Trail of Cthulhu - The Big Hoodoo.pdf - Trail of Cthulhu - siemszak

TRAIL OF CTHULHU

The Big Hoodoo

Publisher: Simon Rogers

Author: Bill White

Layout: Beth Lewis

Artwork: Jérôme Huguenin

Playtesters: Man Sai Acon, Rita Jimenez Aguilar, Ernesto Solano Badilla, David

Barnard-Wills, Kate Barnard-Wills, Peter Barr, Randall Padilla Barrantes, Eric Berg,

Edward Chiasson, Garry Cross, Mike Czaplinski, Robert Davis, Shawn de Arment,

Paula Dempsey, Steve Dempsey, Malcolm Edwards, Manuel Badilla Gómez, Mike

Grasso, Mark Harding, Tom Horn, Belinda Kelly, Andrew LaCross, Sergio Martinez,

Elky Mug, Sam Ollins, Michael Phillips, Stephen Plaut, Fera-Jaede Reiner, Rob, Jen

Runds, Eva Schiffer, Michael Schumann, Sandy Schumann, John Utech, Fiona Walker,

Michael Grasso, Jenny Anckorn, Melanie Hockabout, John O’Brien, Jeff Raymond

Special thanks to Susan Pile for not always followed but certainly appreciated historical

advice and comments.

Photograph of Philip K. Dick is courtesy of the Philip K. Dick Trust.

Chaosium, Inc.

Trail of Cthulhu is a trademark of Pelgrane Press Ltd.

www.pelgranepress.com

TRAIL OF CTHULHU

Contents

Introduction

The Aztec Hotel (Monrovia)

Appendices 44

Pre-generated Character Sheets 44

Handout #1 - Newspaper article 48

Handout #2 - Part of the Greater Los

Angeles area - circa mid 1950s

Ripped from History

21 West Glenarm Street

Ruth Parsons’ Apartment

(Pasadena)

The Investigators

Pre-Generated Characters

125 North Rampart Boulevard

Robert Cameron’s House

(Pasadena)

Additional and Alternate

Investigators

GM Aid #1 - Rules for

Movement Map

1071 South Orange Grove Ave.

The House That Jack

Blew Up (Pasadena)

Handout #3 - A Scrap of Paper

The Shape of the Investigation

Handout #4 - The Painting from

Catemaco

The Hook

The Horrible Truth

Bermite Powder Company

(Tujunga)

Handout #5 - Periodic Table

of the Elements

Victory Conditions

The Trail of Clues

The Arroyo Seco (Pasadena)

PART ONE: THE LONG HOOK

The Los Angeles Times Building

(Central L.A.)

Rules for Movement

Going to the Police (Pasadena)

I Am The Way to a City of Woe

Caltech (Pasadena)

The Parking Lot

(Forrie Ackerman)

The Foundation 30

The Ackermansion (Beverly Hills) 30

The Los Angeles Psychohistorical

Foundation (Hollywood)

The Funeral Home

The Keys to the Kingdom

(Ed Forman)

The Man in Charge

Requiem for a Rocket Scientist 13

The Mourning Chapel 13

Who AreYou? (Robert Cameron) 13

Concerning Leslyn

(Leslyn Heinlein)

Rocket to the Morgue 33

Ed Forman’s House (Pasadena) 33

The Aerojet Corporation (Azusa) 33

The Observatory (Mt. Wilson)

Poetry Reading

Questioned by the FBI

(Central L.A.)

The Grieving Widow

(Marjorie Cameron)

At the Pier

For Us, The Living

The Parking Attendant’s Story

Crying Wolfe (Jane Wolfe)

The Hatcheck Girl’s Story

The Reporter (Omar Garrison)

The Value of a Dollar

Oh That I Were Where Helen

Lies (Helen Smith)

The Excalibur

The Painting from Catemaco

Forrie Sneaks Out

(Forrie Ackerman)

Examining the Painting

The Spirit Moth Key

Drive in the Desert

PART THREE:

THE DESPITE OF AZATAO

I Am The Flame

Henninger Flats

The Church of Thelema

Vance Wimpole Arrives!

