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 Old School Tie (Bookhounds of London)

After fooling around with modern spycraft for so long, let’s take a step back to an old favorite, Bookhounds of London.

I’ve been re-reading Graves’ Goodbye to All That and am currently going over his years at Charterhouse, one of the preeminent public schools of England. For those not familiar, a public school is a fee-charging endowed school and are "public" in the sense of being open to pupils irrespective of locality, denomination or paternal trade or profession. So long as you can pay and (in some cases at least) maintain a certain academic standard, you can attend.

The English are obsessed with public school. It encompasses a certain kind of Englishness that many aspire to, and all recognize. In much the same sense fox hunting, cosy murder mysteries in the Christie style, and bloated, feckless upper classes all represent a kind of Englishness recognized the world over. Other nations hunt foxes, but it’s the English people think of when they see pictures of fox hunting. Other nations murder, but somehow it’s just not the same if the corpse isn’t found in some English country squire’s locked library or splattered across the scones at the church fete.  

So too with public schools. Hogwarts, let’s not forget, is a public school; for all his talents Harry couldn’t attend if someone hadn’t thoughtfully left him a small fortune held by the gnomes of Gringotts. Rudyard Kipling’s most recognizable characters, Stalky and his pals, are public schoolboys. P.G. Wodehouse, the girls of St. Trinian’s, Enid Blyton – the school story is practically a cobwebbed, crumbling English institution.

That being so, it’s likely that at least one of the Bookhounds either attended public school or pretends to have attended. It’s the sort of thing that lends social cache, which can help make a sale. At least the veneer of sophistication that comes with the old school tie might impress a customer.

Things you might see at a public school:

• Cricket
• Rugby.
• The Officer’s Training Corps on parade.
• Ivy-covered buildings
• Masters in their black gowns.
• Corporal punishment.
• School newspapers.
• School societies, eg. Poetry.
• Impressive portraits and donated artworks.
• Small museums dedicated either to the school or some local monument of some kind.
• Impressive modernity, eg. a flying school.
• Crumbling history, eg. the chapel.

All of which brings me to today’s subject: The Old School Tie. 

The Hounds are likely to know a lot of people who want favors or can grant favors. This scratch-my-back economy can make the difference between a Windfall and an ordinary month, or snatch a failing store from the brink of economic crisis.  

What do they do when someone wearing that old school tie wants something, and can offer something valuable in exchange?

The Old Dumbletonian

[Source for Dumbleton school: Murder Must Advertise, Dorothy Sayers]

Everything that can go wrong has been going wrong. The council’s pressing the shop for unpaid rates (taxes). The drains are rotten. One of the shop’s most important customers has defected to another shop. The police are buzzing around like flies, certain that the shop is a front for a pornography ring. Things are looking bleak, so when a fellow you barely recognize from days gone by says he has a peculiar commission for you which will save your financial bacon, you’re all ears.

This gent, Augustus Kendall, says he attended the same school as you, Dumbleton, near Gloucester. You were several years above him, assuming he’s telling the truth. He went from the schoolroom to the trenches, caught a bad one in the right leg which left him with a limp, and spent the rest of the war in  Offizierslager Toruń on the Vistula River. Since then he’s bumbled from job to job, but he has grand prospects. His aunt, a remarkably wealthy old cat, is about to stumble off this mortal coil and he’s her only living relative.

Which would be fine, were it not for some inconvenient letters.

While at Dumbleton he fell in love with one of the younger boys, Douglas Parry. Indiscreet letters were written. Poetry. Other stuff, all of which Parry kept. Parry is now a master at Dumbleton (Greek and Latin). Parry is blackmailing Kendall, bleeding him of every cent he earns, knowing that if Aunt Belima ever sees those letters he can kiss the fortune goodbye. 

Kendall remembers the Hound as being a bit of a sharp character, an impression that is only strengthened by some of the stories Kendall has heard about the way the Hound does business. Surely for someone as resourceful as that, the retrieval of a few letters from old Dumbleton would be no great task?

As it happens Gaudy night is coming up, which means the Hound can probably wangle an invitation to Dumbleton for the festivities on the strength of the old school tie. There’s a fair amount of money on offer, and Kendall is likely to be worth a bob or two when Aunt Belima leaves us …

The Awful Truth

Kendall is a would-be member of the Keirecheires (cults, main book p65). He’s been on the fringes of the cult for some time, but never managed to secure an invitation to join that hedonistic group. He knows Parry is a member and guesses, correctly, that Parry keeps some very indiscreet literature at his rooms at Dumbleton. Kendall reasons that, if he gets hold of those letters and poems, he can use them to blackmail Parry into letting him into Keirecheires.

The problem is, Parry’s been working on a particularly complicated ritual which he intended to present to his fellow enthusiasts at the next orgy. It was to be a summoning, something suitably vile and entertaining for their group activities. However, in creating (and writing down) this hideous ritual, Parry has managed to summon up something particularly ruthless that he’s having some trouble dealing with. Hounds with Mythos might notice some of the precautions he’s been taking, signs of which can be seen at his rooms as well as in his behavior. The chapel at Dumbleton is particularly tainted by Parry’s researches. 

All of which would be fine – up to a point – were it not for some meddlesome Hounds stealing his notes and researches along with the grab-bag of letters and poems.

Once up to their neck in it the Hounds will have to dodge vengeful Keirecheires as well as the whatever-it-is Parry has summoned up.

Good luck with that. The old school tie won’t help the Hounds now …

A Twist?

Augustus Kendall is dead and has been for years. 

He died during the War and over time became a Crawling One, an undead nightmare that lives half in the Dreamlands and half in the waking world, a thing of maggots and decay that can disguise itself as a living man through dubious sorceries. It was he, not Parry, who was a member of Keirecheires, albeit a very junior member at the time of his death. Parry obtained Kendall’s letters and poems through dubious means and is trying to use them to ease his way into Keirecheires. Kendall is furious at the very idea, but Parry’s been able to block him so far. Kendall’s decided to use the Hounds as catspaws, hoping that their efforts will dislodge Parry’s defenses and give Kendall a chance to strike.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy!

