A small house rule which I've been using in a slightly modified form in my recent Victorian horror campaign (which reached an unexpectedly explosive conclusion this week).

This rule works especially well for campaigns which are somewhat story-oriented (in that the PCs are involved in a fair amount of town based activity, and interaction with various NPCs and factions plays an important role), and campaigns where little or no use of the standard D&D henchmen rules occurs. Personally I've found that the henchmen rules are virtually never used in campaigns I run, so I thought it'd be good to come up with some alternative use of the Charisma stat (in addition to its role as a modifier to reaction rolls, of course).

Here's what I thought:

Using the standard B/X ability modifiers (3 = -3, 4-5 = -2, 6-8 = -1, 13-15 = +1, 16-17 = +2, 18 = +3), pluses in the Charisma stat mean that the character has a useful contact or ally, while minuses mean the character has an enemy.

Of course, the exact role these allies/enemies play in the campaign, and how much impact they have is up to the DM.

In the Victorian campaign we were just using the allies rule, which worked out really well. It occurred to me yesterday that the rule could be mirrored to give enemies to PCs with low CHA.

Last night saw the first session of my new mini-campaign, a vaguely H. P. Lovecraft inspired investigative affair set in London in the year 1890.

The PCs are all members of a secret club calling itself "The Society of the Squared Circle", based in private rooms at London's Oriental Club. They have found themselves involved in a murder case, coming to the support of a young doctor who, at first glance, doesn't have a leg to stand on -- he was witnessed killing a woman with his bare hands and then collapsing unconscious by her side until being apprehended by the police. However, all is, of course, not as it seems. The group have begun to uncover some unusual aspects of the case, and have lots more digging planned for the next session.

This was several firsts for me: first time running a campaign set in the real world, first time running a game in a modern(ish) setting with electricity and guns and so on, first time running a proper investigative adventure.

So far I have very much enjoyed the setting -- it's been a real breath of fresh air after running a relatively typical D&D campaign for the last 18 months!

A few points of interest which stood out to me as referee so far:

• I love the Victorian period! (I knew this already.)
• I also like the Victorian period on practical RPG grounds. It is close enough to living memory, and has enough modern technology to be not too unfamiliar to players, while not having advanced so far that problematic things like widespread mass communication, the internet, and so on make designing an investigative scenario tricky.
• One aspect of playing in a historical real world setting which was unusual for me was the balance between making things up and looking things up. I'm used to running completely home-brewed fantasy campaigns, where I, as DM, am free to just make up anything on the spur of the moment and have it become "campaign canon". Not so in a historical setting. We are lucky enough to have a player who is pretty knowledgeable about history, and the Victorian era / the British Empire specifically. This helped a lot when questions came up (and many did!) about "did they have X at that time?", "was Y common knowledge then?", etc. Thanks Steve! Actually this is something I really enjoyed -- that the game felt a bit more collaborative than usual, with players being able to contribute as much to the atmosphere and background as I was.
• I found it a lot of fun designing and running an investigative adventure. This was something I was very unsure about -- whether I'd be able to come up with an interesting scenario, and create a gradual trail of clues for the players to follow. After one session, it's gone really well so far, I feel. Rather than the usual D&D methodology of drawing a map and detailing what's where, I wrote three lists: a list of locales (and marked them on a city map), a list of people (and their relation to the case / each other), a timeline of events. This seemed to work pretty well, and I didn't have to do too much note flipping. I'd be interested to hear how anyone else deals with writing this kind of adventure...

Oh one final fun thing I'd like to share about the campaign: as we're a group of very mixed nationalities (English, German, German/Russian, Dutch, Italian, Belgian), I suggested that it'd be fun for everyone to play a character of their own nationality. This has worked out very well, adding the players' knowledge of their own countries' history to the pool of background flavour. Thus we have a Dutch electrical inventor, a German doctor / polar explorer, a German industrialist, a Russian noblewoman and occult dabbler, a Belgian diplomat, an Italian mobster (named Michael Corleone!) and an English arabist.

