The SCIF (Night's Black Agents, Delta Green)

Fair warning: this link to the Washington Post is behind a paywall.

Governments hide secrets as best they can. That sometimes means only allowing a person entitled to see a file to view it in a secured area, or sensitive compartmented information facility - the SCIF. Once in, it's eyes-only; no devices, no cameras, and you don't take anything out of the SCIF. It's you and the file. Happy reading.

I'm now going to invoke the sacred formulae of Fair Use for this graphic, borrowed from the Post article:

Which goes some way to explaining the layout. It also explains why you might find a SCIF anywhere; you don't need much space. Several high-level government types are known to have a SCIF at their personal residences (Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump) but it can as easily be on a ship, a plane, a truck.

From the Post article:

The point of this meticulous construction is what the intelligence community calls “security in depth” — overlapping layers of protection that slow down adversaries and detect intrusions long before a breach actually occurs.

“It is not just ‘close the door’ — it’s ‘lock the door with a sophisticated lock, and shield the walls against any kind of external monitoring,’” said Steven Aftergood, a classified information expert.

Which poses an interesting dilemma in any modern espionage setting where supernatural spooks are on hand. You can TEMPEST protect your system against electronic intrusion, but what are you supposed to do when actual ghosts can be used to infiltrate the system? Or remote viewers? Or Renfields, the possessed, Serpent People with Consume Likeness - and so on and on.

The other interesting point is that this version of the SCIF is merely the latest iteration. People have been squirrelling away secrets in quiet, secured rooms for donkey's years. You could import the idea to almost any setting, including games like Swords of the Serpentine, but I'm only going to consider Delta Green and Night's Black Agents here.

Why use a SCIF?

First, as set dressing. There's often a scene in Delta Green where the latest Mr. or Ms. Green sets up a secure meeting to introduce the characters to the scenario. Rarely does the scenario consider what that meeting space looks like. It's just assumed to be there. But how cool would it be to have the briefing in a SCIF on the back of a semi? Or in a military base, a Coast Guard ship, a military cargo plane? As Director you've always got to bear setting flavor in mind and nothing sets the tone more than a clandestine meeting in a heavily secured facility.

Second, as a means of disseminating specialist information. In Delta Green lore there's a whole research section devoted to studying esoteric texts and peculiar finds. Delta isn't going to let just anyone have a look at its copy of [insert Mythos text] even if the information in it is relevant to the agents' current investigation. It's going to take place in a SCIF or SCIF-equivalent, with a goon on the door and a nervous researcher in the room making sure nothing gets out of hand, or out of the room. There's probably half-a-dozen SCIFs in Vietnam during Fall of Delta Green, most likely in Hanoi but some will be out on a firebase somewhere in the field. In the 1990s game there are bound to be older SCIFs that Delta doesn't use anymore, for ... reasons ... hidden away on some all-but-decommissioned military base or in some nondescript government offices somewhere. 

In a game where psychic powers are a thing you could have a SCIF that's entirely a mind-creation, a shared dream or delusion where the psychic powers-that-be keep their deepest secrets. An actual mind palace, with God alone knows what guarding the door. You could do something very similar in a Supers game like Mutant City with some Professor X-a-like using his mental powers to create a secured space that only he and other psychics can access. Again, a means of disseminating information - but what an evocative bit of set dressing!

Third, as a scenario location. Any SCIF that's been around longer than a few months is, in any game involving supernatural activity, bound to pick up a certain amount of supernatural residue. Even if the SCIF isn't, say, dedicated to EDOM there's bound to be a couple EDOM assets or agents who 'know the truth' about it and want to protect it at all costs. Or capture it. Or prevent someone else being infected by its malevolent parasites.  

Night's Black Agents presupposes two scenario types that could be all about the SCIF: 

• Sneak. The agents must infiltrate a secure location.
• Defend. The agents must defend a secure location against infiltration.

Either one could be meat for an entire evening's worth of play. EDOM's crack team defending a SCIF against vampire incursion while the Dukes hold secret conference; EDOM's crack team infiltrating a SCIF held by the Conspiracy or its assets to extract the information inside - or even recover the fabled Dracula Dossier ...

