Let's Uncover and Trace a Secret (Night's Black Agents)

Trace. The agents must find something, possibly something that went missing long ago.

Uncover. The agents must uncover a mystery.

Briefly: the Bankhaus is an investment bank with a murky past and has offices in several major cities, of which the Conspiracy has control over the Paris and Zürich branches thanks to its control over Lisle Klingemann, daughter of the boss and a senior partner in her own right, and Albert Ahrens, controller of the Zürich branch and Lisle's devoted slave. The Bankhaus is mainly interested in software development companies, particularly in jurisdictions within Europe, though it has a significant sideline in mining, especially in East Asia, a holdover from its former interests.

It has swanky offices, lawyers, a ton of assets on the book and off, and when it makes calls they get answered by senior politicians and members of the financial elite. It almost doesn't matter whether this is a Supernatural, Damned, Alien or Mutant game; all factions are going to want a piece of the Bankhaus whether to get access to its bottomless bank vaults or for more esoteric reasons.

Clue 

Much like Hunt and Rescue, Trace and Uncover share similar structure and, ultimately, have the same goal. 

In both cases you, you lucky little blighter, are chasing after a McGuffin. The only real difference is whether that McGuffin has physicality or is more metaphorical in nature.

Let’s say you’re trying to Trace something in the present day. There are all kinds of ways that can happen. You can talk to people, you can use electronic tracking methods, you can consult timetables, shipping manifests, shippers, government bureaucrats – any possible source of information, really. Beware common mistakes. Is that number the right one, or was there a transposition? Do you have the right address?

All of this depends on a central premise: that there was a Thing to trace in the first place. Whether that Thing was a person, an object, or something else, it had physical presence and left a trail of information in its wake. Much like the Maltese Falcon it has a history and through that history you can find its current location – in theory, anyway.

Uncovering a mystery has basically the same principle, only this time the McGuffin you’re looking for may or may not be a Thing. It’s as likely to be a Fact. Who killed Colonel Bruce ‘Buff’ Orpington in the locked library of his Yorkshire manor house? Who stole the Muffinchops Diamond? What really happened at that secret meeting? Who betrayed Edom to Dracula back in the 1970s?

The key point being no matter whether you’re Tracing or Uncovering, you’re using the same base skill set to do it and finding the same kind of clues in the process. 

It can be a very thinky adventure. Where a Hit or a Hunt implies some kind of action sequence, there’s no such implication here. You could do exactly as Holmes’ brother Mycroft and solve the entire thing from the comfort of your sitting room. You could do as Poirot does and carry out a little investigative fieldwork while allowing your grey cells to do the heavy lifting. Either method assumes that the investigator does most of the work with their mind, not their fists. I can’t think of a single Poirot, for example, where the detective actually engages in fisticuffs, never mind a gunfight. The TV show was a bit different in that it had to have an action scene, but it was nearly always a Chase of some kind that didn't involve Poirot directly. Even Holmes, for all his legendary baritsu, very rarely stoops to a physical altercation with his villains. 

Which is great, if you’re into that kind of thing. It plays very well with Dust, and Mirrors. However, even die-hard Dust fanatics want someone to march into the room with a gun in their hand every once in a while.

Get Carter 

Get Carter fits very well with this kind of paradigm. In a sense, it’s both an Uncover and a Trace. It starts as an Uncover and starts becoming more of a Trace once Carter realizes the true nature of the mystery he’s trying to Uncover. Plus, while there’s a fair amount of violence it’s more along the lines of a film noir than a James Bond.

One interesting variant on the theme could be Uncovering the mystery of what happened to the agents when they blacked out/were under the influence of hypnosis gas/were Renfielded. This uses basically the same premise as a Trace, except this time the agents are Tracing their own movements. What are those peculiar entries on my credit card statement? Did I really call Pizza Hut 20 times in 30 minutes? What the hell was I drinking?

Potentially this could cover years. If the agents were tools of the Conspiracy from, say, 2000 through to 2010, they’re going to want to know what they were up to in that period. There’s no reason why the Director should let them know everything after one scenario. There could be a mystery element, something that keeps popping up in the long-term narrative the same way Anthony Price uses Debreczen, the alleged school for spies in East Germany, in his 1970s/80s spy novels. 

Incidentally I note that Anthony Price left us in 2019; when I wrote Dusting Off Price in 2013, I wasn’t sure what had happened to him. He was living in Blackheath and for a while there I was in Greenwich and knew Blackheath well. For all I know, I walked past him in the street.

Point being this could become long-term backstory for the agents, and the players. The Uncover, the Trace, don’t have to be single-shots. They can be something you return to again and again as the agents get closer to the source of the mystery.

Then, of course, there’s the bleedin’ obvious. Which is, that the search for Dracula in the Dracula Dossier is as much an Uncover and a Trace mission as it is anything. You’re trying to Trace an individual who leaves a trail – all those coffins and corpses – while at the same time Uncovering the mystery of who he really is, what his weaknesses are, and whether or not he can be killed with garlic pizza.

Even the novel has elements of Uncover and Trace. The heroes Trace Dracula's coffins and Trace his escape downriver to his castle; they Uncover his relationship with Renfield. However, the novel isn't entirely about Uncovering secrets and Tracing things, and there's a strong argument for saying your scenario shouldn't be, either.

Ultimately it will come down to you and your players as to which side of the fence you fall on, but this is one time you should think of scenario building in the same way you'd think of, say, cooking or chemistry: so many parts of this to so many parts of that. Two parts Trace to one part Uncover, that sort of thing. 

Start with the solution and work backwards, says the Resource Guide, building a trail of clues that connects the initial hook to the final scene. Sound advice for both types of scenario.