Entering the Temple

The Moment of Truth

Meet the Thelemites

An Unwelcome Interruption

NEO-ENOCHIAN MAGIC

The Aftermath (Betty Wimpole)

A Basic Understanding

The Operation of Magick

PART TWO: DOWN THESE

MEAN STREETS

Instruments of Magick

Neo-Enochian Space Mead

In A Strange Land

Neo-Enochian Game Mechanics

TRAIL OF CTHULHU

The Big Hoodoo

INTRODUCTION

It is June 19, 1952. Brilliant but

bizarre autodidact rocket scientist Jack

Parsons died two days ago, killed in his

own makeshift garage laboratory by

the accidental explosion of a volatile

chemical—or so the Pasadena police are

going to conclude after what will seem

to be an open-and-shut investigation. Of

course, the newspapers are going have

a field day with the eccentric scientist’s

dabblings in the occult, his association

with the diabolist Aleister Crowley, and

his outlandish theosophistical writings,

but no one in their right mind should

seriously believe that Parsons’ death had

any cause other than the man’s careless

handling of dangerous chemicals. But

for a few of Jack’s long-lost friends—

the investigators—the truth will bring

them face-to-face with a mendacious

charlatan who seeks to aggrandize

himself via the power of the Mythos.

generated characters is provided. The

second is the problem of not enough

history: players may be unable to

willingly suspend their disbelief if the

game-fiction contradicts that which

they know or suspect to be true in

the real world. For those players, a

scrupulous effort has been made to

incorporate such details as will enhance

the adventure’s verisimilitude.

to justify the anachronistic inclusion of

quasi-religious elements in the pulp

guru’s self-help movement (which in

1952 was still billed primarily as a new

science of mental health rather than a

religion) but some Keepers may wish

to change Wimpole back to Hubbard

and Psychohistory back to Dianetics or

Scientology.

Players who are aware of Isaac

Asimov’s stories about the fall of a

galactic empire where a predictive

science called Psychohistory enables

the galactic dark age to be reduced

to a mere thousand years may be

confused, and so should learn that

in this alternate universe, Asimov’s

“Academy” (not “Foundation”) novels

feature a predictive science referred to

as Scientology; any character with Art

History will be aware of this. Similarly,

in the game-world, should the name “L.

Ron Hubbard” be mentioned, it will

turn out to be that of a character based

on D. Vance Wimpole who appeared

in Tony Boucher’s 1942 mystery novel

Rocket to the Morgue, set in the pre-

war science fiction scene in Los Angeles

(in other words, the reverse of the

situation in the real world).

However, as Keeper, you should

encourage your players to treat the

game-world as an alternate reality

that diverges from our own in several

important regards, some of which

they may discover or create in play.

Historical accuracy should be treated

lightly—it is an extraneous bagatelle; an

ornamental rather than essential feature

of the adventure. You can play with or

against players’ historical expectations

about the period as you desire; for

example, you may decide to present the

cultists of Thelema encountered by the

investigators as hedonistic libertines

presaging the enormities of the Manson

family, on the one hand, or as a genial

patriarchy in the mold of Father Knows

Best, on the other.

This adventure should play out like

Lovecraft-flavored film noir, with

investigators drawn into the interplay

among a set of seedy characters with

complicated histories who are working

at cross-purposes. Although “The Big

Hoodoo” is inspired by real-world

events, and the pregenerated characters

it uses share the names of real people, it

departs shamelessly from the historical

record as necessary for dramatic and

ludic purposes. This can lead to two

different problems in play that the

Keeper should be prepared to address.

The first is the problem of too much

history: players may feel awkward,

uncertain, or intimidated when playing

a character who is based on a historical

person if they lack knowledge about

that character. For those players,

background information for the pre-

Ripped from History

A cavalier regard for strict historicity

is especially necessary in the case of

this adventure’s central antagonist.

Daedalus Vance Wimpole is a heavily

fictionalized version of the real

world’s Lafayette Ronald Hubbard,

who was a pulp writer, self-help

guru, and eventually the founder

of a controversial quasi-religious

organization called Scientology. In this

game, Wimpole is the head of a self-

help movement-cum-religion called

“Psychohistory”.The reason for this was

TRAIL OF CTHULHU

The Big Hoodoo

THE INVESTIGATORS

Pre-Generated

Characters

Four pre-generated characters are

provided. The investigators are

habitués of the science-fiction scene

in California. They are based on real

historical personages, some of whom

may be familiar or even well-known

to your players. Noted author Bob

Heinlein and his wife Ginny have briefly

returned to the West Coast from their

new home in Colorado on the first leg

of a tour around the world paid for

with money earned from Bob’s work

on the movie Destination Moon nearly

two years ago. Before they take passage

on a ship bound for Hawaii, they are in

San Francisco visiting Bob’s friend Tony

Boucher (rhymes with “voucher”), a

writer and editor of fantasy, horror,

and science fiction. Boucher is a sci-

fi aficionado who has become one of

the founding editors of The Magazine

of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Rising

young talent Phil Dick, Boucher’s

protégé, is attracting attention for his

intensely introspective and reality-

bending science fictional imagination

and is considering giving up his job as

a record-store clerk to work on writing

full-time.