Finally, a seed:

Lost But Not Forgotten

An EDOM friendly or former asset has died. The circumstances may or may not be suspicious; that's for the higher-ups to determine. The bigger issue is the information kept at their SCIF, located in [their home/Ring/the Seward Asylum/somewhere else]. That has absolutely got to be cleared out and forensically cleansed; there can be absolutely no material left behind. 

Two problems: nobody's sure how to get in, but everyone's convinced the doors are locked; and second, the Jack who's normally assigned to guard the door has gone AWOL ...

Options:

• The Jack has been taken out by OPFOR who now intend to use the Jack's corpse (necromantically revived or otherwise) to get access to the SCIF. If the agents want to prevent this enemy team from using the Jack's biometric data to get into the SCIF they will need to act quickly.
• The SCIF is locked, magically or otherwise, by a device that only EDOM old-timers like the Boffin remember. If the agents want to prevent explosive charges from destroying the SCIF when they attempt entry, they'll need to find one of the old-timers who remembers how the device works. The Jack is trying to do exactly that, for reasons of their own.
• The SCIF contains data that can be used to uncover one of EDOM's darkest secrets - the true identity of the 1970s mole, say - and someone else knows that this information exists. That someone else has suborned the Jack in hopes of recovering the information before the agents do. However, the Jack isn't nearly as reliable as they seem; blood dependency will do that to you ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy! 

 

The Silent Church (Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds of London)

 Look at her eyes. Look at her eyes! For God's sake, what happened to her eyes?

The Evil Dead

Body horror is a genre that, Wikipedia helpfully reminds us, intentionally showcases grotesque or psychologically disturbing violations of the human body or to any other creature. 

A ghost story is often seen as cosy, gentle, perhaps a little creepy but not, well, grotesque. Yet some of the best ghost stories take body horror concepts and run away with them. Take M.R. James:

This might have been the result of a fall: it appeared that the stair-carpet was loosened at one point. But, in addition to this, there were injuries inflicted upon the eyes, nose and mouth, as if by the agency of some savage animal, which, dreadful to relate, rendered those features unrecognizable. The vital spark was, it is needless to add, completely extinct … The Stalls at Barchester Cathedral

Somehow, the idea of getting past it and escaping through the door was intolerable to him; he could not have borne—he didn't know why—to touch it; and as for its touching him, he would sooner dash himself through the window than have that happen. It stood for the moment in a band of dark shadow, and he had not seen what its face was like. Now it began to move, in a stooping posture, and all at once the spectator realized, with some horror and some relief, that it must be blind, for it seemed to feel about it with its muffled arms in a groping and random fashion. O Whistle and I’ll Come To You

Interesting how often James resorts to a similar idea: remove or muffle the face, and horror follows. He does this trick in A Disappearance and a Reappearance, for example, and The Tractate Middoth. Whereas in films like The Evil Dead and its many sequels some of the most memorable moments have to do with melting, changing, malleable faces.

After all, what are people without their faces? When we talk about the Uncanny Valley it’s chiefly to do with how faces look to us. We don’t scrutinize hands, feet, legs with the same intensity we do faces. We don’t look for discrepancies elsewhere first, and then look to the face; we look to the face and then elsewhere. 

I once spoke about Lafcadio Hearn and I’m reminded of his spectral Cousin Jane:

Then, as if first aware of my presence, she turned; and I looked up, expecting to meet her smile ... She had no face. There was only a pale blur instead of a face …

Sometimes this can be used to show mindlessness, a lack of soul. Zombies are good for this, those shambling, sightless, soulless things. More often it’s used, through gleaming eyes and sharp or snaggle teeth, to show evil, predatory traits. Very rarely, as with Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s done to accentuate the weirdness of the situation. I suspect at least in Del Toro’s case it may spring from half-remembered Catholic iconography of Satan and the damned, via Hieronymus Bosch and the like.

