The first sanity mechanics appear in Call of Cthulhu in 1981 and, in many ways, it remains the definitive mechanical model: The character is confronted by something unnatural, stressful, or terrifying. They make a check using their Sanity attribute. If the check succeeds, everything is fine. If the check fails, they take damage to their Sanity attribute based on the severity of the event that triggered the check. If the damage is sufficiently large (either immediately or in aggregate), they suffer some form of temporary or indefinite insanity. These insanities often force a particular action on the character (fainting, fleeing in panic, physical hysterics, etc.).

We can identify three distinct elements in these mechanics:

• The trigger which requires a sanity check.
• The check to see if the trigger causes harm to the character’s sanity.
• The reaction of the character to the trigger (usually due to a failed check).

This is a fortune at the beginning mechanic: You make the sanity check and THEN determine what your character does based on the outcome of the check. It is also a reactive mechanic, by which we mean that it is used in response to a triggering circumstance rather than resolving a statement of intention.

(Thought experiment: What would a non-reactive sanity check look like? It would probably be part of a wider array of personality mechanics which the player could use to interrogate their character’s state of a mind; a very non-traditional form of player expertise activating character expertise, with the player essentially “asking” their character whether they’re scared or aroused by Lady Chatworth or tempted by the devil’s offer. But I digress.)

RESOLUTION SEQUENCE

In my experience, most GMs resolve sanity checks in the same sequence listed above: they describe the trigger, make the check, and then determine the reaction.

GM: A tentacular thing comes slithering out of the closet! Make a sanity check!

Player: (rolls dice) I failed!

GM: You take (rolls dice) 3 points of Sanity loss! What do you do?

Player: Bertram screams and runs out of the room!

In this, they are usually mirroring how the mechanic is described in the rulebook: this is what this rule is for (the trigger), here is how the mechanic works (the check), and here is the outcome of the mechanic (the reaction).

This all makes sense.

But in my experience, it’s not the most effective way to run sanity checks. Instead, you usually want to invert the check and trigger, like so:

Player: Bertram very carefully turns the handle and eases open the closet door.

GM: Peering into he closet… There’s… Yes! There’s something moving in there! Give me a sanity check!

Player: (rolls dice) I fail!

GM: A tentacular thing comes slithering out of the closet! You take 3 points of Sanity loss! What do you do?

Player: Bertram screams and runs out of the room!

It’s a subtle distinction. What difference does it make?

First, the mechanical resolution now functions as foreshadowing: While the check is being made, tension builds at the table as the players anticipate whatever horrific thing might be triggering the check. (What’s in the closet?!)

Second, by resolving the check before describing the trigger, you allow the players to have an immediate, immersive response to your description of the trigger.

Which makes sense, right? When Bertram sees the tentacular thing he immediately wants to scream and run in terror. He doesn’t want to wait a minute while dice are being rolled.

So, in short, you heighten the emotional engagement of the moment both coming and going.

In my experience, the exception to this is when the trigger for the sanity check is generated by a different mechanical interaction. (For example, watching your friend’s brains get sprayed across the wall by a sniper’s bullet.) This is more a matter of practicality than effectiveness (unlike the tentacular horror slithering out of the closet, the GM doesn’t know whether or not the bullet will hit their friend until it does, and the whole table often learns that simultaneously), but does serve as a reminder that the “proper” ruling in an RPG is rarely a simple black-and-white affair.

TRAIL OF CTHULHU – LIMITS OF SANITY

In Call of Cthulhu, PCs start with a fairly large amount of Sanity and usually lose fairly small quantities in each session of play. There’s generally no way to recover lost Sanity, so over the course of a campaign, their Sanity is slowly eroded away by the horrors which they’ve seen, until final the last few points are taken away and they are left permanently mad and broken by their experiences.

This is very effective at evoking the slow, inexorable destruction of Lovecraftian fiction. But, like hit points in D&D, you generally don’t feel actual risk until near the end of the process. There are some mitigating factors, but this can easily have the effect of reducing the impact of Sanity losses.

In Trail of Cthulhu, Kenneth Hite does a very clever tweak on this system by splitting it into two separate tracks: Sanity and Stability.

As in Call of Cthulhu, Sanity generally can’t be restored once lost. However, you also don’t lose it directly. Instead, you usually only lose Sanity as a result of your Stability meter hitting 0.

