I did a cool thing last week: I wrapped up a 23 session Call of Cthulhu campaign that was entirely set in Arkham. The PCs ran an antique/book shop called Astral Antiquities and Appraisals but spent most of their time investigating weird and terrible events in and around Arkham, never straying too far from their store in the merchant district. Over the course of a year in real life, I ran the group through four scenarios but there was enough customization to keep me on my toes, and I want to discuss not only those scenarios and the campaign framework, but also what worked and what didn’t.

Accounting: the RPG

One of my all-time favorite TTRPG books is Bookhounds of London, for Trail of Cthulhu, and I love it for exactly the reason this campaign was successful – whether in London or elsewhere, the book creates a framework of the people and things necessary to make running an occult bookstore (or antique or oddity shop or anything other business focused on buying and selling the weird and esoteric) interesting and gameable. Now that I’ve finished this campaign, I can say that my own two favorite campaigns that I’ve run have been based on this framework of running a shop, and so clearly it works for me in a few ways.

First, it quickly and easily gives the players and GM a framing device to build their stories and characters around. I offered many options for a PC group, but they all wanted to run a store, and we ended up with a fun and eclectic mix of PCs: an ex-con turned shopgirl, veteran turned accountant, forger and second-story man, and failed astronomer turned business owner. They all used opening the store as a reason for their PCs to have gone through a recent personal transformation (a question I asked them up front), and I gave them Connecting Cards (I’ll have to write these up at some point) that loosely tied their backgrounds together.

Running a store that sells weird stuff is really easy for people to understand thematically, and within 2-3 sessions we had a clear picture of Astral Antiquities as a business in Arkham’s Merchant District that had been open for about a year after Wesley the Failed Astronomer inherited the store from his mentor Ruper Merriweather (more on them later). It snapped into place quickly.

Another reason I like having PCs run a store is that it gives the PCs’ universe the center of gravity for framing new scenarios and adventures, which players and GM must have bookshop or not, and it just skips past all the awkward conversations around why the group knows each other and allows the GM to easily put interesting situations in front of the party. Much like Delta Green or the Advocacy (my own contemporary horror sourcebook – more on that in later post for sure), providing a reason for the investigators to explore mysteries gets to the heart of running investigative horror quickly and cleanly.

Building a store in a static location such as Arkham or San Francisco also allows the group to explore that location more deeply, as opposed to globe-trotting campaigns such as Masks or Eternal Lies that drag the party to many locations. With the static location, everyone gets to feel more verisimilitude and connection to the world and the discrete stories and stakes feel more real. Now I love globe-trotting campaigns, but there’s something special about digging into a location and making it your own, finding out what you like and hate about it and giving its characters reasons to be. It’s true escapism.

Connecting the Mysteries

Over the course of these 23 sessions, I ran four scenarios, three of which are in print: The Haunting, Edge of Darkness, Dreams and Fancies, and Queen of Night. I had plans to later run Crimson Letters, also set in Arkham, and then maybe head to Innsmouth for my white whale scenario Escape from Innsmouth. But those last two will have to wait.

Two important things about these scenarios (let’s replace Dreams & Fancies with Crimson Letters to make my point): they are all in print and they all take place in Arkham (well, you can easily put The Haunting there instead of Boston), meaning that running a year-plus campaign like this is really easy and relatively inexpensive to do (as opposed to tracking down either the Innsmouth or Kingsport books if you don’t already have them).

I also used the new Arkham book quite heavily, especially relying on the descriptions and stats for the witch coven (spoilers! There’s a coven in Arkham!) and just getting a great vibe for many locations. We figured out exactly where the PCs lived and what building on the map was the store, and used NPCs from the book for many great encounters – Abner Wick is a gem!

It was very easy for me to string together these scenarios, as well as tie together two early scenarios with Queen of Night at the end for deep thematic call-back and resolution. The Book of Eibon, found in The Haunting, holds many secrets to communing with Tsathoggua (which I’ve written on), which is the Old One I ended up using as the Dark Master for Queen of Night; and then I threw in Bertrand Merriweather, scorned son from Edge of Darkness, to continually harass the PCs until he eventually hired a gang (no Mythos, just fists, bricks, and blackjacks) to beat up PCs, smash shop windows, and generally confuse the plot until he messed up and was chased and tackled by the ex-con shopgirl who it turns out was as fast as an Olympic runner. It really came together nicely.