Sometimes it can be simple, awful. No face. Or no mouth, no eyes. A face of crumpled linen. A peculiar mask that covers almost everything, or show the ‘true face’ – a wolf mask, say, or a tiger mask. Del Toro does something similar by moving eyes from where they’re expected to be to the palms of the hands, and then moving those hands to the head making a mockery of how flesh works – or at least how we think it should work.

Let’s start playing with the idea.

As a reminder, I’ve said this about Hauntings before:

There are any number of tales that could be told, but there are some things the Keeper should bear in mind:

The truth of the haunting will probably never be known for certain, since most of the facts are unavailable.

It cannot be dealt with in the same way as, say, an ordinary antagonist encounter. Ghouls, for example, can be shot, or bargained with. There is no way to communicate with a haunting of place, and probably no way to kill it.

It has a great deal of power behind it, possibly magical power. That means other people besides the protagonists are going to be interested in it. That also means it could be very dangerous.

Let’s say that as a consequence of this Haunting, this memory of things past, there is a sound. That sound is so horrible that it causes those who hear it to want to stop hearing anything ever again. They ram objects in their ears, but it doesn’t stop the sound. So they ram more objects. More still, till their heads resemble porcupines, and yet they still hear. 

A memory of a sound so hideous that people cannot bear to hear it.

The Silent Church

There is a little chapel close to the edge of the Metropolitan Cattle Market, King's Cross. Nobody can remember a time when it was not there. Architecturally it resembles some of the works of Christopher Wren after the Great Fire, but nobody can find any link between Wren and this little church. Best guess is that it was designed by a contemporary or possibly a student.

Nobody worships there. Nobody is seen to go in or out except for a little man who is popularly supposed to be the verger, and he almost never speaks to strangers. He's stone deaf, and answers to the name of Moody; apparently he lives at the church.

On the rare occasions when workmen are called in to carry out repairs - something which, the neighbors say, ought to happen more often given the condition of the place - the workers are always from McCaw and Sons and the elder McCaw claims to have known Moody when he was a boy. McCaw doesn't gossip. His workers do. They say they have to plug their ears whenever they work there, on Moody's orders. They never stay long and are never there before nine in the morning or after six in the evening.

It's not difficult to sneak in. Moody's hardly the most efficient watchdog. However, if anyone's ever tried they've not said what they found there, or what happened when they went.

Sometimes the apprentices in the Cattle Market dare one another to make the attempt but nobody ever has.

Anyone who crosses the threshold notices immediately that the noises from outside can't be heard inside the Church. It's as if the building completely muffles all outside sound whatsoever, however loud it might be. 

If they go early in the morning, or after it gets dark, they hear what seems at first to be singing, perhaps a chant, from far away. It never gets louder but it scrapes on the nerves, as if the words meant something hideous - yet they're unintelligible. Potential Stability 2 loss.

If they stay until it is night - say, between 10 pm and 3 am - then they see shapes. Perhaps shadows perhaps people, they pace throughout the church at all hours, mouths moving. Their ears are spiked clean through by what appears to be thousands upon thousands of needles, so heavy that they make the creatures' heads loll from side to side. It's apparent that these are the singers yet the noise never gets louder, or the words clearer. Potential Stability 5 loss. Anyone who loses 5 or more Stability feels an overwhelming urge to Flee; failing a Fleeing test or resisting this urge means they must deafen themselves by any means necessary. If they cannot or will not then they take +3 damage every round they remain in the Church without deafening themselves.

Those who make the Stability check and remain long enough to hear the music for a minute or more gains 1 Mythos and 1 Magic. This can only happen once. Repeated visits do not increase Mythos or Magic though the Stability loss remains as well as the potential to permanently damage hearing.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Offspring (Night's Black Agents)

 

Generation Kill, HBO

I had something else planned this week but reality got in the way.

It is legit no-shit amazing to me that if one of the marines in Generation Kill had a kid in 2003, that same kid would now be old enough to betray their country's national security secrets on Discord.

To win an internet argument, no less.

I've often wondered what happened to those marines after the war. Some of them allegedly got into trouble when journalist Evan Wright spilled his tea. Some of them will have become magas. Some not. It'd be fascinating to know what they thought of January 6th, or if any of them were there.

