The Anti-Brindlewood Manifesto

[garrett (Bill Garrett)]

(or why I struggle so much with this particular game system)

I’m a long-time fan of HP Lovecraft’s work, and cosmic horror in general. I’ve enjoyed some TV Murder Mystery formats but not others - I think I still prefer “Columbo” and its how-catch-em approach to the classic whodunnit, because while the clues are a vital part of the process, it’s also got that central duel of detective vs. murderer.

Where Brindlewood Bay Gets It Wrong

The problem with Brindlewood Bay, for me, is that there’s a direct disconnect between the central conceits of its two parent premises. I’m growing increasingly allergic to anything that’s described as “cozy”, so I’m going to try and support this claim with quotes from BB’s text itself and TV Tropes, not just my own opinions.

BB advertises itself as being based directly on “Murder, She Wrote” - not just “70’s/80’s detective TV in general”, but this one particular show (“BB” p. 4). I have not seen all 12 god damn seasons (jesus), but I have seen some of it, and I am backed up in my conclusions by the TV Tropes page. Those are:

• It is formulaic. Someone actually wrote this up and it’s hilarious.
• It is not introspective. Some of the most obvious questions in the world go unexamined, like “why do more murders happen per year in Cabot Cove than Santa Carla and that town has actual fucking vampires”, leading to…
• It is episodic. Example: Generally if you’re an old friend of Jessica Fletcher, and you make an actual appearance in the show, you are scr00d. And this will never be mentioned ever again. There’s exceptions but there’s always exceptions to everything, even to the rule of there always being exceptions.

Basically it’s a very “television” thing.

Cosmic horror is not “television” in the slightest.

In fact, cosmic horror is very literary. Ambrose Bierce, Robert W. Chambers, Arthur Machen, and Edgar Allen Poe were writing the precursors to the genre that Lovecraft helped codify. Faithful visual adaptions or pastiches, like “In the Mouth of Madness”, have wound in this literary aspect somehow.

The things that make cosmic horror what it is include:

• It is inevitable. There is a fatalism that makes cosmic horror so powerful. No matter how you struggle, it doesn’t matter. Even if you achieve some victory, it’s hollow and temporary.
• Knowledge is the enemy of sanity. The more you learn about what’s going on, the less easy it will be for you to cope with that, because people just fundamentally aren’t built to handle this stuff. A note for the people who are like “HPL protagonists are weak, I could cope with a shoggoth”: it’s possible to be traumatized just by a sufficiently bad home life, here in the real world. We know what war does to people. I’m fine accepting the premise that truly inhuman things would wreck us mentally.
• It is inescapable. The servants of the Cult will find you because there’s always going to be more of them. The human villain will just reincarnate again. You got away from their village, but you can’t get away from your own half-human genes.

So where does BB go wrong? From the text (BB p. 34):

the strange feeling you have watching these elderly women go back to baking and knitting after they just encountered a group of masked cultists on the beach is the game working as intended.

Cosmic horror is everything episodic television is not. There’s no horror story where the bad guy is beaten and everybody laughs and then things reset for the next episode. There are some HPL stories where the protagonist prevails, but it’s always at a horrible cost (to them, to someone close to them, whatever). Nobody comes out of these stories unscathed, but a TV show that mandates formula and status quo can’t survive that.

The Keeper move “Cut to Commercial” (BB p. 43) is a good example of this: it essentially says “you know all those precepts of cosmic horror? Fuck all that. You can just treat this like Primetime Adventures where we have some goth cosplayers over on the side doing scary stuff, but it doesn’t matter because the heroes always get to go back to their cozy place”.

The thing that really galls me is how easy it would have been to mix these things in a different way. HPL protagonists and supporting characters are frequently older. They’re professors, retirees, in their 40s to 60s. They’ve had full lives and they’re starting to feel that age. Let them investigate things that grow increasingly awful and transmundane, while mixing in their real lives and daily pleasures.

Where Dave Gets It Wrong

I don’t want Dave to feel any worse about the game but I’ll also point out that some of the feedback I’ve given (break things up a little) comes right out of advice for the Keeper. BB p. 34:

The thing you should try to more actively manage is the shift between day and night, and the movement of the investigation from place to place. Some mysteries, especially those that encourage the Mavens to roam around town, start at one time of day but can transition to another, or they suggest lots of different places to investigate.

