Magnificent prepares to head to a show.

Miss Zelda Foster and her driver, not noticing what's about to happen. (The zombies are from the Zombies! board game.)

Gangland shootout! I really like this Victoria Packard, and choose to ignore that it's an anachronism in most Call of Cthulhu games, being a 1930 model.

And of course some Deep Ones.

"'Let's drive to Innsmouth,' you said. 'Genealogical research,' you said."

The cars do vary a bit in scale and, overall, probably are a bit large (again, the cars being mostly 1/43 vs 1/64 scale for the minis). But once the minis are on bases, the scale works really well.

And they definitely trigger the "vroom, vroom" instinct in my inner ten-year-old.


Of course now I need a set-up that requires some parked cars or, better still, a chase scene! (I still need to use the 7th Ed chase rules.)

From philgamer.wordpress.com

Quick and Dirty Fudge Rules for the Cthulhu Mythos

I've been a long-time fan of the Cthulhu Mythos (though for gamers, that's hardly unique - indeed it's almost a cliche at this point), and my wife is a huge fan of Eldritch Horror. I want to run a one-on-one occult investigation game, but we have a newborn and that makes gaming time (and space) difficult to come by. So, I wanted something light - like, rules fit on one page and characters fit on a 3x5 index card light. Dice should be minimal. Rules should play fast and loose, with no significant record-keeping. Minimal skill list.

And I figured, why not Fudge? I've always been intrigued by the game, as well as one of its successors, Fate. But Fate has never really hit the right chord for me. I don't like the "authorial" stance into which Fate pushes me; plus, given our circumstances, I don't want to have to worry about writing stuff onto index cards or sticky notes. Plus - and this is a goofy reason, I know - I just plain like rolling Fudge dice. So that says Fudge.

I mean, there are plenty of alternatives. I already own two editions (5.6 and 7) of Call of Cthulhu, as well as Trail of Cthulhu and Nemesis, plus other games that could easily be reskinned to the Mythos - Unknown Armies orUnisystem (Angel or All Flesh Must be Eaten), perhaps. Cthulhu Confidential looks pretty great for one-on-one play, but at 300+ pages, it's way too heavy for what I'm doing, and I don't want to have to learn a whole new game system. Other rules-light systems like Cthulhu Risus would also be an option, of course. But I'm sticking with Fudge because I've never had a chance to run it and I think it'll work well.

And so, while it's a work in progress, I figured I'd share what I've got so far.

I. Character Creation

Step One: Traits, not Skills. I'm ditching skills entirely. Instead, I'm taking the skills from Eldritch Horror, making 'em into Traits, and adding in Agility to fill a gap. So a character's Traits are now:

• Lore
• Observation
• Influence
• Will
• Agility
• Strength

Fudge runs on a scale from -3 to +3, and all these traits start at 0. Apply six points (on a one-to-one basis) to the Traits. Only one Trait can start at +3. (This might seem a bit lean but even at 0, a character has around a 60% chance of succeeding at normal difficulty tasks so a +1 or +2 is pretty good!)

For a more involved campaign I might add Skills back in (probably "broad" skill groups appropriate to the genre) and maybe a Wealth Trait or Credit Rating Skill. (In keeping with the Eldritch Horror roots of this hack, Influence could stand in in some circumstances.) But then again, for a more involved campaign I'd probably just run Call of Cthulhu anyway.

Step Two: Pick a Profession. Pick three situations where the character would get a +1 bonus when rolling against a certain Trait. (Why three? I dunno.) The bonuses should be significant but situational.  For example: I'm a P.I., so I get +1 to Agility when shooting a firearm. I'm a Journalist so I get +1 to Lore when doing non-occult research. I'm rich so I get a +1 Influence where money makes a difference. I'm a former cult member so I get +1 to Will when resisting Terror.

For sure, not all bonuses are created equal, but that's fine. We don't have to worry about party balance.

Step Three: Pick Belongings. There's no limit on this, but they should be appropriate to the character.