For those who don't know, Generation Kill is a series that first appeared as a series of articles in Rolling Stone, written by a gonzo journalist who up to that point was probably most famous for writing porn reviews for Hustler. It's based on Wright's experiences in Iraq during the 2003 invasion, travelling with Marine First Recon. Wright tried to pitch it to HBO and ended up working with David Simon of The Wire fame to make the miniseries happen. 

With all that said, a NBA scenario seed:

Offspring

A series of articles published in a small press newspaper, The Torch, attracts international attention when it's shown that some of its pieces are based on secret papers held by Britain's Intelligence Corps, 1st Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Brigade . The Torch is best known for its undiluted conspiracy-laden rants, but the articles that attracted attention are, despite the rants, decidedly more factual. These articles claim that British military intelligence assets are being used to monitor and hunt vampires and, while nobody's taking that part seriously, they do contain significant information about current intelligence operations in Europe.

Investigation shows that the Torch, an underground paper primarily distributed in the north of England, got its information from a series of posts on a gaming-devoted Discord channel placed there by a user named Esau1.

The world doesn't yet know that Esau1 is the son of [Edom Duke], a military intelligence specialist posted to Upavon. Soon it will.

The agents are tasked with spiriting away the misbehaving youth before someone with serious intent gets hold of him. Problem being, nobody's entirely sure where he is now; he's not at 1st Intelligence's HQ, Trenchard Lines, where he ought to be.

Possibilities:

• The son didn't appreciate how serious this was going to get and is hiding at the family's apartments in London, Kingston-on-Thames. The Duke doesn't know this but the Duke's spouse does and is trying to shield the boy from the consequences of his actions. What neither of them appreciate is that the son's been in contact with the [BND Agent/GCHQ Desk Analyst/Journalist] (Dracula Dossier) who he sees as a lover/confidant but who's actually working with the Conspiracy. The Conspiracy asset wants as much information as possible before the situation implodes.
• The son knew how bad things were going to get and wanted it that way. He hates the 'family business' and loathes the idea that his current post at Intelligence Corps is just a stepping-stone into Edom proper, and the seat of power that's already being prepared for him. This debacle is his way of making sure he never gets into Edom. He's currently in Berlin, in Mitte's Red Light district, lying low. What he doesn't appreciate is that someone's been hired to kill him (the Assassin from the Resource Guide) and someone from inside Edom is the one who's paying the tab. It might be one of the parent's rivals, or it might be the parent themselves trying to erase a scandal the old-fashioned way.
• The son didn't appreciate how bad things were going to get and was lured into making those posts by a Conspiracy asset. The Madman could be an interesting choice; as written he's homeless, but he could be living in a flatshare with a bunch of other military-minded gamers. The Madman (a ranked player on an FPS platform with his own Twitch and YouTube channel) has Edom links and knew the son did too; the son sees the Madman as a hero, a vampire killer, and is eager to impress him with his inside knowledge. The son's on the run trying to get to the Madman, and the Madman's told him that he's at HMS Proserpine (or some similar England-based Edom location). Problem being, not only is the Madman not there, there is no Edom asset at that location; for game purposes, it's Cool. The son doesn't know that. The Madman does and has alerted the Conspiracy to the son's projected flight path. Of course, if the agents get there first ... 

That's it for this week!

 

The Mythos (Cthulhu RPG, Trail, Bookhounds, Dreamhounds, NBA)

You have begun to piece together the secret rules of the real world, rather than the ignorant scrim of physics and religion. You recognize the great names, and the truths they conceal ...

Let's play with the Mythos.

Imagine that you could see and understand things that nobody else could. That you knew the secrets of the stars, or why Mondays are always brown - and what it means for Mondays to be brown. What does that mean for you, and your understanding of the world around you?

A character can have Mythos at the beginning of the game, if the Keeper is so inclined. Or they can gain it in play, through reading occult texts or encountering the otherworldly. What does that mean for the one who has it? They can see the truth behind the veil, fine, but what does that mean on a day-to-day basis?