The Stability meter CAN be restored when depleted, but it’s limited enough that it can easily be wiped out in a single session (which would result in Sanity getting hit).

This allows the system to create a mechanical sense of risk that builds over the course of each session (as Stability is depleted), while ALSO capturing the long, slow, inexorable, and irreversible destruction of a character’s psyche (as Sanity is depleted). It allows characters to brush up against madness without being permanently broken.

If you’re a Call of Cthulhu GM coming to Trail of Cthulhu to the first time, you’ll want consider how the hard limits in each system are different. This will affect both scenario design and the pacing of individual sessions. In some ways Trail of Cthulhu is more forgiving (because Sanity is “shielded” behind Stability), but in other ways it is considerably less forgiving (because it’s relatively easy to completely blast through Stability in a single session).

The game is fairly well-tuned so that in a typical scenario some or all of the PCs are likely to feel the risk of running out of Stability, but it won’t actually happen in every single session. (Which is also good, because if it’s getting hammered so hard that it IS happening like clockwork every single session, that also deflates tension.) But this is something you’ll want to monitor and adjust in your scenario design and rulings: If their Stability is rarely or never at risk of running out, check to see if you’re not calling for Stability tests as often as you should. If their Stability is being sand-blasted away, see what you can tweak to get a more balanced result.

UNKNOWN ARMIES – A MULTITUDE OF MADNESS

Unknown Armies by John Tynes and Greg Stolze has several more features in its sanity system (which, in the first edition, was called the madness meter and was resolved using stress checks).

First, instead of having a single track, the system has five separate meters, one for each type of psychological stress the character might experience:

• Helplessness (unable to take action you feel is necessary)
• Isolation (when you’re cut off from society or loved ones)
• Violence (pain, injury, death)
• Unnatural (challenges to your perception of reality)
• Self (violations of your deepest beliefs)

This paints a more evocative picture of a character’s psychological state. It also allows the game to track separate effects for each type of trauma, while still measuring overall psychological stability across all the meters.

Having these separate meters also allows Unknown Armies characters to become hardened: Each stress check adds a hardened notch to the associated meter. Each trigger is rated by its severity, and if character has a number of hardened notches in a meter equal to or higher than the rating of the trigger, then they don’t need to make the stress check. (They’ve seen so much Violence, for example, that someone being punched in the face no longer has a psychological impact on them.)

Systems that harden you against tests can suffer from a “plateau effect” where you reach a certain level equivalent to whatever style of play you prefer and then stop rolling checks (see Katanas & Trenchcoats). This also happens in Unknown Armies, but it sidesteps the problem by having the five different meters: You can plateau in one, but the character will remain vulnerable in the other meters (and realistically can’t plateau in all of them because there are cumulative psychological consequences based on the total number of hardened notches the character has).

Unknown Armies also does something interesting with the reaction phase of the resolution: If the PC fails a stress check, they have to choose fight, flight, or freeze – in other words, is the character’s reaction to furiously attack the source of psychological stress, flee from it in a panic, or simply lock-up in indecision, terror, or a “deer-in-headlights” effect.

The cool thing about this mechanic is that, although the failed check constrains the available options, the player still remains in control of their character. Conversely, even succeeding on the check gives a roleplaying cue (because becoming psychologically hardened is meaningful) that the player can pick up and run with.

SANITY CHECKS FOR NPCs

Something which many games with sanity mechanics miss (and which, in my experience, many GMs ignore even in the games which do include support for it) is to also make sanity checks for the NPCs.

If you aren’t already doing this, it’s well worth exploring. It can really push the narrative in cool and unexpected directions.

It can also emphasize how dangerous and unusual the PCs’ lives are (and, therefore, how extraordinary and meaningful their actions are). It can also remind them why they need to be the ones to solve the problem and that it may be a very, very bad idea to call in people who aren’t prepared to deal with it.

On that note, remember that NPCs will generally only have a fraction of the screen time that the PCs do, and, therefore, will only have a fraction of the opportunities to make sanity checks. Don’t load ‘em all up with the default maximum Sanity ratings for starting PCs. Seed in a broad range of Sanity ratings, from those who are fairly robust (at least to begin with) to those who are already psychologically unsound.

A DIGRESSION ON MYTHOS MADNESS

So it turns out that there are aliens. And some of them have visited Earth. Maybe they’ve even been involved in genetically engineering human beings.