Start At The End (RPG All)

It's no good starting out by thinking one is a heaven-born genius - some people are, but very few. No, one is a tradesman - a tradesman in a good honest trade. You must learn the technical skills, and then, within that trade, you can apply your own creative ideas; but you must submit to the discipline of form. Agatha Christie

I find it useful, when designing an RPG scenario, to follow Agatha Christie's advice. She was asked many times for writing advice over the years, and as with all advice your milage may vary. However, there's one bit I think is evergreen: start at the end, and work back.

Christie, when writing her murder mysteries, would start with the corpse. She'd plot out the murder from the moment poison met lip, or knife, back. Then she'd unravel the whole narrative from that point, and with that as a blueprint would find time to sit down and write the thing. She knew, from the first moment, where the story ended. What she needed to discover was where the story began, and how the detective - be it Poirot, Miss. Marple, Tommy and Tuppence or whoever it might be - enters the narrative and finds out what happened. 

In an RPG scenario your players might not be trying to unravel a murder but they are trying to unravel something. What that something is doesn't really matter. The essential point is this: whether it's a fantasy swords and sorcery smackfest or that chilling moment when Illithid meets brain, you know from the start where you want the story to go.

All you need to do is get there.

Let's say this is a Night's Black Agents story. We already know from the main book that there are, broadly speaking, nine kinds of story:

• Destroy. The agents must destroy the local conspiracy apparat.
• Flip. The agents must flip an asset to their side.
• Heist. The agents must steal something
• Hit. The agents must kill someone
• Hunt. The agents must find someone.
• Rescue. The agents must rescue someone.
• Sneak. The agents must infiltrate a secure location.
• Trace. The agents must find something, possibly something that went missing long ago.
• Uncover. The agents must uncover a mystery.

We also know that any of those stories can be turned on their head, so for example a Reverse Hunt might be hiding someone from the Conspiracy.

For the sake of this example it doesn't really matter which of these narratives we use. One quick RNG generation later ... 9. The agents must uncover a mystery.

It goes without saying that in order for the agents to uncover a mystery the Director has to know what the mystery is. That's not what we're trying to accomplish. What we want to know is, how does this story end?

You see the same dynamic play out in film. Say this were a heist movie: Le Circle Rouge, for example.

Without giving away the plot, the story revolves around a heist but does not end with a heist scene. Few heist movies do. The heist is often a midway point, something that the characters have been working towards but not, ultimately, the point of the story. 

No, the point of the story is (not a spoiler) an imagined quote from the Buddha, presented as fact within the story's narrative:

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, drew a circle with a piece of red chalk and said: "When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever the diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle."

That moment of confrontation is the point of the narrative. That is what the story strives towards.

So if you intend, say, a moment of confrontation at the end point of your narrative, then that moment of confrontation is what you must start with when plotting out your narrative. 

Let's say you've been using the Familiar Foe rules from Double Tap, p. 52:

You have done battle with a particular enemy before. Not a generic mook, not just one class of opposition, no matter how distinctive. A Familiar Foe is a named opponent, be they the “Wizard of Waziristan” or the “second Lieutenant of the Death’s Sword Brigade, Johannes Klonsveldt.”

Let's further say that this Familiar Foe is based on one of the Operatives found in the Resource Guide, p 16:

• Name: Gavin Kroeger
• Description: Mid-30s, sharp suit, sleek, energetic
• Previous Patron: Major law firm or hedge fund (Goldman Sachs or similar)

Kroeger’s a legal troubleshooter for the conspiracy. His usual role is to move money around and engage in high-level corporate and legal machinations – buying politicians, fixing elections, bribing key officials, or using the conspiracy’s resources to forcibly acquire companies and assets useful to the vampires.

Therefore the final scene of this scenario is about a showdown with Kroeger. The agents are about to meet their Familiar Foe in the red circle.

You, as Director, already know about as much as is possible about Kroeger and can add extra details as needed. Perhaps he wasn't a Renfield before but is now, because the Conspiracy are considering him for full membership and want to see whether he can handle the pressure. Perhaps he's on the outs with another highly placed Conspiracy operative and is constantly having to defend himself against attacks from the rear. 

That moment, when the agents uncover the secret, isn't the end of the scenario. It will drive them towards the end. It's a stepping-stone towards that final scene.

But that final scene is where you start with. You want to round off the narrative with a moment where Foe meets Foe, and for that reason you want to know everything you can about that final moment. Once you know that, you can plot backwards from that point and work out, say, how the agents encounter the plot hook, or where the secret is kept, or who's guarding it.

You know who - Gavin Kroeger - and you know what you're striving towards. Now ask yourself some questions about that final scene.

Where is it taking place? Let's say Berlin, why not.

What does Kroeger want? Well, that depends on whether the secret is a good one or a poison pill. Let's say it's a poison pill. Let's say it's the equivalent of a Dracula Dossier Fraudulent Item, because Kroeger wants the agents to accept the item as real and pass it on to their contact. That way Kroeger finds out who or where that contact is, so they can be dealt with.

How does Kroeger get what he wants? Well, he has access to power appropriate to the narrative, along with assets and goals. Given Kroeger is who he is, he probably isn't dancing the Hulk Smash Polka across the city. No, he'll be calling in political favors, working behind the scenes, offering massive bounties to whichever mercenary can ... and so on.

With all that in mind:

The final scenes are an extended Heat/Chase sequence across Berlin, in which Kroeger puts every possible pressure on the agents but ultimately wants them to get away so he can find out who their contact is. It doesn't really matter what the secret is or where it is; however, for the purpose of this example let's say it's something hidden in the depths of Teufelsberg, which I've talked about before.