That will depend, to a degree, on the source of their knowledge. Let's say for the sake of discussion that the character - we'll name them Sarah for the purpose of this example - got their Mythos at character creation. Sarah's Drive, Artistic Sensibility, led them to a forgotten little art gallery in the outskirts of Manhattan where they encountered a painting that opened their mind to the infinite. Sarah has become obsessed with this artist and seeks out more of their work, partly for the knowledge it contains and partly because they have a peculiar fascination with the art itself. Sarah has 1 point Cthulhu Mythos, and a new appreciation of the world around her. That's all a result of discussion at the start of the game; the Keeper might suggest using Sarah's Drive to justify the Mythos point, but Sarah's player came up with the art gallery on her own. 

That's how Sarah got that point. However, it doesn't stop with one painting. Sarah now sees the world in a completely new way. What does that feel like, in play?

For starters, it means that Sarah sees everything around her in the light of this new knowledge. Other artists either take these ideas on board and incorporate it into their art - in which case Sarah appreciates their efforts - or they don't. Other art seems bland and stale. Things she appreciated before this happened are now derivative, flat, lifeless. 

Sarah may find herself drawn to the forgotten corners of the art world. That's where she encountered her new muse, after all. She might find more works by that artist, or different works by different artists that draw on the same principles. This portrait is clearly the work of someone who knows, and Sarah can tell by the composition, the imagery, the geometric alignment of the work. Or perhaps the artist has stumbled on the idea by accident.

That's Sarah on a good day.

If, on the other hand, Sarah has had a shock - an encounter with the infinite that cost her Stability or worse yet Sanity - then she might start interpreting everything in terms of art. The sky is exactly that shade depicted in the art; what does this mean? The clouds, the stars, the world around her takes on new meaning. Is that a door, or a painting of a door? Did she encounter a face like that in a dusty room in Montmartre? Are these shadows just like those encountered in oils that fateful day? That person's eyes - are they like those she saw in that painting?

Much the same might happen if Sarah's Mythos was gained through book learning. The effect is determined by the source, but the result is the same. That bit of doggerel first encountered in a note in the margins of Azathoth and Others takes on new, horrible meaning in the light of those peculiar stains on the floor - not blood, yet eerily like blood. The fact that the doorman was born in Cancer Ascendant takes on new meaning when you consider what Derby is supposed to have written about the same astrological symbols. 

If Sarah has had a shock, then the words she once read in an inconspicuous little pamphlet of poetry echo in her head nightmarishly. Again and again the words beat on the inside of her skull like a kettle drum, and the fact that the doorman has sky blue eyes is darkly significant when you consider how blue is used in Derby's work. 

Let's say Sarah got her Mythos through a personal encounter with something squamous. What then?

That would depend on what the source actually was. Let's say it was through an encounter either with Nyarlathotep or, more likely, forces aligned with Nyarlathotep. At that point much depends on which version of Nyarlathotep you're using. Trail has several options, among them:

“Nyarlathotep” is not a being, a separate Messenger of the Gods, but a technique, specifically telepathy, used by the Great Old Ones. The “thousand forms” of Nyarlathotep are merely the natural result of telepathic impressions on thousands or millions of brains, human and inhuman.

Thousands upon thousands of psychic messages floating on the ether. Sarah's thoughts are not her own any more. At any moment an idea might pop into her head, and was it her idea, or a fragment of Nyarlathotep that penetrated her skull? That peculiar radio frequency; dead air, or something awful? The rhyme those children are chanting, does it have another meaning?

These are things that Sarah encounters every day and she encounters these things because her fundamental understanding of the world has changed irrevocably. No longer can she pretend that 2 plus 2 equals 4, not when she knows the truth. In many ways she's like the folks who gibber about chemtrails and see mysterious threats in airy nothing. Sarah knows what we do not: that there is a Mythos behind it all.

How does this manifest in play?

For starters, the Keeper can ask Sarah's player to define certain aspects of the Mythos herself, in much the same way that Swords of the Serpentine players describe aspects of Eversink. This is fundamentally a part of how her character sees the world; it stands to reason that Sarah should be able to describe it herself, in her own words. 