… why is this driving me insane again?

As Unknown Armies demonstrates, sanity mechanics are not ineluctably linked to the Mythos. But they did originate there, and so pervasive is the influence of Call of Cthulhu that any Mythos-based game seems almost incomplete without them. So this feels like an appropriate time for a brief digression on why Mythos-inspired madness exists.

Partly this is just cultural dissonance: At the time Lovecraft was writing, these things were not part of pop culture, so it was possible to believe that people would find their existence unsettling to their settled views of the way the world worked. The understanding of how insanity worked was also different in some key ways. And, of course, Lovecraft was a huge racist and had a plethora of mental issues himself, so there is some projection of his own preexisting mental infirmities into the mental state of his characters.

So, to a certain extent, it’s like wondering why women faint all the time in Victorian literature.

On the other hand, there’s a bit more to it in terms of the time when the “Stars Are Right,” which suggests a fundamental reordering of the laws of the physical universe. The creatures of the Mythos literally belong to a universe incompatible with the universe we think we live in. To put it another way: We live in a little tiny pocket of abnormality which uniquely makes it possible for human life and consciousness to exist and/or prosper. The idea that at some point the Earth will leave our zone of grace, the stars will right themselves, and our little epoch of abnormality will come to an end can be rather unsettling in a way that “there are aliens” isn’t.

But more than that: The creatures of the Mythos are a living connection to the way the universe is supposed to work… and the way the universe is supposed to work is inimical to humanity. At extreme levels it can be like trying to run COBOL programming through a C++ compiler. At lower levels it’s more like trying to run a program through a buggy emulator. It’s not just “that monster is kind of creepy,” it’s “that monster has connected my brain to a place where my brain doesn’t work right.” (This idea also works in reverse: Mythos creatures are operating in a semi-insane state within this period of abnormality. That’s why Cthulhu is lying in an induced coma below R’lyeh… he’s trying to minimize the damage.)

But even more than that: The damage being done to your mind is actually a direct result of the mind desperately trying to rewrite itself to cope with the true nature of reality. Mythos-induced insanity? That’s not the mind breaking. That’s the mind trying to fix itself. It just looks like insanity to us because we’re all broken.

Back to the Art of Rulings – NEXT: Traps

Go to Part 1

Here’s my random tip for using Idea rolls as a GM:

Don’t.

Let me start by explaining what I’m talking about: In Call of Cthulhu, an Idea roll “represents hunches and the ability to interpret the obvious.” In some of the older scenarios published for the game, this roll would actually be used to prevent players from having their characters take certain courses of action because the character wouldn’t know to do them — sort of aggressively preventing player expertise form trumping character expertise.

There are some obvious problems with that, too, but what I’m interested in right now is the far more common technique of using the Idea roll to tell players what they “should” be doing. For example, if the players are talking about how they can get an audience with a casino owner, the GM might call for an Idea roll and say, “You could disguise yourselves as high rollers.” Or when the PCs stumble onto a bloodstained altar in the center of a stone circle, the GM might call for an Idea roll and then say, “You could try putting that idol you found earlier on the altar!”

Even in games that lack a specific mechanic like this, you may see similar techniques improvised (usually with some form of Intelligence check).

GM-INITIATED IDEA ROLLS

The basic function of the Idea roll is essentially like using a walkthrough in a video game: You don’t know what to do, so you have to consult a guide that can get you past the point where you’re stuck. A GM-initiated Idea roll, though, is often more like having an obnoxious friend sitting with you who’s played the game before and simply WILL NOT shut up and let you play the game for yourself.

If you’re a GM prepping a scenario and you come to a place where you think an Idea roll will be necessary, that’s a really clear sign that you need to DO BETTER. Saying, “I need an Idea roll here,” is basically saying, “I have designed a scenario where the players are going to get stuck here.” Instead of prepping an Idea roll, figure out some way to redesign the scenario so that the players won’t get stuck there. (The Three Clue Rule will often help.)

What about run-time Idea rolls? In other words, you’re currently running the session, you can see that the players are irreparably stuck, and you need to fix the problem. Well, there are two possibilities:

First, they’re not actually stuck, in which case you don’t need to use an Idea roll.

Second, they ARE stuck and definitely need help to get unstuck. In which case, you shouldn’t be rolling the dice because failure is not actually an option: You need to give them information. Therefore you should not be rolling to see whether or not they get it.