All that said, let’s go to the Bankhaus.

Let's use Uncle Albert. When I first described the Bankhaus I said:

Albert wants to keep Lisle happy, but it's possible that her continued mental domination has awakened certain desires in him that, until now, he's been able to suppress. He may have a collection of Lisle-a-likes kept at private apartments, or be a familiar figure at local BDSM establishments.

Let's say Uncle Albert is keeping a Lisle-a-like at a luxury apartment in Aarburg, a quiet little Swiss town with a lot of history. Picturesque. Touristy. Small. 

 

Luxury Aarburg Apartment image sourced from Luxuryestate.com

The first order of business is to Trace the Lisle-a-like, presumably because she has well-connected friends who know how to reach out to people like the agents for help. Or, because agents of another vampire-related agency - Edom, say - are using the Lisle-a-like as an excuse to hire the agents, pretending to be concerned parents when in fact they're using the agents as disposable stalking horses. 

The next question you want to ask yourself is how much Uncover, how much Trace? The agents will be Uncovering the mystery of why Albert wants to keep Lisle-a-likes, while at the same time Tracing the Lisle-a-like. I'd guesstimate about two parts Trace to one part Uncover, but it's up to you.

Ideally at the end of the scenario the agents know, or think they know, why Albert wants a Lisle-a-like - the Uncover - and they know where this Lisle-a-like is. Moreover, from this point they should have enough information to know where to look for the next bit of cheese in the maze. They should know about Albert's connection to Lisle, for example. They should know what kind of techniques Albert is using to create Lisle-a-likes, but not where he learned them, or (if specialist equipment is needed) where he's getting his toys.

Unless the agents have been particularly sneaky they also ought to have incurred at least one conspiracy reaction. Are the vampires tracing them? Attacking their allies, menacing their Solaces? That's because they dared Uncover the mystery, interfered with the proper workings of a Node, and brought the wrath of the undead on their vulnerable little Solaces. 

What about the Reverse? Well, in this instance the agents aren't trying to find anything. They're pretending that they already have something, and they're daring the enemy to come get it.

Lovejoy TV show titles, starring Ian McShane

It's a grift, a big store or a short con, where the agents are Henry Gondorff and the conspiracy's people are Robert Shaw's Doyle Lonnegan. 

Using the above as an example, if the agents were to abduct the current Lisle-a-like from her luxury apartment in Aarburg and then dangle her like a carrot in front of Uncle Albert, driving him to distraction and forcing him to chase after her, that would be a reversal of the Uncover/Trace. Now Albert's doing all the work and the agents are playing keep-away. 

This runs the risk of being unplayable for the same reason that a reverse Sneak is unplayable; it's mechanically possible, but the NPCs are doing all the fun plot stuff. That's never a good position for the Director to be in. 

However, a reverse Uncover/Sneak has one undeniable benefit: the agents are taking an active role, because they're the ones pretending either to be something they're not or to have something they don't have. They're the ones selling the big store, roping in the sucker and feeding him the convincer. Those are all active roles.

Let's say this pretense revolves around the Lisle-a-like's ex-lover sneaking back into her life as if she was Rapunzel and he (she?) the roguish prince come to rescue her from dolor. Then the reunited lovers rush off to, well, anywhere really, but let's keep it in Europe and say Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, for a skiing holiday. They might even have stolen some of Uncle Albert's cash to make that happen. It's actually all a ruse to lure Albert out of his place in the Node so the agents can do something nefarious, but if it works ... the payoff will be sweet indeed!

That's it for this week, and this series. Enjoy!  

  

Let's Sneak (Night's Black Agents)

Sneak. The agents must infiltrate a secure location. 

Briefly: the Bankhaus is an investment bank with a murky past and has offices in several major cities, of which the Conspiracy has control over the Paris and Zürich branches thanks to its control over Lisle Klingemann, daughter of the boss and a senior partner in her own right, and Albert Ahrens, controller of the Zürich branch and Lisle's devoted slave. The Bankhaus is mainly interested in software development companies, particularly in jurisdictions within Europe, though it has a significant sideline in mining, especially in East Asia, a holdover from its former interests.  

It has swanky offices, lawyers, a ton of assets on the book and off, and when it makes calls they get answered by senior politicians and members of the financial elite. It almost doesn't matter whether this is a Supernatural, Damned, Alien or Mutant game; all factions are going to want a piece of the Bankhaus whether to get access to its bottomless bank vaults or for more esoteric reasons. 

Sourced from Themes and Titles

Unless your players are dead inside, this is the mission they dreamt of when they signed up.  

Maybe they saw themselves as James Bond, Jimmy Ocean or Jason Bourne. Maybe they imagined using cunning disguises and trickery, or perhaps, as Bond memorably did in the Goldfinger opening sequence, they pictured themselves swimming past enemy defenses with a fake seagull on their heads.   

Regardless of the icon they pick for themselves, this is the iconic spy moment. The agents’ time to shine. 

Or the moment where it all goes a bit Pete Tong and the agents have to run for their lives.  

Either way, it’s Thrilling. 

Perhaps the best thing about a Sneak is that it involves a number of skill sets which in turn means that everyone will have a chance to shine. The Digital Intrusion specialist, the driver, the con artist, the B&E sneak machine, they all have potential spotlight moments. 

Perhaps the worst thing about a Sneak is that involves more work on the Director’s end than most other operations. Think about it: you have to prep a number of different options to get in, set varying Difficulty numbers depending on how and where the agents try to infiltrate the system, and have different options available for that inevitable moment when the agents exfiltrate, under fire or cool as ice, depending. This is the one time the players will want to see, if not detailed maps and sketches, at least some imagery of the target. This is the one time the Director will need detailed OPFOR on hand for the agents to bounce off of.  It’s tactical. It’s strategic. It’s sneaky. 

