Armitage Files

The Trail of Cthulhu campaign I'll be running this summer is based on the Armitage Files by Pelgrane press. I say "based on" because of the unique nature of the campaign.

 Hex 0704: Sleepy Shoggoth under a log

Unlike a traditional Cthulhu campaign (or any investigative campaign for that matter) which is usually a series of connected adventures each with a set of clearly structured events, characters and goals, the Armitage Files is more of a toolkit. It's been aptly described as a sandbox "investigation" and is roughly analogous to old style sandbox fantasy modules in that the Armitage Files' handout documents provide a map (not an actual map in this case, more of a collection of tantalizing leads) to possible investigations. Each clue in these documents has a corresponding character, organization or place description, with the option of it being innocuous, stalwart or sinister. One can think of these as the same kind of thing as encounters on a hex grid - e.g. go to hex 0143 and you'll find an abandoned wizard's tower. In the Armitage Files you follow up on the Yacht Club lead from one of the handouts and there's something there waiting for you. Like a hex map, the investigators don't need to follow up on everything, just the things they find most intriguing. And also like a hex map, there's no strong connection or common theme (apart from a mythos theme of course) between the investigative encounters (for lack of a better word).

This is both a boon and a challenge. It's a boon in that each of these "investigative encounters" can be quite short, doable in a session or two. And because they're not strongly connected, it lends itself to self contained episodic play quite well. It also means that you don't need to have a full complement of players at each session - you can go with whomever shows up, with the PC's of absent players being off stage (presumably recovering or taking care of other business). In fact, the structure (or lack there of) almost encourages subsets of players to chase after particular leads, without much risk of them becoming wrapped up in a longer term investigation that would exclude the other players. Simple side investigations can be done through e-mail or, as we've already tried out, through Google Hangout (or other conferencing software).

The challenges are that, firstly this requires more work on the GM's part - you've got to have two or three investigative encounters ready to go. There's some good advice in the Armitage Files that suggests a GM query the group before a session on what leads they're going to follow up so that they can prep in advance. The Armitage Files also suggests a style of play called "improvisational" where the GM does no prep and builds the mystery with the open collaboration of the players. This may work for some, but to me this pulled the lid off too far - a good deal of the tension, I feel, comes from the players being in the dark as much as their PC's.

The second challenge is establishing and building a coherent narrative to the overall campaign. There's a real risk of The Armitage Files becoming a set of disjointed encounters with no build toward a satisfying conclusion. This will require work again on the GM's part to provide that narrative that connects the encounters. I've approached this by building a general narrative framework into which I can slot the investigations. Each mini investigation may be self contained, but they will contribute generally to an overall, evolving story. What's going to be great here is that player input, mainly obtained through listening to the players hypothesizing about what's going in, is going to be a major contributor to that evolving story. I've done this, as I'm sure many GMs have, on a limited scale within the constraints of a published campaign or scenario, but with the Armitage Files this will play a much greater role.

It's an exciting challenge and we've had two sessions so far that have gone well. A quick intro session over Google Hangout where the first of the mysterious Armitage documents comes into the hands of two of the investigators, and a regular table top session where the players followed up on a lead from that document. Already the players have thrown in some unplanned and interesting twists that would not have occurred within the structure of a more traditional campaign.

Next post I'll summarize those two sessions.