PLAYER-INITIATED IDEA ROLLS

On the other side of the screen, a player-initiated Idea roll is generally more viable: This is basically the players sending up an emergency flare and saying, “We’re lost! Please send help!” To return to our analogy of the video game walkthrough, this is the player who has been stymied to the point where they’re no longer having fun and just want to be able to move on in the game.

In my experience, it should be noted, what such players are looking for is often not the solution; what they are looking for is an action. They feel stuck because they don’t know what they should be doing. A Matryoshka search technique, therefore, is often a great way to respond to this.

Something else to look for is the clue that they’ve overlooked. Not necessarily a clue they haven’t found, but one which they don’t realize is actually a clue, which they’ve radically misinterpreted, or which they’ve completely forgotten they have. For example:

• “You realize that patent leather can also be used for furniture, not just shoes.”
• “While S.O.S. could be a cry for help, couldn’t it also be someone’s initials?”
• “You suddenly remember that you still have Suzy’s diary in the pocket of your trench coat. Didn’t she mention something about the color purple, too?”

Trail of Cthulhu innovated a cool mechanic along these lines for its Cthulhu Mythos skill: You can use this skill to “put together the pieces and draw upon the terrible knowledge that you have been subconsciously suppressing, achieving a horrific epiphany. The Keeper provides you with the result of your intuition, sketching out the Mythos implications of the events you have uncovered.”

There are two important features to this mechanic: First, it doesn’t require a roll. (Again, if the players need help, then denying it to them on the basis of a dice roll doesn’t make sense.)

Second, it has a cost: The sudden insight into the terrible realities of the universe will cost you Stability and, quite possibly, Sanity. Importantly, this cost is NOT exacted “if the player deduces the horrible truth without actually using [the] Cthulhu Mythos ability.” The cost, in my experience, not only dissuades players from relying on the mechanic instead of their own ingenuity, it also enhances the sense of accomplishment they feel when they solve the mystery or gain the insight without using the mechanic.

The 7^th Edition of Call of Cthulhu has similarly modernized the Idea roll, using a fail forward technique where a failure still gets the PCs the necessary clue/course of action, but also results in some sort of negative consequence: Getting the clue might bring you to the attention of the bad guys; or you might waste weeks of time digging through a library before finally stumbling across the right reference; or, like Trail of Cthulhu, the insight might force a Sanity check.

Another cool technique it suggests, particularly in the case of failing forward, is to aggressively reframe the scene: Jump directly to the point where the PCs have followed the lead and gotten themselves into trouble as a result.

A final interesting variant here is to make the Idea roll concept diegetic instead of non-diegetic; i.e., to make it a decision the character makes instead of the player. In a fantasy setting, for example, the character might literally make a sacrifice to the Goddess of Knowledge in order to receive a divine vision.

GM DON’T LIST #10.1: TELLING PLAYERS THE PLAN

Like an aggressive Idea roll on steroids, some GMs will go so far as to just literally tell the players what their characters will be doing for the entire scenario.

For example, I was playing in a convention one-shot where we were street samurai who got hired to be ringers on a Blood Bowl team in order to rig a high-stakes game. This was a really cool premise, turning the usual expectations of the game on its head and giving us an opportunity to explore how the PCs’ heist-oriented abilities could be used in a completely novel environment.

Unfortunately, the session quickly went completely off the rails. Rather than letting the players make any meaningful decisions, the GM had pre-scripted every play of the game: We were reduced to simply rolling whatever skill had been scripted for us. (It didn’t help that the rolls themselves were essentially pointless since the outcome of every drive and most of the plays had ALSO been planned ahead of time.)

This was an extreme example of something closely related to GM Don’t List #7: Preempting Investigation, but I bring it up here mostly because I’ve seen several GMs who use Idea rolls to similar (albeit usually less absurd) ends. These game are characterized by the players making an endless stream of Idea rolls, with the GM constantly saying things like, “Pierre [your character] thinks he should come back and check out the Le Petit Pont after dark.” Or, “You could probably get a pretty good view from the top of Notre Dame. You’ll need to figure out some way to get up to the top of the towers.” Or even, as literally happened in one game, “Rebecca thinks she should stab the Archbishop in the chest.” (“No, really, she thinks this is really important.”)

Basically: Don’t do this. Present your players with problems, not solutions. Give them the space to mull over a situation and figure out what they want to do (or what they think they need to do) in response to that situation.