"What does your understanding of the way the world works tell you about why those ravens have gathered the way they have on the courthouse roof?" "... about your knowledge of human behavior, and why those people on the edge of the train platform defy accepted norms?" "... about this particular shade of blue?"

For another thing, the Keeper can use this to create scenes and encounters which can be used to distribute clues the players might have already missed in previous scenes. It's the Mythos providing a hint as to the true nature of the situation, when the players have wandered past the clue trail. This can be very helpful in those moments when the players seem lost and the Keeper can't think of another justification for directing them back to the plot. 

Also, it can be used to reinforce the mood. Nothing says Cthulhu like the sudden realization those sinister words on the quiet pages of a book have hideous meaning when you combine that knowledge with the understanding that this particular arrangement of stars has great significance to those who worship the chaos. Or that this style of architecture reflects lessons learned from the buildings found in the damned city of Irem. 

The key point is the Mythos ability shouldn't be used as a passive clue finder. It's more akin to knowing a secret. If you know that medieval architects planned their cities around concepts found in forbidden lore then the fact that this particular collection of streets and alleys is designed in such-and-such a way tells you that the real heart of the city, its intended heart anyway, is over here, and within it lies something terrible ... You know this. But the tourists who wander the streets of this quaint little town each day, all blind to its hideous reality, wander unheeding into the maw of something that must not be named. Does this explain why ... 

Thus the adventure begins.

That's it for this week!

 

The Neighbors (RPG All)

I expect you noticed the many articles about Russia’s cyberwarfare section, Vulkan Files, this week.  

This isn’t going to be a cyberwarfare post, though. The post is inspired by a throwaway line in the Guardian’s article. It goes like this:

The inconspicuous office is in Moscow’s north-eastern suburbs. A sign reads: “Business centre”. Nearby are modern residential blocks and a rambling old cemetery, home to ivy-covered war memorials. The area is where Peter the Great once trained his mighty army.

Which made me think: how often, in any RPG setting, does the Keeper think about the neighbors?

A lot of settings go into some detail about, say, city blocks, or neighborhoods. Fantasy used to be particularly bad at this. I remember one of White Dwarf’s prize-winning series of articles detailed a city block by block, practically house by house, and while it’s an incredible achievement I could only think, as I read it, ‘there’s absolutely no way I could use this.’

I mean, what would be the point? As DM, you’d never remember half of it. The bits you did remember, you’d never get right. You’d forget stats, or get lost in the maze of text, and be forced to make things up on the fly. 

Swords of the Serpentine and Bookhounds of London are better at this, as is Night’s Black Agents or even D&D 5E. There’s enough detail to get you going, not so much that you get bogged down in minutiae, and you convey the flavor of the setting which is much more important than knowing Boggs the Butcher lives in a tumbledown shack in the middle of Spogger Street and owes money to the wizard Fibble who’s in a sadomasochistic relationship with Dodo the gnome who lives in Quaggoth Street at the bottom of the hill and who experiments in alchemy, supplies for which she gets from Ruin the golem on Dundle Lane. Ruin has a quest for you, by the way. They have a rat problem in their cellar. If you bring him six rat tails … and so on.

But there is some advantage to knowing who the neighbors are. It sets the mood, gives you backdrops for scenes, and sometimes allows for important plot twists. It might be nice to know if, say, there was a rambling old cemetery nearby your Bookhounds’ shop. Or just where they go for breakfast.

Not every setting has an established base of operations for the characters, nor does every genre encourage it. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser never had a home for longer than a few minutes. The only time that duo established a nest it got burnt down a few paragraphs later; after that, they were wandering adventurers – at least until they retired. Your Nights Black Agents flit from city to city in a never-ending quest to rid the planet of bloodsuckers. Dungeons and Dragons invented the murderhobo, point being that they are actual hobos – Kings of the Road. 

Some settings do, though. Some are deliberately located in particular places – Bookhounds of London, Dreamhounds of Paris. Some are a little more broad-canvas but still rely on central locations; most World of Darkness games center the action on one or two particular places. Wraith depends on its Haunts. Vampires don’t like to travel, and even if they do the intricacies of the setting demand that they pay close attention to the territory they currently occupy.

So what does that look like?

