SCRY ME A RIVER
Having inspired countless other games, the Rivers of London books have finally got their own RPG. John Power Jr. speaks to Lynne Hardy, the game’s line editor, about what it took to bring them to life
‘Call of Cthulhu with added hope’ is how British author Ben Aaronovitch describes the Rivers of London RPG, and he should know being the author of the wildly successful novels that Chaosium’s new game of occult detection is based upon.
An urban fantasy that features talking foxes, where ghosts can provide immaterial evidence and the Metropolitan Police Force isn’t in special measures, the novels follow Peter Grant - police officer, wizard and latest recruit to the Met’s secret magic division, The Folly - as he goes up against the ‘demi-monde’; supernatural serial killers, warring gods, occult criminal gangs and the like. The books have long provided inspiration for gamers and, with a TV series on the horizon, Chaosium have swooped in to bring an official RPG to our tabletops.
Key to both securing that license, and then making the game a reality, was Chaosium’s Lynne Hardy. A veteran of games such as Call of Cthulhu, Achtung! Cthulhu, Blue Rose and her own Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks, Hardy is, quite importantly, also a huge fan of Aaronovitch’s books.
‘I was introduced to them via friends, who kept telling me that I really ought to read them,’ explains Hardy. ‘I kept putting it off because I'd kind of fallen out of love with fantasy and science fiction. But then I thought, “well, people keep telling me these are good, I'm gonna give them a go” and promptly blasted straight through however many of them were available at that time. I think it was the first five or so, and so I joined the ranks of those desperately waiting for Ben to hurry up and write another one.
‘From having worked on Call of Cthulhu it was very obvious that Rivers of London would really adapt nicely to an investigative style game. It's a police procedural and I liked the fantasy and magical elements to it. It was enough to make it interesting, without going down a lot of tired old footpaths. So I saw that there was this game in there and really it was just waiting for the right opportunity to see whether it could become more than just a pipe dream.’
That opportunity would finally arise a few years later when Aaronovitch was scheduled to do a book signing in Hardy’s native Newcastle.
‘I booked off work for the day and got in nice and early, so I was at the front of the queue,’ Hardy recalls. ‘By this point, I'd had a conversation with [ Chaosium Creative Director] Mike Mason. So there's me at the front of the queue, I didn’t have my official business cards, just my personal one that I've written my Chaosium email address on, so it looked really professional. But I managed to buttonhole Ben and basically said, “have you ever fancied having your own role playing game?” At which point his face lit up, because apparently the answer was yes and, as it turned out, he'd always hoped it would be a BRP game too, as he’d always been fond of that system.’
I MANAGED TO BUTTONHOLE BEN AND BASICALLY SAID, “HAVE YOU EVER FANCIED HAVING YOUR OWN ROLE PLAYING GAME?” AT WHICH POINT HIS FACE LIT UP.
BRP, or Basic Roleplaying, is of course Chaosium’s house system, one that for over 4 decades now has powered games like RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu. Whatever arcane rituals Hardy had been secretly performing in preparation for this meeting, the stars had clearly aligned over Tyneside that fateful day.
Aaronovitch having some form as a tabletop gamer probably won’t come as too much of a shock to anyone who has read his books, but him having an affinity with RPGs was something that would come in handy, not just during the game’s development but even at the earliest stages of getting the deal done.
‘I always wanted him to be involved because, obviously, these books are his babies,’ Hardy says. ‘It’s his world, he created it, he wants to look after it and make sure that we treat it with respect, which is completely understandable. But also him being a gamer, that was actually very helpful during the negotiations, because he understood that he was never going to make his fortune from this. It wasn't a video game, it's not TV. I mean he says it himself, this is his vanity project, he wanted his own game.
‘So throughout the process we consulted really closely with him, and that was something I wanted too, because I wanted him to feel that he had an investment in the game and wasn't left out of that equation. So Ben was writing spells for us, he was coming up with little suggestions for things. If we had a query, we'd get in touch with him and go, “is this how this works?”’
Aaronovitch’s involvement was also key to getting the tone of the game right. Whilst the books are more urban fantasy than outright horror they do have their fair share of darker moments and violence, both supernatural and otherwise, something that Hardy wanted to be represented in the game.
‘It's not as deadly as Call of Cthulhu,’ she explains. ‘I mean, it can be for NPCs, but not for player characters. You're going to end up hurt, you may end up unconscious, but it's going to be difficult to actually kill you. But then people are very seriously hurt and do die in the books. It’s not very often but guns do appear, and when you start shooting those things people do tend to get very badly hurt. So it's always difficult balancing that reality with making sure that you aren't going through a new character every week but from our play-testing we think we've got the balance right.
‘And again, that's where Ben was very, very helpful,’ Hardy continues. ‘He's spoken before about this in various places, he has to have at least one gruesome death per book to keep the gruesome grannies happy. But you don't want swathes of bodies everywhere, because this is still set in the real world and serial killers do attract a lot of attention. So you've still got to find that balance.
‘I mean, one of the first deaths [in the novels] is absolutely horrific, and witnessing that has massive knock on effects for the series. Not going to mention any spoilers but there are some really dark, gruesome bits in there. But there's also that lovely humour that lifts it and which makes it very British actually. Working with a predominantly British crew on it helped, and working with a group of people who either were already fans of the books, or became fans of the books while they were working on it was also very helpful. With any property like this, you have to love your source material to do it.’
“THERE ARE SOME REALLY DARK, GRUESOME BITS IN THERE. BUT THERE'S ALSO THAT LOVELY HUMOUR THAT LIFTS IT AND WHICH MAKES IT VERY BRITISH ACTUALLY”
That close relationship with Aaronovitch, and the team’s passion for the project, has paid off with a game that faithfully captures both the tone and feel of the books, which raises another issue. With a loyal fanbase already out there, there’s a very good chance that this could be many people’s first role-playing game, something that Hardy was keenly aware of during the game’s development.