Step Four: Pick a Complication. This is something that makes the character's life more complicated. In game terms, the GM has explicit permission to use the Complication to make the character's life miserable (e.g. to turn a rolled success into a failure, to make a given task impossible, to take away an important possession or NPC). But when the Complication is used in this way, the character earns a Fudge Point and an Experience Point - like a combination of Compels in Fate, and Flaws in 7th Sea 1st Ed. This might be too, well, complicated or meta for a true quick-and-dirty system, but we'll see how it plays.

Step Five: Record 5 Fudge Points on the character's sheet. They operate much as set out in the Fudge rules.

And that's it! Because I'm not using Skills, and therefore there are fewer things to spend experience points on, I'm thinking I'll require a fair number of EPs to raise a Trait. But really, that's almost certainly moot. I doubt we'll play enough for Traits to significantly increase anyway. (Hey, having almost no mechanical character devlopment worked in the original Traveller.)

 II. Combat and Sanity

I've taken the most basic approach to Sanity suggested from various takes on the topic: I just created a separate track for mental damage. I've just termed the two tracks, collectively, Trauma, and followed Fudge rules for Physical Trauma - Scratched, Hurt, Very Hurt, Incapacitated, and Near Death. I set up similar categories for Mental Trauma - Unsettled, Shaken, Traumatized, Incapacitated, and Insane. I've expanded the second category (Hurt and Shaken) in each to two boxes rather than one. (I might also expand the first category to four, from three. We'll see.)

Physical combat is as per regular Fudge rules. Sanity is a bit different. Every spell and unnatural event and creature has a Terror (or Unnatural, or Wibble - whatever) score. Roll Will vs. that score or lose Sanity. Failing a Lore test when casting a spell also costs you Sanity. If you're reduced to Traumatized or lower on the mental track, you probably have a phobia, PTSD, or other ongoing mental condition that will require treatment. If you're Insane, you won't recover without professional help (just like you'll die without help if you're reduced to Near Death). Otherwise Mental trauma accumulates just the same as Physical trauma.

Eyeballing it, and taking into account the guidelines in Fudge for physical damage (e.g. a .45 would have a damage of 2 or 3) I'm thinking that seeing a dead body would be a -1 or 0 Will test. A Deep One would be 0. A zombie would be +1. A Dark Young or Shoggoth would be +3. Cthulhu would be +4 or up.

This does mean that, unlike in Call of Cthulhu, there probably won't be the ongoing slow decline of Sanity. It'll play more like Sanity in Eldritch Horror. That's fine for my purposes.

III. Credit where credit's due
 
Files that were useful in putting this together:

Fudge 1995 Edition from Grey Ghost Press.
Solo Game with Fudge and Horror from Stargazer's World.
Fudge Sanity (three different takes on Sanity rules) by R. Behrends, M. Lucas, and M. Harvey.
Going Slightly Mad by Fred Hicks (by way of the Wayback Machine) - more Sanity rules.
Call of Fudge by Tim Hall.

Crucible Crush Strikes Again: Cthulhu Minis!

A while back I wrote enthusiastically about Bob Murch's truly excellent Haudenosaunee/Weyndat warband miniatures and his eminently Cthulhu-appropriate Pulp Figures. In my post about the Pulp Figures I'd said I really hoped Bob and Crucible Crush would move on to explicitly Call of Cthulhu-themed miniatures.

I've been a bit out of the loop for the last few months, but I was delighted the other day to see that Crucible Crush has, indeed, produced some fantastic Cthulhu sets.

VISIT SCENIC INNSMOUTH. VISIT IT!

The down side is that, unlike the Pulp Figures lines, these minis only come in sets of 10 (though you do also get a vile idol or weird portal with each set.)

I like to think of myself as adding value.

So at fifty bucks a set, you'd better know you really want 'em. They are pretty cool, though.

"A sea captain, a magician, and an archaeologist walk into a portal..."

Really, I just have to decide if (a) I'll be running a Call of Cthulhu campaign that will last long enough to justify the purchase; and (b) whether I'll really need these sets, given the pulp minis I've already bought from CC.