Sneakers, sourced from Rotten Tomatoes

There aren’t many films that rely on infiltration and sneaking as the main meat of the narrative. Part of, yes. I can’t think of a single Bond film that didn’t involve a Sneak scene of some kind. However, it’s usually only a fraction of the whole story.  Sneakers is the exception, and well worth seeking out if you haven't already seen it.

Going back to the Planning, Execution and Aftermath formula the Sneak scenario is unusual in that, for once, you’ll be spending most of your time in the Execution phase. The whole reason why a Sneak scenario is Thrilling is because you get to Sneak in. It’s the visceral moment when you’re standing somewhere you know you shouldn’t be, doing things you know you shouldn’t be doing. Everyone everywhere has had that moment in their lives, at least once. Yes, the Planning is important, and yes, the Aftermath probably has a Chase of some kind because really, why not? Baby Driver was almost entirely a Chase scene from the opening sequence, and it was brilliant.   

But the meat here is that sensation of bliss when you have crossed the Rubicon and are ankle-deep in potential shit, and whether or not that shit remains potential or becomes as literal as Shrodinger’s Cat will depend on whether or not you raise the alarm. 

Broadly speaking there are three kinds of Sneak scenarios. 

• Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. You are attempting to sneak into a heavily guarded facility which will react with lethal force should you screw this up. You’ve seen that film a thousand thousand times. 
• Climbing the Matterhorn. You are attempting to sneak into an area in which most of the obstacles are environmental. General Wolfe scaling the cliffs of Abraham, Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn & David Niven crossing ocean and climbing cliff faces to blow up the Guns of Navarone, that sort of thing. 
• Danny Ocean’s Dream Job. There may or may not be lethal force at the site; that’s not the challenge. The challenge is to get in, and out, without anybody knowing you were there. They might find out later. That’s fine. By the time later rolls around you’ll be on a beach in the Maldives. Any number of con games play out this way, and there’s often a switcharoo scene or possibly a cackle bladder. This is the version that will almost certainly call for a Preparedness test at some point. 

There’s one additional wrinkle to bear in mind that I’m going to call the Money Heist twist. In that narrative, the problem isn’t Sneaking in. You get in however you like. No, the problem in this scenario is Sneaking out again, without anyone realizing what you’re doing until it’s far too late. This twist will almost always be a Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, but it’s worth bearing in mind that you, as Director, can make Sneaking out, rather than Sneaking in, the meat of the scenario. 

Money Heist Bella Ciao, sourced from Ένας αγέρας

All that said, let’s go to the Bankhaus. 

Let’s say this time out that the target is one of the Bankhaus’ East Asia holdings, a mining operation in South Korea close to the North Korean DMZ. The agents have reason to believe that the Conspiracy is using it for nefarious purposes, though what those purposes are remain unclear. 

This means that the Preparation part of the scenario will involve a fair amount of scout work, both to see what kind of operation the Conspiracy is running and what kind of OPFOR the agents can expect. 

Given that the Conspiracy’s operation is probably pretending to be something it isn’t, the first layer of this onion will involve working out what it actually is. That means the agents will be keeping tabs on who goes in and out, what appears to be going on down there, and whether there are any unusual defenses or outbuildings. Are they using a lot of electricity and therefore throwing off a lot of heat? Do high ranking government officials turn up at unusual times? Is that mysterious visitor the renowned physicist Benjamin Sun-Kee, and if it is then what is he doing here? Why are all those trucks coming and going – refrigerated trucks, not your standard cargo hauler? 

Then comes the actual Sneak. 

If it’s Kiss Kiss, then the operation plays out much as any one of a dozen different thrillers. The agents get in and get out under the noses of any number of heavily armed guards. Combat is possible, perhaps even likely, so as Director you need to prep some armed OPFOR.  This sequence is very likely to end in a Chase of some kind, so as Director you need to be prepared for that as well. 

If it’s Environmental, then the agents are trying to get in via a route that seems impossible which is why it’s not as heavily guarded as the other ways in. The cliffs at the Plains of Abraham were so steep it was thought impossible for an entire army to scale them, therefore the French didn’t pay as close attention to them, which is why Wolfe and his men took the French by surprise. So you’re looking at some kind of environmental hazard significant enough to pose a challenge. Fording a raging river, climbing a steep cliff, or walking through the DMZ all qualify as environmental challenges – some more than others.  

If it’s Danny Ocean’s Dream Job then the agents are going to be relying on infiltration, disguise, bluff and meticulous timing to get in and out without anybody knowing what they’re up to. Exactly how they do this is up to them. Perhaps they do as Danny Ocean did and hide one of the team in a special delivery so that they can open the way for the rest. Perhaps they pretend to be delegates from another Node conducting a surprise inspection. They could even pretend to be vampires, to cow the gullible human guards into submission. Whatever works, but the key here is that the burden is very much on the players who will, by their actions, be deciding how difficult this becomes. Don’t worry too much about that. In this, as with all things, the players are usually their own worst enemy. 

Then, of course, they have to get out again … 

OK, so what about the Reversal?

Well, this is the one time I'm not sure there is a Reversal. 

