Call of Chicago: Survey Says — Write About More Stuff, Monkey! Dance! Dance!

Horror in the Museum_FinalI didn’t take any advanced statistics courses in college, so that title may not be precisely accurate.

Survey, survey. Oh, yes. Simon sent out a survey to all the current subscribers of Ken Writes About Stuff, upon whom may blessings shower without sensible restraint. We got about 180 responses back, which is a pretty good percentage, I’m told. Almost all of the respondents play both Night’s Black Agents and Trail of Cthulhu, which is very gratifying to me — and we have a good spread of all the other Pelgrane games as well. (About half of them are playing TimeWatch … perhaps it may not just be a game!!) In short, you guys seem to be pretty devoted Pelgrane players, which makes me feel much better about doing GUMSHOE Zooms going forward.

That said, only a third of the respondents rated the GUMSHOE Zooms so far a ‘4’ on a scale of 1 to 4 for enjoyment and usability, although another 40% or so gave them a ‘3’. So we need to tweak them a bit, apparently.

In happier news, better than 77% of the respondents rated my Mythos monster series Hideous Creatures a ‘4’ on a scale of 1 to 4 for enjoyment and usability. (Almost everyone else rated it a ‘3’.) So that’s golden.

See how this works? You respond, I carve this block of electronic marble in front of me a little closer to the PDF elephant you truly want. That’s how this works.

Of the eight mostly random suggestions Simon offered, we got the strongest response for more Looking Glass pieces (top four answers!), although each of them could also be read as “campaign frame” settings. (The settings got about 60% of you up to ‘4’; a little stronger than the pure Looking Glass: Mumbai did.) So you like campaign ideas, probably in cities. It’s not a perfect science, and did I mention I only took basic stat?

And we got some lovely responses and specific requests — I only wish I could fulfill them all! Lots of people wanting settings, which tends to reinforce my previous deduction. One really good suggestion for a new “Ken’s Time Machine” type issue, about possible counterfactuals, what-ifs, or historical enigmas — once TimeWatch gets up to speed, I may try to construct something along those lines. The first of those might happen later this year. We had a number of completely fair and understandable requests for more SF-focused KWAS material to support Ashen Stars and Gaean Reach games.

And my favorite response, which I saw a gratifying number of times: “Whatever Ken wants.” As the man says in Joe vs. the Volcano, “Sir, may you live to be a thousand.”

So taking all of those responses — including the last one, ho ho — into account, here’s what the first half of Ken Writes About Stuff, Volume 2, is shaping up to look like:

 

April 2014: Hideous Creatures: Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath. “Worlds of sardonic actuality impinging on vortices of febrile dream – Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young!” Are they nameless horrors or numbered servitors, Druidic nightmares or ab-natural abominations? Where do they grow, and on what loathsome food do they thrive? Follow them to Hell and Hydra, or to Mormo and Monsanto.

May 2014: GUMSHOE Zoom: Voodoo. The first of a new series of GUMSHOE Zooms looking at historical magic traditions — and giving you the tools and rules to evoke these puissant powers in your own game! This one examines sympathetic magic and zombies, and Zooms in on the Afro-Caribbean magical-religious complex encompassing Vodoun, Candomble, Santeria, Obeah, and Hoodoo. The loa ride in May!

June 2014: Hideous Creatures: Serpent Folk. “The features mingled and merged in a seemingly impossible manner. Then, like a fading mask of fog, the face suddenly vanished and in its stead gaped and leered a monstrous serpent’s head!” They built Valusia before the dinosaurs, and lurk behind half mankind’s darkest cults. Are they extra-dimensional, extra-terrestrial, or just extra venomous? You won’t fool the Children of Yig, in any skin they wear.

July 2014: Exo-Archaeology! “No other ancient city on Mars had been laid out in that manner; and the strange, many-terraced buttresses of the thick walls, like the stairways of forgotten Anakim, were peculiar to the prehistoric race that had built Yoh-Vombis.” From the Face on Mars to Precursor artifacts orbiting dead quasars, the mysteries of space aren’t all astrophysical. For some answers, you have to dig. Ruins — of cities, starships, and planets — hold danger and horror, riches and knowledge. What a lost species or a cunning GM can build, bold exo-archaeologists and their players can uncover.

August 2014: Hideous Creatures: Lloigor. “You make the usual mistake — of thinking of them as being like ourselves. They weren’t.” God or monster? Species or phenomenon? Dragon or disc — or discontinuity? Invisible, invulnerable, inexplicable — the vile vortices of the lloigor encompass all and care for nought.

September 2014: The School of Night. “Black is the badge of Hell; the hue of dungeons and the School of Night.” Queen Elizabeth’s realm lies vulnerable, not just to the Spanish or the plague, but to occult forces perhaps more dangerous than either. You study those forces at the risk of torture — at the risk of your soul — but you must hold them at bay or see England destroyed. This GUMSHOE campaign frame sets the PCs on the stage with John Dee, Christopher Marlowe, and Sir Walter Raleigh … and perhaps with traitors in their ranks.

 

As always, every Ken Writes About Stuff issue will be available as a single-PDF purchase — but you save more when you subscribe for the year! Shakespeare and Shub-Niggurath, Baron Cimetière and barren planets, serpents and … er, ghosty uncaring cancerous serpents — they’re all waiting to play with you!

 

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