Regardless, these are some good-lookin' minis.

Miniatures for First Nations/Native American Characters (Or Lack Thereof)

It was payday, and I regret nothing.

Flush with satisfaction at my earlier purchase of Cthulhu-suitable minis from Canadian company Pulp Figures, I splurged on pre-ordering sets of Huron and Iroquois warriors from Crucible Crush's Flint and Feather line. (Bob Murch is the sculptor for both.)

Needless to say, mine won't look as nice, what with my ham-handed painting.

 I also ordered the Spirit Creatures set because, what the hell. The Stone Coat Giant looks awesome.

"You hear something?"

Because Flint & Feather is a skirmish wargame, the miniatures are specifically tailored to warbands. You'll note, therefore, that while there are a couple of minis that aren't entirely martial, most of them represent warriors, and they're all male.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not really much for wargames and my main interest in miniatures is for their use in role-playing games. (Though I might try Flint & Feather at some point; the playtest rules are available for free.) And I've often thought that a game setting inspired by the history and mythology of the Iroquoian peoples of the Great Lakes Region - especially the Five (later Six) nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, or their great rivals, the nations of the Wendat (Huron) Confederacy - could be pretty great. Difficult to do right, for sure, but with tons of potential.

(Note: "Iroquoian" refers to a group of related languages, which included those spoken by the Iroquois, the Huron, and others; where "Iroquois" refers to the Haudenosaunee specifically.)

So I went looking for miniatures for various First Nations (I'm Canadian so I tend to use "First Nations" to refer to the original cultures of North America), to see what was out there. And the selection is pretty limited.

I'm going to limit myself here to miniatures. One topic I'm not going to get into in depth - at least not in this post - is how one should approach crafting a role-playing game based on another culture. Suffice to say, especially with First Nations cultures - which Canada has an appalling history of attempting to eradicate - cultural sensitivity is a must. Witness the criticisms of J.K. Rowling's rather ham-handed use of "Native American" magic in Pottermore, for instance. If your setting will have mystical powers, it's not really appropriate to place traditional cultural beliefs under the rubric of "magic". One wonders, for instance, if Rowling - not to pick on J.K. - would have included transubstantiation in the Catholic faith as Hogwarts "magic".

"Transformus Sanguinus!" (Picture: dailymail.co.uk)

That said, as a secular humanist-type chap, I tend to view all religious beliefs as, effectively, magical thinking. But that, too, is a topic for 'nother time.

Further, there's a long history of stereotypes and overgeneralization, on the one hand (there were hundreds of distinct cultures in North America prior to contact with Europeans), and erasure or invisibility, where indigenous cultures just don't appear, on the other. Finding a middle ground can be tough. And, there are precious few role-playing games that deal with First Nations-inspired cultures as anything but a sideshow, or that have First Nations-inspired protagonists. Ehdrigohr is one, a recent FATE-based system where the human cultures are all based on various real-world First Nations cultures, including those beyond the Great Lakes or Great Plains. How We Came to Live Here is another though it is, interestingly enough, not currently available because Galileo Games is revising it with the assistance of cultural consultants. New Fire (which, as part of its Kickstarter campaign, did consult with linguistic and cultural experts) presents a fantasy empire and cosmology inspired by the Aztecs, with nary a Conquistador in sight. But these are exceptions.

Point is, it's really difficult to find a game with First Nations-style cultures that isn't set post-European contact - that is, games that are actually set in settings based upon First Nations cultures and myths.  Deadlands and other Old West games often have the option of playing a member of one of the Great Plains nations, of course, and you could certainly create, say, a party of Apache warriors in such a setting. But the bulk of material is about the settler cultures and technologies, and (as in Shadowrun) the power of the Plains First Nations in Deadlands arises in reaction to the settlers' encroachment.

Which, um, brings me back to miniatures.

