The Agency of Narrative Intrigue and Mystery

This is an interesting question. I think the absence of any kind of VtM-esque “masquerade” is important to Eureka in several ways. I think it’s important to the themes as a game about solving “mysteries” with evidence-based conclusions in a realistic world where evidence is not always cut and dry. The fact that vampires and whatever else can have existed for at least a thousand years yet still be without consistent or widely accepted scientific documentation in the modern era, and how that can be the case even without a powerful systemic force actively suppressing this information - themes of confirmation bias, rigidity of worldview, academic arrogance, etc.. This is all very important to Eureka’s ideas of evidence-based discovery and particularly important in the context of crime investigation and the judicial system.

I also think it is important to the themes represented by most of the monsters, that there is no monster society or support network, there’s no one they know like them, no instruction manual for being what they are, officially they don’t even exist. Mundane normal people who don’t intrinsically understand their perspectives and yet still have the capacity to be there for them are all they have.

Going off that last point I think it’s important to the fact that their needs are not being met by conventional society. This makes it frequently necessary for them to meet their own needs by deception, force, aggression, and even sometimes outright violence with a real human cost in pain, suffering, and even death - and this in turn meaning they cannot often even (safely) talk about their situations to ask for help from anyone, it’s already too late to do so without confessing to a crime and facing the full sadistic force of the law. There is no community of people with similar situations and experiences. They are unknown, and if they were known they would be reviled.

I think the absence of a masquerade is important because despite all of this pain, suffering, and death, these monsters are inarguably not invaders/infiltrators, nor are they part of a shadowy secret flesh-eating cabal that antisemetic conspiracy theorists find comfort in blaming all their problems on and to whom mundane people are just ignorant livestock animals. They were born in this society or arrived to it in some way with no malicious intentions.

But all of the above is just me talking about why the “no masquerade” element is there in Eureka RAW; you’re asking if the game can still be played with this element altered, and I think ultimately the answer is yes, it would still be a functional mystery solving game and most of the Paranormal Traits themselves could still be used without a complete overhaul.

If I were to mod Eureka for a setting with a masquerade, here are a few things I think I would do or things I would at least consider.

There would be interpersonal discrimination on both a direct level and like even more importantly an economic level. Is anyone going to want to hire a vampire if they can’t come in during day shifts? Is anyone going to want to pay a vampire for night shift work? “Well, it doesn’t seem right to pay you extra for night shift work because you would be awake at that time anyway, and really it would make sense to pay less because nobody buys anything past 11:00 PM anyway.”

The Evangelicals would also have a fit about vampires being allowed to exist basically at all whether the Bible says anything to justify this or not (it obviously doesn’t but that never stopped them before). There would be hate crimes against basically any type of paranormal person. (This also made me think there would be all kinds of useless language put forward to. They won’t keep blood banks open past 1:00 AM, but they’ll sure as hell refer to you as a “person with vampirism” instead of a “vampire.”) (This also reminds me of a joke in Yvette Preux’s story where she actually prefers to be called a “revenante” but both the paranormal researchers she collaborated with and the short-lived real vampire community that briefly formed in New Orleans insisted that “revenante” wasn’t the correct terminology and she needed to call herself a vampire.)

There would be blog posts about how you should avoid giving kids certain arbitrary foods or vaccinating them because it might make them grow up to be a wolfman or a gorgon or a man-eater.

As a continuation of this here is a link to two relevant posts, one by @tormenty that actually is a Eureka post based on this very idea, and another probably not inspired by Eureka at all but that perfectly represents the ideas I’m thinking of by @meli-writes.

Oh my god, lady, I'm not going to eat your stupid fucking kid.

It's bad enough that I can barely make rent because I have to spend all my money on food and I still feel like I'm dying. Now I have to have this stupid fucking "safety vest" crushing me to go outside so you herbivores can feel safe. Just because I'm a monster you think I'm some kind of psycho who's going to swallow people in broad daylight.

How many people die in car accidents every year? School shootings? Herbivores kill each other all the time and you ignore it, but if one man-eater swallows someone then there's a "monster problem."

Monsters in the world of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy hide their conditions from ordinary humans, but here I'm imagining an alternate scenario where monsters are integrated into society. The vest prevents man-eaters from swallowing prey, but doesn't seem to make anyone feel safer. The kid doesn't seem to care, though.

(she/her)

(the art in this post is by me 😊)

Netty is a character that I played in a game of @anim-ttrpgs Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, and one that I love dearly.

Natalie Atkins is an investigator for fun. She trawls the web for interesting situations and pokes her nose in. This often causes friction due to her lighthearted attitude to the serious situation.

Fun Facts! She loves to eat sweets! Her fridge has several full cakes in it. She rolls around on the floor when she's upset. Her hair is naturally black, she dyes it white.

but everyone has their secrets...