Already you can see, I hope, the structure being built. The end scene is that extended chase across Berlin, with Kroeger and his catspaws putting as much pressure as possible on the agents as they flee from whatever it is they found at Teufelsberg. However, they don't want to actually catch the agents, which means they'll hesitate at the last moment. That hesitation might be the clue the agents need to realize that the secret they've gone to such lengths to uncover is a poison pill.

At this point you'd want to flesh out the details of that final moment. Some Berlin details, for example, with variations depending on whether this is day or night and whether this is a guns-blazing car chase or a delicate cat-and-mouse Thrilling Infiltration moment. Prepare for either one; let the players choose which one they're going to go for. You'd want to know the resources Kroeger can call on, and if there are third parties in play like that backbiting Conspiracy higher-up then you want to know what that third party can bring to bear.

Once you know all those things then you work back. How did the agents get to Teufelsberg? What do they expect to find there, and what do they actually find there? How did they get clued in that there was something at Teufelsberg worth looking for? Did Bothans die to give them that information, and if so who were those unfortunate Bothans? 

Always remember, though, that you didn't start with Bothans. You started with that face-off between the Familiar Foe and the agents on the streets of Berlin - and then you wrote the scenario.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

Private Investigations (Mutant City Blues)

The recent Mutant City Blues reboot offers the option of playing as a heightened private detective in this brave new world of superpowers and those who abuse them, and that got me thinking: just what is a private detective, anyway?

The oldest examples are crooks who went straight - sort of. Men like France's Eugène François Vidocq, a rakehell, soldier, convict, probable forger, duelist and martial artist who turned his life around and, in 1811, joined the cops. Later, when the Sûreté decided in 1833 that it didn't need recruits with a criminal history, Vidocq formed his own investigative agency, Le bureau des renseignements, made up mainly of ex-cons like himself. Larger than life and full of devilment, Vidocq became the subject of plays, books, gossip, and several films, from the silent era to modern day.

His English equivalent is Jonathon Wild, Thief-Taker General, who operated roughly a century before Vidocq but without the latter's successful career. Less a crook gone straight, more a crook gone even more crooked, this gang boss decided that, in the absence of a police force, he'd act as the police. This allowed Wild endless opportunities for bribe-taking, racketeering and bounty hunting. Wild would offer to find and return stolen goods, and then extract cash from the thieves and the putative owners, threatening to expose criminals or actually turning them over for the bounty on their heads. It all came crashing down when Londoners started taking corruption seriously, for the first and possibly last time, and Wild went to the gallows in 1725, later ending up on the dissection table. His skeleton is possibly the most famous one in the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons.

In the United States the most famous private investigator is Allen Pinkerton, a cooper (maker of barrels) who by chance discovered a gang of counterfeiters, informed on them, and as a result became a Chicago police detective. From there he went from strength to strength, eventually becoming Lincoln's spymaster in the Civil War, a union buster and a terror to train robbers and bandits. The agency he founded still exists today, and became synonymous with private investigation - the Pinkertons.

The earliest fictional detectives tend to operate along these lines, albeit slightly more respectably. Poe's Auguste Dupin is a man born to money but now poor, a kind of gentleman detective who can operate in both the respectable and less-respectable realms because he belongs to both, by training and circumstance. He shares this quality with Sherlock Holmes, whose antecedents might be of the squirearchy but whose financial constraints lead him to make money the best way he can. 

Holmes' creator Conan Doyle was himself comfortably middle class, but spent his early life in straitened circumstances due to his father's alcoholism and spent much of his early career bouncing from failed job to failed job before finding a niche in fiction. Whereas Dashiell Hammett left school at age 13 to work, eventually becoming a Pinkerton himself and, later, a soldier, before ever committing a fiction, and Hammett's protagonists are fiercely independent fixers and private agents. His contemporary Raymond Chandler had a decidedly rosier early life, but again financial woes intervened and he turned to writing to solve his cash problems, creating fictional characters like Philip Marlowe, world-weary intermediaries between the rich and those who would prey on the rich.

    Big Sleep trailer. Sourced from Movieclips

Agatha Christie meanwhile had a conventional early life unmarked by the kind of financial and social hardships that created Hammett, and thus Hammett's Sam Spade. So her characters are themselves fairly conventional. Christie's Poirot operates in a world in which he can specialize in the detection of murder, and Miss Marple doesn't really have to earn a living at all but finds herself mixed up in murders regardless. Whereas Spade has to do what he can to get by, and will take, say, $200 if you offer him, say, $100 to find a mysterious missing objet d'art.

Already we can see a stylistic break. For Hammett's Spade, how is less important than who, and why is usually self-explanatory. There's no question about anybody's motive in the Maltese Falcon, nor are there exotic poisons and doubts about time of death. Floyd Thursby is shot to death, Miles Archer is shot to death, all out in the open rather than behind locked doors, and the central question isn't how or why they died but where the Falcon is right now, and who has it. 

Whereas Christie's Poirot, Dorothy Sayer's Sir Peter Wimsey and others of their type are obsessed with how and why, and less concerned about who. The Mysterious Affair at Styles features a wealthy woman poisoned with strychnine, and the central question becomes how that poison was obtained, whether or not people knew about the dead woman's altered will, and how the poison was administered. Novels like these care about who did it only because someone has to have done it; the prize for working out the puzzle is finding out who, but the puzzle is the point, not the murderer.

So a Hammett protagonist navigates an uncertain world of changing allegiances and lies, where a Christie protagonist lives in a fairly certain world where crime is more of a logical conundrum than an opaque mist of bluff and counter-bluff.  You'd never get a speech like Sam Spade's at the end of Maltese Falcon in a Christie novel. A Poirot never needs to explain himself, or examine his own motives, because Poirot knows his motives are pure. A Sam Spade knows his motives are anything but pure. Yet that speech is the bleeding heart of Maltese Falcon. There is no heart in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

From these early beginnings come others, operating broadly along similar lines - the specialist, the clever amateur, the genius. Seldom are they former crooks, like Vidocq or Wild. More often they are former detectives, like Spade or Poirot. Very often they're neither of those things but happen to wind up near a murder regardless, whether they bake cookies for a living or have a famous detective for a father. The more respectable the author, the more likely it is the detective will be someone either respectable or formerly respectable but now in straitened circumstances. The crime is nearly always murder, and when it isn't murder to begin with it usually becomes murder by the third or fourth chapter. A far cry from The Maltese Falcon's snatch job gone wrong, Dupin's purloined letter, or Holmes' Beryl Cornet. Finding the McGuffin isn't anything like as important, in this kind of narrative, as unmasking the killer.

