From one point of view, the playing of a roleplaying game can be described as the organized exchange of information between players. Particularly numerical information.

GM: Give me an attack roll.
Player: 17.
GM: You hit.
Player: I do 18 points of damage.
GM: The orc falls dead at your feet!

The player generates a number (rolling their attack skill plus a d20 roll) and gives it to the GM. The GM performs a mathematical operation on that number (comparing it to the orc’s armor class) and the result of that operation causes him to request an additional number from the player. The player generates that number (by rolling the damage for their weapon) and reports it to the GM, who once again does an operation on that number (comparing it to the orc’s remaining hit points) and determines an outcome (the orc dies).

This seems simple and intuitive. And, in this case, it largely is.

But it turns out that how we process and pass numerical information around the table can have a big impact on play. For example:

GM: The orc’s AC is 17. Give me an attack roll.
Player: I hit. 18 points of damage.
GM: The orc falls dead at your feet!

By passing a piece of information (and the associated mathematical operation) over to the player, this GM has significantly improved the efficiency of their communication. If the orc hadn’t died (or if there are other identical orcs), this efficiency compounds over time because the GM doesn’t have to keep passing that piece of information to the player.

Of course, efficiency is not the be-all and end-all of a roleplaying game. There are any number of reasons why a GM might want to keep the orc’s armor class secret from the players (either as a general principle or due to specific circumstances). My point is not that these other considerations are somehow “wrong,” but rather simply that in choosing those other things the GM is sacrificing efficiency.

In many cases, however, the GM isn’t aware that this is a choice that they’re making. And often there are no reasons that might justify the inefficiency; the flow of information (and the impact it’s having on play) just isn’t something the GM is thinking about.

For a long time, this wasn’t something that I understood, either. I’d have discussions with people complaining that such-and-such a system was super complicated and a huge headache to play, and I would be confused because that didn’t match my experience with the game. It would have been easy to pat myself on the back and think, “Well, I guess I’m just smarter than they are,” but I would also have players say to me, “I’d played such-and-such a system before and I hated it, but you really made everything make sense. Can’t wait to play again.” And I’d scratch my head, because I really hadn’t done anything special in terms of teaching how the game worked.

The difference was in the flow of information. Not only can the flow of information around the gaming table be inefficient, it can also be confusing and burdensome.

ECLIPSE PHASE

We think of game mechanics primarily in terms of numerical values and how those values are created or manipulated. But in actual practice, many mechanical resolutions are performed by multiple people at the table. If you think of the resolution as a ball, it often has to be passed back and forth. Or you might think of it as a dance, and if we — as a table of players — don’t coordinate our actions in performing the resolution we’ll end up stepping on each other’s toes.

This efficient passing of information is an example of system mastery. Often, as a table gains experience with a particular RPG together, they’ll intuitively find the patterns of behavior that work. But this doesn’t always happen, and when it doesn’t we can benefit from consciously thinking about:

• What numbers we say
• Who is responsible for saying them
• How we say them

Let me give a simple example of this, using Eclipse Phase.

Eclipse Phase is a percentile system. You modify your skill rating by difficulty and then, if you roll under that number on percentile dice, you succeed. In addition, your margin of success is equal to the number you roll on the dice. If you roll 30+ (and succeed) you get an excellent success; if you roll 60+ you get an exceptional success.

Here’s how things often go when I’m introducing new players to Eclipse Phase (particularly those new to roll-under percentile systems entirely):

GM: Give me a Navigation check.
Player: I got a 47.
GM: What’s your skill?
Player: 50.
GM: Great. That’s a success. An excellent success, actually, because you rolled over 30. Here’s what happens…

The players don’t know what numbers to give me, and so I need to pull those numbers out of them in order to perform the necessary operation (determining if this is a success or failure and the degree of success.) As players start to master the system, this will morph into:

GM: Give me a Navigation check.
Player: I got an excellent success.
GM: Great. Here’s what happens…

They can do this because they’ve learned the mechanics and now know that their roll of 47 when they have a skill of 50 is an excellent success. (In this, the exchange mirrors that of a player attacking an orc in D&D when they know it has AC 17, right? They don’t need to pass me the information to perform the mechanical operation because they can do the operation themselves. In fact, many people like roll-under percentile systems like this specifically because they make this kind of efficiency intuitive and almost automatic.)