Muted Swallow Episode 9 - Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy Gameplay

It’s a Burnadette episode! Find out what Burnadette gets up to on her own in the apartment while Yvette is inquiring about the voicemails!

Will she get attacked by a grabber? Watch to find out!

I saw this when running newpipe. But wait, it gets deeper. I clicked on the details buttons and it said as of today, we have 83 days left until Google rolls out this new requirement for apps inside and outside of the google play store. If any developer disagrees with their new terms and fees, they will be blocked!

I'll share some of the info below:

Looks like they're trying to nuke the remaining privacy and freedoms we have left on the internet.

What to do?

-Get your developer friends to not comply to their new guides

- Sign the open letter on the site and take action by checking out the full resources list on their website as well!

To summarize, this is all daunting especially when you feel all alone with unfair and inhumane regulations comming out faster than improvements but we got this working together!

Share the link with your friends, family and anyone who will listen!

Making a Modern Medieval Comtesse in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Finally out, the character creation video for the iconic Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy character Comtesse Yvette Preux. This is a longer one because in addition to the usual tangenting we had to go through the monster elements of character creation too and all the extra options and features that entails. Not counting some completely unedited raw footage we may upload at some point, this will probably be the longest video on the channel, not that I think that will bother most people since extremely long videos have kinda been in-style recently.

Having watched the video over again, for future iterations of this character sheet, one thing I would probably change is moving 1 point from Close Combat to Driving.

Combat is just one thing that some Death Bed characters might engage with, but Fatigue is involved in almost everything physical the PCs do.

So, while NPCs in Death Bed do have conventional “HP,” Death Bed PCs do not. Instead of a number that goes down, they have a track of squares that get filled in from right to left when they take damage and gain Wounds. When they exert themselves, they gain Fatigue, which fills in the same squares from left to right. If all squares are filled, the character dies. (Yeah I stole this from the Dark Souls Board Game but that’s because it’s a genuinely good way to represent a “stamina” system in turn-based combat.)

Fatigue is gained from any action that the performance of - once or repeatedly - would be considered “exercise.”

Wounds are relatively difficult to remove from the track, but Fatigue is removed from the track gradually over time at a rate determined by how much Weight the PC is carrying.

Fatigue also gradually starts building up when the PCs have gone too long without eating or sleeping.

This system overall provides a gradual attrition to overexertion in the dungeon (even though just walking around the dungeon outside of combat does not cause Fatigue in and of itself) and while long-distance traveling. In a long hike, the pace is usually going to be set by whoever in the party has the lowest tolerance for Fatigue accumulation.

The Fatigue system is really interesting in combat, because movement and actions cause Fatigue, which fills in and shortens a PC’s health bar. At the same time, the more Wounds a PC gets, the less Fatigue they can afford to accumulate.

Finally, with very few exceptions, there is no actual limit on the amount of movement and actions that a PC can do on their turn. If a PC has 20 squares on their health track, and an attack with their weapon causes 3 Fatigue, they could attack 6 times in a single turn. The obvious tradeoff to this is that with each attack they are essentially reducing their HP, and making 6 attacks will leave them with the equivalent of 2 HP until their next turn when their Fatigue reduces by 1-4 points (depending on Weight carried), at which point they will then have the equivalent of 3-6 HP. (It is also worth noting that an “attack” in Death Bed represents many consecutive swings because rounds in Death Bed are more like a full minute instead of a few seconds like rounds in Eureka.)

Also since I mentioned combat, “hit” and “damage” rolls in Death Bed are the same roll, and based on the weapon being swung, with modifiers based on the PC’s skill and advantage/disadvantage based on the circumstances.

PCs use rolls for their attack and defense, most NPCs use flat numbers. Armor is damage reduction vs attacks, and HP values are overall very low. Most human-sized enemies will have only 1 HP, meaning their Armor(which often also has their skill at fighting wrapped into it) is just a number that the attacker must roll above to defeat them.

I want Death Bed to be really strategic in this way, where, pretty often a kill on any given individual enemy can be guaranteed (like if a PC has a sword with an attack power of 1D8 and +4 from their combat skills against a weak enemy that only has an Armor of 3 against the damage type of the weapon), but there will never just be one weak enemy. Does the warrior take as many of the guaranteed kills as possible in a single turn, causing a lot of Fatigue and potentially leaving him vulnerable from exhaustion, or does he fight defensively and pace himself? What if there is an enemy whose armor has a chance to protect against a light attack, but would have no chance against a heavy attack which does more damage but also causes much more Fatigue?