Technically there is: the agents can defend a location against someone else's Sneak attempt. Which ... I mean, it's doable, but it does mean that the NPCs will be doing most of the Thrilling stuff while the agents are on the sidelines playing keep-away. You could look at it as a kind of Dead By Daylight scenario where the agents are the Killer trying to keep the survivors from turning on the generators, and that kinda works, but if the NPCs get the spotlight moments while the agents get hosed, not by their own actions or even enemy actions but by the situation itself, you have to wonder whether that's a game you want to play.  

Also, I can't help but think this is bound to become a very talky session as the players pore over maps and schematics arguing about the best way to defend against an attack, all the while ignoring their Preparedness pools. Or, at the other extreme, it becomes a game entirely about Preparedness pools while the Director reverses the improv principles and turns it into a 'yes, but' scenario. Lots of dice rolls, not much action. Either way, dull and frustrating for all concerned.

No, it may be better in this instance to have this as a classic Whodunnit mystery. In this situation the agents come on the scene after the Sneak attempt has already successfully taken place. The NPCs got away with the McGuffin. The question is, who were they? Followed closely by, where are they now? Do they still have the stuff and, if not, who does?

The obvious plotline here is the theft of the legendary Dracula Dossier, but really it could be any kind of McGuffin so long as the agents and NPCs all agree that it's valuable stuff.

That’s it for this week! Enjoy.   

Let's Hunt and/or Rescue a Target

Hunt. The agents must find someone. 

Rescue. The agents must rescue someone. 

Briefly: the Bankhaus is an investment bank with a murky past and has offices in several major cities, of which the Conspiracy has control over the Paris and Zürich branches thanks to its control over Lisle Klingemann, daughter of the boss and a senior partner in her own right, and Albert Ahrens, controller of the Zürich branch and Lisle's devoted slave. The Bankhaus is mainly interested in software development companies, particularly in jurisdictions within Europe, though it has a significant sideline in mining, especially in East Asia, a holdover from its former interests. 

It has swanky offices, lawyers, a ton of assets on the book and off, and when it makes calls they get answered by senior politicians and members of the financial elite. It almost doesn't matter whether this is a Supernatural, Damned, Alien or Mutant game; all factions are going to want a piece of the Bankhaus whether to get access to its bottomless bank vaults or for more esoteric reasons. 

Mechanically a Hunt is a mirror image of a Rescue operation. They both have broadly the same goal, the only real difference being that in a Hunt you don’t have to worry about bringing ‘em back alive, Frank Buck style. 

Sourced from Randy Waage

In theory a Hunt can lead in several different directions and is often a lead-in to a different operation – a Hit, say. However, a Rescue has its premise built-in; there’s Penelope Pitstop, there’s Dick Dastardly, and you, you’re off to the races. The person you’re trying to Rescue is a walking McGuffin, and you’re trying to Rescue them either because they mean something to you personally or they possess information that will change the world as we know it, for good or ill. 

Sourced from Filmschoolsecrets

Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes is an excellent example. In that film the walking McGuffin, Miss Froy, seems to be a governess returning home to England from her time abroad. In fact she’s a spy who possesses vital information, and it’s because Miss Froy Vanishes that all the action takes place. This narrative’s great conceit is that the heroine, Iris Henderson, can’t convince anyone that Miss Froy exists, never mind is in danger, so she spends a fair chunk of the film wandering about in a kind of horrified daze. It’s a neat idea, but as a plot device it has very limited use. There’s only so many times you can pull the ‘Miss Froy? Never heard of her. You must be dreaming, or drunk, or ill’ gag before it goes off like soured milk. Even Hitchcock abandons that idea about halfway through Lady Vanishes. 

No, most of the time you’ll have to settle for a standard rescue mission. Your agents know who they’re looking for and probably have a rough idea where they are, but that’s as far as it goes. 

Following the Planning, Execution and Aftermath premise, it’s plain that both a Hunt and a Rescue will spend most of their time in the Planning phase. The Execution assumes that they’ve found the object of the exercise and the Aftermath is either going to involve taking someone to safety or fleeing the scene – possibly both. 

Planning is where the thrills are this time.  That moment when your agents don’t know exactly where to go next or what to do when they get there, but they have to keep pushing forward or accept defeat.  

The great thing about both these operations is they have natural plot-hooks built in that lead to future operations. A Hunt can lead to a Hit, or a Rescue, or a Flip. A Rescue gives the agents the walking McGuffin who in turn can lead to almost any operation you care to choose, by virtue of the secret information they have.  

Whereas it’s a bit difficult to use, say, a Hit to lead into another operation. By definition, a Hit is pretty much over as soon as someone pulls the trigger. There’s no obvious lead-in to a Flip operation next week if the object of the exercise is missing a vital portion of their brain matter.  

There are any number of films and television episodes calling themselves Hunt, or the Hunt, or what-have-you, but they tend to go back to the same old well: It’s The Most Dangerous Game, only this time with [liberals/Korean spies/superheroes.] 

Sourced from WJAK Ent

The original 1924 short story was an adventure narrative where Plucky Hero is chased across a jungle(ish) landscape by a crazed huntsman, and most of these narratives assume that the hero is the person being hunted while the villain is the hunter. That isn’t always so, but it’s a very common theme. Which is a bit of a problem from the Director’s POV, since the agents are meant to be the heroes and the target of the Hunt is a villain. Or at least villain-adjacent.  

A very similar narrative plays out in Rogue Male, the 1938 Geoffrey Houseman thriller in which an unnamed sportsman and experienced hunter sets out to see if he can shoot a dictator. Things go wrong, he has to run, and the hunter becomes the hunted. It’s been filmed a few times, and from a plot perspective unfolds much as Day of the Jackal, except this time the Jackal is the one the audience is meant to root for and there’s a longer endgame after the assassination goes wrong.  