First, a couple ground rules.

It’s not all Plot Relevant. The coffee shop on the corner doesn’t have to have Quests. The shopkeeper’s apprentice doesn’t have a Destiny, or at least not one that requires five fantasy archetypes to go on an epic journey in search of the golden sphincter of the arctic wyrm Quixotus.

It’s not all Supernatural. Yes, settings like Vampire assume all sorts of peculiar entities operate in the shadows. It doesn’t follow that every Starbucks is a front for the Camarilla/Sabbat/Mummies/Wraiths/Santa. Sometimes a Starbucks is just a Starbucks. 

It’s not Exhaustive. Don’t name every least business or NPC. Concentrate on the ones you intend to use, even if it’s just as set dressing.

It has a Past. Sometimes that can be fun to play with. 

Finally, Randomize. Don’t feel as if everything has to be meticulously planned. Plans never last long once play starts, anyway. Know where you want to get to; the hows and whys of getting there is determined in play.

Let’s say this is a Bookhounds of London game, and the decision’s been made to have the store in the West End. As per the main book, the West End is:

Although there are poorer streets and plenty of low commerce in this area, the West End represents fashion, wealth, and power. The term “West End” can refer to the whole area of central London west of the City or to a specific set of districts west of Charing Cross Road ...

So already you have a decent idea of the kind of businesses/offices/services might be found in that part of London. You also have five players (in this example), each of whom are busy scheming and daydreaming about their characters. 

Now’s the time to get those players involved. Five questions, one for each player. A sampling:

• What’s the business right next door to your shop?
• What’s the best short cut to get to the street your shop is on?
• Where does your character go for lunch?
• What’s the traffic like on the corner?
• If you needed to raise money in a hurry, who would you turn to?
• Where do you buy tea?  
• Where does the person you crush on work?

I hope you see the pattern. Ask questions that are directly relevant either to the character or the shop. It doesn’t matter if the local amateur FC meets every week in the sports pavilion two streets away if none of the characters have any interest in football. From those questions, devise neighbors.

If this sounds like the Building, well, that’s because it is the Building. Except it’s those parts of the Building that are directly relevant to the characters, and it’s designed in part by the players, not you. Sure, there’s plot involved, but it’s not long-term plot. It’s character plot. Stuff they get up to in their downtime. It's the equivalent of Night's Black Agent's Solace; it's important to the character but has no immediate main plot function.

Put it another way. Agatha Christie wrote murder mysteries, but more often than not there was a sneaky romantic side plot hiding away in there among the corpses because Agatha Christie liked a bit of romance with her exotic poisons. This is your version of that romantic side plot, except the romance is optional.

Let’s dig a little deeper.

What’s the business right next door to your shop? 

Answer: a family-owned laundry, which shares a back alley with the shop as well as frontage. Sometimes we get their mail, and they get ours. The turnaround in the back alley is tight, which can cause problems when their truck is parked too close. After some discussion with the player, you decide between you that the family is the Gerondis, and there are five of them: mother, father, two sons, a daughter.

Finally, the random element. Something not in the players’ control. 

I like using Tarot for these situations. That gives me a hundred or more combinations determined by the cards, not me; more than enough to be getting on with. I don’t need a lengthy backstory. I need something brief, pithy, and useable in a hurry.  

Quick shuffle and one turn of the card later: Death. Straight up.

Oooo.

Death is major arcana, beginnings, change, transformation. OK. That’s now the Gerondi default state. It doesn’t matter when the character encounters them or when they appear in the plot, there’s always something involving change, beginnings, transformation.

Maybe the father is an inventor in his spare time coming up with peculiar gadgets. Maybe the daughter is a romantic falling in and out of love. Or maybe the mother has a love for travel. Or all these things at once; doesn’t matter. Point being, this is the Gerondi default state. No matter when they come up in the narrative or why, something is always changing.

That gives you plot hooks, or at least something to use as a framing piece. None of this has to be plot relevant. This is character relevant, which is just as useful but doesn’t have to involve zombies, magic items, or the ongoing machinations of cults. When in doubt, the Geronidis change, transform, or begin something new. 