Depending on the setting, you'll want at least the option of female characters - either PCs or NPCs - and, one assumes, female characters that go beyond traditional female roles, just as you see in many games based on other cultures, whether the "castles and knights and, fuck I dunno, Romans and Elves and laser guns and shit" of Dungeons & Dragons, the "Japan + the rest of Asia in a blender, hit 'puree'" of Legend of the Five Rings, or the pseudo-Old West of Deadlands. And you'll probably want a range of character roles, too, not just warriors.

When I went looking online for miniatures suitable for non-martial characters - especially female ones - in an Iroquois-inspired setting, or indeed any First Nations/Native American setting, I had a lot of trouble finding, well, much of anything.


(A quick note, just to reinforce: This isn't about Crucible Crush, whose Flint & Feather line is, as I noted above, perfectly suited to the role for which it was sculpted. I am talking more generally here. And, for that matter, Bob Murch notes that he is "uncontrollably sculpting Heroes, Warriors, Shaman, medicine women and whatever else strikes my fancy", so we might see some more non-martial minis in the future from CC. Which would be awesome.)

And in an RPG setting based on the Haudenosaunee or the Wendat, this is a real issue. Because while the nations within each confederacy had strict gender divisions, both were matrilineal (families and inheritance went through the mother) and women had significant political power, including the power to appoint (or depose) chiefs. And in an RPG setting, it's open to further relax those divisions. So we'll need some female minis too. I was surprised at just how few female First Nations minis - from anyone - there were. Never mind the general lack of minis for non-warrior characters.

Beyond gender and social role, there's not a real range of cultures available, either. First Nations minis are generally of two types: Haudenosaunee and/or Wendat warriors for the Seven Years War (what Americans tend to call the "French and Indian War"), or Great Plains cultures (especially the Apache) for "Old West" lines. Flint & Feather, being set pre-contact, is an exception. Another exception is the Aztecs, for whom there seem to be more options available (see e.g.this line from Outpost Wargame Services). Again, most of  these seem mostly aimed at either the wargame or diorama hobbyist - not RPGs. And good luck finding minis that are suitable for the nations of the West Coast, like the Haida or the Kwakwaka'wakw; or more southerly cultures like the Cherokee or Navajo.

 Reaper does have a couple of nice minis, for sure; though the use of "Native American" (rather than specifying a particular culture or nation) kind of makes my teeth itch. Very specific to the Great Plains, though, and only the Shaman mini really says "Player Character" to me.

"Native American Chieftan".  (Reaper miniatures)

"Female Indian Shaman".  (Reaper miniatures)

Now the limited selection can be easily explained: As I mentioned above, there just aren't that many games where First Nations cultures are in the spotlight, so there's not much call for a broad range of First Nations characters. And as far as wargames are concerned, the bulk of attention is either the Seven Years War or the Old West. And, to top it all off, any minis (at least non-warrior types) that are suitable for an RPG like Ehdrigohr probably wouldn't then be suitable for "historical" minis, further limiting their market. The female shaman from Reaper, for instance, would be fine for Deadlands; but it's certainly not "historically accurate".

I'm not criticizing miniatures companies here (nor the gaming community or industry, either). But it is notable that in miniatures as in Hollywood, the vast majority of First Nations people are either antagonists or, possibly, allies within the broader settler, post-European contact, context. They're not protagonists, and the setting isn't theirs - they just happen to exist within it.

But all of that said, I'm certainly looking forward to receiving my impulse buy well-thought-out and entirely justifiable purchases from Crucible Crush. Especially the Stone Coat Giant.

(And if anyone - and I'm not foolin' myself that this blog gets much traffic - happens to know of any mini lines that do have a broader range of characters available, do let me know!)

Pulp Figures Minis - Worth a Look for Call of Cthulhu GMs

I recently ordered some miniatures from Pulp Figures, a company I hadn't heard of prior to a Google search for "pulp era miniatures" while putting together a Call of Cthulhu 1920s campaign (see my previous post on 1921 Boston). I was pleasantly surprised to find a Canadian company (PF is based in Kelowna, BC) producing minis, and I'm very pleased with my purchase. I was pretty particular about the minis, as you'll see - and in retrospect, maybe too particular. But, oh well, maybe next payday I'll put in another order...