Sourced from BFI

Morally speaking a Rescue operation is much easier to plot, since the target of a Rescue is assumed to be worth saving. This doesn’t have to be so; the target could be a mass murderer on death row, and the agents need to get them out because of the vital information they possess. Still, more likely than not the object of the exercise is going to be a more-or-less innocent victim of circumstances, making the operation that much easier to justify. 

Sourced from Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers

Saving Private Ryan has the advantage of being a hybrid, Hunt and Rescue plot in one. In that narrative the protagonists don’t know exactly where Ryan is, except that he’s in bad country and they need to get him out.  Then follows the Hunt, after which the protagonists have to Rescue the objective in the middle of a firefight. 

There’s an argument for saying that a Rescue or Hunt operation on its own doesn’t make for a compelling narrative. It’s fine in short bursts, but both operations suffer from one-trick-pony syndrome. There are plenty of ways to carry out a Hit. By definition there’s really only one way to carry out a Rescue: you go to point A, grab the object of the exercise, and run like hell to point B before someone catches you in the act. You can add a twist - the object of the exercise is actually a clone of the original with a very limited life expantancy - but a twist only modifies the structure, it doesn't change it.

A Hunt is a little more flexible, and fits in naturally with the Gumshoe find-the-clue basic premise, but it’s difficult to make the Hunt on its own the main plot. After all, the whole point of a Hunt is that you have a tense, even explosive, face-to-face at the end of it. It’s the face-to-face that most people find Thrilling; the lead-up to that moment is just so much froth before the main event. 

For an example of a story that uses both elements to good effect look at the TV series Money Heist. There the whole point of the story is that it’s a Heist, but in between moments of heisting there’s plenty of smaller Hunt and Rescue moments along the way. 

All that aside, let’s go to the Bankhaus. 

Lisle is to meet with representatives from the Conspiracy, and your agents know this is going to happen but don’t know where. Once Lisle meets with those representatives she’ll hand off the McGuffin and then the Conspiracy agents will take it back to the Secret Lair, or whatever plot-relevant location is useful to you.  

Sourced from Movie Predictor

The agents don’t know precisely who they are Hunting and at this point it may be handy to introduce an element of mystery by offering multiple targets. The Eiger Sanction does exactly this, by introducing a random factor. The sinister forces who hire Clint Eastwood to Hunt and then Hit a target don’t know precisely who they want Hit. Just that it’s one of three: the Frenchman, the German or the Austrian. Similarly, you as Director could introduce uncertainty by letting the agents think the Conspiracy contact might be one of several people, forcing them to split their attentions until they think they have identified the right target. 

Once they shadow Lisle to the meet and discover the dilemma, the agents then have to Hunt their target across Europe as they travel to the Secret Location. If they get there, it’s all over; they’ll have delivered the McGuffin. 

Now let’s turn that on its head and say this isn’t a Hunt, but a Rescue.  

Same premise, except now the agents aren’t Hunting people. They’re trying to find out which coffin has the person they want in it, hidden away in cold storage and about to be delivered to a dinner table for slavering bloodsuckers. Pick your coffin. The other two have something nasty in them. The third … It’s the Lady and the Tiger, vampire-style. 

Let’s Flip these operations. Now it’s not a Hunt, but a Chase. It’s not a Rescue, it’s a keep-away or a poison pill, where the agents have to deliver a person to the enemy because they want the enemy to think they’ve captured valuable intel when in fact the McGuffin they retrieved possesses only junk data. 

In this instance the agents are speeding across the continent (on the Orient Express, why not – let’s keep this traditional) and they’ve got with them Erika Donnadieu, the software genius from Kube Group. They’re trying to keep Erika out of the hands of the Conspiracy, but the agents know full well that Erika is actually a plant. The agents’ cunning scheme is to let Erika think they trust her, hand over the secret information/McGuffin/what-have-you, and then let the Conspiracy retrieve her. Except it’s all a ruse; Erika gives the Conspiracy a load of wet nothing and the agents skip merrily off over the horizon, having been Chased and allowed the opposition to retrieve their poison pill. 

Lots of moving parts in that, and it has to be handled carefully – but it could be a lot of fun, played right. 

That’s it for me. Enjoy! 

Let's Hit a Target (Night's Black Agents)

Hit. The agents must kill someone 

Briefly: the Bankhaus is an investment bank with a murky past and has offices in several major cities, of which the Conspiracy has control over the Paris and Zürich branches thanks to its control over Lisle Klingemann, daughter of the boss and a senior partner in her own right, and Albert Ahrens, controller of the Zürich branch and Lisle's devoted slave. The Bankhaus is mainly interested in software development companies, particularly in jurisdictions within Europe, though it has a significant sideline in mining, especially in East Asia, a holdover from its former interests. 

It has swanky offices, lawyers, a ton of assets on the book and off, and when it makes calls they get answered by senior politicians and members of the financial elite. It almost doesn't matter whether this is a Supernatural, Damned, Alien or Mutant game; all factions are going to want a piece of the Bankhaus whether to get access to its bottomless bank vaults or for more esoteric reasons. 

Day of the Jackal (1973)

Wetwork is one of the go-to plots for spy stories. It has drama, action, and an exciting goal. Added to that, there’s a wide range of options: will you opt for poison, a knife in the dark, a sniper’s bullet – or are explosive endings more to your taste?  