But there’s actually a problem with this because, if you recall, Eclipse Phase also features difficulties which modify the target number. This disrupts the simple efficiency and we would often end up with discussions like this:

GM: Give me a Navigation check.
Player: I got an excellent success.
GM: There’s actually a difficulty here. What did you roll?
Player: 47.
GM: And what’s your skill?
Player: 50.
GM: Okay, so you actually failed. Here’s what happens…

This creates all kinds of friction at the table: It’s inefficient. It’s frequently confusing. And either the outcome doesn’t change at all (in which case we’ve deflated the drama of the resolution for no reason) or the player is frustrated that an outcome they thought was going one way is actually going the other.

The reason this is happening is because there is an operation that I, as the GM, need to perform (applying a hidden difficulty) but I’m not being given the number I need to perform that operation. The player has learned to throw the ball to a certain spot (“I got an excellent success”), but I’m frequently not standing at that spot and the ball painfully drops to the ground.

What I eventually figured out is that the information I need from the player is actually “XX out of YY” — where XX is the die roll and YY is their skill rating. I could catch that ball and easily carry it wherever it needed to go.

GM: Give me a Navigation check.
Player: I got 47 out of 55.
GM: An excellent success! Here’s what happens…

And I realized that I could literally just tell players that this is what they needed to say to me. I didn’t need to wait for them to figure it out. Even brand new players could almost instantly groove into the system.

ADVANCED D&D

As you spend more time with a system, you’ll frequently find odd corners which require a different flow of information. In some cases you may be able to tweak your table norms to account for the special cases, but usually it’ll be more about learning when and how to cue your players that you all need to handle this information differently (and the players gaining the mastery to be able to quickly grok the new, sometimes overlapping, circumstances).

Let’s go back to D&D, for example.

When I’m a DM and I’ve got a horde of orcs attacking a single PC, it’s not unusual for me to roll all of their attacks at once, roll all of the damage from the successful attacks, add all that damage up, and then report it as a single total to the player. It just makes sense to do a running total of the numbers in front of me as I generate them rather than saying a string of numbers to a player and asking them to process the verbal information while doing the running total themselves.

And, of course, it works just fine… right up until a PC gets damage reduction. Now it’s the player who needs to perform a mechanical operation (subtracting their damage reduction from each hit) and doesn’t have the information they need to do that.

Even PCs with multiple attacks usually resolve them one by one for various reasons, so the reverse (players lumping damage together when the GM needs to apply damage reduction) rarely happens. But two of the PCs in my 3^rd Edition campaign have weapons that deal bonus elemental damage, and they’ve learned that sometimes I need that damage specifically broken out because creatures are frequently resistant against or immune to fire or electricity damage.

When we first started running into this difficulty, the players defaulted to always giving me the elemental damage separately. But this was an unneeded inefficiency, and we quickly figured out that it was easier for me to simply tell them when they needed to give me the elemental damage separately.

These are simple examples, but they hopefully demonstrate that this sort of mastery is not an all-or-nothing affair. There’s almost always room to learn new tricks.

FENG SHUI

Let’s also take a look at one of these systems that’s fairly straightforward in its mechanical operations, but which can become devilishly difficult if you don’t pass information back and forth cleanly.

In Feng Shui 2, the dice mechanic produces a “swerve”: You subtract a negative d6 from a positive d6 in order to generate a bell curve result from -5 to +5. (Sixes actually explode and are rolled again, so the curve is smeared out at the ends, but that’s basically how it works.)

When you want to make an attack, you do two things. First, you check to see if you hit:

Roll Swerve + Attack Skill – Target’s Defense

If you hit, you then calculate damage:

Margin of Success + Weapon Damage – Target’s Toughness

Looking at those two equations on the page, there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly exotic about them. In practice, though, I’ve seen players and entire groups get completely tangled up in them. There tend to be two major problems:

1. The attacker feels as if they should be able to complete one full step of this process and then report the result… except they can’t, because neither step can actually be completed without information that the defender posseses.
2. Upon completing the first step, players want to report a flat success/failure outcome (“I hit”), but if they don’t pass the margin of success to the damage equation they can’t actually calculate damage.

