Turn 7 Part 2: Flame, Pain, and Board Games (Patreon)

[X][Ghostfire] Ghostfires Patron

-[X] Felicity's uncle would send her the logbook of her ancestor, a pirate infamous for raiding slave ships during the height of the Triangle Trade. Their treasure horde was never found, but no one had the logbook to hint at its final resting place…

[X] [Power of the Lounge] Feast of Mania: A more benign shape: some members of the Lounge would begin exhibiting a particular, if unusual, enthusiasm for a particular topic. This in turn would begin attracting more customers, those also afflicted by this particular mania.

-[X] Tabletop Mania

[X][HOT] Cyrus Pinkney and Solomon Wayne: Two individuals that Amadeus had met during his attendance of Gotham U: now that he was no longer simultaneously working at New Bedlam and the ground-work was already being laid for Amadeus's asylum, the former, an experimental architect, wished to aid by constructing a series of facilities such as a greenhouse, a clock-tower, and small indoor village for patients and a highly modern yet secure penitentiary for inmates. The latter was a judge, one interested in using the Asylum to develop more effective and modern techniques for criminal rehabilitation, ones more sophisticated than shoving them into the rat-hole known as Blackgate. Arkham Asylum gains improved and expanded facilities, nice and tasty government checks, and also begins pioneering the science of criminal rehabilitation. Will lead to the Asylum more closely resembling that of the Arkhamverse canon aesthetically.

[X][War] Josiah would hijack a ship of the Kanes' shipping company, cracking a hole in the bottom and forcing the crew to evacuate while the Opaque Shadow and his hired goons (sourced from Josiah's criminal contacts but being told his true identity) load the most valuable cargo into their prepared getaway boat.

[X][Regret] Josiah would take into the swamp a table and several bottles of the most potent alcohol he can find (spiked with whatever most potent poison he can find), and waits for Grundy to come and invite him for a drink. (Josiah sleight of hands his drinks to avoid poisoning himself.)

[X] [Roth] Josiah may not know genuine witchcraft, but he suspects that there is something to the fact that witches in tales always have a pet. And he just has contacts that might be able to smuggle in something exotic and foreign, maybe with some myths tied to it too.

[X][Projectotron] Construct a workshop on the Lodge to make new Projectotrons on commission.

[X][RING] Chalmer Chill uses their control of related industries to dry up business for the Kanes' shipping company, and offers to buy it out at a... reasonable discount. (Those Kanes do a little too much business with the Germans...)

[X] Cryptids, you say?: We all love a good cryptid! Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Chupacabras. Suddently, one such Cryptid would be sighted in the wilderness around Gotham: was this creature really out there? Yes. Yes it was.

-[X] Loveland Frog

[X][ACT] With the help of Zelda and Gluck Josiah creates a system to simulate the conjuring of fire in specific shapes and colors for an impressive light show.

[X][PERFORMANCE] Josiah spends time practicing controling fire for his new act and to not burn down the his boat mid performance.

!!!GOTHAM!!!

The April Fool has played the Meta Card Houses Choice Runner Up. The Loveland Frog has been selected as the recipient, receiving +3 Votes. 

!!!GOTHAM!!!

Dear Felicity

I am sorry for your loss. You don’t know me: it has been many years since we last saw one another, and you were merely a babe at the time. I am your mothers older brother, Farnsworth. I doubt she spoke well of me, if she spoke of me at all. 

She did not approve of my choices in life. I will not provide details about those choices, other than that she believed those choices would bring harm back to her family if she continued associating with me.

It was not an unfair decision, though I regret the distance it created between us. It shames me I am not able to attend their funeral, so I have taken care to send an extra stipend to help pay any expenses such a ceremony might have incurred. On top of this, as my last remaining family, I have arranged things with some colleagues of mine: you will receive on top of this a monthly stipend of money to help pay for the farm and any expenses you might have incurred. 

Lastly, I am taken to understanding according to what I have learned of you that you wish to undertake a certain ambition. With that in mind, I will attempt to offer what help I can: you will likely require a great deal of capital. One of our ancestors was a pirate of some renown: Captain Peppermane, the Scourge of the Gotham Coast. He supposedly assembled a vast treasure, one that people, including myself, have been searching for for decades. 

I have successfully managed to locate his log-book and have included it in this letter. I believe it may hold the key to finding Peppermanes treasure. If you can locate it, the funding may prove critical to your ambitions: money is harder for us to use, but it still opens many doors. 

I will continue to help, however I can. If you wish to contact me (or perhaps visit), I have written my address in Metropolis.

Your Uncle

Farnsworth Kearney

PS: LAY LOW. PRACTICE YOUR ATHLETICS AND AIM. 

!!!GOTHAM!!!

