John Law RPG S01E02 London 420p GRAHMATIC

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Could I have one of those blackcurrant drinks now?

Sure.

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Gotta glass? . . Oh, don’t bother, I got one.

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You know, I read a lot. Especially things that have to do with history. I find that stuff fascinating. Scottish merchant vessels of the seventeenth century just now, and I was thinking of going to the National Library in Edinburgh to find out more, but then I did a search and I clicked on a link to a St Andrews University page where they’re talking about this guy called Alexander Gillespie. He was a seaman from Ellie, and they have his sailing journal. He wrote it between 1662 and 1685. In total sixty-five voyages. Imagine that. Sixty-five trips. That would be five seasons of stories if it was on the telly. I was going to say he was the Picard of his time, but he didn’t work for a federation of planets. It was just him and his wife. She ran the business while he was making use of the, quote, extensive trading networks throughout Europe, and they’re saying it’s likely he exported coal from Culross and sea salt from Bo’ness or Prestonpans, and either took it to sell in London and Rotterdam, or traded it - in Norway for timber, in the Baltic countries for iron and hemp, and in Bordeaux for wine. It’s the claret that earned him the big bucks apparently.

In that one page I found the basis for my maritime research. All I need to do now is organise a research trip to St Andrews to read the manuscript, and to Elie to get an idea of where they lived. And then link it to the Law goldsmith business in Edinburgh. Postulate that Gillespie, upon returning to Scotland, would take his bags of mixed foreign coins into Edinburgh to exchange them. Whereupon he gets chatting to John and offers him a lift to London.

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The game starts and they’re on the boat, and here’s John with a monologue. Not to camera like those AI history reels with the influencers - he’s busy helping out round the ship and we hear his diary entry from earlier in the day. The camera pivots round to take in the sails and the masts and the rope ladders and the waves.

Hello, it’s 1691 and I’m on the boat to London. This kind gentleman known to my father has agreed to take us as far as London, and we’re very grateful to him. We’re expecting to arrive at eight o’clock this evening.

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I’ve written a plus sign in the margin. Most of these monologues and conversations are first drafts.

What’s this? Gillespie’s spotted some pirate ships in the distance. And more than usual, so the lads will have to help out. Boom. We’re in the present. The gamer’s gonna have to ward them off by firing some warning shots from the ship’s canons. Gillespie’s like, get a shifty. Mon. Sake.

That’s the first game. Very simple. A few canon shots, and then we’re onto the second story - their arrival and disembarkment … disembarking in London. So long, Gillespie. Cheers for the lift. Nae probs bud.

An introduction to the city. Context and contingency, for instance an acknowledgment that it was still being rebuilt after the Great Fire. Lots of detail. A panning past the people on the streets …

… Have you seen those historical reels on social media? I like them. Indicating what life was like at a certain time. The clothes, the food, and the markets and so on. They’ve got me thinking about what it means for films, what with AI improving at the rate it is.

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They’ll be useful in getting a film finished at least. Getting the content did … Like, let’s say I wanted to make a film of that casino scene. The analogy I was talking about. I could head to a casino, sign up for a free membership, then turn up one day when it was quiet and film on the fly … I’d get some shots from a first person perspective and they might be alright. I’d make it work and that would be that. But it’s not as if I could fly a drone around – have it swooping round the room. Oh, hello casino management staring at your screens in an upstairs room - don’t mind me.

I’d have to write to them - sincerely hello, doth casino, willest thou lettest me film in your establishment with a drone - but they’d likely ignore the letter, or they’d eventually reply with their corporate brand consideration and probably some stipulation. Are you an accredited film-making company. I don’t know - what’s that? Who accredits? Cue a search, and no immediate answers, and aw shit, is everyone gonna be like this? All this process. Maybe we need a production assistant. No, we don’t have the budget for a production assistant. I know, why don’t we use AI?

So you take that route, and it’s kind of okay. You ask the AI agent to collate casino views - maybe to pan round a bit more quickly than you’d prefer so the fakery will be missed. Like the words. AI can’t manufacture background words yet. It can’t even do letters. It merges pieces of letters, so you’d have to whoosh past anything that would have words on it - like the puggies.