What frequently happens in the latter case is:

GM: The target’s Defense is 17.
Player: (does math) Okay, I hit!
GM: So your damage will be equal to the margin of success plus your weapon damage. What was your margin of success?
Player: Uh… crap. I forgot? Three? Maybe four? Hang on… (does the math again)

Another interesting thing that will happen in this kind of situation is that the players — who don’t like being confused or frustrated! — will try to find ad hoc ways of routing around the problem. In Feng Shui 2, for example, I’ll frequently see players basically say, “Well… I know what this guy’s Defense value is because I attacked him last round. So I’m just going to attack him again to keep it simple.”

The important thing to take away from this is that the players want to solve the problem just as much as you do. But often this kind of ad hoc pseudo-solution just shifts the frustration: They’ve figured out how to make the mechanical resolution flow more smoothly, but they feel trapped by the system into making choices that they don’t necessarily want to make. The insane, over-the-top Hong Kong action of Feng Shui 2, for example, has been compromised as they attack the same guy over and over again.

So let’s say that you find yourself in this situation. How can you fix it?

• Identify the sequence in which mechanical operations must be performed.
• Identify who has the necessary information for each operation.
• Figure out how to pass the information to the necessary person at each stage of the opration.

For example, in Feng Shui 2 who has each piece of information used when resolving an attack?

• Outcome of the swerve roll. (Attacker)
• Attack Skill (Attacker)
• Target’s Defense (Defender)
• Margin of Success (whoever calculated the outcome of the attack roll)
• Weapon Damage (Attacker)
• Target’s Toughness (Defender)
• Wound Points taken (Defender)

If you look back up at the mechanical equations, it should be fairly easy to identify the resolution sequence and the numbers that need to be said:

1. Attacker rolls swerve and adds their attack skill. (The game actually calls this the Action Result.) Attacker tells the Defender this number.
2. Defender subtracts their Defense from the Action Result. (This is the margin of success. The game calls this the Outcome.) Defender tells the Attacker the Outcome.
3. The Attacker adds the Outcome to the Weapon Damage. (The game calls this the Smackdown.) The Attacker tells the Defender the Smackdown.
4. The Defender subtracts their Toughness from the Smackdown. (This is the number of Wound Points they take.)

You can see that Robin D. Laws, being a clever chap, identified the significant chunks of information in the system and gave them specific labels (Action Result, Outcome, Smackdown). Other games won’t necessarily do that for you (and even the Feng Shui 2 rulebook, unfortunately, doesn’t specifically call out how the information should be passed back and forth), but you should be able to break down the mechanical processes in any system in a similar manner.

PIGGYBACKING IN GUMSHOE (AND BEYOND!)

Let me close by talking about a mechanical interaction that has multiple players participating simultaneously (which, of course, makes the “dance” of information more complicated to coordinate).

In the GUMSHOE System (used by games like Ashen Stars and Trail of Cthulhu), some group checks are resolved using a piggybacking mechanic:

• One character is designated the Lead.
• The difficulty of the test is equal to the base difficulty + 2 per additional character “piggybacking” on the Lead’s check.
• Those piggybacking can spend 1 skill point to negate the +2 difficulty they’re adding to the check.

The mechanic is very useful when, for example, you want Aragorn to lead the hobbits through the wilderness without being detected by Ringwraiths: The more unskilled hobbits there are, the more difficult it should be for Aragorn to do that, but you still want success to be governed by Aragorn’s skill at leading the group.

Many moons ago I adapted this piggybacking structure to D20 systems like this:

• One character takes the Lead.
• Other characters can “piggyback” on the Lead’s skill check by making their own skill check at a DC equal to half of the DC of the Lead’s check. (So if the Lead is making a DC 30 check, the piggybackers must make a DC 15 check.)
• The lead character can reduce the Piggyback DC by 1 for every -2 penalty they accept on their check.
• The decision to piggyback on the check must be made before the Lead’s check is made.