That’s the neighbor.

Do this four more times and you have five neighbors to play with. 

That plus your actual plot should be more than enough to keep your players occupied.

Hope you folks enjoy! See you next week.  

The Green Folk (RPG Horror)

 From Tweet by Folk Horror Consortium

I keep a folder called Useful Twitter. Every so often someone posts an image or a graphic that I know I'm going to find useful in the future, and I save it there against the day when I need inspiration. For much the same reason I buy books like London Cameos and Fabian's London After Dark - not because I think the history is 110% reliable but because the stories can be useful inspiration.

The image looks a little too perfect, when all is said and done. But as an inspiration ...

The Green Folk

Horror, Urban, Any Modern Setting

This neighborhood is on the edge of redevelopment. Developers have been eyeing it up for years but, for one reason or another, the money was never there. Times change and opportunities arise. It looks as though the wrecker's ball is ready and the architects' plans are fully developed.

You are:

•  Impoverished renters or squatters who've recently moved in because there was nowhere else to go, or at least nowhere that was close enough to where you work/study.
• Urban explorers determined to map out the area before the wreckers move in.
• House strippers determined to steal everything that isn't nailed down before the wreckers move in.
• Social workers or equivalent do-gooders trying to reach out to the inhabitants before the wreckers move them on.
• Government workers or the equivalent tasked with mapping out and rezoning the area to make it easier for developers to move in.
• Party people who got completely blitzed at the last pub/bar and are wandering in a haze looking for somewhere else to go.

This row of houses and shops was once a bustling area but about sixty years back it started to slip into decline. Then came recessions, changes in government, urban blight, and before anyone realized what was going on there was almost nobody left. The people who do live here don't talk much to outsiders. They're not unfriendly, exactly. They just don't talk.

You'd have to look close to realize that they don't talk because they don't have mouths any more.

Characteristics of the neighborhood:

• Almost no lights after dark. The street lights are mostly bust, there are few businesses, and the houses/apartments keep their windows covered.
• Old-fashioned business signage, or businesses. Who calls themselves an Automat these days? Who operates a news stand? Is that a horse and cart down the street?
• Peculiar mold smell, like rotten straw.
• No children. At all. The school is vacant, as is the only playground.
• No vagrants. At all. Nobody spare-changing, nobody sleeping in alleyways.
• No buses or public transport. At all. There are still bus stops and one subway station, but no buses, no trains - no commuters. In or out.

The Awful Truth

1. Seed of Corruption. At the heart of it all is an old-fashioned botanical garden, in the grounds of a Victorian era house. It's the oldest home on the street, covered in ivy, and the garden at its center is a cultivated garden in perfect order. There are people living in the house who say they're the children/grandchildren/great grandchildren of Sebastian Montogomery, who built the garden. They all appear to be 30 years of age exactly, and they all look very alike. They maintain the garden. The garden is all that matters. The garden is the life ...
2. Disease But No Death. About [x] decades ago there was a pandemic that sickened millions and killed tens of thousands. In order to bring peace and some kind of solace to the people the priest of the local church obtained a relic (potentially a Mythos relic if this is a CoC style narrative) which they believed would cure those who kissed it. It prevented them from dying but it also prevented everything else; no children, no desire, no energy, no will to do anything but sleep during the day and wander aimlessly at night, except for certain nights of the year when they all gather in the church for ceremonies. The people who live here are basically harmless so long as they're not disturbed, but if they're disturbed ...
3. Joined In One Dream. The neighborhood everyone sees isn't the one that actually exists. There is something else under the skin, but that skin is the dreamworld of one of the people living here - or who used to live here, at least. Horror novelist Peonie Dark (aka Tom Ward) spent their entire life working on this reality, painted the walls of their apartment with images of the kind of story they wanted to express, went out at night with a spray can and a dream to create images of the world they wanted to tell stories about. As they became more active, and sicker, and sicker, the 'real world' began fading away; Peonie's fading life force couldn't keep the body alive but it could suppress the lives of everyone else. Now Peonie's basically a husk, empty of everything except a desire to create, and the world around them is their canvas.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!