My perusal of PF's catalogue was, I admit, incomplete. I didn't bother much with the military lines, simply because my campaign is going to be pretty standard Cthulhu - 1921 Boston, urban characters, probably not wandering too far from home. But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that PF has numerous lines including U.S. Adventurers, the French Foreign Legion, the British Empire...

The minis are not specifically for Cthulhu. They're specifically pulp minis, meaning that the "occult investigator" niche isn't really represented. They're maybe a bit more, er, rugged than you might expect for a default Lovecraftian group. But here are certainly sets within the "Weird Science", "Gangland Justice", and "Heroes and Personalities" series, or figures within those sets, that are perfectly good for Cthulhu gaming. And if your campaign is more rugged than the default, many of the minis would be great.

Not just archaelogists! RUGGED archaeologists!

 
That said, I didn't order the "Drawing Room Detectives" set because I'd originally thought it was too tied to the Agatha Christie genre, but in retrospect they would've been a worthwhile purchase as investigators.

DON'T. READ. THE. BOOK.

There are Hooded Minions, which I also didn't buy, because they seemed to be better suited to stories with two-fisted heroes like The Shadow. Again, perhaps I was being a bit too particular. Upon review they'd work fine.

 But the Cultists are perfect for Cthulhu. 

Hard-boiled P.I. confronts cultists. Tale as old as time.

You may have to pick and choose from wtihin full sets, though. The "guns for hire" set from the "Gangland Justice" series have some figures that would suit private investigators and other, tougher, investigators (the "P.I." in the above picture is from that set). 

"You lookin' at me? I don't see anyone else here."

 
And the other figures, even if not really suited for the typical Cthulhu party of PCs, would work fine as NPCs and antagonists. The News Hounds set (also from Gangland Justice) has some decent figures for Cthulhu.

"Dangerous Dames" from the "Heroes and Personalities" series has some good figs as well, though again, maybe a bit more rugged/adventurous than expected for "standard" Cthulhu.

Dangerous Dames vs. Female Cultists! FIGHT!

If you want to go full-on gonzo pulp, maybe advancing to the 1930s (say, a game of Achtung! Cthulhu) you've got cultists in gas masks, Nazis, mad scientists, killer robots .... (All from the "Weird Science" collection.)


Physically, the minis are pewter, and cleanly sculpted. They are mostly free of excess metal, though a few will require filing or trimming. The main down side I see with these miniatures is the size of the various bases. A number of the bases are quite small; if used in a tabletop rpg, maybe a bit too small. The bases aren't standardized, and the minis don't use a slotted plastic base either.  I think some of these minis will be a bit unsteady in the usual to-and-fro of a tabletop RPG session. I might try my hand at rebasing them at some point.  (You'll notice most of the figs in the catalogue pictures have been rebased, so that's probably the expectation.)

Overall, though, these are great minis. The quality of these minis is such that I hold out hope that at some point Pulp Figures will put out an Occult Investigators line specifically tailored for Cthulhuesque shenanigans. But for the moment, while PF might not fill all your Cthulhu needs, there's certainly a lot of good stuff here.

And right now, Pulp Figures is busy working on fantastic Huron/Iroquois sets, including some supernatural beings like the "Stone Coat Giant" and the "Great Horned Serpent".

What's the saying..."Mess with the snake, get the horns?"

Which ties in nicely with a future blog post. But anyway. Pulp Figures - worth a look.

History in Gaming: Boston in 1921 (Call of Cthulhu)

While I tend to prefer alternate history or historical fantasy to straight historical fiction, history is of course a fertile source of inspiration for gaming. And of course there are games like Call of Cthulhu, which by default is set in our world (albeit with Mi-go, extra-dimensional monstrosities, and books that drive people insane), and in which you can use real-world history basically as-is.


With my B/X D&D campaign on indefinite hiatus, and with a copy of Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition on my tablet, I'm thinking about a Cthulhu campaign set in Boston in 1921. Why Boston? No particular reason. I've just never set a game there before. And after perusing Wikipedia (which is still one of the greatest resources for GMs!) and the Intarweb for a few hours, I have to say, Boston in 1921 is a fantastic setting for occult shenanigans.

