[Darren MacLennan]

Originally Posted by Eurhetemec

To be honest, whilst the criticism of this book may be valid, I do tend to wonder why you bought it at all? Assuming you did, rather than being given a review copy.

You don't want to know about San Fransisco's:

History
Geography
Culture
Personalities
Occult world
Crime
Quirks

Only as they relate to the Mythos. Dunwich was chock full of campaign hooks, weird happenings, interesting NPCs and had a major Mythos monster at its end; ditto Arkham, Kingsport, Innsmouth. Like, show me the Mythos aspects of San Francisco, and leave the dry stuff to Lonely Planet.

You only want to know about Mythos monsters and the like, in an almost context-free way.

No; in context of San Francisco.

unless I want to just make it up, which in my experience is a recipe for disaster with well-travelled and well-read players. If I wanted to "just make it up", I'd make up my own city.

I always do. As soon as your characters hit the ground, they're interacting with things that don't exist in the real world; if your players are bitching you out because they're meeting at two streets that don't meet together, they're playing Geography Nitpicking: The Gamefuckening, not Call of Cthulhu.

As for your whole "Well investigators shouldn't stop crime or be interested in anything but the Mythos!" schtick, I think that's pretty questionable and possibly a unique viewpoint. In most of the Mythos novels, crime and depravity are the signs of the Mythos at work in human society, or at least tend to accompany it.

Depravity, yes, but I've never seen crime as indicative of having anything to do with the Mythos. On top of that, solving the problem of women being shipped into slavery is one that we can't solve now, much less in the 1920's. It's easier to kill a Mythos monster than it is to turn a man's heart away from vice.

I'd also question your apparently unresearched by no-less-certain-for-it assertion that San Fran didn't have a homelessness problem in the 1920s. I'd be very surprised if that was true, given the amount of social upheaval, literal earthquakes, and so on, in that region.

The circumstances that lead to San Francisco being a bastion for homelessness today have been well-established. In the 1920's, it was a lot easier to commit somebody, a lot easier for authorities to beat up the local homeless in order to encourage them to move on their way. The homeless culture was focused mostly around hobos, who had their own thing going.

It's possible that San Francisco had a huge homeless problem back then, but I can't imagine where I'd go to find the appropriate research.

I always have sympathy for criticism of city books, because I'm a Londoner, and when Americans, or out-dated non-Londoner Brits try and write about the place, it's often hysterically inaccurate or stereotypical (don't even get me started!). From what you're saying, though, this seems like a well-researched and thorough portrait of San Fran in the 1920s, albeit with rather less actual Mythos action that one might prefer.

To be sure, it is quite well researched. If you're looking to play a historical campaign in 1920's San Francisco, it's not bad.

Here's what I would have liked included:

- Tips on how to integrate historical personages into your games. What do they really know? What do they want to know? Who will they hire to do it? We can read about Emperor Norton online until our heads explode. And seriously, the Winchester House has appeared in so many novels and supplements and comics that it's a wonder that it hasn't collapsed from overuse.

- Integrating a really nice cult into San Francisco, one that doesn't exist within its own space but spreads throughout the entire book. Dunwich's model is excellent for this.

- Useful NPCs. The local kid who acts like a guide. The society of dilettantes that's going to summon Daoloth if they keep up their little weekend games. The geomantic configuration that draws its power from the motion of the trolley cars up and down the streets and the people who use it. People that the PCs can meet and interact with, who aren't important because they're historically famous, but because they're important in the game. The ones that we get are pretty pallid.

-Darren MacLennan