Preview: Bend - Contagion of Urges
about 5 years ago – Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 03:46:23 AM

Hello Contagious and Curious,

And preview of an infected site today: Bend, with a Contagion of Urges! 

Of course, the first urge you likely have is to listen to the latest episode of the Actual Play of the Contagion Chronicle run by the developer, Matthew Dawkins.

For Previous Installments, check out: 

• Contagion Chronicle - Character Creation
• Contagion Chronicle - Episode One
• Contagion Chronicle - Episode Two
• Contagion Chronicle - Episode Three

Bend: Contagion of Urges

The city of Bend isn’t old; it’s barely seen a century. It doesn’t have the appetites of older cities. The grinding wheels of high politics don’t turn here like they do in Washington, the stuttering gears greased by sacrifices of mortal integrity. It isn’t a center of slick corporate wealth and commerce like New York, sucking hope and humanity from its victims as they pass each other wordlessly on its faded concrete streets. Nor is it a place of cancerous industry like Detroit used to be, guzzling down the poisoned blood and flesh of its citizens as if it were a giant meat-grinder. 

Bend came into being as a crossing point of the Deschutes River during the 1800s, although not without bloodshed against the indigenous populace. The aggressively expansionist European-American settlers had seen the wealth of Oregon and they wanted it. At the turn of the 19th century, the river served as a pulsing artery for opportunistic lumber companies to drive mills, and the city sprung into being. Bordered to the west by mountains, Mt. Bachelor and Broken Top, and the high deserts to the east, Bend is a town with a copywrit soul. The lumber industry is ailing, dead for all intents and purposes, so the city has latched onto the next largest resource it can exploit: tourists. Winter is dedicated to ski resorts, while summer capitalizes on white water rivers, forest hiking trails, and other scenes of natural beauty. Hotels, microbreweries, and golf courses are the draw today, rather than sawmills and job prospects. The hard-working lumber community has packed up and left. In its place is a city more likely to host corporate getaways and golf meetings where big businesses (as well as some of the more formal monstrous organizations like the Invictus or the Cryptocracy) can discuss ongoing strategy over a few casual holes. 

As a tourist destination, all season ‘round Bend is a place to find lone travelers. The hills see a fair few isolated walkers and a steady stream of campers. The dangers of the wilds (both mundane and supernatural) account for a hefty number of disappearances. Lava River Cave, a massive, inactive lava tube, is the foundation for several the gristlier local folktales. Apart from that, Bend is everything you’d expect from a small, rural city. Betty and Jughead share a booth at the diner, Kevin Arnold delivers the morning papers, and Howard Cunningham runs the local independent hardware store. Bend is the choicest parts of the American dream: the roadside diner, the bar where everybody knows your name, the house in the ‘burbs, the white picket fence, the nuclear family, and the 401k. It is a veneer of domestic normality all built on blood, capitalism, and grief. With the onset of Contagion, the sins of the past are revisiting Bend. The mortal population are fearful, aware there are things around them that are different. And what humanity fears, it destroys.

Theme: Persecution

The local monsters are less cautious about covering up the evidence of their existence. In fact, they’re getting sloppy. At the same time, the humans seem to be more astute to evidence of the unnatural. The friction between what they once believed to be fantasy and the evidence of the reality piles up in their minds and threatens to tear the barrier between humans and monsters down. That can only lead to one thing: a witch hunt. No single human can stand against the monsters, but ten, twenty, or a hundred? Those are better odds. The theme for Bend is to hold the weight of a human population over the characters like the Sword of Damocles to put the powerful few in fear of the amassed might of humanity. It’s an opportunity for the Storyteller to ratchet up the tension in this setting, bit by bit, using orbiting events like a countdown clock to zero hour, when the Contagion gains full control of the population and the city rises like a wrathful tide to sweep away those things that humanity does not, or cannot, understand.