 "Shippin' up to Boston..."

In this post, I'm going to give a rundown on what I've cobbled together and a few thoughts on what I might do with it. My plan for the next post is to actually set out where the campaign's going to start. I've tentatively decided there will be three predominant Great Old Ones in Boston - Cthulhu (mostly worshipped in surrounding communities *cough Innsmouth cough cough* but also within Boston; Hastur, whose cult is mostly limited to a small group of artists and aesthetes; and Nyarlathotep, who has a few different, sometimes competing, cults within various groups and classes in the city.

Of course one needn't spend a lot of time on this. Really, most groups can run with a quick-and-dirty take on Boston. But I love learning about history, so why not put it all together?

In recent history, the Great War ended a mere three years ago, and the great Influenza Pandemic lasted into 1920. The Great Molasses Flood killed 21 people and injured 150 in 1919. The Russian Revolution was in 1917, leading to the first "Red Scare" in 1919. The President is Warren G. Harding, who will die in 1923, and the Vice-President (and soon-to-be President) is Calvin Coolidge, former Governor of Massachusetts whose career got a boost when he sent in the state militia to deal with the Boston Police Strike in 1919 (of which, more later).

(Issues 16/17 of The Unspeakable Oath has a period map of and information about Boston in the 1920s as well.)


Demographics, Racism, and Anti-Semitism


In 1920, Boston had around 750,000 people (compared to New York's 5,600,000). Almost one-third (31.9%) were of Irish descent, living predominantly in the city's South End, though the establishment was heavily white, anglo-saxon, and Protestant. The North End in 1921 would be heavily Italian. 

In the early 20th century about one-third of the North End's population was Jewish, but 1922, the North End's Jewish community had mostly dispersed to other neighbourhoods. The 1920's saw the rise of "numerus clausas" policies at leading universities and medical schools (setting a preference for "desirable" - i.e. native-born, white, and Protestant - students), primarily to limit Jewish students but also to limit or prevent Catholic and African-American student enrolment as well.


The African-American population was relatively small, being around 2.2% of Boston's population in 1920. But that decade also saw the "Harlem Renaissance", a cultural and artistic boom within the African-American community, in which Boston seems to have played a significant role. And, as an aside,Sgt. Horatio Homer, the Boston Police Department's first African-American police officer retired in 1919, after 40 years of service.

Check out that epic 'stache!

(Boston also seems to have escaped the race riots, where whites attacked African Americans, in the so-called "Red Summer" of 1919; not that there would be a lack of racism in the city. The Ku Klux Klan was set to make a resurgence in the early 1920's, and while Boston wasn't a hot spot for that particular brand of racist bullshit, there's some suggestion the KKK actually was more active in New England in the 1920's than some believed.)



Caveat: I've never been a big fan of using history as a straitjacket; I would much rather have players play the characters they want, and the group makes it work. Lovecraft's work, and the pulp genre generally, were often deeply racist, of course, but I'd much rather err on the side of gameability; and it's obvious, anyway, that 1921 Boston can allow for characters from a broad range of ethnicities and cultures. 
 
Nonetheless, the various different neighbourhoods and the ethnic and religious tensions of the day could certainly provide an ample source of conflict, or at least flavour, in the campaign (much like the CoC adventure Dead Man's Stomp).

Female Investigators

 The Nineteenth Amendment, allowing women to vote, was ratified on August 18, 1920. In a game set in the 1920's, that means female characters have had the right to vote for less than a decade. In Boston 1921, they'll have had the right to vote for less than a year!

The 1920's of course offers many archetypes for female investigators. In 1921, Amelia Earhart was taking flying lessons in California. (She'd later become famous for being the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic, in 1932.) In 1926, Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel. Jennie Irene Mix wrote about opera and classical music and became one of the few radio editors in 1924; years earlier, in 1907-08, Ina Eloise Young reported on sports - very rare for a female reporter - for a Colorado newspaper, the Trinidad Chronicle-News. There were many prominent female artists, actors, writers, and singers, such as Dorothy Parker, Bessie Smith, Zora Neale Hurston, and Georgia O'Keeffe.