Supported by uncle financially, the mysterious Miss Kearney would indeed lie low, with her chosen alter ego not making an appearance but two or three more times in the following few months. Instead, she focused on rebuilding the family farm, training her body and mind, and investigating her ancestor. 

There had been a few locations dotted throughout Greater Gotham County: mostly in the forested northern part of the region. Hideouts, stashes, places where Peppermane and his crew had done business. 

It was during this search that she learned that his treasure was not in one piece: not entirely. The pirate had only had one true horde of treasure, but bits and pieces of his vast wealth had been seeded along the route. Small pocketfuls of doubloons, loose gems, ledgers and documents. All used to further finance the project, or else put into restoring the farm by replacing farm animals, clearing the fields, restoring the barn. 

What free time she had, she spent at the Lounge: it still stopped by the farm via the river even if they had to cancel most of their supply deals with the Kearney farm. Maybe it was sympathy on the part of Josiah for a poor orphan girl, maybe it was guilt for a business partner (no matter how mild) getting killed, maybe it was just convenient enough that there wasn’t any reason not to. 

Still, it meant the place had, unknowingly or not, attracted another guest with a hidden identity, and like the other two one less than concerned with the rule of law. Unlike our good friend Josiah or Harold Harris, however, Felicity's moral compass still pointed straight north. 

Speaking of, the Lounge was, on the surface, hopping, though tragedy lie in wait. The place found itself swarmed with a new type of oddball: the classic staple of nerdicana, the board game enthusiast. It started with a few people getting into chess. And then getting REALLY into chess. And then branching out: the checkered game of life, by Milton Bradley. Authors, published some decades before by the Parker Brothers and authored by someone whose name I don’t know. They even had Parcheesi, purchased by patrons of the lounge and played in the main hall, with Josiah graciously allowing the Gotham Board Game Club to store the games when not in use in one of the back closets. Legend says the Lounge still maintains a secret collection of these games for use by its many patrons. 

The original club consisted of a mix of the various groups who inhabited the Lounge: african americans, frauds, mystics, magicians. Over the many decades it would exist, however, it would become a place of prestige for many with a fascination for those primitive table top games in Gotham City, regardless of class or structure. 

Not everyone in the club had an appreciation for board games that stayed within the bounds of what you or I would consider healthy, however. One out of every twenty members of the club would wind up sent to Arkham Asylum: suffering from what could only be described as hideous board game related psychotic breakdowns. 

Nobody knows why. They just went and snapped, starting with Jason Kleddinger, who would in 1904 attempt to burn the Lounge to the ground, claiming it was cursed, that it had been whispering to the checker-master to do something terrible.

Alright. I’m gonna admit, this turn has had me put my finger on the scales more than I would care for. The April Fools one I feel is somewhat forgivable under the aegis that it was meant to be funny, and I think I can work better with the frogs than the camels. 

The Full Moon situation is, however, complex. You see dear reader, while this is partially my fault, I don’t actually like any of the Full Moon votes. Or rather, I don’t like the single vote that anyone actually voted for. 

First, let me breakdown why, because part of it is it plays to a fairly consistent peeve of mine when it comes to bad write-ins: to summarize, the idea behind the vote was a scary story competition. Pretty basic idea, a scary story competition that might accidentally have summoned some ghosts! Its something that fit the spirit, and the basic idea has a pretty solid amount of gas. 

The problem is that it’s bogged down in enough extraneous or unhelpful details to be a problem. I wanted a basic idea for a scary story I could write, not a detailed summary: I cannot stress this enough, I want write ins to be brief. Adding extra crap does not make my job easier: it makes it harder, and frankly makes writing this more of a chore than a pleasure. 

Second, and I cannot stress this enough, all write ins unless otherwise requested need to be OPEN ENDED. The winning full moon vote was not. Open ended, dear reader, does not mean “provide an entire summary of the event leading to the climactic event”. Open ended means “suitably bare bones enough for me to use as scaffolding”. The winning vote ends with Josiah being forced to make a promise with some ghosts: that’s not scaffolding, thats an entire conclusion. 

I’m going to be honest, dear reader, this is probably the umpteenth time I’ve been forced to spell this out, and I’m starting to get a little tired of it. Hence this whole spiel, and the following message: stop giving me over-wrought crap and expecting me to make something interesting from it. 

When I ask for a write in, barring a handful of exceptions which I will mention beforehand, I want it to consist ONLY of the most pertinent details: who, what, and maybe one or two of the other W’s. “Josiah holds a scary story telling competition with his closest friends” is fine, as is “Josiah holds a scary storytelling competition with his friends that results in a haunting”. “Josiah holds a scary story telling competitions with his closest friends that eventually has a bunch of specific spooky stuff happen and the ship winds up sailing over a haunted stretch of the swamp and Josiah is forced to make a deal with ghosts” isn’t. 