Go to Part 11: Description-on-Demand

Go to Part 1

NODE 3: ALICIA COREY’S BOARDING HOUSE

• A wooden, hand-painted sign declares as much on the sloped front lawn. An attached lower placard reads ROOM FOR RENT.
• Ma Kelley is a woman in her mid-50s. Widowed when her husband was killed in the war. She knows what the Girls know (below), and can also provide Alicia Corey’s rental application.
• Men are generally not allowed through the door at any hour; if they have official credentials, she won’t make a fuss about it, but it will nevertheless startle the girls.

Bedrooms: One of the second floor Chambers is occupied by Ma Kelley. The other four are furnished for rental. Three are occupied (including Alicia’s); the fourth is currently available for rent.

ALICIA COREY’S RENTAL APPLICATION

• She moved into Ma Kelley’s in July.
• Lists a forwarding address: 169 Page Street West, St. Paul, MN.  (Node 5: Fatima’s Shrine)

QUESTIONING THE GIRLS

• Betty, Grace
• They probably don’t’ know that Alicia is dead (unless it’s been a couple of days, in which case the cops have followed up).
• Alicia always paid her rent promptly in cash.
• She worked as a secretary, but they realize they don’t know for what firm.
• She never had any guests that they can recall, but she did keep strange hours from time to time. (Ma Kelley doesn’t have any sort of curfew, so this wasn’t considered a problem or anything.)
• She’d once mentioned during dinner that she had been in Cairo. The girls thought this was terribly exotic, but it didn’t seem as if Alicia wanted to talk about it. (Betty is convinced this means that she has a dark and mysterious past; probably featuring a lover who tragically died.)

ALICIA COREY’S ROOM

Furnished with care and love. A handmade quilt on the bed. (Features an arabesque design indicative of it being Egyptian in origin.)

Writing Desk: Everything is meticulously clean. Any written matter has been carefully destroyed.

Loose Floor Board: Under the bed. Alicia Khouri’s Diary is hidden inside.

ALICIA COREY’S BACKGROUND

Alicia’s real name is Alicia Khouri. She is of Egyptian descent.

Rashida Khouri, Alicia’s mother, is a Hu-manifestation of Ra and a Sister of Fatima. Alicia learned the teachings of the Sisterhood from her mother, but had not yet been indoctrinated into the inner mysteries of the coven. (She didn’t know that her mother was a Hu-manifestation of Ra.)

Gladys Roy had alerted the Sisterhood that there was Tanit activity in the Twin Cities. Alicia was sent to conduct an investigation. She had tracked the cult activity to kidnappings at Harriet Tubman’s Asylum for Colored Orphans (Node 4), but gotten no further in her investigation at the time of her death.

Investigators may suspect that Corey was directly targeted in response to her investigation, but this is not the case. Her exposure to the Tophet serum whiskey was coincidental.

ALICIA COREY’S DIARY

Flipping through this thin red volume – well-worn and weather-beaten despite containing pre-printed entries only for the year 1925 – reveals that the first half is completely blank and unused. In July of this year, however, entries in a fine and elegant script begin (mostly in a blue ink, although there are some scrabbled out in pencil and others in a black ink; all appear to be of the same hand, however).

At first glance, most of the entries appear to be concerned with sightseeing around the Twin Cities. But in aggregate an odd pattern appears: The sites she is notating as if they were tourist attractions generally… aren’t. They’re common businesses or even private residences. Mixed in among these curious entries you notice a recurring mention of the name Tanith, and also one reference to “a defacement of the eye of Ra”.

Over the past month, the entries become fixated around a single location: Harriet Tubman’s Asylum for Colored Orphans, located in the Rondo neighborhood of St. Paul. The exact nature of these notes is difficult to discern as they are partly written in some form of code, but they seem to catalog the comings and goings of numerous individuals, tracking their movements in some detail.

If Lost, Please Return Me to
169 Page Street West, Saint Paul, Minnesota

Go to Node 4: Harriet Tubman’s Asylum for Colored Children

Go to Part 1

NODE 2: MINNESOTA 13

INVESTIGATING BOOTLEGGING

Cop Talk – The O’Connor System:

• The former police chief of St. Paul, John O’Connor, established the O’Connor System, in which the police allow organized crime figures to “layover” in St. Paul as long as they don’t perform any criminal activities there in exchange for payoffs and kickbacks.
• The primary liaison is “Dapper” Dan Hogan, boss of St. Paul’s Irish Mob. But Kid Cann of Minneapolis has been benefiting from it, too, ever since the “handshake” deal which settled their mutual territories.
• Cann is the guy in charge of virtually all the bootlegging in the Twin Cities. If he’s not doing it himself, he knows who is. He can be found in the Cotton Club in Minneapolis most nights.