‘I wanted it to be something that would encourage people who loved the books into giving gaming a go, rather than for hardcore gamers who've been doing it for years,’ Hardy says. ‘Of course, we'd also love it if those hardcore gamers play too and perhaps discover the books in turn. In fact I've already had lots of people tell me that they hadn’t heard of the books and when they saw we were doing the game went out and devoured them as well, which is fantastic.
‘But I always wanted it to be an introductory type of game. I've written games like that before, Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks was my steampunk introductory game, which couldn't get more simple. Actually, when I was running proof of concept games for Paul [Fricker] and the various members of Chaosium to show what sorts of adventures people would have in the world it was a stripped down version of Cogs & Cakes that I used.
‘Paul did jokingly say, “why can't we just use that system,” but it's a little bit too simple for dealing with things like magic. So we always wanted it to have the BRP DNA underneath it. That appealed to Ben, obviously, because he's a big fan of BRP and it made sense to me, because I understand it. It's one of those systems that just clicked for me, it's how my brain works.
‘We knew it couldn't be as simple as the Call of Cthulhu starter set, but we also didn't want it quite as in depth as the full [CoC] seventh edition rules, it kind of had to sit somewhere in between, mainly because of that magic system. Magic is integral to the Rivers of London world and we've got to somehow be able to deal with that. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted Paul involved. Paul and Mike [Mason], did a fantastic job of updating Call of Cthulhu to the seventh edition, so I knew he would be a safe pair of hands with that kind of brief.
Streamlining the BRP system is not the only way the game aims to provide an easier experience for both first time gamers and GMs alike and the rulebook makes particularly good use of the source material, for example presenting the well-worn ‘what is an RPG?’ section in fictional prose with Peter Grant wrangling the other characters from the novels through a game of Call of Cthulhu.
The new game also smartly take another cue from Call of Cthulhu’s 7th edition, or more precisely its starter set. Once the traditional niceties have been observed the rulebook goes straight into a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style solo scenario. Based on one of Aaronovitch’s short stories, The Domestic, it’s a great way to ease you into the game.
‘We know that it worked in the Call of Cthulhu starter set and that's why I wanted it in there,’ Hardy explains. ‘Because, again, we're assuming that people might not have gamed before, or they've just had a limited experience of it. We know that Alone Against the Flames is great for introducing people to Call of Cthulhu. So that's exactly what I wanted at the front of the book because we couldn't make any assumptions about who was playing it.
‘And again, this was part of the collaboration with Ben because he really liked the idea of there being a solo adventure based on one of his short stories. Gavin Inglis did an absolutely superb job adapting it, even if you've read the story there's some little tweaks to it that you're not going expect. So it's there to help set the tone, give you an introduction to some of the rules and the character creation, but it's also there to show you how you can adapt Ben’s source material to create your own Case Files, which is what we’re calling scenarios.’
That is something that will definitely come in use, run your average dungeon crawl and many experienced GMs can happily create everything on the fly with just a few tables, creating investigations requires a bit more work. For many GMs that’s part of the appeal, a chance to create their own labyrinthine plots for their players to pick their way through but it can still be a daunting task, especially for someone new to role-playing games.
To help with that the book also contains a sizeable chapter of advice for GMs covering everything from tips for running games in general, and investigations in particular, to the use of safety tools, how to deal with problem players and when to just relax, ignore the rules altogether and let the game play out.
The rulebook also features a second scenario, The Bookshop, also based on an existing short story (The Cockpit) but this time one designed to be run by a GM for a group of players. Once again this provides a great example of how to use the novels as material for your own games.
‘Keris McDonald wrote a section for GMs about adapting stories whilst deviating from them, so we're trying to give that support,’ explains Hardy. ‘And you'll see that in The Bookshop scenario that there's a lot of asides and advice for people who aren't used to running games. So we hope we've given enough support for new starters to be able to get on with it.’
Still, Hardy doesn’t plan to keep players waiting too long for new material either and work on delivering that is already well under way.
‘At the moment, I have another three books planned,’ she reveals. ‘There's an America source book, which will explain how to set up a game there because it's a very, very different setting. That will have two scenarios in it to again help explore the differences in tone. Then after that I would like to do a UK scenario book. That's something that Ben and I really want to do, so that material is there to help people who aren't used to writing their own. The idea is there would be some London based scenarios but also ones set elsewhere in the country, as there’s a section in the rulebook about creating your own Folly, and opening new branches around the country if you don't want to run your game in London.
‘And then the book after that would be a look at all the other types of characters you might play. For example the Genii Locorum,’ Hardy says, referring to the books’ powerful spirits, each tied to a particular location. ‘How do you integrate that into your game without completely over balancing it? Is it a problem if you do? Or teenagers like Abigail from the book. If you want a whole gang of Abigails going around investigating things, you can do that. And of course talking foxes! Let's face it, everybody wants to play a talking fox. I mean, I have had conversations with Ben about what talking creatures are in America, but I'm not gonna say anything about that yet…’
Hardy’s passion for Rivers of London is as apparent as it is abundant and she’s clearly excited for people to immerse themselves in this world, just as she has. With the ever growing popularity of the novels, and a TV series still to come, that audience could be significant, and Hardy has overseen a game that will embrace them with open arms. For now at least though she can count on one very satisfied customer, an author who’s finally got what he always wanted, a game game to call his own, a bit like Call of Cthulhu, now just ‘with added hope.’