A lot of D&D5e defenders on here like to claim that asking someone to learn a new system is "gatekeeping" somehow, but I'd argue that acting like one game is emblematic of the entire medium to the exclusion of people who don't click with that one game is way more meaningfully a form of gatekeeping, even if it's fully unintentional.

Muted Swallow Episode 8 - Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy Gameplay

Finally got the eighth episode of the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actual play “Muted Swallow” uploaded. Sorry it’s a few hours late. In this episode we see a proper party split happen.

You see this a lot in standalone horror novels that don't get caught up in their own "lore." My absolute favorite example of this is "The Library Policeman" by Stephen King. The creature in that book and how it "works" is wholly defined by the scope of the protagonist's personal trauma. It does not "exist" nor has "logic" independent of the protagonist's emotional journey. Sure, it all makes "sense" in that story but trying to tease out the creature as an independent entity with a consequential "existence" simply falls apart.

I would also point to something like Frank Miller's Sin City stories. The characters are BOLD archetypes with no substance behind their evocative presence. Senator Rourk is a complete tautology. He is a Senator because he's rich and powerful and is rich and powerful because he is a Senator. Things happen because Rourk wants them to happen. By what means? What's the power structure propping him up? Who are his allies? Who are enemies? What is the network composing his wealth? These things are not only unanswered, I would suggest they are UNASKED. It simply doesn't matter. Rourk might as well be Zeus.

It is that element of UNASKING, I am focusing on.

No, this was never a legend meant to operate on a 21st century biology, the blood is blood but it's also life, and so on.

Redefine Victory - Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy OST

Try listening to this on loop while the investigators come away with only their lives, or when they have to deliver heartbreaking news to someone. It can also work in more "generic" investigative scenes.

Composition by @imsobadatnicknames2

I recently saw your post about RPGs and artistic merit - and there was an addendum at the bottom talking about how 5e actively damages GMing and playing and ingrains bad habits and mindsets. It’s something I’ve been struggling with myself (as someone who really only learned to GM on 5e). What would you say is the best way to go about unlearning 5e?

I don’t know if I can give this an answer to the fullest possible extent, but I think I can rapid-fire a few things.

Most of this advice is going to be most applicable to running “trad” or “OSR” “challenge” games, which D&D and the vast majority of other TTRPGs fall into even if their designers don’t fully realize it. (Like how VtM really seems to bill itself as a story game but RAW it really wants to be something more like a dungeon crawler.)

Read the rules and play by them.

Not all games are as broken as D&D5e. (D&D5e is not even as broken as most people think it is, it is just mediocre at being a fantasy combat game and bad at everything else it isn't built for.) You will often find that the rules for other TTRPGs are much easier to memorize and reference than D&D5e, and that playing by the pretty strictly is easy and fun.

Don’t be a “magician,” check the rulebook.

Get used to just pausing the game for a couple minutes to look up a rule, get the players to help you. Treat it like an open-book test. Play the game with the rulebook open on the table on or as a PDF or something. Don’t try to impress anyone with the “smoothness” or “cinematicness” of the game you are running. If you and the players are not well versed in the rules of a given game, this can be a little rocky at first, but you’ll get better at memorizing and searching the rulebook over time so these pauses will get shorter and less frequent the more sessions you play.

Be a ref, not a storyteller.

This is kinda just a continuation of the previous point. No TTRPG is perfect, they will often fail to account for edge cases and certain situations in their rules, and may even have “glitches” where a rule played strictly RAW will result in outcomes not intended by the game designers. When this happens it is your job as GM to make a reasonable and fair call on how that rule is going to be played, like the ref in a sports game. Remember that the ref in a sports game is not tasked with making up new rules or overriding existing-and-unambiguous ones to favor the players. As a GM you should be rooting for the PCs, but not engineering their victory. If they lose they lose, even if that means the “story” ends or goes in an unexpected direction. (In case it needs to be said, the GM should also not be engineering the defeat of the party beyond just creating/playing out hostile NPCs and environments that have their own motivations counter to the goals of the party. Don’t make spontaneous traps materialize just because the PCs are winning too much.)

NEVER fudge rolls, lie about stats/dice, or anything else like that.

Demand respect.

Make players pay attention and actually play the game. Even if you are following the various tips here and thus significantly lightening the workload on yourself, you are still putting in a lot of effort to run this game for them. If they’re on their phones, not taking it seriously, etc., tell them that you don’t want to prep and run this game for them if they’re not even going to try to engage with it.

Players must know their characters’ rules, and ideally more.

It’s your job to play all the NPCs, not the PCs. It is the bare minimum for your players to have read the rules that pertain to their characters and those characters’ abilities and stats. Of course nobody is perfect, but if you’re several sessions in and a player still doesn’t know how to play their character at all, circle back to the “demand respect” heading.