Of course, part of the reason that an unsuitable write in one this one is, I feel, the result of me unwittingly clownshoesing my way into accidentally causing a quest with no numbers to bloat unnecessarily: its resulted in multiple other votes this turn to turn out the same way, it’s just that none have peeved me to the degree that the winning Full Moon did.

To be clear, dear reader, I am not angry. This is not me chiding you: consider this more akin to a teacher trying to help educate you, or, less pretentiously and less metaphorically, as a gamesmaster trying to help his players understand the intended way the game is meant to be played. Of course, that still results in us needing to fix the underlying systems that led us to this point: after all, the issue isn’t just playerside. Part of the blame lies also in the choices I had unwittingly made.  

 The nice thing about a mostly ad hoc system is that you can change it pretty easily though, and without numbers to chain us down, the change is pretty simple: just make the power of the lounge and hotspot stuff its own update, making each turn 3 parts. That should give the frame card stuff and the action system enough breathing room from each other to be properly savored, and should hopefully lead to more creative and aggressive Frame Card uses along with some of the other changes I’ll be introducing. 

We’ll deal with the specifics of that system once we finish this turn: for now, bare with me and we’ll try to finish out this turn on a high note, dear reader. With that in mind, we move onto the Power of the Lounge vote, where you voted for Tabletop. Since Gary Gygax’s dad isn’t even a twinkle in the eye of his grandpa yet, I decided a period appropriate interpretation of that as board games, something that already existed, the rare modern industry whose golden day preceded the industrial revolution, though not by much. 

However, I don’t think any of you actually understood the assignment. This isn’t just cultivating a harmless following, this is deliberately seeding your followers with an unhealthy, sanity eroding mass obsession. The prose of the vote was deliberately chosen to evoke that feeling: sure, you directed it in a less harmful direction, but there’s no such thing, dear reader, as a healthy addiction. Otherwise it’s not actually an addiction, it’s a hobby with spice. 

So even though I’m voiding the Full Moon Halloween vote, it seems we’re gonna get a little spooky anyways, with another Curse. Action code [The Game of Death], because that is our theme here, dear reader: to make a long story short, we’re looking for a severely negative effect from the decision to embrace monopoly mania. Much like Cauldron of Madness, don’t think of this as a punishment, think of it as an opportunity to pick what flavor of spice you like in your story, the kind of adversity you’re interested in seeing the characters deal with. For good or ill.  

[ ] Curse of Pill Player: The Mania would turn on the Arkhams who had unknowingly cultivated it: in 1905, one of the cousins would be attacked, kidnapped and tortured for five days by a maddened member of the club angered at losing at a board game to their topic of hatred, who would subject them to demented challenges based on Milton Bradleys greatest work. Talk about a sore loser. The Arkhams gain another curse, and in a few years, they will be forced to endure a horrific series of events in which survival and sanity aren’t guaranteed.

[ ] Curse of the Unfinished Game: The Mania would eventually lead to tragedy: in late 1902, the Gentlemens Parlor would be closed due to seven members of the Gotham Board Game Club perishing by swallowing poison known or unknown. The reputational damage to the Lounge would last decades, and more concerningly it’s said by many that the Parlor is still haunted by the vengeful ghosts of the club members, forever enraged that they would never be able to finish their last game. Not exactly unfinished business, but close enough for government work. The Parlor becomes cursed with vengeful ghosts and an even worse reputation. Should the Parlor be removed before this curse can come to fruition, another public part of the Lounge will be chosen. 

[ ] Curse of the Mad Monarch: It started with the titular game: designed by one of the more occult minded members of the club, the first time it was played tragedy followed, all the players involved were horrifically injured in the following week, one after the other, in the order they had lost, until only the winner remained, going on to gain great wealth. This would repeat: once a decade, a member of the Club would make a peculiar game that would bring misery, if not death, to the players. Each of these cursed games would be stored in a special section of the Lounges closets, occasionally brought out again by those ignorant of their dangers. That or dumb teenagers looking for a thrill. Every decade, at some point a Cursed Board Game will be created and bring misery and ruin to its players, starting with the Mad Monarch. 

!!!GOTHAM!!!

Where were we? Oh yeah, the Lounge. Now, while the board game club was just getting off the ground, in the fall and winter of 1901, Josiah started expanding his repertoire of tricks and facilities. 

He finally got into the Projectocorder selling game, creating a facility Mr. Bart could use to build more Projectocorders for clients as well as building props, set-pieces, and attempting to improve the Projectocorder. 