In Boston, the Boston Police Department hired its first six female officers in 1921 - though no further female officers were hired until the 1940's, and female officers weren't given uniforms or guns until 1972. The six included Irene McAulliffe, an accomplished horsewoman who had already served as a mounted police officer in Weston in 1913, and as a police officer in Washington, D.C. If she doesn't scream "player character" to you, I don't know what to tell you...(McAulliffe, by the way, became a highly regarded officer but was abruptly assigned to switchboard duty in 1934 because, said her lieutenant, women were better at switchboard duties than men. Sheesh.)


Speaking of law enforcement - hoo boy, what a mess.


Prohibition

 Prohibition was enacted by 18th Amendment, Jan 17, 1919 and came into effect on Jan. 17, 1920. It was ultimately repealed in 1933, but in Boston in 1921 the recent enactment of Prohibition allows for gangsters like Charles "King" Solomon, bootleggers, corrupt police...

 

Wrong game, Finn. Back to Arkham with you.

The Boston Police Strike

...speaking of which. In 1919, the Boston Police went on strike. Their pay was less than that of an unskilled labourer on an hourly basis; they had to buy their own uniforms; they had to live in aging squad houses (some dating back to before the Civil War) with inadequate toilet and bathing facilities; and often had to share beds. And to add to the mess, the rank-and-file of the police force were heavily Irish Catholic, and - you guessed it - those in charge tended to be Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

So, in september of 1919, almost three-quarters of the police force went on strike. The labour movement considered joining them in a general strike, but ultimately refused on the basis that a general strike would open the unions to widespread criticism. 

The Police Commissioner fired the strikers, replacing them with new officers; many of the new officers were not suited to the work and feel prey to alcoholism, corruption, or incompetence. Oh, and the Commissioner provided the new hires the wages, uniforms, and benefits that had been originally demanded by the striking officers. Classic union-busting. What an asshole.

For Boston 1921, this gives all sorts of ideas for PCs, NPCs, and plots. Much of the newly-hired police force is incompetent and corrupt (and with Prohibition in full swing, at that!), and a former police officer would make a fine backstory for a PC or NPC.

Labour and Political Unrest

 By 1921 the First Red Scare is more or less over, though anti-Communist and anti-anarchist feeling still runs high. While the Red Scare may have lessened, this still provides justification for overzealous police raids, especially with the unrest of the Boston Police Strike within recent memory. Anarchists and radicals are still agitating. Some unions (like the Industrial Workers of the World) are more overtly political, revolutionary, and left-wing than others.

"I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night"  -

(Joe Hill was an IWW organizer who was (probably falsely) executed for murder)

Performed by Paul Robeson, who could also be inspiration for a PC or NPC!

It's also a time of labour unrest, with union busting and strike breaking as common practice. (Unlike today, where...oh, wait.) But labour is also about to start a sharp decline; a number of strikes in 1919 (including the Police Strike) were unsuccessful, the judiciary, employers, and the media are unrelentingly hostile to unions, and the American Federation of Labor lost one million members (25% of its membership) between 1920 and 1925. The National Labor Relations Act won't be law until 1935, so there are few legal protections for joining a union or for strikers.


Oh, and the Sacco and Vanzetti trial and appeals are ongoing. The two men were found guilty of murder in July of 1921, though they weren't executed until 1927. (Though their guilt for the murder has been questioned from 1921 until the present day, and their conviction seems just as likely to have been owing to their being Italian immigrants and anarchists as it was for genuine proof of guilt.)

There's a lot to draw on here. While Lovecraftian characters tend to be from the educated upper-middle class, there's certainly room for working-class, radical, or trade unionist characters, too.