Ideally, players should know the rules as well as the GM knows them, but that is such a radical idea in most TTRPG spaces that it can be kinda hard to ask for.

Oh also I'm just tacking this on here: players should build characters that fit the setting and situation, not the other way around. If you’re playing a fantasy combat game, they should not be presenting you with a pacifist baker, they should be presenting you with a warrior who is willing to go sword-to-sword with the enemy, and even more importantly willing to do it in the context that the situation asks for. If it’s a dungeon crawl, for instance, the player should be presenting you with a PC who either wants to go into that dungeon, or is at least easily motivated by the allure of the treasure that might be down there or the desire to save the kidnapped princess or whatever else.

Write situations, not plots.

Remember you’re a ref and a facilitator, not a storyteller, and challenge-based TTRPGs almost universally actively resist consistently producing conventional plots and character arcs. This is not a flaw, and it is not your job to “fix” this. You do not need to be writing a plot, you need to be writing a situation.

Example of a plot:

The PCs will first go to the tavern and witness the Bad Guy give his evil speech and then kidnap the Victims. They will have particular witty dialogue with him before he gets away coolly and they are unable to stop him. Then they will go to the wizard’s tower to meet the wizard who will become their friend and teleport them into the Bad Guy’s lair, where they will have a specific encounter with the Guard Captain who will defeat them and lock them in a cell. They will overhear specific dialogue in the cell that makes them sympathize with the Bad Guy’s tragic backstory. They will break out of the cell by appealing to the conscience of the Minions. Then they will confront the Bad Guy and have an epic battle with him that they can’t win, but once they are nearly defeated, the Bad Guy’s Minions will turn against him and save the party.

Example of a situation:

The party arrives in Town. A barmaid comes running out screaming “Oh won’t someone help! The Bass Guy has just kidnapped the Victims!” (You can probably expect the PCs to pledge to rescue the Victims at this point if you are following the above tips and telling players to make PCs that fit the setting and are easily motivated by the “hooks” of the adventure.)

The party can find out some clues about the location of the Lair by asking various NPCs.

There is a wizard tower where a wizard lives and he might be able to be convinced to teleport the party into the Lair.

There is a front entrance to the Lair they could try to fight their way through once they find it.

There is a back entrance to the lair they could try and sneak through once they find it.

Any number of other plans might work based on the rules of the game and cleverness of the PCs, such as disguising themselves to walk past the guards at the front, using a spell to fly over the walls, etc.

Once inside, instead of specific encounters that have preplanned outcomes, there’s just guards and minions with set stats in locations where it makes sense for them to be, and who will do what it makes sense for them to do in response to the actions of the PCs. The PCs might die if they do something stupid like try to fight all the minions at once, it’s up to the dice rolls and their clever actions should be done to the purpose of making it so that they are not taking stupid risks and are not at the mercy of luck or skill that isn't in their favor. It’s up to the PCs and players to do these actions though, not the job of the GM to give them plans or make sure those plans work.

The party may or may not end up directly confronting Bad Guy, and he has his own set stats not just a scripted battle. If he wins, he wins. If they defeat him by the skin of their teeth, great! If they defeat him quickly and unceremoniously by using a spell to make the ceiling collapse on him, that’s also great! Forget “balance,” don’t try to perfectly scale encounters to the levels of the PCs. It is their job to figure out the best way to overcome challenges, even when they can’t win by a straightforward attack. Often it is best to run away, even.

The GM creates a situation, the PCs react to the situation, and then the NPCs react to the PCs. Whatever happens happens, even if it doesn’t produce a conventionally satisfying “story.”

Use adventure modules!

I say “the GM creates a situation,” but that shouldn't necessarily be true, even though disagreeing with that being necessary is another idea that is so radical that you might have a hard time convincing people of it. Anyway, adventure modules are not bad or lazy to use for a GM. Many adventure modules are very very good, others are bad and don’t follow the “make situations, not plots” rule, but these bad ones can still be stripped for parts to make some good open-ended situations out of with less work than coming up with the whole thing yourself.

Scale it down! No, smaller than that!

When creating a situation, do not commit to a gigantic “campaign” that will take 600 sessions to fully play through, keep it small, keep it “episodic.” One dungeon at a time, one mystery at a time, etc.

Don’t aspire to be a Big Budget Actual Play GM.

You should not aspire to be anything like Matt Medcier or any of those other guys. This is not because “they’re professionals who have trained forever and so they’re too good for a hobbiest to expect to be like right away,” it is because they are actors putting on a show for an audience. Big Budget Actual Play is not high-tier TTRPG play, it is TTRPG WWE. It isn’t realistic to the real experience at all, and isn’t meant to be. Trying to be like these GMs will make you a worse GM in your home games, just like trying to do WWE moves will make you a worse fighter in a real fight.