Library Use: As far as the mainstream papers are concerned — the Tribune, Daily Star, Pioneer, St. Paul Dispatch —  there is no organized crime in the Twin Cities. The only possible explanation is that pressure is being applied to keep it out of the papers.

• Library Use 1: Smaller, tabloid newspapers occasionally attempt to cover local political corruption and criminal activity, which is apparently rife. (See O’Connor System above.)

Streetwise:

• Moonshine generally isn’t made inside the city limits.
• Bootleggers run the liquor in from out-of-town distilleries and make the local sales.
• Kid Cann is the mob boss who runs most or all of the local bootleggers. Everybody knows that.
• Streetwise 1: There’s a network of supply – the guys in charge don’t just get booze to the bootleggers; they’re also in charge of the smuggling operations that get the distilleries their raw alcohol.

MINNESOTA 13 WHISKEY BOTTLES

The whiskey in the bottles recovered from the James J. Hill House has a slightly purplish color.

Craft/Chemistry: Can determine that these bottles are brand new; not from 1905.

Chemistry: Can detect the presence of the Tanit parasites. (See General Research: Lab Analysis – Tanit Parasites.)

Chemistry: The Whiskey has been flavored with Juicy Fruit gum.

• Chemistry 1: The Juicy Fruit may have been used to cover up the flavor of denatured alcohol.
• Library Use / Cop Talk: Using Juicy Fruit as a flavoring is a unique trait of Stearns County bootleggers, up near Holdingford (“moonshine capital of Minnesota”).

Leveraged Clue (Juicy Fruit Flavoring / Minnesota 13 Label)

• Oral History (Stearns County): Can find someone willing to identify Node 6: Davis Farm as the source of this whiskey.

PETE’S

A speakeasy on Hennepin Avenue, north of the Mississippi. Oleg Andersson can be found here.

OLEG ANDERSSON

APPEARANCE:

• Prop: Photo of Oleg Andersson

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• Smirks.
• Fidgets with his tie.
• Fronts as tough, but quick to backpedal in face of real threat.
• Voice goes nasal when he gets nervous.

BACKGROUND

• Born 1898 in Norway. His parents came to America and settled in St. Cloud when he was two years old.
• Came down to Minneapolis in 1921 looking for day labor work. Got tangled up in a robbery gang instead; was out buying cigarettes when the rest of his crew got rolled up.
• He ran to his friend Dan to hide out until the heat died down. Dan was running booze and Andersson’s connections up in Stearns County made him useful. Dan was killed a couple years ago in a drive-by.

CLUES

• He gets the Minnesota 13 Whiskey from the Davis Farm. (Billie Davis is the only bootlegger in Stearns County with the expertise to fix the denatured ethanol Kid Cann hooked him up with.)
• He delivers denaturalized ethanol to the Davis’. He picks up the ethanol from a warehouse location. He doesn’t know who drops it off — Kid Cann hooked him up with the connection and it all stays anonymous.
• Following Oleg: Following Oleg will eventually lead to the Davis’ Farm, where he drops off barrels of chemicals from his truck and picks up crates filled with Minnesota 13.
• Oleg’s Address Book: Carried in his breast pocket. Contains addresses for his pick-ups with notations – Davis Farm is marked as a place that he makes a special drop-off; and checking the noted dates it’s clear Rachel’s whiskey came from the Davis Farm.