The Final Rest Roadhouse: Established in the 1950s on China Hat Road outside the city limits, the Final Rest Roadhouse has served as a bar stop for travelers, hippies, long-hairs, and bikers over the decades. Generally frequented by those less welcome by the residents of Bend, the bar is regarded as a welcome buffer, far enough away to keep those unwanted elements out of town. As such, it has served for many years as an unofficial meeting house for Sworn factions. Today, this reputation is likely to draw unwanted attention, and it’s only a matter of time before de la Salle’s agents come a-knockin’. The Rest is a traditional roadhouse, a relic of a bygone age of Americana. Old rock posters plaster the walls, and the jukebox is always a couple of decades out of date. Although its windows are grimy and the whole façade is run-down, that appearance is carefully maintained to discourage any casual business. On rare occasions, college kids will swing by on a dare to slum it with the roughnecks. The Rest takes care to ensure that, while they get discouraged from returning, they do get home safely. Unfortunately, the city is growing and the suburbs and golf courses are creeping closer. 

• Jocelyn Moretti, proprietor of the Final Rest, is a figure of local legend both within and outside of the supernatural community. She can, as required, be the head of the local coterie or guide to a throng. Stories about her center around a rumor that she lived in New York until a few weeks before the arrest of Al Capone. That, along with her surname, has led to speculation that she has ties to the mob or a link to the FBI. Was she ever part of a shadowy under-cover plot to the arrest of the notorious gangster? If any organized response to the persecution is going to come, it’s going to come from the Rest. Whether Jocelyn orders an investigation, tells everyone to go to ground, or sounds the call to go to the mattresses, this will be where things get started.

#CofDContagion

#SpreadTheSickness

#FinalWeek

Backers Only - Contagion Setting Preview # 9 - Santiago
about 5 years ago – Wed, Apr 17, 2019 at 05:53:32 AM

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Backers Only – Manuscript Preview Part 4 - STORYTELLING
about 5 years ago – Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 03:43:40 AM

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Preview: Running the Contagion Chronicle
about 5 years ago – Mon, Apr 15, 2019 at 04:58:39 AM

Hello Contagious,

A preview of the Storytelling chapter from the Contagion Chronicle today - Backers will have access to the full chapter manuscript tomorrow! We're about to hit the 10 Day Countdown, so review your pledge, check your rewards, adjust as needed, and spread the Contagion as best possible over these final days.

The Contagion Chronicle is, by default, a crossover game. You can use anything in this book in other games, like Werewolf or Geist, but it’s designed to enable chronicles in which the characters come from multiple game lines.

This chapter provides the Storyteller with advice on how to run the Contagion Chronicle itself, and how to run Chronicles of Darkness crossover games in general.

Running the Contagion Chronicle

This book is a game of what if: what if everything the characters trusted turned on them, and everything they took for granted flipped upside down? It’s a journey into Wonderland, if Wonderland looked like their shitty studio apartment and their clunker with the blacked-out windows, but felt like the rules they understood no longer applied and everything was what it wasn’t. Taking charge of the situation means opening themselves up to ruin and potentially letting the madness run rampant, through them and everything they love. So running this game means balancing the risk of losing everything and the threat of Armageddon with playability and ensuring the players and their characters retain agency.

Theme and Mood

The Contagion is about loss of control — control of yourself, others, your environment, and your circumstances. Imagine a dementia patient, terrified to realize he no longer remembers his own family or what year it is. He can’t function on his own anymore, and things seem to happen at random. His actions prompt the wrong reactions. People tell him the facts he knows to be true are false, and he has no way of knowing whether they’re right or just lying to take advantage of his confusion. That’s the Contagion.

Unlocking this chronicle’s core themes in play can be tricky, because you want the characters to experience loss and disorientation without letting those experiences spill over onto the players. Open communication and transparency are crucial. You can use musical cues, Clues from the investigation system on Chronicles of Darkness p. 77, and clear pathological language to alert the players that something that seems nonsensical is actually part of the Contagion, and thus they can study and fight it.

Although this book talks about “the Contagion” and “infection” like it’s a disease with observable symptoms, characters won’t know it’s a sickness until they investigate and start to understand the bigger picture. Show them what’s happening, rather than telling them. Don’t say, “this Infrastructure is infected.” Instead, describe the ripple effects and let them come to the conclusion that it’s the Contagion on their own as they dig deeper.

Loss, Change, and Chaos

Go ahead and break things — you have permission. Break smaller things on the local and personal level at tier 1, larger things across whole regions at tier 2, and fundamental things across the world at tier 3. Stop the sun from rising in the morning or setting at night. Let the Faerie lord show mercy for no good reason, and a trusted companion act like a hated enemy with no obvious explanation. Give the characters’ powers unexpected side effects and replace their beloved traditions with nonsense. To raise the stakes, pull the trigger on Chekov’s Contagion. If an outbreak that weakens the Gauntlet doesn’t result in running across a place where it crumbles entirely and the material world merges with Shadow, the players will have trouble taking the threat seriously. Make them fear what happens if they do nothing by showing it to them; it keeps them actively engaged.

