@Taskerland

@Taskerland @RogerBW it's the aspect of DG that I find tiresome enough to complain to Roger about regularly. Don't give Agents the necessary info for their jobs, but do whatever crimes are necessary to destroy the unnatural, kill the witnesses, and of course, the organization will murder any Agents who seem compromised or inconvenient or bad at their jobs.

@Taskerland @RogerBW for my own modern agency-type scenarios I deliberately avoid because, firstly, I don't want to play those kinds of people, and secondly it doesn't seem at all a good way to run an agency. If you want to quell supernatural threats, give the Agents as much info as you can and value them.

@Taskerland @RogerBW I'm slightly surprised that I've only come across one game built around someone trying to destroy DG entirely, and sadly that antagonist was textually 100% in the wrong.

@Taskerland @RogerBW I have also been vaguely tempted to devise a DG setup but it's the bits of government that aren't so ACAB: a secret benevolent conspiracy of waste disposal operatives, health visitors, bus drivers, planning inspectors etc.

@shimminbeg @Taskerland "What am I doing here fighting shoggoths, man? I set up community gardens!"

"We are a group of Taxi Cab drivers, we possess... the knowledge"

@RogerBW @shimminbeg @Taskerland

@Printdevil @RogerBW @Taskerland Taxi/Health Visitor combo proving their worth once more as they seamlessly map out incidents and weirdness epidemics.

"Now, they don't *look* related, but if you're heading from that address to Grintmistle in rush hour, you're going to turn left down Back Church and hit a jam at the roundabout here, and who's coming in from the north just turn? Why, folks from the *other* address avoiding the school run by cutting through…"

I actually did that in a game in the modern era and a health visitor was recruited at the end of the scenario.

I did the "mapping disease" in an 1862 game with intelligent cholera.

@shimminbeg @RogerBW @Taskerland

@Printdevil @RogerBW @Taskerland That seems like an interesting premise!

I came across a huge education folder of stuff about cholera in glasgow with maps and tenement floorplans, and it just became "a thing"

@shimminbeg @RogerBW @Taskerland

@Printdevil @RogerBW @Taskerland I can see that being an incredible resource, whether you used it directly or for background material more generally.

I've been collecting things like that since the Jackdaw folders in the 1970s. My house is trove of un-run games.

@shimminbeg @RogerBW @Taskerland

I've been contemplating on "the ideal prop/handout" recently because of playing so many mystery/murder box sets and education folder material is almost always good because it is designed by specialists in delivering information in digestible ways. Too often you get people thinking "more is better" in handouts and props and really they aren't worth the time spent on them to the players*

*unless you are showing off. Showing off is good. Especially about Bok

@shimminbeg @RogerBW @Taskerland

One of the things I've come across time and time again (and entirely guilty of myself) is spending time on things like playbills for theatres or concerts, which are just mostly exercises in design and don't provide the players any actual information that you couldn't just tell them. That's table litter. I being a photoshopmonkey am terribly prone to making very artful trash.

@shimminbeg @RogerBW @Taskerland

@Printdevil This discussion makes me want to run a game featuring that 'chimney sweeps fighting monsters' thing from the comic I wrote a few years back. Because I don't have enough un-run games already... @RogerBW @shimminbeg @Taskerland

@Taskerland "First rule of the trade, innit."

"Regular sweeping?"

"No. Always bring shotguns."

@Printdevil @RogerBW @shimminbeg

Isn't that all a bit Nigel Pennick?

@Taskerland @devilsjunkshop @RogerBW @shimminbeg