James Bond had to carry out two assassinations without a hitch before claiming the coveted 00 designation.  He did the first with a sniper attack, while the second was a much more up-close and personal approach. The Jackal, consummate professional, took on the assassination of Charles De Gaulle and intended to get him with a mercury-tipped sniper round at a distance of about 400 yards. Meanwhile Jason Bourne, inspiration for the Brainwashed Black-Ops Badass build, is a close combat specialist who dropped out of the program after a failed assassination in which he had to hide aboard a private yacht for five days to get close enough to the target to do the deed. Jason Statham’s Mechanic specializes in deaths that look like accidents, and goes to great lengths to make that happen. 

A Hit has a few things in common with Heists, in that the narrative is mostly about the Planning and the Aftermath, less about the Execution. As a general rule you want to make sure that your narrative is Thrilling, and it can be difficult to make the Planning stages of a Hit Thrilling. That’s doubly so if the agent’s intended hit strategy involves sitting at a distance of 400 yards and putting an explosive bullet between someone’s ears.  

No, for it to be Thrilling there needs to be stakes, action, consequences, and for that it’s worth going back to the Jackal – with a touch of Jason Statham’s Mechanic. 

In those stories it’s not about the moment when a finger tightens on a trigger. It’s about how difficult it is to get to a point where you can pull a trigger. In the Jackal the narrative is ultimately about the Jackal’s tortuous progress across France to reach a certain point at a certain time, and how often he comes close to being exposed or caught. In mechanical terms, the entire novel is an Extended Heat chase with the prize at the end being a President’s head.  

Mechanic: Ressurection (2016)

Statham’s Mechanic operates in very similar circumstances but the thrill is never in the kill itself. It’s in the climb across a skyscraper’s front to get to a point where he can make the kill. The narrative is almost entirely prologue with the sudden release of … water … being the climactic moment. Again, in mechanical terms the scene is an extended Thrilling Infiltration, to get to a point where the Bang-and-Burner’s prepackaged toy can do the most good. 

The actual killing takes seconds. It’s the minutes you spend getting to the point where you can kill that makes a Hit a Hit.   

In an RPG narrative you also have the option of the escape plan, which is usually hinted at in novels and movies but rarely becomes a significant part of the story. A Jackal may say that the ability to get away with it is all-important, and it is to him as a character, but it’s not important to the story of The Day of the Jackal. Similarly Statham’s Mechanic may get away without a scratch despite impossible odds, but the movie doesn’t spend much time showing you how he does it. What’s important is that he does it. 

Whereas an RPG story has the option of making the Aftermath the meat of the story, because the Aftermath can be Thrilling. It will definitely involve some kind of chase moment in the immediate aftermath of the Hit, and may involve a significant Extended Heat chase across the geopolitical landscape. This probably works best in Dust and Mirrors games, where betrayal and murky allegiances are paramount. However, it’s possible – and might be a lot of fun – to start the story with the target of the Hit collapsing in a welter of blood, and your agents then have to somehow get away with it. 

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

The Boys from Brazil (1978)

Marathon Man (1976)

The Three Days of the Condor is almost entirely an Aftermath narrative; there is a Hit at the beginning, and the protagonist has to deal with the consequences. The Boys From Brazil starts with a series of Hits, after which the protagonists have to unravel the complicated series of events that got to that point and discover the real reason for the Hits.  Marathon Man has a similar dynamic, with slightly more time spent in the Planning stage.  

All these are Dust narratives but they have one other thing in common: the protagonists of those stories aren’t the ones carrying out the Hit. They’re the ones that have to live with the consequences. This is because all these stories, and Dust narratives in general, are morality tales, and it’s difficult to make a killer the hero of a morality tale. A hero of a thriller, sure; but someone who pulls the trigger from 400 yards away is, at best, morally dubious.  

In that sense a Dust tale inherits the Noir mantle. Noirs are often morality tales as well, and the protagonist usually ends up getting martyred. 

All that said, let’s go to the Bankhaus. 

There are all kinds of targets here. Lisle and Albert are the obvious ones, but really anyone sufficiently interesting and plot-relevant can be the target. Or it could be a more crooked narrative where the subject of the Hit leads to the real Objective of the mission. Say, a crime carried out in such a way that it looks as if Lisle or Albert must be the killer. 

It’s generally the case in stories like these that the difficulty of getting to the target and carrying out the Hit provides the Thrills of the story. It’s one thing to smother someone in their sleep, something else to creep through a small army of guards, deactivate the alarm system, avoid the attack dogs and then smother someone in their sleep. That’s what makes Hitman’s Agent 47 the top of his class; not that he knows how to use a pillow, but that he can get to a point where the pillow is useful. 

So to spike the difficulty the Hit either has to take place in a difficult location, or be surrounded by difficult safeguards, or both. It’s not enough to get the door key; you need a biometric key set to one particular person’s keyprint. It’s not enough to walk into the nightclub; you need to get into the VIP lounge, and from there into the hidden VIP lounge. That’s not just a bodyguard, it’s a Renfielded rhoid-rage bodyguard with more points in Martial Arts than six Jackie Chans combined. 

Let’s say that the target is Lisle and that, for plot reasons, the Hit has to take place at an exclusive sex club in Berlin to throw suspicion on Albert. That knocks off two Node head honchos in one fell swoop. It has to look as if Albert did it and that means he can’t have an easily provided alibi, so timing is critical. It can look like a murder but it has to be his murder, and that means unless he’s suddenly discovered his inner Schwarzenegger it can’t be an overtly violent hand-to-hand killing. Poison, bullet, knife in the back, all these methods are on the table, but not something that would require more strength or skill than Albert has. Plus, if Albert is left-handed, say, better make sure you use your left hand too. Let’s also say that in order for this to work Lisle’s partner for the evening has to be distracted, so they don’t become an unexpected witness to something unpleasant. 