So, it beginneth! My long contemplated Victorian era supernatural horror campaign.

We had a group character creation session last night (I like those!), and now have an assortment of gentlemen and ladies with an interest in the occult and strange.

In the end I decided to go with a very simple rules / chargen system based on the core of Labyrinth Lord / basic D&D. The house rules were as follows:

• No classes or levels. PCs are all basically 1st level fighters (in terms of hit points and saving throws). Experience progression in the standard sense is not going to be an aspect of the campaign.
• Characters gain a number of areas of specialist education / academic knowledge based on their INT score.
• Characters have a number of useful contacts based on their CHA score.
• Every character also has four talents: things they're good at. These could be in the domains of sports, arts, crafts, culture, etc.
• An alternate damage system (to account for the lack of healing magic), where PCs have a pool of CON / 2 "wound points". Hit points then represent mostly fatigue, and can be recovered quickly, while wound points represent real damage and regenerate slowly.

We have the first game next week, so I'll report how it goes. I've never run a horror game, or a modern(ish) era game, so it'll be an interesting experiment!

I've been talking to the players in my group about possibly starting a new campaign (actually a series of mini-campaigns), and one option that's been discussed is a Victorian era Cthulhuesque campaign.

I was considering this some time back, and we even got so far as creating characters, but never got around to playing. One of the main factors in this was that I realised I'm not that keen on the Call of Cthulhu rules, and (moreover) that I just can't be bothered to learn and master some new rules set. It's just not something that interests me. One of the brilliant things about playing Labyrinth Lord for me is that I'm innately familiar with the rules.

So I've gotten to thinking about how I might run a Cthuluesque game using a foundation of Labyrinth Lord / basic D&D.

Unlike in D&D, in a modern(ish) horror setting the concept of "classes" of adventurer isn't important. What is important however is what characters know and can do -- hence the enormous skills list in CoC. I'm not a fan of skills systems, which was one of the main things which put me off CoC as a rules system, but I'd want some way of defining what each character is good at.

Here's what I'm thinking of.

For each attribute, the player can choose a number of things which the character is good at or has training in, relative to the score, as follows:

3 to 8: not good at anything, 9 to 12: good at one thing, 13 to 15: good at two things, 16 to 17: good at three things, 18: good at four things.

Each "good at" / skill should of course be in some way related to the attribute in question. The player would basically be free to choose whatever they wanted, without being restricted by a pre-defined list of skills. Some ideas would be:

STR: climbing, boxing, wrestling.
CON: running, can drink anyone under the table, rude health.
DEX: shooting, draftsmanship, card shark.
INT: history, languages, mathematics.
WIS: self-control, good judge of character, compassionate soul.
CHA: public speaking, "ladies' man", mesmerism.

How these areas of skill would actually be used in play would be open to the referee's judgement. One example might be that if characters were given a 1 in 6 chance of achieving a certain task, then characters who are "good at" that thing would get a bonus (probably based on the attribute in question).

Very flexible, very vague, but probably enough to run a game with! (At least for people like me who aren't bothered about having strictly defined rules for everything...)

A little recommendation for anyone interested in running games in Victorian London: I've just been doing a bit of research on sourcebooks for the period, and discovered the wonderful looking "Baedeker's London and its Environs 1900". It's a hardback facsimile of a real guidebook from the time, and is readily available from amazon etc. And it's 512 pages, so I imagine it's pretty comprehensive!

Originally I was looking for something specifically RPG related, possibly the out-of-print "Cthulhu by Gaslight", but really I just want a book with detailed maps, and information about notable places, where one can buy things, and so on. It looks like this book will be perfect for the job! I just ordered it, so will post further information as to its RPG-worthiness when I receive it.

Just received in the post yesterday...

The really great thing is that I've only played CoC twice, and both times the d20 version, so this majestic tome is all new to me!

Horror in Victorian London here I come :)