Always know exactly what you’re breaking and how, and what else shatters when you do it. Don’t break random things, because then the characters have no hope of unraveling the mystery. Jot down notes on the ripples your changes make. Think about the logical conclusion to a situation in which something important changes, and don’t be afraid to go big. That said, make sure whatever you change affects the characters in some personal way, even in a tier 3 game. Monsters stepping out of portals from another realm all over the world doesn’t matter to your game unless one of those monsters steps into a crowded square and takes a bite out of the players’ favorite ally. Also, make sure you don’t break things until the characters and the players are fully invested in what they have to lose; you have to show them what their normal is before you take it away.

Paranoia and Trust

Very little is sacred when the Contagion gets involved, but that goes for characters, not for players. Characters should doubt their knowledge and senses, but players need to be able to trust you. The group builds the story together; you may control the characters’ enemies, but you yourself are not an enemy. So how do you create a paranoid mood without making players feel anxious themselves?

First, communicate with your players. Make sure they know up front what sort of chronicle they’re getting into if your whole game is the Contagion Chronicle. If you introduce it later, talk to them after the first chapter in which Contagion symptoms appear, and explain that while things are getting strange, you’re not just arbitrarily changing the rules — they have the power to investigate and oppose the madness. Try to introduce the Sworn (and/or the False) in the same chapter, although the players may not learn yet what that means, so they know options exist and a plan is in motion even if they can’t see its shape.

The characters are special: they, the Sworn and the False, are the only ones who can see reality’s sickness. Even others of their own kind act like these nonsense syndromes are the way things have always been, making the protagonists question themselves. Stress this to make the characters feel alone and vulnerable, while the players feel empowered as the only ones who can save the world.

One simple way to close the gap between character paranoia and player trust is with the investigation system. Players feel better about in-game confusion and desperation if they know dice can help them actively progress. An investigation lets them do that and puts some of the power of resolution in their hands. Giving players a participatory role in the narrative through codified rules means giving them agency and helps them feel excited instead of wary about the inexplicable bullshit their characters go through. You can also use the optional conflict resolution system in this chapter, on p. XX.

While characters should experience loss, don’t take away things the players spent Experiences or significant effort to access too often, unless the characters sacrifice them on purpose. That doesn’t mean the Contagion can’t screw around with those things — in fact, it should, because that’s a simple way to make the stakes feel high. Nothing incites a player to action faster than the threat of losing something she earned. Actually remove those things altogether only sparingly, though, unless it’s just for a scene or so. For one thing, players get resentful when you take away things they worked for without their consent. For another, it’s almost always more interesting to make things weirder than to negate them entirely. If the Contagion has an effect on certain kinds of magical powers, it’s better to give them dreaded side effects, make them interact strangely with other phenomena, alter their parameters, have them activate uncontrollably, or fail under specific circumstances. This creates story hooks, while saying such powers just don’t work tends to take story hooks away.

If a character does permanently lose something to the Contagion on which the player spent Experience points, give the Experience points back and let her spend them on something else relevant to the current story; this practice already exists in the Sanctity of Merits rule (Chronicles of Darkness pp. 43-44), but since the Contagion can theoretically mess with innate abilities, apply it across the board.

Anytime a character temporarily loses access to something important or the Contagion affects her in a way that puts her in harm’s way or imposes a significant setback, award the player a Beat or inflict a Condition (which provides a Beat when it resolves). Beats are how the system incentivizes players to accept or create narrative twists that get their characters in trouble and up the stakes, so the Contagion’s effects should always provide Beats whenever they cash in on the threatened horror of loss and paranoia. If this happens in direct service to acting against the Contagion or supporting the Sworn, make them Sworn Beats.

Don’t let the Contagion mess with Vector powers, though, because the Sworn specifically developed them as a reaction to the Contagion in the first place.

Backers Only - Contagion Setting Preview # 8 -Acre
about 5 years ago – Sun, Apr 14, 2019 at 05:00:22 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.