But yeah. Your casino scene’s saved to your computer, and you have it in your editing package. It’s only OK, but it’s done. The scene’s ticked off, and you’re happy about that. So you decide to use AI a second time - to get a shot of a bird flying over a pond. Again, it’s fine, but later on you’re showing your near completed film to some friends, and one of them tells you that they know of a pond a couple of miles from where they live, and you’re like, ah, they’re not so keen on the pond scene, and by extension that the film is almost entirely AI. You know they’re saying so why didn’t you just film the pond scene - you might even have had fun doing it, you crazy bastards choreographing an entire twenty minute film from a computer in a living room. And someone else chips in … If you start filming outside I could get my brother to give you some sausage rolls from his bakery – could you promote his business in the credits?

You’d be smiling. You wouldn’t know what to say. You’ve been staring at a computer screen for two weeks, and you’re aware there’s a void beneath the surface of the film. Regardless of how good the film is, and, you know, irrespective of whether you regard it as art or as content - there’s something missing.

Remember back in the day when you bought DVDs? Did you ever buy DVDs in Mumbai? Did you scan the back of the box to see if it had a directors commentary? I did. I’d be excited if I could watch a film and then watch it again with the director commentating.

Well the internet took away the experience of owning physical media for most people - no more vinyl sleeve artwork to appreciate, or walls of DVD boxes to build. Instead it became about accessibility.

And now AI is taking away the story of how films are made. Replacing it with an ease of production for film-makers. Readily created scenes, and usually within a template, like the history reels.

What would the directors commentary of an AI film be like ? . . Oh yeah, I remember that day … We did a lot of prompting. And we ordered pizza again. Pepperoni, I think. A Friday. Was it a Friday? No, it was a Saturday. We had a tab open for checking the football scores. Definitely a Saturday.

That’s the void. The stories that are missing. Or that’s how I imagine I’d feel about making an AI film, but then again, it would be done. Film did. Finished. Done. You’ve make the film with AI, and it is what it is. But for sure people will clock your choice to use AI. Yeah, those guys use AI for nearly everything. Which is only to say that people will be people and some won’t be into AI films in the same way that they’re not into black and white films, or they’re not into subtitled films.

What am I saying ? . .

… With every aspect you delegate to AI, you become the person who took those easy options, and you’ve lost both the experience of solving a particular problem, and the ability to talk about it. How you filmed the pond with a particular lens. How you found someone online to voice one of the characters. How you wrote the dialogue in an unplanned roundabout way that day by going for a walk, picking up a flyer for a club night and being reminded of someone and what they once told you, with that becoming the pivotal line in the construction of the scene.

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Computer games though – they’re literally called computer games aren’t they, so it’ll all be what? CGI? Human curated, AI guided, CGI. I don’t know anything about making computer games … I learned HTML for a website once, but that was a long time ago.

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Here’s a paragraph from Janet Gleeson. I found her writing on John Law recently. She wrote about him for a Russian website. An online school. Encouraging people to learn English by reading about John Law and then answering questions. Reading comprehension it used to be called.

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Russian, eh? Are we allowed to talk about Russia yet? Has permission been granted unto us by the beloved media of our beloved regime?

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I’m joking. You can’t care what they think. Here’s Janet, writing for Russians about the London of the time, and she tells us which part of the city Law moved to.

London of the time had 750,000 people. It was the largest Western European capital. Since the Great Fire of 1666, a lot of new buildings had been put up. To the north and east there were factories and workshops surrounded by the pitiful homes of the poorest workers. To the west the aristocrats and businessmen lived in grand houses among green fields. Law settled in St Giles, a fashionable suburb of London which included Holborn, Covent Garden, Seven Dials and Bloomsbury. At that time it was almost a village. Law’s desire to be accepted into London ‘society’ took him to theatres, St James’s Park and Vauxhall Gardens. He ate in fashionable pubs and visited famous coffee houses.

She has society in inverted commas. I mean it’s a vague word, isn’t it, but back then it rang with … exclusivity. The people of society were the people who had leisure. Who didn’t need to worry about money. Society was a scene.

