The Ring of Five

John B took us on a trip to 1920s Berlin as crime fighters investigating strange goings on with a somewhat Cthulhu-esque angle to it. This is a sideshoot of his long running early twentieth century RPG campaign involving a number of characters in various alt history activities.

We were all cast as police of various types, I was Kommissar Bernhard Steyer of the Kripo with my trusty Wachmeister (John A), and tagging along for the ride was Russell from the Prussian Police (later the Gestapo), Pete from the Security Police (SD), Micheal as the Police Forensic Examiner and Tim as a youthful Kapitan-Lt Canaris, from some shady intelligence outfit.

RPGs are never very photogenic I'm afraid, but we did break out a few hats. As a big fan of Kommisar Gereon Raths adventures in the 'Babylon Berlin' series, I broke out my fedora and jaunty shirt for a night of cocaine and benzedrine fuelled dancing, as favoured by the good inspector to wind down.

Sadly my revelries were interrupted by news of a murder! A body had been found, apparently hacked to death outside the notorious Ring of Five club.

John provided us with a beautiful map of 1920s Berlin, which came in very handy, although many of the roads in the city centre still have the same names and follow the same routes on Google Maps.

Off we went to the night club to investigate whatever was happening. I won't bore you with a blow by blow account, but we uncovered what appeared to be a widespread conspiracy involving both various different political factions and a secret society with an interest in the occult and Teutonic supremacy. There were various references to 'Carcosa' and 'The Yellow King' as well as writings in an indecipherable form of ancient Cunieform. 

Thanks to excellent police work, we identified the baddies lair and it ended up in a shoot out as we stormed a flat in Moabit. We rescued a hostage, and very conveniently killed the head of the local German Workers Party (I'm sure they won't get anywhere) who also had the murder weapon in his possession. Case closed.

The only slight wrinkle was that the other main suspect, a gentleman of military bearing wearing a monocle, apparently disappeared in a flash of light as our police fought their way through the building. Although publically the case was closed and a serial killer brought to justice, these disturbing developments, along with links to the activities of Austrian agents and the involvement of Albert Einstein in some unspecified way, meant the privately the case was very much open. The Security Service took over and we were all seconded to the ongoing investigation. The next instalment awaits!

That was brilliant fun, very well researched, good fun to play and very atmospheric. The game was more on the realistic side of RPGs (so no level 20 Paladins with 200 hit points), and our various familiarities with police and forensic procedures came in very handy. I'm looking forward to the next one.