That’s a lot of moving parts, so there’s plenty of things for a team of agents to do. Someone has to keep Albert busy, someone else has to keep Lisle’s partner busy, there’s Infiltration, there’s probably also Digital Intrusion (either to control the security cameras or to wipe the records – perhaps both), all of which has to be timed perfectly which means someone has to be coordinating the whole thing. Not an easy job.   

What happens when we flip a Hit and make it so the story has to be about preventing a killing?

The trick there is, a lot of the things that make a scenario Thrilling happen to the killer, not the people trying to stop him. The hero of the Day of the Jackal is policeman Claude Lebel, but you wouldn't know it from the film and you barely know it from the novel, though I doubt that was author Forsythe's intent. It's just that the Jackal does all the eye-catching action-centric stuff. Claude makes a ton of phone calls and reports on the regular to the authorities in charge of the case, but in terms of directly affecting the narrative Claude has no role at all, except at the end.

Sherlock Holmes has a better option. His antagonist Colonel Moran is a sniper and game hunter without peer, who carries out his hits with an air-powered rifle that kills with a lead bullet, not a million miles away from the Jackal's bolt-action rifle with its mercury-tipped bullets. The idea being accuracy, plus an exceptionally lethal payload.

Holmes pulls it off by making himself the target and ambushing Moran - and no, that's not a spoiler, it's a Holmes story. If you haven't worked out that Holmes (nearly) always wins by now, you never will. It's a bit like expecting a Bond villain to triumph. The minute Bond steps into the ring the only question is how the villain will lose, not when or if. Make it so the agents aren't reacting to someone else's action but are themselves taking action, and the narrative becomes Thrilling again.

So in a reverse Hit story your best bet is to allow the agents to be the targets, either because they willingly put a target on their backs or because this is a Conspyramid reaction to something the agents did. Pit them against the best of the best. That way the narrative becomes personal, and if you're doing your job right the agents will become deeply paranoid.  Channel your inner Mike Pondsmith. Make them check under the bed and avoid all windows. If they can't bear to drink anything other than bottled water on the off-chance you've poisoned the martinis, you've done your job well.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Let's Plan a Heist (Night's Black Agents)

Heist. The agents must steal something

Briefly: the Bankhaus is an investment bank with a murky past and has offices in several major cities, of which the Conspiracy has control over the Paris and Zürich branches thanks to its control over Lisle Klingemann, daughter of the boss and a senior partner in her own right, and Albert Ahrens, controller of the Zürich branch and Lisle's devoted slave. The Bankhaus is mainly interested in software development companies, particularly in jurisdictions within Europe, though it has a significant sideline in mining, especially in East Asia, a holdover from its former interests.

It has swanky offices, lawyers, a ton of assets on the book and off, and when it makes calls they get answered by senior politicians and members of the financial elite. It almost doesn't matter whether this is a Supernatural, Damned, Alien or Mutant game; all factions are going to want a piece of the Bankhaus whether to get access to its bottomless bank vaults or for more esoteric reasons.

The League of Gentlemen (Criterion)

A heist plot is about the planning, execution and aftermath of one large robbery and most heist films tend to spend more time on the planning and aftermath than they do the execution. 

Not that the execution isn’t fun. It’s often the most thrilling part, but in terms of time spent on screen the execution is perhaps 10% of the runtime. The balance is spent on planning and aftermath.

How much is spent where will depend on the kind of story told. In The Asphalt Jungle, a significant chunk of the screen time is devoted to the aftermath because the narrative is noir, and the whole point of noir is the characters not the action. Usually, the aftermath is about the characters’ death spiral or some similar gloomy end state. But the aftermath is where the meaty character drama is hiding, so that’s where the plot spends most of its time. A Dust or Mirrors game will probably follow this pattern.

Whereas a thriller narrative spends the majority of its time on the planning because the planning stage is where the thrills are. The League of Gentleman follows this pattern; the vast majority of its screen time is spent gathering, training and equipping the heist crew. The actual heist is perhaps a few minutes long, and the rest of the film – all twelve minutes of it - is its aftermath. A Stakes game the best fit for a thriller narrative.

One of the tricks of this particular genre is the gathering of necessary materials, effectively a pre-heist before the main event. This plot device assumes there is a species of McGuffin that’s needed before the characters can forge ahead and take the main McGuffin. It almost doesn’t matter what this is; it might be plans, materials, getaway vehicles, but whatever it may be it’s vital to the success of the operation.

In The League of Gentlemen, the bandits need equipment they can only get from the military. Being ex-military themselves they opt to disguise themselves as soldiers, sneak onto a base and steal everything they need right under the garrison’s noses.

In Night’s Black Agents the Preparedness ability is sometimes used to skip past all this on the assumption that the actual breaking-and-entering is the main event. It can be, but it’s just as much fun to play through the various bits of pre-heist preparation so long as the pre-heist involves action of some kind. 

If it’s just sitting in a smoke-filled room drawing sketches on the back of a beer mat, don’t bother. If it’s about breaking into the prestigious offices of a world-renowned architectural firm to steal the plans of the vault, or whatever it may be, then go for it.

The shorthand is this: if you can develop a Thrilling version of the pre-heist, whether that means Digital Intrusion, Infiltration, Interrogation or similar, then run the pre-heist. If there’s no way to make the pre-heist Thrilling, then hand-wave with Preparedness.

Much the same principle can be applied to the aftermath. The Italian Job spends little time on the heist itself, but the final moments of the film – the bits that everyone who’s ever seen it remembers – is the aftermath. That’s not because the Italian Job is a psychological character study. Nobody ever hired Michael Caine because he could act; they hired Michael Caine because he looked good on film. The aftermath of the Italian Job is one extended Thrilling Chase sequence followed by what can best be described as a typical British triumph.