On paper, this system made sense. When I put it into practice at the table, however, it wasn’t working out. It seemed complicated, finicky, and the players weren’t enjoying using the mechanic.

I gave up on it for a couple of years, and then came back to it and realized that the problem was that I had been sequencing the mechanic incorrectly. One element of this was actually a slight error in mechanical design, but even this was ultimately about the resolution sequence.

The way the mechanic was being resolved originally was:

• The GM declares that, for example, a Stealth check needs to be made.
• The players decide whether they want to use the Piggyback mechanic for this.
• The GM approves it.
• The players choose a Lead.
• The other players decide whether they want to piggyback or not.
• The Lead chooses whether or not they want to lower the Piggybacking DC.
• The Lead would roll their check.
• If the Lead succeeded, the other players would roll their piggybacking checks. (The logic being that if the Lead failed, there was no need for the piggybacking checks. But, in practice, players would see the Lead’s result and then try to opt out of piggybacking if it was bad.)

Here’s what the actual resolution sequence needed to be:

• The GM declares that there is a piggyback check required.
• The players choose their Lead.
• The other players make their piggybacking checks. If any check fails, the largest margin of failure among all piggybacking characters increases the DC of the Lead’s check by +1 per two points of margin of failure.
• The Lead makes their check.

You can immediately see, just from the number of steps involved, how much more streamlined this resolution process is. The only actual mechanical adjustment, however, is to shift the adjustment of the piggybacking DC from a decision made before the piggybacking checks to an effect of those checks.

The take-away here is that while our passing of mechanical information at the table is often numerical, it can also include other elements (like who’s taking Lead in a piggybacking check) which can also be streamlined and formalized for efficiency.

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

Go to Part 1

BASEMENT

BASEMENT – KITCHEN PORCH

Liquor Crates: Mostly empty crates which originally contained three dozen bottles of Minnesota 13. A half dozen or so bottles remain, unopened.

• GM Note: Gladys brought the liquor in these crates and had them dropped off at the back porch.

FIRST FLOOR

FIRST FLOOR – HALL

Prop: Photo of James J. Hill House Hall

Corpses (3): Two on the floor. One on the stairs.

FIRST FLOOR – ART GALLERY

Prop: Photo of James J. Hill House Art Gallery

3 story tall pipe organ. 12 foot high fireplace on the opposite wall. Expensive art lining the walls.

Corpses (3): One playing the organ. Two in an amorous embrace on the bench.

FIRST FLOOR – LIBRARY

Prop: Photo of James J. Hill House Library

Corpses (3) – One of the corpses is Frank Candide (ID in his wallet; he was married to Evelyn, whose body is in the attic).

FIRST FLOOR – MUSIC ROOM

• Upright piano. Victorian wallpaper. Crystal chandelier.
• Portaits of James J. and Mary T. hang on the walls to either side of the door.
• Coats and purses are stacked on a divan.

• Simple Search: To sort through the IDs.
• Evelyn’s ID: Evelyn Candide’s ID is here, so if they haven’t found the bodies in the attic yet, this will indicate a missing woman.
• Alicia’s ID: Alicia Corey’s purse is here and a photograph inside can be used to identify her corpse. It also lists her name and address on a small “Please Return” card.

FIRST FLOOR – TERRACE

• Evidence Collection 1 / Evidence Collection (Lucretia’s Testimony): There is a trail of fingerprints “walking” across the terrace. (Go from the house down the stairs and then vanish into the grass.)

SECOND FLOOR

SECOND FLOOR – BALCONY

Fluted balustrades around the edge. Lounging furniture fashionably arranged.

Corpses (1 + Alicia Corey)

ALICIA COREY’S CORPSE: This corpse still has its left hand, which is clenched in a tight fist.

• GM Note: Alicia’s purse and ID are downstairs in the Music Room.

Shattered Hamsa: Clutched in her left hand, there are shards of glass and lead. (Prop: Shattered Hamsa)

• GM Note: This was Alicia’s Hamsa charm. To prepare this prop, print out the picture of the Hamsa and cut it up into pieces. Allow the players to assemble the pieces like a puzzle.
  