Gaming in the 1950s

Playing a game set in the 1952, like playing in the standard Trail of Cthulhu

setting of the 1930s, is strictly speaking “historical” rather than “modern” gaming.

Nonetheless, the slightly closer distance in time from now to then makes this

era much more familiar-seeming as a setting than even the 1930s. The post-war

political and social order coalescing in this period is going to shape attitudes and

beliefs for the remainder of the century (well into the time of many players’ living

memory), and the on-going penetration of television into American households

(and subsequent enshrining of 1950s suburban domesticity in popular culture)

means that even the shape of everyday life in this period will seem more familiar

than that of the 1930s. For U.S. players at least, the 1950s are likely to stand as a

quasi-mythical “normal” against which the cultural shifts of the latter half of the

20th century stand either as deviations or advances.

In general, the cultural milieu is characterized by the pre-occupations of the

period: (1) paranoid Red-baiting anti-Communist politics, (2) tensions between

materialistic consumer desire (occasioned by postwar prosperity) and guilt or

suspicion about giving in to social conformity (same), and eventually (3) the gradual

emergence of civil rights as a persistent social concern. Technological optimism

is the order of the day, consistent with increasing electrification and telephone

penetration in rural areas—the U.S. has about 28 phones per 100 people at this

time—and the establishment of the automobile as an icon of American social

mobility and cultural possibility (about 60% of U.S. families now own a car).

Science fiction, although still regarded neither as art nor literature, is beginning

to provide important pop-cultural touchstones, with Howard Hawks’ The Thing

from Another World and Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (both 1951,

and both later re-made) serving as early examples.

Some additional cultural orientation to the period may be helpful to some

players. In June 1952, when this adventure takes place, World War II has been over

for only seven years. The Korean War (initiated in 1950) has entered a period of

protracted stalemate while the larger Cold War against the Soviet Union simmers

on in deadly earnest, exacerbated by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Red-baiting

witch hunts, currently in full swing against the State Department, Hollywood,

and the universities. Nuclear testing in the South Pacific and in the Nevada desert

is on-going (with one desert explosion televised nationally in April). Julius and

Ethel Rosenberg have been found guilty of delivering atomic secrets to the Soviet

Union and await their execution in the electric chair. Harry Truman is President

of the United States, having won against NewYork governor Thomas Dewey four

years earlier. Truman’s current unpopularity as a result of economic recession, the

Korean war, and revelations of governmental corruption has led him to announce

that he will not seek re-election, particularly after his loss in the New Hampshire

primary to Senator Estes Kefauver in March.

On television (still only available in black-and-white, and only to 34% of

American households), I Love Lucy and Dragnet just ended their first seasons,

The Ed Sullivan Show is four years old, and Milton Berle is near the height of his

popularity as “Uncle Miltie” on Texaco Star Theatre. Leroy Anderson’s instrumental

“Blue Tango” is a presence on the airwaves, and Gene Kelly’s movie musical Singin’

in the Rain was a hit with audiences earlier in the year. Novels of World War II

top the fiction bestseller list, including James Jones From Here to Eternity and

Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny, both of which deal with men confronting

the constraints of regimented organizational life, a theme that will be picked up

throughout the decade.

Character sheets for all the PCs are

given on page 44 to be used as

handouts.

Additional and Alternate

Investigators

Should you have more than four

players, you can easily introduce

additional investigators drawn from

the science-fictional circles of which

Boucher, Dick and the Heinleins were

part in the 1950s. Collaborators Hank

Kuttner (age 39) and his wife C.(for

Catherine) L. Moore (age 43) now live

and work in Los Angeles, where in the

1930s Kuttner was active in fandom

Trail of Cthulhu - The Big Hoodoo.pdf

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