Rats in the Walls: Mysterium [Recruitment]

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Concept
A Lovecraftian symphony at the end of the world for 3-5 players, using Rats in the Walls, a lightweight system available for pay-what-you-want on Drivethru.

Aim
My aim is to run a story with a definite beginning, middle and end rather than a sprawling campaign or sequence of investigations. Three acts, plus whatever side-plots and personal narratives the characters bring to the table. It's hard to estimate how long it will take – six months? More, less?

I should specify, I'm not looking for players who habitually produce posts consisting of just a few sentences. My prose tends towards the extensive and purple, befitting the source material, and while I certainly don't expect or desire every in-character post to match or rival that I find constantly getting one-liners or terse posts that don't explore any details of the character's mindset or actions, that don't react to my posts and give me material to respond to in turn extremely off-putting in the long run.

Tone & Themes
The blurring of horror and wonder; the indistinct lines between the beautiful and the hideous.

Themes, topics and areas of expertise that may prove useful for characters: musical theory or performance; physics; electrical engineering; the ability to speak Arabic, Hindi or Russian; espionage or investigation; mountaineering.

Subject Matter
The game is set in 1925, so racism, sexism, colonialism and other crappiness is a historical fact and a hard to extricate part of the genre, though I intend to dull the edges of it in the interests of playability and palatability.

This is a cosmic horror game: violence, body horror, nihilism, all that good stuff is to be expected. There may be elements of sexuality, but they will not be frequent, explicit, for the purposes of titillation or necessarily involving the PCs directly. Rather, it will be another vector for horror.

This game is explicitly friendly to LGBT and any other minorities or marginalized groups.

Player Experience Requirements
Rats in the Walls is a very easy system to pick up, so no prior experience is necessary. Some familiarity with Call of Cthulhu, the Mythos or Lovecraftian fiction generally would be helpful in understanding the desired tone and atmosphere, but is also not necessary.

Intended Post Frequency
2/week.

Specialized Software and Resources
None.

How to Apply
Post your interest here. If you have ideas about the character you'd like to play, post 'em! Consider in particular why your character might have been invited to Tatiana Rockwell's private performance at the Miskatonic University's music department. Are they a member of the faculty or student in music, physics, mathematics or engineering schools? A donor to or alumni of the Miskatonic? A musical or cultural journalist writing a piece on Ms. Rockwell or the late Mr. Skryaben? A friend, agent or suitor of the performer? A local celebrity or patron of the arts? On the more extreme fringe of credibility, a thief that finagled an invitation to try and purloin the wallets and jewels of the guests, or a G-man surveying Ms. Rockwell or her audience for signs of un-American activities?

This will not be first come, first served, so the more interesting and evocative your interest or character concept the better! I plan to make the invitations on or before Halloween, NZ time, so you've got almost a week.

Oh, wow, I've been itching to try out Rats in the Walls, so I'm overjoyed to see you post this. I haven't played it before, but I do have the rulebook, and I have been playing with the idea of running it here in the future. Very happy to see that you beat me to the punch!

My main reservation is the expectation of lengthy posts. Can you give an example of what kind of post length you're expecting? I'm afraid that with a newborn in my house, I won't be able to meet your expectations. But maybe if I saw an example?

Regardless of whether I end up being in the mix, I wish you the best of luck with this game. Very glad to see RitW getting some love.

It's not about word count, per se. It's about not constantly writing posts that are the bare minimum, about putting in a modicum of effort, connective tissue and colour on them. I can't really provide example of doing it right, because that's so situational.

Don't fixate on it. I can tell from your post here you'd be more than up to the task. 8]

I've been interested in Rats in the Walls for a while now too. I've been trying to find a more rules light approach to Lovecraftian horror than Call of Cthulhu but I've not liked Cthulhu Dark that I've been playing recently, a bit too light and the sanity mechanic is a bit off.

I'd also have some reservation about the need for more verbose prose but it sounds like I might be able to fit within the envelope of what's expected.

Character creation ideas, how about a contemporary of Ms Rockwell, a fellow student of physics, but someone who was rather in awe of the mysterious woman and whose own career proceeded in the more staid and mundane direction of further studies in the field of electromechanics. He could be an academic or professional electrical engineer, but very much a reserved and unassuming man, not someone you would expect to be caught up in the rarefied air of an avant garde musical performance. He's probably as much interested in the instrument as the music, but most interested in the woman herself.