Slit in the Palm: There is a strange slit or cut in the palm. No blood, but some kind of clear, jelly-like substance in the slit.

• Medicine: The liquid is aqueous humor — the introcular fluid which fills the eyeball.

SECOND FLOOR – RACHEL’S ROOM

Prop: Photo of James J. Hill House Rachel’s Room

THIRD FLOOR

THIRD FLOOR – SERVANT’S QUARTERS

A simple room, but with the same rich oak trim found throughout the house.

ATTIC

THEATER

Converted into a small stage. (For the production of amateur theatricals by the Hill children.)

Corpses (2): Located on the stage behind the curtains.

• Rupert Wild and Evelyn Candide.
• Evelyn was married to a Frank Candide, whose corpse is in the Library.

Tanit Hands (2): These hands were trapped in here.

CRAWLING HAND OF TANIT: Athletics 2, Fleeing 6, Scuffling 4, Health 4

Hit Threshold: 4 (tiny, quick moving hand)
Alertness Modifier: +1 (10% eye by volume)
Stealth Modifier: 2 (tiny skittering hand)
                Weapons: eye gouge, scratching, unpleasant probing (-3)
Stability Loss: +1
Eye of Tanit: Pupil twists into a curlicue. Stability test (no loss). On failure, establish trance like state. On second failure, can issue a hypnotic compulsion that will last until trance ends. Being controlled has a potential of 4-point Stability loss.

RACHEL HILL

APPEARANCE:

• Prop: Photo of Rachel Hill

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• In a state of shock covered only by her excellent manners.
• Dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief.
• Weakness melts away if pushed around; then she wields her full strength as a millionaire’s heiress.

BACKGROUND

• Grew up in New York.
• Had diptheria as a child.
• Married Egil Boeckmann, a University of Minnesota football hero (scored touchdown that tied first “Little Brown Jug” game with Michigan) in 1913.
• Moved back into James J. Hill House when her mother became ill in 1919.
• Recently hired a photographer to take pictures of the property before it’s given to the Archdiocese.

CLUES

• She did not drink, as she’s teetotaler.
• Gladys Roy left early. She had invited a friend – Alicia Corey – to the party.
• Reassurance 1 / Interrogation 1: She asked Gladys Roy to secure the alcohol for the party (and brought it in the later afternoon). (She won’t admit this without reassurances that she won’t get in trouble. Otherwise her story is that people brought their own booze.)

NOTES

• Rachel was married in the Drawing Room of the mansion. (The dissociation between that memory and the corpses currently in there.)

RACHEL HILL: Athletics 4, Driving 2, Firearms 0, Fleeing 8, Scuffling 4, Weapons 2, Health 7
Alertness Modifier: -1 (oblivious)
Stealth Modifier: 0 (unskilled)
           Weapons: Fists (-2)

LUCRETIA GRAY

APPEARANCE:

• Prop: Photo of Lucretia Gray

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• Nervous around authority figures.
• Protective of members of the Hill family. Refers to them as Mr. Wallace, Ms. Rachel, etc.
• Gives a “look” to anyone she considers to be acting foolish.

BACKGROUND

• Her husband was a butler in the house. He died in a trolley accident in 1919. They had no children.
• Has worked with the Hill family since 1911.
• Last servant working in the house (the rest were assisted into other positions or given pensions after Mary T.’s death).

CLUES

• She sent the invitations out for Ms. Rachel’s party. (Has a list of addresses and could, for example, give people contact information for Gladys Roy.)
• Gladys Roy brought the liquor (Minnesota 13) to the party at Rachel’s request. She dropped it off on the back porch and Lucretia would run bottles up as people requested more.
• Reassurance 1: As she was calling the police from the phone in the den, she saw something crawling across the Terrace and disappearing into the darkness.

LUCRETIA GRAY: Athletics 10, Driving 0, Firearms 0, Fleeing 8, Scuffling 6, Weapons 3, Health 10
Alertness Modifier: +1
Stealth Modifier: +1
            Weapons: Fists (-2), Household Implements (-1)

Go to Node 1: The Black Cats