Censorship: Banned in Boston


Boston was renowned for its priggishness in the 1920's. The main organization responsible for censorship in Boston at the time was the delightfully-named "Watch and Ward Society" (whose motto was manu forti, "with a strong hand"). The Boston Public Library kept objectionable books in a locked room, and some plays were presented in a bowdlerized "Boston Version" to satisfy the W&W Society. Elsewhere in the country, the phrase "banned in Boston" was sometimes used to connote something lurid.

Of course this provides further motivation so seek out information from Miskatonic University...

This is great fodder. For my Boston, the Watch and Ward Society has been infiltrated by a cult of Nyarlathotep. The strict censorship laws allow Nyarlathotep's followers to monitor and control occult goings-on within Boston (such as performances of The King in Yellow), to confiscate arcane tomes under colour of law, and to shut down publications or performances that don't serve the cult's ends.

Music, Theatre, and Radio

Jazz and Blues are becoming popular. In 1921, Mamie Smith records "Crazy Blues", which is a Vaudeville song but with blues influences. It's the first blues song to be recorded by an African-American woman, and it becomes a surprise hit.

 
Movies are still silent; it won't be until 1927 that the first "talkie", The Jazz Singer, is introduced.


Live theatre  is still big. Vaudeville has a strong history in Boston and a strong Irish presence, and would be popular for another decade, rife as it was with ethnic stereotypes.


What I'm thinking is starting off the campaign with the PCs attending a performance of The King in Yellow. But that's high-falutin' theatre; knowing that vaudeville's still king is an interesting side point.


Spiritualism and Occultism

The physical basis of all psychic belief is that the soul is a complete duplicate of the body, resembling it in the smallest particular, although constructed in some far more tenuous material. In ordinary conditions these two bodies are intermingled so that the identity of the finer one is entirely obscured. At death, however, and under certain conditions in the course of life, the two divide and can be seen separately. Death differs from the conditions of separation before death in that there is a complete break between the two bodies, and life is carried on entirely by the lighter of the two, while the heavier, like a cocoon from which the living occupant has escaped, degenerates and disappears, the world burying the cocoon with much solemnity by taking little pains to ascertain what has become of its nobler contents.

 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Vital Message

Spiritualism would have a substantial following in Boston in 1921 - and not just in Boston; Canada's longest serving Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, was a great believer in seances and the occult. In Boston, noted psychic and medium Mina Crandon was conducting seances by 1923 and while Harry Houdini debunked her performances in 1924, that did not seem to dissuade her supporters and followers within the Boston elite.

...possibly because she apparently conducted seances in the nude, no foolin'.

 

The Order of the Golden Dawn, which is clear inspration, if only in name, for the Order of the Silver Twilight in Call of Cthulhu and Fantasy Flight Games, had lodges in the United States by 1920 (not sure if one was in Boston, but easy enough to add...). (As an aside, the short story collection Cthulhu's Dark Cults includes a story where two union men in 1921 Boston break into a Silver Twilight lodge to get incriminating information on their boss so they have a bargaining chip!) Similarly, Alistair Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis was active in the U.S. - certainly in California, where a young L. Ron Hubbard was involved, but a lodge in Boston wouldn't be out of the question. And sex magic rituals like the Babalon Working, trying to summon a goddess, is certainly easily adaptable to the Mythos. Though probably with less sex and more, er, tentacles.


(As an aside, the Catholic Church condemned spiritualism in 1898, and the Anglican Communion expressed grave concern about people "making a religion" of spiritualism.)




Medicine and Psychiatry

 Call of Cthulhu discusses psychiatric techniques prevalent in the 1920's, so I won't go into that overmuch. But in terms of medicine, there still wasn't a truly effective antibiotic until the 1930's (Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928). There were a couple that were used to treat syphilis, but they had serious side effects. But at least by the start of the 20th century doctors knew to wash their hands. And anaesthetics were available, generally in a syringe, like morphine, or in mask or oral form; intravenous anaesthetics wouldn't come into use until the 1930's.


Anyway, you get the idea.

Really, most of this won't be necessary. But it was fun to learn more about the history of the time, even in predominantly Wikipedia form. Hopefully I can put something coherent together for the actual game in the next little bit.