From your perspective as Director, play through the aftermath if one of two things apply:

• Either you can make it Thrilling, or
• You’re playing a Mirror game and now’s the time for the grand betrayal.

The final point to bear in mind is this: it doesn’t matter what’s in the safe you’re trying to crack. The audience doesn’t care. What the audience – the players – cares about is getting into the safe and getting away with the loot. So long as you make that process interesting it doesn’t matter whether the agents are getting away with millions of dollars in Nazi gold, the plans of the fort, or the contents of Donald Trump’s closet at Mar-a-Lago. What matters is the planning and the aftermath, not the whatever-it-was they stole.

With all this in mind, let’s go to the Bankhaus.

Bankhaus Klingemann has offices in Paris and Zürich. Let’s say the target is the Bankhaus’ offices in Paris, near the Place de l'Étoile aka Place Charles de Gaulle. Even if your players don’t know Paris all that well it’s a pretty good bet they’ll recognize the Place de l'Étoile, as it’s been in so many films. 

This is something you should be striving for. Make the heist location a character in its own right. It can be as fantastic as a Transylvanian castle or an alien spaceship, as historic as the city center of Milan or as Dusty as a racetrack while the horses are running. What matters is, the location is always larger than life. It's a place the agents want to spend a little time in - at least long enough to clean out the safe.

Let’s add a couple layers of difficulty and say that this heist has to go undetected for at least 24 hours after the heist, and that it has to take place within a relatively short time window. Say, between the hours of 4pm to 4.30 pm, Friday evening. It doesn’t matter why; adding extra layers of difficulty ups the challenge which in turn ups the Thrilling aspects of the heist. Maybe Lisle is in the middle of a meeting and can't be disturbed. Maybe there's some kind of supernatural conjunction, or a change in the guard patrol or what-have-you. The thrills are what matter; everything else is gravy.

Already you’ve got a visible, memorable location and the added pressure of special conditions. That’s vital. It’s not enough to be thrilling; you have to be Thrilling. Making it take place in a memorable location helps the players cement the action in their minds. 

Now, the final step: add an unexpected dilemma. 

The size and scale of the dilemma will depend on what kind of game you're playing. Dust and Mirrors games can have dilemmas which either are small scale or seem small scale at first glance. The League of Gentlemen has a moment like this during the heist planning phase, when a policeman unexpectedly calls at the (fake) garage they've set up to build the heist cars they need. The policeman pounds a regular beat, this garage is on his beat, and as it's new to him he stops by to introduce himself and chat to the owner. Simple. Explicable. Exactly the kind of thing that might happen, but because it's a policeman calling at the one place the Gentlemen would rather he didn't call, it's a problem.

Whereas a Stakes game by default plays big, wild and dramatic. A mere policeman stopping by isn't anything like the scale or noise of a Stakes game. This is the kind of thing you might see in a Grand Theft Auto Let's Play, where some rando is dashing down the street on foot with a five-star rating. This is when you hear sirens.

 American Heist

The exact nature of the dilemma will depend on the specifics of your campaign. This is where you want to tailor a specific challenge to meet agents' Drives or test their specialties. If someone is an ace Driver, this is when the Thrilling Chase plays out, and so on. If someone's Drive is Atonement, this is where you put that moment of truth where their sin can be expiated. Or made infinitely worse ...

Let's say that the Heist in this specific example is at the offices of Bankhaus Klingemann near the Place de l'Étoile and the heist has to take place between 4pm to 4.30 pm, Friday evening because that's when Lisle is out of the picture and your agents are trying to manufacture a scenario in which Albert suspects Lisle of being in on the heist. If Lisle can't explain her whereabouts, that creates a problem for Lisle which your agents can exploit. It doesn't matter really what the McGuffin is; what matters is where it is and when it can be had.

As a complication let's say that the Conspiracy has sent an unscheduled audit team to Paris to check the Bankhaus' books, and the head of audit is a Renfield. The agents will have to be clever or sneaky to get past the audit team and grab the goods.

Let's further say that because of the audit team the McGuffin isn't where the agents thought it was. Lisle moved it, or changed the locks, because she didn't want the audit team finding it. It's still at the same location, but it's more challenging to get. That ups the Difficulty of any tests to get at the McGuffin. 

OK, that's what happens in a Heist. What about the reverse?

Well, the Reverse is challenging. A Heist has three components: the planning stage, the actual heist, and the aftermath. The agents are trying to prevent the heist or catch the heist crew.

By default the planning stage takes place off-stage. The NPCs are doing all the planning and the agents don't know what they're up to; at this point they may not know the NPCs exist. So that's not when the scenario starts, from your players' perspectives. 

That means your options are to step in during the Heist, or in the Aftermath.

If this is during the Heist then it's either going to be a kind of counter-infiltration scenario where your agents are caught in the building as the enemy breaks in - a Die Hard situation - or the agents arrive just in time to bottle the enemy up in the building and the scenario becomes a hostage negotiation problem.

Both have their merits, but it might be more interesting to play this as an aftermath or Munich situation. The awful thing has already taken place. The agents now have to track the perpetrators across the planet and find out what they were hoping to accomplish, or who they were working for.

In theory you could play an entire campaign this way, each session being about another target, then another. "We found three more names ..."

The Dracula Dossier has the most obvious McGuffin for this moment, the Dossier itself. It's gone missing, Edom will pay a fortune to get it back. and the agents are either freelancers chasing a dream or employees of one of the shadowy espionage groups interested in knowing what the Dossier contains.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.