That was my impression too. Cthulhu Dark seemed too far in the minimalist direction from CoC 7e's maximalism, to the point where it barely exists at all. RitW seems like a great medium between them, and I'm keen to see it in play.
I dig it!

The adventure hook sounds really interesting. Unfortunately, I've found that the 1920s setting just really doesn't grab me, so I dont think joining is a great idea. That said, I'd love to follow along if you decide to make this game public. Only if every actual player is okay with that, of course.

Well, you -know- I've been jonesing to play Rats in the Walls, and love 1920s cosmic horror... I'll offer my pipe / right cross / library card if you'll have it.

OK, you're a pal. Assuming it works with the scenario, my thought is that I'll play a young protégé(e) of the composer mentioned in the invitation, this Alexander Skryaben. If Skryaben was a professor (or visiting professor) at Miskatonic U., I might be a student. Either way, I might be a trained composer who is now struggling to make a living due to rumors of some untoward relationship with Skryaben.

In short, I'm getting some serious Amadeus / Mozart in the Jungle vibes (minus the silliness, of course), and think playing a struggling composer/conductor sounds intriguing and fitting with the setting.

Yep, keen to see it in action, particularly the sanity mechanic which really fell flat for me in Cthulhu Dark, but also if you get a sense that the system provides some useful differentiation between characters and checks. With Cthulhu Dark the rolls were all the same so it was difficult to know what you were rolling for.

I have a fantasy of running Impossible Landscapes as a PbP campaign but I can't face running it as Delta Green and I'm looking for an alternative system.that is relatively easy from a mechanics perspective.

There are at least three different DG take-offs.

Cthulhu Deep Green -- which I suspect you won't like, Meph, as it's rooted in Cthulhu Dark. It's a fair bit more complex, and not necessarily in a good way, IMHO.

Black Light is a straight lift of DG into ICRPG, and (again IMHO) it's pretty damned cool. You have to be down for that d20 vibe, but it's a solid little game. Self-contained if I remember right, I don't think you need a copy of Index Card RPG to run it.

Well damnit. I've run across at -least- one more but it's escaping me. Will post if and when it comes to me.

It also wouldn't be that hard to add Bond mechanics to a game like Rats in the Walls, The Cthulhu Hack, Tiny Cthulhu, Night's Black Agents or even something like Fate or a tuned 2d20 Achtung! Cthulhu. And in the vein of Stars Without Number, there is Silent Legions, though I know precious little about it because I just -struggle- with Kevin Crawford's work.

I will say that I have a lot of time for the current iteration of DG itself, even though I generally don't like percentile systems, and especially percentile systems with oodles of skills. I think current DG is the very top of the BRP food chain.

Are you thinking of Fall of Delta Green, Harr? The Gumshoe version?

No, but there is -also- that!

The Green Triangle Hack?

Funnily enough what I don't like about Delta Green is all the Delta Green lore, I find it all a bit too self-referential and I end up not taking it seriously and thinking of it like the Laundry Files. But I'm hijacking Dirigible's thread!

This sounds intriguing and I think I'd like to give it a shot if you'll have me as I do love the horror genre. I've played in one CoC game but am also a little familiar with Lovecraftian fiction from the Arkham Horror card game. The character idea I have swirling around in my head is a female reporter in her late 20's, who is not interested in reporting on the mundane. For example, she recently did a series of interviews with a local explorer and cartographer who was the first female professional mountaineer. My character also has done some mountain climbing herself. Always in the thick of the news, she got word of the concert and was curious about Ms. Rockwell's self-conceived instrument and what would have driven her to make her own in a sea of already existing instruments.

I like the idea of simpler rule sets and would hope that I could post up to your expected standard. I'm not a bare minimum poster at all, so there's that.

Hey everyone. Great to see the interest and ideas! I got tied up with spring cleaning the last few days, so slight delay. I'll have the game up and open over the next few days.

Took a little longer than planned, but invites have gone out to SavageBob, Mephistophilis, Harrigan and Windyridge. Thank you for your interest!