Here, the PCs are brought together by a mysterious scholar or spymaster who has a copy of the Dossier. For some reason, the spymaster can’t go into the field himself (he’s too old/too frail/has to avoid cameras because of facial recognition programs – the government’s searching for him/has to maintain his public persona), so he gives the player characters assignments to carry out based on annotations in Dracula Unredacted.
“Go here,” he says, “and find out everything you can about Klopstock and Bayreuth, Bankers”
Dracula Dossier Cuttings and Additions, p41.
Let’s play with this idea and put together a Secret Triumvirate.
ANTONY.: These many then shall die; their names are prick’d.
OCTAVIUS.: Your brother too must die; consent you, Lepidus?
LEPIDUS.: I do consent,—
OCTAVIUS.: Prick him down, Antony.
LEPIDUS.: Upon condition Publius shall not live,
Who is your sister’s son, Mark Antony.
ANTONY.: He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him.
Let us suppose a conspiracy within Edom, assisted by China’s Room 452, represented in this drama by the Chinese Agent (p110 DD).
Antony, a senior agent within Edom, (Hopkins? perhaps) wants promotion. Antony's deep in the counsels of one of the Princes (it doesn't matter which, for the sake of this narrative) and expected advancement as soon as one of the Prince slots became available. Antony's been told that's not going to happen.
Antony turns to the Chinese Agent to help him shake up Edom, in the course of which Edom will lose a Prince or two (so sad) and enable ambitious juniors to get what they deserve. Lepidus, the Archivist, is brought in because Lepidus has the Dossier in his possession. Antony needs that as bait for Octavian; Octavian won't make a move unless there's sufficient reward on the table.
What the Antony of this piece does not know is that China's Octavian has, on his payroll, the Assassin. The intent being to clear the road of both Anthony and Lepidus as soon as the two have outlived their usefulness and provided that all-important Dossier.
Why do this?
Well, it’s fun. Which should always be the first point.
Second, if you’re going to have a Mysterious Scholar or secret spymaster of some kind handing out the missions it’s helpful if you have a defined endpoint in mind. After all, this game is meant to be about the player characters. If you have a Mysterious Scholar pulling the strings with no defined endpoint in mind, then there’s a risk that the narrative becomes about the Scholar and not the agents.
In this case the defined endpoint is the dissolution of the Triumvirate, quite possibly courtesy of an Assassin’s bullet. Because Octavian suffers no fools and has his own agenda.
Third, if there’s more than one figure in the mix then that gives the agents a mystery to unravel. Unravelling mysteries is what this game is all about. In this case the mystery is ‘who’s really pulling the strings here? Octavian, Anthony, Lepidus? Are we doing this for King and Country, or is there another player on the board?’
This works for Edom characters in the obvious way: Antony, the new Edom mole, brings them in to help him chase up Dossier leads. He's doing this because he has to prove provenance to Octavian's satisfaction. If he does this, Octavian helps him shake up Edom thus providing the impetus needed to push Antony to great heights within Edom.
If non-Edom, then the characters are brought in by Octavian. The Chinese Agent needs a useful bunch of go-betweens to help him bring the Dossier out of storage and into the light. That's not going to happen unless Antony gets what he wants. So the Agents are brought in by China to do Antony's bidding, rushing about the place looking for clues sourced from the Dossier. Once Antony's happy, Lepidus brings the Dossier out of storage at which point Octavian snatches it. Octavian has no reason to care what happens to the Agents after that, leaving them in the traditional Burned status that all good games start in.
Essentially the Triumvirate acts as a Conspyramid in miniature. Its narrative purpose is to give the agents a small conspiracy to deal with, in preparation for the larger conspiracies to come. With the added bonus that this particular conspiracy puts them in direct contact with the all-important Dracula Dossier, which is the big McGuffin of the piece.
Think of this as the first act of the campaign.
When I discussed the first act a long, long time ago, for Bookhounds, I said:
The whole point of the first act, in any campaign, is to establish mood and setting … They don't even have to encounter the Mythos, or anything supernatural, in the opening act, so long as the opening act is true to the overall mood … What you as Keeper ought to be doing is getting the players to concentrate on the things that matter (at least in the short term): the setting and the starting location.
The same thing applies here.
When it comes right down to tacks, Night’s Black Agents is about spy stuff with vampires, and Dracula Dossier is about spy stuff with vampires and added Dracula hot sauce. In Bookhounds, you had the shop to concentrate on in the opening act. In NBA, you have the spy stuff.
You can add the hot sauce later. In Act Two.
By all means hint at the hot sauce in Act One, have some mithering Renfields or old Conspiracy hotbeds like Whitby or Hillingham show up. But let these serve as hints of what’s to come, once the agents get their feet wet.
The big advantage is a wider canvas. Bookhounds is ultimately a one-city setting, but in NBA you can send the agents literally anywhere. Probably anywhere in Europe, bearing in mind the Dracula Dossier, but still, this week France, next week Romania, week after that, who knows?
Don't feel limited. Klopstock and Bayreuth, Bankers, is a worldwide enterprise, after all. Maybe this week it’s the Board of Directors meeting in Dubai? Or a clandestine rendezvous with that activist investor in Montana?
The point to concentrate on is the spy stuff. The surveillance, the suborning, the gathering of intelligence, the car chases and showdowns. This does two important things: it keeps the agents on their toes, and it introduces them to the mechanics and tropes of the world they inhabit. Is it Dust? Mirror? Something else? What’s its history, its forward momentum? These are things the players will need to understand in order to portray their characters.
All of which is driven by the Mysterious Scholar who starts off as an unknown quantity and is revealed to be an Edom insider, perhaps mere moments before bullet meets grey matter.
At which point the Triumvirate dissolves, Octavian makes his getaway (or tries to), Lepidus is dead or in the wind, and that precious artifact, the Dossier, is in play.
Add hot sauce. In large quantities. It’s time to start Act Two.
Enjoy!
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