Well how would John Law relate to inverted commas society upon arriving in London? Drinking and gambling, or so goes the usual story, but I don’t think his tennis playing is mentioned enough. He was a very good tennis player apparently. I think he’d get involved that way. He’d go to … wherever the tennis place was … uh, I thought I had a note of it …

To be honest I lose interest when it comes to London. All these London place names. You could spend decades becoming cognizant of London place names. That’s what it must be like living in London. Oh, you don’t know where Holborn Crescent Shire Park is? Allow me to regale you with my superior understanding. No thanks. I’m not bothered. I know the monopoly streets. How about that? I could tell you the rent due on Bow Street with no houses.

And then you get those Americans. Tri-state area. Tri-state area. Bay Area. I commute to the Bay Area. Do you now? Where the fuck is that? Why do you think I know where that is?

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Real tennis isn’t tennis as we know it. That’s called lawn tennis. Real tennis, or royal tennis – it’s posh like croquet. And it has mad rules - you have to hit it off walls as well as over the net - and there’s a spectators gallery, a sloping roof, windows, and plant pots on the window sill. All in-play. Tomato plants in the summer and herbs in the winter.

The points are the same. Fifteen, thirty and forty, which is an abbreviation of forty-five. Numbers that correspond to the clock face. The minutes. I’m guessing they had two clocks. One to tell the time and then another with the two hands pointing to the points gained by the players. That’ll be why they’re called points. The points accrued. They still have two clocks at Wimbledon, don’t they? One with the time and another with the amount of time that’s passed since the game began. Maybe its a tradition - they stuck with the clocks, but one day someone got tired of the net and invented squash. Or really liked the net, and that’s when lawn tennis was invented.

Here’s John Law’s introduction to London society via real tennis. An early draft.

Hello tennis people. My name is John Law. I have money, so I consider myself to be part of society. Hello John Law. We’re also of society. Yes, I know. Do you now? . . Well please come hither, change your shoes, and let us play a game of tennis.

It cuts to the court and he’s standing there, ready to play, and a guide to the controls pops up on the screen. It starts off easy, but then you learn about spin and drop shots and lobs, and where to hit the ball against the sloping roof. What to say if you knock over a plant pot. All the rules and etiquette.

You master the controls via a few practice games, and then he enters a league. But I don’t want the overall game to be too linear, so I’ll combine the tennis with the cards, and have stories and maybe side missions in between. The to-ing and fro-ing will give an idea of London, and it’s leisured society, and the man himself.

Law gets described as a dandy. And a beau. Which partly means that he was regarded as being good looking and partly that he was well dressed - an arbitrer of fashion, I’ve pasted here … A fashionista … No, I don’t like that - Well dressed - that’s enough.

And popular with the ladies. I think both those whom he met, but also in that celebrity way - the yeah, I like him because other people do, because he’s popular, so I like him … hang on, are all these celebrity magazines good for me – what exactly is being sold to me?

Someone was saying that it was only a few years later – in the early 1700’s – when the word beau became a word for boyfriend. And then of course it eventually became one of the words that ended MTV. All those boos and beaus and cribs. The finance people again. Chaps - on the agenda today, we’ll be leveraging MTV to boost real estate … More fiat bozo shitfuckery.

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Fast forward. We’re a few games into the tennis league, and someone invites John to a card night. We’re having a game tonight, would you care to join us? Why yes. Playing it down as if he doesn’t know how to play, because he was undoubtedly a card shark. I haven’t seen anything to suggest he ever cheated, but he did get to know all the ins and outs of the games he played.

Nicholson’s game tavern. No reference again. From Murphy or Gleeson, probably. Something else to check later.

The drinking culture of the time.

Everyone drank what were called small beers. Beers for breakfast lunch and dinner, because the brewing killed the bacteria in their water. They found a way to minimise the alcohol content to one to two per cent. Swedish supermarket beer.

Hard drinking at night though, and it was a mark of distinction - to be able to drink heavily. Boozing was very socially acceptable, and gambling too - so when people say derogatorly … derogatorily … oh John Law, he was this boozy gambler - they’re really only saying he was typical for his time within that inverted commas society.