NOTES

• Drives a 1922 Ford Model TT truck

OLEG ANDERSON: Athletics 6, Driving 6, Firearms 3, Fleeing 4, Scuffling 4, Weapons 3, Health 8
Alertness Modifier: +1 (keeps an eye out)
Stealth Modifier: +1 (knows how to stay out of sight)
Weapons: sap (-1), .38 revolver (+0)

KID CANN

(ISADORE BLUMENFELD)

APPEARANCE

• Prop: Photo of Kid Cann

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• Proud
• Prone to violence if threatened.
• Gestures with both hands

BACKGROUND

• A Jew born in 1900 in a Romanian shtetl, his parents emigrated to America in 1902.
• Left school as a kid to sell newspapers on Minneapolis’ “Newspaper Row”, where the best locations were held by gangs of kids.
• Began running errands for pimps and whores in the red light district.
• Prohibition let him and his brothers expand their operations. Forged connections with the Chicago Outfit (Al Capone) and New York’s Genovese crime family (Mafia).
• Oversees illegal distilleries in the forests near Fort Snelling, bootlegging operations, prostitution, and labor racketeering.
• Cann insists his nickname is derived from his boxing days, but it’s rumored that he earned it due to his tendency to hide in outhouses/bathrooms when shooting starts.

CLUES

• Hooked Oleg up with denatured alcohol from the Harris Chemical Plant. (He’s bribed people in charge over there to “leave it unattended”; then it gets picked up and taken to a warehouse. Oleg picks it up from there and takes it to his people in Stearns County. Cann doesn’t know who he takes it to.)
• He can identify that Minnesota 13 from the party as one sold by Oleg Andersson.

KID CANN: Athletics 6, Driving 5, Firearms 6, Fleeing 4, Scuffling 8, Weapons 4, Health 9

Alertness Modifier: +1 (wary)
Stealth Modifier: +2 (sneaky)
Weapons: Brass Knuckles (-1), .45 automatic (+1)

KID CANN BODYGUARDS: Athletics 6, Driving 4, Firearms 6, Scuffling 8, Weapons, Health 8
Alertness Modifier: +1 (watchful)
Stealth Modifier: 0 (unskilled)
Weapons: .38 revolver (0), Sawed-off pool cue (-1), switchblade (-1), Fists (-2)

Go to Node 3: Alicia Corey’s Boarding House

Go to Part 1

NODE 1: THE BLACK CATS

BACKGROUND

The Black Cats aerobatics troupe was first organized in 1924 with 13 members, headed by Bon MacDougall.

MEMBERSHIP: The roster is in constant flux with members coming and going.

Original members: Bon MacDougall, Al Johnson, Gladys Roy, Fronty Nichols, Heard McClelland, Chief White Eagle, Jack Frye, Paul Richter, Art Goebel, Spider Matlock, Gladys Ingle, Frank Lockhart, Reginald Denny, Babe Stapp, Bill Lind, and Sam Greenwald

HOME BASE: Burdett Airport – Los Angeles, CA

UNIFORM: Black sweater with a 13 Black Cats patch on the front and names on the back.

• Each name has 13 letters; if it doesn’t, nickname is added.
• White claw insignias; one for each time they’ve fell. (Under Black Cat rulings, after the eighth claw they can no longer fly with the troupe, because cats only have nine lives. Reginald Denny received two when joining the troupe because he’d been felled twice during the Great War; his joining may have also been a publicity stunt arranged by his studio.)
• The logo of the black cat was created by Bon MacDougall “in regard to the ancient Egyptian religion and it honored the sacred cat of Bubastes”. He flew with it before the formation of the group; adding the 13 for the group.

TRIVIA:

• Appeared in Howard Hughes’ Hells Angels and other 1920s films.
• Used no parachutes until 1927 (when it became law).
• Disbanded in 1929. (Members of the troupe went on to found TWA.)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

• http://www.twaspirit.com/blackcats.html
• http://www.sedonalegendhelenfrye.com/1928.html

LOCAL TOURING TROUPE: Consists of Gladys Roy (who is from Minnesota) and a handful of other 13 Black Cat members who are barnstorming as an independent tour across the Midwest.

AEROBATICS SHOW

START: If the timing makes it possible, the show has already started as the PCs approach.

• They see a low-flying plane pass overhead. Someone is dangling helplessly from it!

AEROBATICS SHOW: Play Aerobatic Show – Video (skip to 00:15).

Aerobatics Show – Photo 1 (Race Car): Gladys Roy appears in a race car keeping pace with a plane.

Aerobatics Show – Photo 2 (Climbing Aboard): Gladys stands up in the car, grabs the passing plane, and climbs aboard.

Aerobatics Show – Photo 3 (Wing Leap): Gladys jumps to another plane.

Aerobatics Show – Video: As she does so, a third plane comes up… this one having lost its wheel. Gladys collects a wheel from the second plane, transfers to the third, and replaces the wheel.