The world these fictions live in is quite nice, on the whole. Someone might threaten them or try to hurt them, but as a general rule folks are pleasant, innocent creatures and they're not at the mercy of circumstance. If anything, it's the detective's job to ensure the world remains pleasant for everyone, and when it isn't they step in to make it so.

Every so often someone like Walter Mosley comes along and the detective returns to his roots as a middleman in a larger, dangerous world. In that kind of fiction nobody's completely innocent, least of all the protagonist, and often the dividing line between success and failure is vanishingly slight. However the Mosley's of this world are the exception rather than the rule; in fiction, there are far more Marples than there are Easy Rawlins. 

Devil in a Blue Dress, from Sony Pictures

So after all that rambling, the central question: who or what is a private detective?

The private detective is a hired agent whose job is to help their client achieve a particular goal. A contractor. A middleman. It's not their job to build a legal case against a guilty party, but to build the case their client wants them to. Equally is it not their job to denounce anyone from a pulpit. They work for pay, like everyone else, and their day-to-day resembles more a researcher's than a gunslinger's.

When your detective is a man like Thief-Taker Wild the client is usually someone who wants to stifle potential scandal or avoid a criminal conviction, and will pay any amount of money to make sure the truth never comes out. When your detective is someone like Vidocq then the client is someone who has been failed by the authorities, possibly because of political shenanigans, and will pay any amount of money to get what they want - whether or not they deserve it. Dashiell Hammett's protagonist in The Glass Key, gambler and racketeer Ned Beaumont, is built along Vidocq's lines, as is Sam Spade of Maltese Falcon fame. Philip Marlowe leans more to Thief-Taker Wild, particularly in The Big Sleep.    

If your detective is someone like Allen Pinkerton then everyone's operating within the law, but the law is a very big tent and can include intimidation, beatings, political twisting and shady deeds. Immoral, but not necessarily illegal. Or, if illegal, the kind of illegality that is seldom prosecuted and almost never successfully prosecuted. Mosely's Easy Rawlins operates in this kind of world. 

If your detective is a Dupin, Holmes or Poirot then not only is everyone operating within the law but also the law has a decidedly moralistic tinge. Poirot can say, in all seriousness, that he disapproves of murder - and he does so because his creator disapproves of murder. In much the same sense someone might disapprove of opening a liquor store on Sunday, or of spanking children, or of sexual behavior. Murder is wrong and people who do wrong things are punished. Q.E.D. Most modern police procedurals - The Rookie, Law & Order, especially L&O SVU - fall in this category. There are good guys and bad guys, and the good guys are supposed to win. 

 

The Wire

If you're looking for strict realism in your game then you're probably going to want to lean towards the Pinkerton model. Vidocq and Thief-Taker Wild belong to an earlier age, when there is very little law to speak of and almost as little civil authority. Modern society couldn't survive without some kind of organized leadership. Someone's got to be the glue holding this rickety bucket together, after all, and it's not going to be the PCs - they're too busy getting into fights and looking out for Number One. 

There's a lot of talk about Invincible right now, for obvious reasons, and while I've not watched it through I have noticed something odd about the series - and perhaps it holds true for all modern superhero comics. In Invincible, there really isn't an organized leadership of any kind. Buildings blow up and civilians get vaporized, but there's no suggestion of a civil authority, no real government at all. It's almost as if the planet is just a pretty backdrop for selfish costumed jackasses who want to party. 

A private investigator has to operate within society's rules, a superhero doesn't. A private investigator has to worry about getting arrested, about keeping her nose clean and not getting caught doing something shady. If the PI doesn't worry about those things then the best they can hope for is to have their license pulled, at which point they're not a PI any more. The worst case is time in jail, if not the death penalty.

In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade spends a fair amount of time keeping the cops at bay, and calling his attorney to make sure he and his client don't get railroaded.

The same holds true for your PCs. In any private investigator game the cops, the civil authority, the mayor's office and whoever else are all going to get in the PI's face. This might be because the PI is holding onto explosive information that could embroil the city in scandal, or it might just be because the PI is a pain in the ass who doesn't play well with others. Which would explain why the character isn't working within the HCIU. Either way, one of the main antagonists in any PI game is going to be the city itself, whether or not the character has a decent relationship with the cops at the local precinct.

The Pinkerton-style world is a little different from the Miss Marple and Poirot model. In a Pinkerton world the authorities may actively work against the investigator, our of malevolence or protecting their own interests. At best the authorities passively block the investigator at every turn, or make things more difficult. There are constraints on what the PI can do, and the authorities enforce those constraints.

In the Poirot kind of fiction the investigator - who doesn't hold any kind of license and is the very definition of a free agent - can do as they like, because the authorities are assumed to be on their side. They share goals, because this is a moralistic world in which people who do bad things are punished, and the law is implicitly on the side of those who do good. Poirot might have a friendly or not-so-friendly rivalry with the detective in charge of the case, but Poirot's relationship with the law as an institution is always sound. 

Take The Rookie. Nathan Fillion's John Nolan is always going to be on the side of righteousness, because that's the essence of his character. If tempted, he will never eat the apple. Thus his relationship with the LAPD is always going to be good, even when (at the end of the second season) it appears to everyone as if Nolan's gone rogue. The Rookie's LAPD is always on the side of the angels, and Nolan is basically an angel at heart, so the LAPD will always back Nolan's play.