Thanks to a certain frenchman as well as Edisons very public attempts to act as a rival, there was a market at least: sure, the machine couldn’t be mass produced which meant that its price was always going to be higher than Edisons own machines, but it was still the highest quality option on the market at this point in time and came with its own sound-recording unit, especially since our dear friend Mr. Bart used the tools offered by the workshop to further improve the design for the mass market. 

Alright, commissions. As mentioned, this option is the most expensive version of getting your machine into other peoples hands you could have taken. However, not only does it mean every projectocorder is going to be bespoke, it also means you have significantly less odds of getting the design stolen. 

Beyond that, it also has the side benefit of allowing our little pet film-maker to expand his operations and improve the rate at which the design will be refined. More specifically, this is going to be a market practicality upgrade, as logically that’d be what this particular development would likely lead to. Not an upgrade to the quality per se, but rather something meant to make actually selling this thing a little more efficient, whether it be making it cheaper, making the parts easier to replace, or making the whole thing a little more durable. Action code is [The Cinema]

[ ] Simplified Manufacturing: The Arkham Projectocorder was and always would be more expensive than mass manufactured models, at least as long as they were artisanally made. However, if Mr. Bart worked on simplifying the process of building one, the cost could be lowered somewhat, making at least a little more reasonable for aspiring film-makers to acquire the machines. 

[ ] Reliable Design: The Arkham Projectocorder was, despite or perhaps because of its relative advancedness, a surprisingly fragile machine. This was a problem Mr. Bart had been attempting to fix, and now, with his workshop, he was fairly certain he had figured it out. Going forward, the Projectocorders would become generally more rugged and durable.

[ ] Non-Flammable Reels: It was an unfortunate truth of cinema that sometimes film reels caught fire. Even the projectocorder had this problem: Mr. Barts solution? Developing a chemical treatment for film reels that would never catch fire…even if this resulted in the picture recorded having an off green tint. These reels would be shipped- for free- to customers who ordered a Projectocorder.

Of course, this benefitted the Lounge too: remember how I mentioned it let Mr. Bart work on props and set pieces? Using them, the guy would begin creating recreation of scenes from the myths of ancient greece, short vignettes based on various novels and tales that had lapsed into the public domain, and even the same occult lore that his employer and patron dabbled in. 

That very halloween, the Lounge was delighted and thrilled by a film inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s Cask of Amontillado, starring Vogel as Montressor and Brown as Fortunato, a reel that was sadly lost in the Disaster of 1907. Speaking of, the pair of them would also use the workshop for their props: machines such as an ‘idiot powered lightbulb’, the seven foot tall thinking cap, the stationary unicycle, and a giant wheeled sculpture of a bear. 

And topping things off, Josiah would debut a new act, one that would end in horrific disaster.  Hastily purchasing what flammable materials he could from Crane and having Davis rapidly assemble a pyrotechnics system, he would put on a show: the Magic Flame.

Now, our dear stage magician was no stranger to hastily made decisions done out of greed and laziness, nor was he stranger to those decisions backfiring. However, this particular disaster would prove particularly haunting for the man, as it would be the first time his negligence would cost someone he knows personally. 

As mentioned prior to this update, you made some not great decisions here with your ACT and performance. On the one hand, the AP spent on practicing means that he’s less likely to accidentally user-error someone to death. 

However, that leaves the natural 10 when it comes to design flaws. Unlike the other votes, this actually is a penalty of sorts: simply put, someone is going to catch fire because Josiah didn’t put enough effort into safety. You get to pick who. This isn’t necessarily going to kill them, but at a minimum it will require several months of hospitalization, and it very much CAN be fatal.

You will also be receiving a new Frame Card for this, so it isn't all bad news. Action code [Cut Corners].

[ ] Josiah: The man himself! Who else deserves it than the man who is directly at fault? Maybe he’ll learn a lesson. Maybe he’ll perish in flame. If he comes out the other end, he won’t be the same person as before, at least. Who knows if the Lounge will survive without him, though. 

[ ] Davis Jacobs: The lesser Jacobs, who helped his employer assemble the system. He had warned that it was dangerous, and would become its victim. An innocent man, horrifically burned because of the negligence of his employer. And yet, the Lounge would easily survive his immolation.

[ ] Scotty O’ Rourke: A member of the audience who had been too close. A member of the Benevolent Lodge, his loss, whether injury or death, would be felt by the Lodge immensely, troubling the collection of mystery solvers and depriving them of a key member and (even if temporarily, but potentially permanently) depriving the organization of its moral core. 

The rest of the vignettes (Frog, Robbery, Pet, Grundy, Asylum Benefactors) will be saved for the next post. Note that for obvious reasons some of them are still in the air: if you pick Josiah and he dies, obviously the swamp meeting and hijacking will be voided (and, for the record, there will be a vote on inheritor in that situation). If he lives, however, they’ll just be delayed to early spring.