Aerobatics Show – Photo 4 (Dog): After changing the wheel, she climbs up onto the wing, and does a handstand. As she comes down, she’s confronted by an angry dog. The dog threatens her, she backs away…

Aerobatics Show – Photo 5 (Tennis): … and leaps onto another plane! This one is outfitted with a tennis set, which she proceeds to play with another barnstormer.

The show continues like this for some time, with various stunt performers on both land and ground doing a variety of amazing feats. The planes themselves also do a variety of stunts and formation flying.

OTHER POSSIBLE STUNTS

• Flying through a building or crashing into a building, tree, object, etc.
• Blowing up planes in the air; passengers and pilot eject.
• Spinning airplanes (sometimes engulfed in fire) toward the ground, but not crashing.
• Loops while barnstormers stand on the tip of each wing.
• Flying lower and picking up hats with wing tips.
• Hanging from rope ladders or dangling upside down by ropes; swinging under the plane on wires.
• Parachute performances.
• Flying inverted for extended periods.
• Riding a bicycle dangling from a rope and then parachuting down to the ground.
• Landing upside down.
• Saloon brawls on wing tops.
• Staging a fight on the wing with one man getting knocked off with a punch.

CURTISS FIELD – FALCON HEIGHTS

• Bill Kidder founded the airfield in April 1919; Minnesota’s first full-service airport.
• Licensed by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company for selling and servicing Curtiss airplanes.
• Snelling & Larpenteur Avenue (dirt-lane roads at the time) would be lined with cars on weekends to watch the planes. Just east of the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.
• Offers short plane rides for $15.
• Additional Resources: http://www.airfields-freeman.com/MN/Airfields_MN_Minneapolis.htm

GLADYS ROY

APPEARANCE:

• Prop: Photo of Gladys Roy

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• Cool, confident, ironic and witty.
• Smokes.
• Quirks an eyebrow when amused.

BACKGROUND

• 23 years old.
• Started parachute jumping in 1921. Holds the world’s low record for parachute jump. (Has also jumped from 17,000 feet.)
• A barnstormer who’s performed across Minnesota, also in Hollywood and across the nation.
• Famous for dancing the Charleston and playing tennis on the upper wing of an airplane in flight.
• Western Vaudeville Manager’s Association is her booking agent.
• She was injured filming The Fighting Ranger in Hollywood earlier this year when she was thrown from a horse

CLUES

• She invited Alicia Corey to the party at James J. Hill House.
• She knows Rachel bought her whiskey from people associated with Kid Cann. (She recognized the Juicy Fruit flavoring as Minnesota 13.)
• She bought the liquor for the party (Minnesota 13) from a bootlegger named Oleg Andersson. She met with him a gin-joint called Pete’s on Hennepin Ave. just north of the river. (See Node 2: Minnesota 13.)
• She wasn’t drinking at the party last night because she had the aerobatics show this morning.
• Following Gladys: Gladys can be followed to Node 3: Fatima’s Shrine (she goes there after the aerobatics show).

LEVERAGED CLUES (anything proving her membership in the Sisterhood of Fatima)

• Can basically fill in all the background on Tanit and Ra.
• She knows that kids are being kidnapped by the Tanit cultists. (Alicia Corey told her.)
• She knows that the whiskey was tainted with Tanit parasites (although she didn’t know that when she brought it).

NOTES

• Gladys’ Bag: Searching through her stuff will turn up a Hamsa charm similar to the one Alicia Corey had at Hill House. (Can be used as leveraged clue.)

GLADYS ROY: Athletics 10, Driving 4, Firearms 3, Fleeing 6, Scuffling 8, Weapons 8, Health 10
Alertness Modifier: +2 (professional paranoia)
Stealth Modifier: 0
Weapons: Fists (-2), Switchblade (-1), .41 deringer (+0, 2 shots)

OTHER MEMBERS OF THE BLACK CATS

Have no real connection to events, but…

• Know that Gladys Roy was talking about going to Rachel’s party last night and having a grand old time.
• Alicia Corey went with Gladys and didn’t show up for work this morning. (Caused a headache with the box office.)

13 BLACK CATS FLYER

These flyers can be found at Hill House and also Node 5: Fatima’s Shrine. There’s also likely to be some found here at the show itself (brought by people who received them elsewhere, etc.).

Go to Node 2: Minnesota 13