Over and over, we’d camp out right at the murder site and just farm for clues until we could Theorize. And that is what the game, as far as I can tell, tells us not to do. Page 35:

Players will naturally want to be busy-bodies and do everything in a short time span, or focus their whole investigation on one place, but don’t let them

This might seem minor, but I think it contributes to the disconnect I’m talking about, because if we never have that strong Day/Night distinction, there’s no opportunity to even do the tone shifts that BB is specifically asking us to do. It’s just straight up “Murder, She Wrote” (which would be fine, if that’s all we were ever going to do) without any of this goth cosplay nonsense.

Conclusion

Basically, if the goal was run “Murder, She Wrote”, I feel like Dave would have been better served with other systems, e.g. “hey we’re playing GUMSHOE but you’re all little old ladies, stat yourselves accordingly”. I get the impression Dave saw the MSW name-drop in Brindlewood Bay and got stoked and then the game failed us all.

Which happens! I’ve had games that didn’t play at all the way I hoped they would. The best thing to do is what Dave did, which is to say “cool, let’s just move on”.

[garrett (Bill Garrett)]

For fun, I’ll try to pitch an alternative game concept to Brindlewood Bay that resolves what I think are the most systemic problems:

• The central theme of the game is the accumulation of sorrows, and how different characters cope with them
• Sorrow arises from approaching the end of your life, of feeling like you no longer have a purpose, and of losing things you cherish
• You combat sorrow by finding new purpose, by enacting the familiar and the routine, or by sharing the fruits of your long life with those who need it

Essentially, your cozy lifestyle as a Murder Maven is a coping mechanism for feeling the pangs of knowing your life is finite and that your best years may be behind you. You do things like read murder mysteries - and solve murders - to defy the power mortality has over you.

The dark conspiracy of the Midwives, by contrast, is made up of people who have already been broken by that sorrow. “What good are our finite lives,” they asked themselves, and decided that if they were to die, they should die in truly memorable fashion. They’d celebrate death, they’d invite it or create it, and finally they’d conjure something that would bring it about in a worldwide scale.

(this also makes “WandaVision” recommended viewing for this version of the game)

Now for some specifics.

“You can’t gain clues that point to a suspect” really, really grinds my gears, because the whole purpose of a clue in a mystery is to do exactly that. That’s what “clue” means - point at a solution to a mystery. That’s like the definition of the word. The etymology literally alludes to a thread, like something you’d use to wind your way through a labyrinth.

So I’m going to reframe what you really want to do. Here’s some sample moves:

When you push a suspect to reveal their motive, mark 1 Motive on that particular suspect. By interacting with the suspect, or tricking the suspect into revealing something, you gain more insight into what might have made them want to commit the murder. Work with the Keeper to describe the particulars.

Keeper advice: don’t let PCs just repeatedly push suspects for motive. Make them have to set up a scene, bait a trap, sneak in somewhere, whatever. Pushing for motive should happen after some risky setup, and not feel like a series of interview questions. The PCs are explicitly not law enforcement of any kind - they’re old busybodies and should be treated as such.

When you unmask the suspect, frame a scene with the suspect where you try and set them up to admit their guilt, using the motives and evidence you have accumulated. Roll +Motive that any Maven has accumulated with that Suspect, up to a limit of +3. Roll at a further +1 (allowing you to go to +4) if you are the only Maven who revealed Motive for this suspect. Then clear all Motive the suspect has.

On a 10+, you have uncovered the killer and achieve a confession. On a 7-9, choose one: uncover the killer but face a Sorrow in the process, or the suspect is exonerated but mark 1 Motive on two other suspects of your choice. On a miss, the suspect will die later, leaving you with no further leads.

Once the total Motive accumulated exceeds the Complexity of the mystery, official law enforcement will get more involved, with increased scrutiny and limits applied to the Mavens’ investigative efforts.

There’s also a move for “seek the comfort of a cozy activity” that addresses the Sorrows you’ve faced, but that’s beyond the scope of random forum noodling.

The idea here is that everyone is a suspect because they all have means and opportunity - it’s everyone who was around the victim when they died. The remaining piece is motive, and you basically get to pick your killer of choice. The Mavens essentially only get one shot at a suspect, so there’s two strategies: gang up on one person fast, or have each Maven essentially attach themselves to one suspect of choice.

You don’t have a lot of red herrings to wind into a conspiracy pinboard puzzle. It’s much more about the characters and why they might kill another human being.