The game that was played at perhaps Nicholson’s game tavern was called Basset, and yes, in researching the game it’ll be necessary to recreate a games tavern atmosphere and learn it fully. I’ve only glanced at the rules. There’s a play by a writer called Susanna Centiere. The Basset Table. I’ll …

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No, I guess you’d prefer that I didn’t look it up just now. Need to keep moving.

Next page. I’m getting there. It’ll be a while yet though.

Here’s a couple of sentences that sound like wikipedia … Basset was the the high stakes game of choice for the London elite in the 1690s … It had a notorious ability to bankrupt in single night.

Yep. And within a year of arriving Law goes bankrupt. But he wasn’t put off the game from the experience. It encouraged him. It gave him focus.

The story of his bankruptcy via Basset is the first of two story interventions in the overall game. You’re alternating between the tennis games and the card games, and perhaps you’re being asked to make some dialogic choices in the social situations in between – I haven’t decided on that yet.

Anyway, suddenly the game mechanics kick in, you lose completely at the cards, and he’s at a writing desk, explaining his situation to his mother. I’m seeking to avoid debtors prison, he says. A few letters are sent in each direction, and she agrees to buy his share in the estate his father left them. Which was a castle and some land to the north west of Edinburgh. Next to an eatery that sells refillable coffee, but only till noon.

Well we don’t know how he felt about doing this, but it provided the impetus for a change in approach. Like I was saying, not to abandon card playing because it was too risky, but instead to fully understand that risk. So he studies the game in depth. Probability theory, including, Gleeson says, the work of Galileo, Geralamo Cardano at Padua University, and the mathematicians Pascal and Jakob Bernoulli. Murphy mentions more names, and I was reading an article arguing that Law made contributions to the field of probability itself. That’s how serious he became about about understanding the game.

Like, there’s a one in four chance of picking a diamond from a deck of cards - how does that change as the cards are spent during the game? The chance becomes higher, or the probability greater, if you see non-diamonds pass. A lower chance, or lower probability, if diamonds pass. He practices keeping track of all the ratios … I haven’t played the game yet, but what he’s doing is staying as aware as possible so he can recognise the best time to bet, and when that time arrives, he bets big.

You get films about it. Rainman. Charlie Babbitt … no, that was his brother. Raymond. Dustin Hoffman’s Raymond Babbitt with the toothpicks, and then they drive to Las Vegas and play Blackjack. Pontoon, we call it. My gran taught me how to play.

As with Pontoon, in Basset there’s a banker called the talliere, and there’s the punters – the other players. He spotted that there was a definite advantage to being the banker. An asymmetry. A fixed odds advantage. Better odds if you play the banker. As people say, the house always wins.

So that’s the second thing he did to gain an advantage. He always played banker. And from then on he won regularly. It became like a money printing exercise, and Murphy concludes that he was more of a bookie than a gambler.

It’s interesting … It raises the question of whether anyone else knew. Didn’t the other players work out that when he played banker he tended to win? Why wouldn’t they ask to rotate? . . It couldn’t have been too technical for them to learn - I think it was his charisma. I think he put on a performance as talliere, and that performance was considered part of the night’s entertainment. Until it wasn’t. Until people protested, and when they did it forced him to move around venues to retain his advantage.

I’ll get to that. He would soon be moving around all over Europe, but his emigration wasn’t connected to the card playing. It came from the second story intervention.

It’s two years later. The 9th April of 1694, and he has an altercation with a guy called Edward Wilson, one of the most talked about men in London. Another beau.

It was either in a bar called Fountain, or in a chocolate house. I guess the Fountain could have been a chocolate house. I’m going with a chocolate house in any case … An extended story that begins with some argie bargie, and in the melley, tankards of chocolate are thrown. Wigs are spoiled. You’ve got rouge and hot chocolate running down faces, and Wilson is very pissed off. He majorly flounces, and we cut to Bloomsbury Square, wherever that is, where Wilson surprises him.

What their argument was about isn’t known, but there’s a fair bit of speculation.

Someone’s said, quote, it was a cocktail of royal mistress, drama and financial mystery that still baffles historians.

The royal mistress was Elizabeth Villiers, the Countess of Orkney - a mistress of the King, and it’s suggested she was a lover of Wilson, and known to Law. And then there’s a Mrs Lawrence who gets talked about, and Wilson’s sister, who lived in the same building as Law. Letters show that Wilson had written angrily about Law’s living arrangements. Keep it down in there - you’re upsetting my sister with your partying.