Fictions like the Rookie might ape Chandler and Hammett in some superficial respects - after all, they all take place in Los Angeles, the heartland of detective fiction in America - but they differ in fundamental ways, which you as Game Moderator should bear in mind. The most fundamental of which is that, in a Rookie fiction, bad guys are always punished by the righteous, while in a Hammett fiction bad guys may or may not be punished, and if they are it's seldom by the righteous. 

That in turn will determine the shape of your campaign going forward, which means it's a vital part of your Session Zero. What kind of fiction do your players lean towards? Do they like the idea of being cogs in a mincing machine? A Pinkerton-style go-between, acting on behalf of less-than-innocent clients - perhaps even doing things that a more moral character would recoil at? Falsifying evidence, theft, bearing false witness? Then their clients are going to be powerful, unscrupulous people who want what they want whether or not they deserve it, because in that kind of world nobody deserves anything. They only keep what they can take.

Deadwood

Do they like the idea of being the clever, morally centered Poirot, Marple, Monk or Rookie? The kind of person who, like Poirot, refuses to act on behalf of the unworthy 'because I do not like your face?' Then their clients are going to be innocent people looking for something that rightfully belongs to them. No grey areas, only moral absolutes, and the adventure along the way involves solving puzzles, not playing several different gangs of crooks against each other and hoping to come out on top. In fact solving the puzzle is the only reason this kind of detective exists. That's why Holmes examines cigarette ash and Miss Marple interrogates vacationers at a Caribbean getaway. It's implicit that the criminal is bad and must be punished, and because it's implicit nobody's going to be examining their motives or delve into psychological angst over them. That just leaves the locked-room question as the meat of the narrative.

Knives Out

Anyway, that's it for this week's discussion. Next week, some Mutant City Blues scenario seeds ...

The Queen's Messenger (NBA)

This video is sourced from Side Note, a channel about obscure historical and geographical topics.

Imagine a man whose mission is to transport secrets. Sometimes it's nothing, sometimes it's something. It might be a box of Cuban cigars, or it might be the ins and outs of the latest missile crisis. He's very nearly a stock character out of a Hitchcock film, or an Agatha Christie novel: white, almost certainly male, very British, probably in his forties, probably spent his entire working career in the diplomatic service. He's about as unrepresentative of the Commonwealth as it is possible to be, unless you reduce the Commonwealth to Australia and Canada. Even Australia's a bit of a stretch, since judging by that photograph at 1.06 none of them have seen the sun in years. Yet he represents the Commonwealth, carrying communiques back and forth from all corners of the globe each day of his working life. All that for about 25-35K a year, more or less. Plus expenses, presumably, but even so that's a relatively meagre pay packet for that level of responsibility.

Side Note points out that these messengers have been targeted by honey traps, and the risk to their lives (and messages) is real enough. In addition to those examples mentioned in the video, two are known to have died in accidents: a plane crash in South America in 1947, while another went down with the SS Berlin in 1907. The Berlin sinking is one of those explicable tragedies common to sea travel, but the crash of BSAA Star Dust has been fodder for conspiracy theorists and UFOlogists almost from the moment she went down.

Events like these are the stuff of detective novels, and Agatha Christie used a plot much like it in her 1922 novel The Secret Adversary. The kick-off is the sinking of the Lusitania during the Great War, when a male diplomatic courier who knows he isn't getting on a lifeboat hands the McGuffin over to a female passenger to deliver to the embassy. However she never gets there, and the story is about what happens next. Christie doesn't specifically mention King's Messengers, but it's pretty clear what her doomed courier is.

So how to use this in your Night's Black Agents or Dracula Dossier game?

To start with, the Messengers are obvious targets for enemy action. If the Conspiracy can read minds, or pull the Dracula mesmerism trick, then the Messengers are likely targets. Even if the Conspiracy never gets to read those messages in the diplomatic bag, the courier's mind is a very useful secondary target. These are the people in the room where it happens, after all. They've seen and heard things that nobody else had the chance to. Knowing what they know could be invaluable.

Impersonating one would be a very handy way of getting past what might otherwise be impenetrable security. A passport, a tie, the right kind of public schoolboy mannerisms and you're golden. Of course, it would be a shame if your vampire type was one of those allergic to silver; those greyhound pins and insignia would be the very devil. Grit your fangs and bear it, I suppose.

In the Dracula Dossier Edom would probably want to keep half an eye on the Messengers, just in case. Sounds like a job for Osprey, and in a low-key game where Edom is a handful of in-the-know operatives working through friendlies and go-betweens it's likely Osprey is a Messenger. After all, he's got to have some kind of diplomatic day job that allows him to keep an eye on operations worldwide. Besides, he's practically built for it: smooth features, well-preserved, well-dressed, Etonian accent? Hello, Central Casting!

Of course, impersonating a Messenger is a one-time-only gig. It gets you out of a scrape, but almost certainly raises every single red flag it is possible to raise. There are only a few of them, after all. Given the delicacy of their work they're probably monitored very closely. I say probably - we are talking about the English, whose tradition of bumbling towards disaster is well established. Perhaps it's all done on a handshake and a smile. Traitors have skated under the old school tie before, with hardly anyone bothering to delay their progress let alone stop them before they skip across to Moscow. Or Dracula's Castle, in the current fictional narrative.

A player agent as a Messenger is a very intriguing possibility. Being an active diplomatic agent does limit your options; you can't just bunk off for the day to stake vampires if you're meant to be carrying vital messages to, say, the Mission in Bahrain. However a Messenger is the ultimate Mule, more likely to take Archaeology or Art History than Forgery, or perhaps just extra points in Bureaucracy. The sort of agent used to High Society, with a healthy dose of Flattery and Bullshit Detector. Traditionally the Messenger doesn't carry a gun, but that doesn't stop them having a decent Shooting or Hand-to-Hand pool. That said, Preparedness, Shrink, Surveillance and Network seem more likely General spends.