Between these scenarios and the Arkham book, I found it incredibly easy to string together a cohesive campaign in a way that I had never done before. Yes, at times it did take me a bit of effort to create episodes but building the three fronts for Queen of Night was a very worthwhile investment that paid out multiple dividends later in the campaign.

I am confident that I could run the same scenarios (with Crimson Letters instead of Dreams & Fancies), buy no new books, and even provide the same frame of “you are running a business in Arkham” (which could be books/antiques or detective or?) and run 20+ sessions again with the same factions and have the game be totally different but just as successful.

However, there was one key learning (aside from all the above) that helped me tune the game and find its groove for everyone at the table.

Favored Play Style

As I discussed on MUP 320, I ran Dreams & Fancies from the Kingsport book and it did not work for my table at all. I misjudged how the PCs should engage with the scenario – it should be on top of another scenario for ideal effect – and so everyone was lost on how to really dig into the scenario, including myself.

I pulled the plug on it early, after messing around creating The Door in the Floor (which I need to write up) and thought about what the table (including myself) needed. Remember, all my players were new to investigative horror, and they really jumped at the clues/mysteries presented in both The Haunting and The Edge of Darkness. Yes, they ran a store, but they were never there, which created an ongoing joke of “who’s tending the store?” and “well, I came by but the store was closed, again,” that pointed at the table’s greater interest in mysteries than accounting.

Also, I don’t have a lot of time to create new content for my games, which is why I ended my Bookhounds of SF game in the first place. I’m really working hard at writing consistently and continuously, building up momentum to set my attention firmly back at novels, and while I love to mess around with scenarios and customize them to fit the table, using my own understanding of storytelling and character arcs to create a very bespoke and deep story for my table, I just don’t have the time for it.

So I rely on published scenarios to help me – whether running Masks over three years or Edge of Darkness over three sessions, sadly my writing doesn’t pay me enough (yet) to playtest new materials all the time.

When Dreams & Fancies spun out, I realized that it was not a very clue-heavy scenario, and that it asked the players to be very curious in a way that my rather new investigative table was ready for. I think really understanding how investigative games work takes time to learn, and while a more mature table (like my Masks game which is comprised of veteran Cthulhu players and GMs) might know how to scratch at thinner clues, my table of new investigators needed (and liked) a clearer, more concrete set of clues and mysteries.

And I was right. Holy smokes was I right.

Queen of Night (found in Arkham Gazette #3 which I can’t recommend enough – do you already have a copy?) starts like the best of mysteries – with a murder – and tips sideways fast. It has plenty of research to do, with a good collection of clues and props that help the PCs dig into the lineage of a long-time gestating Arkham witch cult. There are multiple dead bodies, plenty of NPCs to engage, and lots and lots of weird and spooky moments to throw at the PCs. It really is a smashing scenario.

And the players LOVED it. By the end of the first session, the confusion and incomplete conclusion of Dreams & Fancies had left us, to be replaced by a haunting and terrible murder mystery. Then I stacked on the extra details and mysteries of not only the Merriweather Gang but the other Arkham coven (the one in the Arkham book), which stirred the clue-pot considerably and really had the players scratching their heads for a long time.

By the time we were a few sessions into Queen of Night, it was clear that I had found a style of game that worked for everyone. I still had to do some work to get the factions up and running (which I’ll write more on in a later post), but once I did that work my job at the table was very easy.

One of my favorite moments of the game, and a favorite moment in 35+ years of GMing, came toward the end, when my players were, once again, sifting through the clues and trying to pick out the narrative. They did something similar every couple of sessions after they got a couple new chunks of clues, but this time it was different. They had met and faced down the threat of the Merriweather Gang, figured out that the Arkham Coven was different than the Queen of Night coven, and begun to understand who each of the NPCs were.

The grand moment came when a player said, “I think there are three different groups here…” and listed them out and all their relevant context. This was a stark difference from 4-5 sessions earlier when they were conflating all the factions into one with wide-eyed confusion, “This witch cult is HUGE!” Now they had sifted through all the clues like the thorough investigators they had become, and had been able to arrive at thoughtful and well-researched conclusions based on the myriad clues I had thrown them over multiple sessions. And they got it right.

It was beautiful.

I Would Do it Again

Now that I’m here, I would totally run this campaign again, even if I took out Dreams & Fancies and didn’t replace it at all. Bookstore, Detective Agency, Florist, really it doesn’t matter. Running a campaign where the PCs are business owners in Arkham is just so easy and satisfying. And those scenarios are all well-constructed and easy to use as building blocks to create a deep and fun game of exploration and investigation in and around Arkham.

It would totally do it again.