Saturday, December 8, 2007

The Innsmouth Papers





This is one of the documents I've created for COC game set immediately after the Innsmouth raid. It's based on a contemporary report (taken from the Al Capone files)from the Department of Justice's "Bureau of Investigation", the name of the FBI before it became..well..the FBI.

Realistically, players probably shouldn't get the document in it's current form. Original reports were closely tracked, hence the assigned document identification numbers, and it beggars belief that the Federales wouldn't notice that a few pages were missing from the Innsmouth file, either the BOI version or the classified one put together by the Department of the Navy.

So how could investigators get their grubby little paws on the document? Photocopies. You might be surprised to learn that at least two types of copying machines existed in the 20's and 30's, both relying on a variation of traditional photographic print-making. You can find more information about the technology in the "Copying Machines" exhibit at the amazing Early Office Museum, but for our purposes it's probably enough to use an image editor to dirty up the originals with the dust specks and noise of a poor photocopy. If you're really hell-bent on realism you can print out the resulting graphic on smooth photo paper to replicate the finish of a true photo based duplication system.