Perhaps your agent is a former Messenger, someone shuffled out of the Service for the good of the Service. Oh, you got your pension and possibly even a gong; after all, nobody really wants to admit what happened even if it is an open secret. You still belong to all your old clubs, and wear the tie now and again. Plus, you have Network friends in all sorts of interesting places. However if anyone's likely to bear a smoldering grudge it's the man who got canned from the most interesting diplomatic job ever. Could be more interesting if it was the woman who got canned; misogyny's a potent motivator, and Lord knows the British establishment's riddled with it. Revenge or Thrill-Seeker (back in the saddle again) seem reasonable Drives, possibly also Transparency and Patriotism.

After all that, a scenario seed:

The PEP (Politically Exposed Person)

Allan Daigliesh, Queen's Messenger, is a happily married man with two sons and a daughter, all rapidly approaching University age. It's been a difficult marriage; constant travel takes its toll, and Allan hasn't always been a model husband. However he's recently been behaving erratically, and the question is whether it's stress of the job or something else. Edom is interested in Allan's case, and brings the agents in to find out what, if anything, is going on.

1. The Cuckoo. One of Allan's children is becoming romantically involved with a Legacy, most likely Billie Harker, Tabitha Holmwood or Thad Morris, but it's Director's choice. Allan knows this, and knows what the Legacy represents because he's had brushes with Edom before. The last thing he wants is for his child to get anywhere near the shadowy world of Edom, but all attempts to break off the relationship have failed. That's why he's nervous; he knows it's only a matter of time before these chickens come home to roost.
2. The Renfield. The Conspiracy is putting pressure on Allan through his wife Belinda, who's traded in the red wine for a different scarlet beverage. The Conspiracy knows Allen makes regular trips to [X] Mission, and wants to see what's in his diplomatic bag. Either Belinda is using Aberrance tricks to get the information, or the Conspiracy's just using her as leverage to get Allen to do what it wants. The pressure's affecting Allan's job performance, and there's a chance he may break under the strain.
3. The Man in the Mirror. Allen's learned one secret too many and wants to change his life for the better. He wants to do something to make it right, and he's started with a little whistleblowing. Perhaps he's made contact with the Journalist (or someone posing as the Journalist) or a foreign diplomat like the Chinese Agent, but whoever it is has Conspiracy links. Allan thinks he's about to do something good, for once; he doesn't know he's talking to the worst kind of people. Assuming, of course, that they are really people …

Enjoy! 

Universal Aunts (Trail, Call of Cthulhu, Night's Black Agents)

This post is inspired by Lucy Lethbridge's book Servants, which I'm reading for research purposes. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting period information on the Victorian era, the 1920s and 30s.

Lady-help is a catchall term for an unmarried woman without financial resources, who works as a kind of servant but isn't really from the same social class as a servant. Consequently they balance precariously between the group they feel they belong to, the middle classes, while at the same time not having the same claim to membership of that group as the people they work for. Lethbridge describes this as 'living on a social mezzanine floor, between one world and another.'

Often they do not, or cannot, perform the same tasks as a servant, having not been taught the necessary skills. Nor did they want to be taught. That's the whole point of being a lady; you don't have to do manual or domestic labor. So in practice the lady-help is a paid companion or quasi-governess, someone who can be set administrative tasks, like managing a diary or arranging train tickets and hotel stays, but who has no practical function, like laundry or cooking. Agatha Christie often makes use of the lady-help. Hildegarde Schmidt and Mary Debenham, who appear in her novel Murder on the Orient Express, are examples of the type.

In the Victorian and early Edwardian period, the lady-help's a bit vulnerable, particularly since they lack the money and the opportunity to save that guarantees a modest comfort in retirement. Again, going back to Agatha Christie, this is why legacies gifted in the master or mistress' will are so important. However for those not lucky enough to get a legacy, the best they can hope for is to live on charity - or, more likely, slowly starve on charity.

Things change in the 1920s. There are fewer men, thus fewer opportunities for marriage. Moreover the declining economy means families need cash, however they can get it. Unmarried daughters must work. At the same time, there's an innate horror in letting social standards slip. The middle class must remain the middle class; there can be no question of blurring the line between servant and master. Then there is the war, which among other things taught a whole generation of middle class women new skills, and confidence.

Enter new temporary employment agencies, like Universal Aunts.

'Britain's first personal service bureau' opened in 1921, on Sloane Street. Its founder, Gertie Maclean, wanted to create a venture "which will, I hope, fulfil my search for an opportunity to use my time and intelligence. I would hope too, that other like-minded ladies can become involved." They did, and soon Universal Aunts had a full catalogue of women capable of performing any task. Women with Zoological Society certificates, expert researchers fluent in many languages, women who knew about physics, spiritualism and foreign missions, who were qualified car and boat mechanics, and pilots.

Women who would make excellent investigators in any period horror game, especially Trail and Call of Cthulhu.

These kinds of agencies turn up in fiction now and again. Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey owned and operated an agency like this, with Joan Murchison, former secretary with a background in stock broking, as its founder member. However it wasn't until Servants that I realized this was an actual, historical event, not some backstory invented by a mystery writer. It opens up a range of options for the Keeper, or even the Night's Black Agents director. Consider:

• The agency can be a source of information. You can justify any skill set you care to name - Archaeology, Accounting, History, Library Use, Bureaucracy, High Society, Surveillance - and the agency can meet that need. So if the investigators pick up an interesting doodad, and don't know what it is or what it does, ask Universal Aunts to look into the problem. Or need someone followed, or something looked into.
• The agency can be an employer or patron, for female investigators. That former Dilettante who lost all her family money in the great Crash can find a new sense of purpose, and employment, with Universal Aunts. It might work even better with a group of all female investigators.
• It can be a clue dispenser. Are the investigators getting bogged down in minutiae, or lost in the weeds? Universal Aunts might point them in the right direction, albeit indirectly. Say the investigators are having trouble tracking down Stanley Fentiman, or they want to know why he was kicked out of his old College, or what he's been up to recently. Universal Aunts may know, because one of its members knows Fentiman, or used to work with him, or has connections with the College that chucked him out. Or Universal Aunts may come to the investigators and ask their help with Fentiman, thus giving the investigators a clue as to his whereabouts or plans. 
• It can be a training facility. If the investigator needs to brush up on her Latin, History, Vampirology, or whatever it may be, there's bound to be an Aunt who knows all about it, and can help.
• It can be an occult investigative agency. This is similar to the employer or patron option, above, except that it exists to combat occult threats. It hides this mission under some discreet front, but imagine a Universal Aunts founded, not by Gertie Maclean, but by Wilhemina Murray. Or Dion Fortune, or anyone with occult interests. Universal Aunts wouldn't be up there with Delta Green, sending out hit squads to eliminate threats, but there's all kinds of trouble it could get up to. That mysterious Count, for example, with his business interests in Whitby - no doubt the Aunts have crossed swords with him before. 

The best thing about Universal Aunts, of course, is that it still exists. Anything For Anyone At Any Time is one heck of a motto to live up to for over a hundred years, but Universal Aunts has managed it. 'Universal Aunts still endeavors to rise to any challenge.' I bet it does! This means it can be a resource in Call, Trail, and Night's Black Agents; plausible in any era. 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Playing with Real Toys: Abandoned Orient Express Trains, Belgium (GUMSHOE Modern)

There was a time when Orient Express meant luxury, mystery, and romance. Those days aren't quite gone, but the train in these pictures has seen better days. Abandoned somewhere in a Belgian train yard, these old carriages and locomotive have been quietly rusting away for many years. Lost and forgotten things have many stories to tell - so what can we do with this one?

A quick note on ownership: the photos shown here were obtained via Urban Ghosts and the blog Rebecca Bathory. I understand Urban Ghosts obtained at least some of its images from another user, blogging at PreciousDecay. To my knowledge, those are the original sources of the images.

For those who aren't familiar with Georges Nagelmackers' pride and joy, a brief history.

The state of train travel in Europe during the Victorian era was lamentable. Functional, yes, but where was the style? The panache? Meanwhile, across the water, American George Mortimer Pullman was showing how it could be done: luxury travel, in a carriage fit for a king, not the knock-crack-smash in a wooden box that everyone had become used to. 

This inspired many innovators, including Belgian Georges Nagelmackers, who founded the Wagons-Lits Company in 1867. His dream was to create a train empire, luxury that traveled across the continent, and he was successful. You could start in London, end in Constantinople, and never lack for anything, whether it be fine dining, comfortable sleeping compartments, or congenial companionship. Each carriage had its own name, its own personality, decorated and fitted to the highest standards of the day. Every need was anticipated, and catered for, down to the least detail.

Image taken from Wikipedia, Plan de vaisselle CIWL

If you had any pretense to importance, you wanted to be seen on that train, and that went for fictional characters as well as the more mundane sort. Dracula's hunters went by Orient Express from Paris to Varna, beating their quarry to the punch. English hero Harry Flashman went with his journalist friend Blowitz on the train's maiden voyage. James Bond nearly lost his life on that train, and Agatha Christie uses it twice, once in a short story, and again in her novel Murder on the Orient Express - probably the most famous novel about the Orient Express.

Image taken from Wikipedia.

The Great War knocked back the Express, and for the first time in its history it was unable to traverse its entire route. At war's end, armistice papers were signed aboard one of the train's luxury carriages; when Hitler kicked off World War Two, he made sure that the French surrender documents were signed aboard that same carriage, and later, when defeat seemed imminent, he blew it up. After World War Two the train revived again, but with a dramatically altered route; some of its traditional stops were now behind the Iron Curtain. However in the end it wasn't history but technology that killed it off; in the jet set age, there was no demand for train travel, however luxurious. For a brief time there was no train at all. Then in 1982 enthusiasts revived the brand, restoring some of the old carriages and building others. Now the London to Venice luxury run is purely for well-heeled sightseers, not for travelers on their own mysterious passage from wherever to whenever.

The train and carriages seen in the photographs are 1930s vintage, probably left there in the 1970s. If the 1980s enthusiasts looked at them at all, presumably they believed what was left wasn't economically viable - they may have been too far gone to be restored.

With all that in mind, some scenario seeds for Night's Black Agents, Fear Itself, and Esoterrorists.

Night's Black Agents: the opposition proposes a midnight meeting at the train yards; whether to exchange hostages or for some other reason is immaterial to the seed. The exchange is to take place aboard one of the abandoned Orient Express cars. As might be expected, it's a trap: two snipers have the train carriage covered, and there's a bomb inside.

Thrilling Elements: 

• A chilled bottle of champagne and an appropriate number of glasses rest on one of the abandoned carriage's seats. [the bomb, on remote detonation, is under the seat.]
• A goods train comes to an unexpected stop some distance away, and the screech can be heard throughout the yards.
• The faint glow of cigarettes can be seen, perhaps some fifty yards away - train staff on a crafty break, or something else?
• Train cars loom ominously in the darkness; every shadow could hide a potential threat.
• A tapped-out, blood-starved Renfield [the Conspiracy think she's a traitor, and this is as good a way as any of dealing with her], captured ally or other defenseless, twitching body is tied up on the carriage floor.
• A train unexpectedly switches to the track the agents are on.

Fear Itself: Urban Explorers say the Orient Express cars have a completely different personality at night, and the latest dare is to go there after midnight and leave some sign that you've been there - a card, a mark, anything. However some of those who do never return, and some who do return say they hear odd noises, a voice speaking in German. In fact, one is the train car Hitler ordered destroyed, but not because he thought it would be used as a war trophy. The demon inside Hitler transferred its consciousness to a special phylactery shortly before war's end, and arranged for it to be hidden inside the train car, for later retrieval by dedicated followers. The dazed and reeling Fuhrer, free of its influence, tried to have the car destroyed, but the demon's followers prevented this. However the last few months of the war saw all the Nazi occultists killed or captured, which meant nobody was able to retrieve the phylactery. There it sits to this day, waiting to be rediscovered - and in the meantime causing all kinds of mayhem to those unwise enough to disturb it without using the proper ritual.