The financial mystery bit is how Wilson, a retired soldier, came to enjoy the lavish lifestyle he did. From where did he get his money? From Villiers? From someone she knew?

Murphy covers all the hot goss. I don’t know if I want to gamify it. Like I was saying, it might make it more interesting, but it could all get too complicated.

Some notes on chocolate.

Chocolate was introduced as a drink by the Ottomans in the mid seventeenth century … Bars of chocolate weren’t a thing until 1847 … Chocolate drinks were bitter … Health drinks, with spices … Anise, cinnamon, nutmeg.

Back to the duel.

Most likely they were both carrying small swords, known as a dress swords. Wilson tried to stab him, but with a single thrust Law inflicted a stomach wound and killed him. Crowds gathered, and the polis eventually arrived. Fuck’s going on here?

Law was confined to Newgate prison, charged with murder, and then sentenced to death – the reasoning being that it was a duel, and in such cases the victor would be charged with murder. But then doubt was cast on whether it was a duel and his sentence was reduced to a fine for manslaughter, at which point Wilson’s brother appealed. The question became whether it was premeditated. Had Law planned to kill him?

He gets locked up again to await a new verdict. In a different prison. I thought I had a note of it … no, I don’t. Not here.

He escapes, so you can guess what comes after this lengthy story interlude. Oh yes. A prison escape game.

A disclaimer of sorts. It’s suggested that, due to the royal connections, a nod and wink escape was permitted - an easier option politically for those involved. The description of Law attached to the reward notice, for example – apparently it was deliberately misleading.

But I’ll ignore that. It’ll be a 17th century prison escape game.

Wait a second …

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Southwark Prison.

Someone wrote a book a few years afterwards, imagining a dramatic escape, so I’ll check that out. And I’ll look at the historical records to find the design of the prison. Make it so there’s a wide range of escape possibilities. Overcoming the guard with smuggled in opiates. Cleverly concealed tunneling. Filed down iron bars. Wall climbing. Dog befriending. But no paperclips. Only the materials of the time.

It’ll be difficult. I’ll make it a real challenge. And then he’s out of the prison, jumps into a carriage, and there’s a carriage chase for a few miles. Country roads. Cor blimey, guv - look what you’ve gone and done - you’ve upset me apple cart! Ere comes another one. Ease off the throttle, geezer!

You complete the two-part game and the story becomes his search for a boat to take him to France. He’s chatting to a ship’s captain. Hello, could you take me to France please? I have a gold coin in my shoe.

And the captain’s like Aah! You have a woman’s shoe!

Because it’s Captain Redbeard Rum from Blackadder. Or one of his descendants, but I’d still like Tom Baker to do the voice. Aaaaa-aaaa-aaaarg, me laddy! I’ll wager that shoe has never been used to tow a damaged ship to port after a particularly harrowing encounter with a dreadful spindly killer fish! And Law goes yep, true, you’re right, it hasn’t, but I do know a few rum cocktails and I’d be happy to pour our drinks all the way to France. Do you know the way? And Tom’s down with this. Yes! I do! But you have to keep pace with me! And that’s the next game.

I don’t know how I’d arrange it. I could send him an email. Hey Tom, I’m a fan of you as Doctor Who and I loved your autobiography, and I was wondering if you’d like to portray a descendant of your Captain Redbeard Rum. It’s 1694. He’s sailing from Sussex to France with a fugitive, and they’re drinking rum.

I’d copy in Ben Elton … No, I’d write to him separately. Dear Mr Elton, you politicised me with your artistic output and now I’m making a computer game set in the seventeenth century. Can I allude to one of your characters from the Blackadder Two episode Potato? The John Law character is asking to be dropped off in France, and a captain very similar to Captain Redbeard Rum is happy to take him, but only if he pours the rum and keeps up with his drinking. It’s the second of three boat games within the overall game. As the gamer, to complete it, you have to cope with Law’s blurred vision and manage his increasingly woozy coordination. When you do, he wakes up at the side of the road in some French coastal town.