Esoterrorists:  Several Esoterror cells across Europe have united with a singular purpose: to place copies of the abandoned Orient Express cars in every train stop that the original Express visited, before the Great War. Urban explorers from Paris to Istanbul report seeing these train cars, apparently copied to the last detail from the Belgian originals, left in depots and apparently forgotten. Are the Esoterrorists trying to create some kind of spirit copy of the original Orient Express, and if so, is this to weaken the Membrane, or have the Esoterrorists some other purpose in mind? Could this be an attempt to resurrect someone, or something, that rode aboard the Orient Express? Does this have anything to do with a string of murders, also from Paris to Istanbul, with one thing in common: an antique train ticket from 1892 found in the pockets of the dead?

That's it for this week. Enjoy!  

Twisting Christie (GUMSHOE All)

When constructing a mystery scenario - say for BubbleGumshoe - the Director/Keeper will want to keep the players on their toes. Everyone loves a plot twist. It's practically mandatory. The problem is, how to keep players from guessing the twist halfway through?

In some settings, guessing the twist is half the fun. The Dracula Dossier, for instance, provides three possible ways for any person, place or thing to develop; as an innocent, or unconnected plot point, as an Edom-friendly plot point, or as Dracula's puppet. That way the Director can adjust things on the fly, and account for unwise player mutterings like, 'God, we would be so, so hosed if the Journalist turned out to be one of Dracula's minions.' The twist is baked in.

That said, the Dracula Dossier is huge. Over 360 pages of unrelenting evil. When writing your own stuff, you may not want to spend time making sure every single person, place or thing the players might encounter has three different aspects. So what to do?

Author Karen Woodward has this to say about mystery maven Agatha Christie:

Christie often (though not always) had three distinct threads interwoven throughout most of her plots. Let's call these the A story, the B story and the C story.

A Story --> the murder (the whodunit)

B Story --> a romance

C Story --> a touch of evil

The A story is the main story, the story of the murder. The B story is a subplot that includes one of the main characters in a romance. The C story is another subplot, one about a character who has malign intentions toward one of the other characters. These intentions aren't related to the murder--perhaps this is suspected but, in the end, the 'touch of evil' character will not be intimately connected with it.

In Death In The Clouds, for example, the A plot is the murder of blackmailer and moneylender Madame Giselle. The B plot is the romance between ingénue Jane Grey and dentist Norman Gale. The C plot revolves around crime novelist Mister Clancy, who may or may not be the murderer. 

Yet a typical scenario often has only an A plot: one clear objective, which the agents or investigators have to shoot for or die in the attempt. Seldom is there a B plot, and almost never a C. However the disentanglement of A from B and C is what makes the twist a twist. It's because the reader can't be sure that A won't turn into C at the last minute, or vice versa, that the denouement becomes a denouement, and not just a rubber mask removal.

Now, it's unreasonable to have a romance B plot in every single scenario. Christie liked them, but you're trying to get a plot out every other week, where she's aiming to get a novel out every six months or so. Equally, in a TV series where there's a romance subplot, the romance isn't part of every single episode. Flirting, yes, but not the full-blown will-they-won't-they stuff. The audience gets tired if you return to the same plot points in every scenario, whether it's romance or some other thing.

However a B plot that adds some non-threatening drama is perfectly reasonable. Even better if it includes something the characters can relate to, but what that thing is will depend largely on the setting. In Bookhounds of London, the obvious target is the store itself. In Dreamhounds of Paris, it could be a proposed art showing, possibly even the 1938 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme. In settings where there are character hooks baked into the setting - like Night's Black Agents with its Sources of Stability - there are other possibilities.

With that in mind, and using a Bookhounds scenario idea I've described in the past, let's do some brainstorming and see where the B and C plots might be.

Lucy Ainsworth is the second daughter of wealthy shipping magnate Peter Ainsworth. Her eldest sister is married to minor nobility, and lives in Kensington. She and her younger sister Elanor still live in the family home in Wimbledon; both parents are dead.

Years of simmering hatred and jealousy have turned Lucy into a werewolf. She sees herself as the guardian of the Ainsworth legacy, defending it - and the Wimbledon house she and her sister Elanor share - against intruders. So far her activities haven't attracted attention, but her restraint is slipping. Sooner or later something will happen that will shatter their peaceful home life for good.

So the A plot is Lucy, and what to do about the ravening werewolf she's become. We're now looking for B and C plots that can be tied into A.

B is meant to be the non-threatening plot. It may or may not be the cheerful plot. When Christie plots her B level romances, they don't always end well. C is the touch of evil plot, the character that draws focus away from the real villain. C may or may not be a threat, but C certainly looks like a threat.

Since this is Bookhounds, the store is in play. There may be other, character-related hooks that are equally viable, but when writing for a group not your own you can't guarantee those hooks are there or, if they are, whether they're useful.

So let's make the B plot store-relevant. If the store is actually in Wimbledon, even better, though again when writing for a group not your own you can't order things the way you'd like them.

The main plot is about jealousy and rage, so it would be good if the B plot could also be about jealousy and rage. This helps tie everything together, thematically, reinforcing the scenario's central concept.

So: one of the store's rivals, fed up at the store's perceived success, hires Chester Riley, an amateur actor down on his luck, to do them foul. Chester, who thinks he's a master of disguise, keeps coming back to the store again and again to cause trouble. Maybe this time he'll make himself obnoxious while customers are in the shop. Or loudly argue with the staff about the price of a book. Or say he wants to return a book, since it was damaged when he bought it and he wants his money back. Of course he's doing that in front of a crowd of would-be customers.

In order to deal with the B plot the characters need to work out who Chester is, and why he's doing what he's doing.

Note that the B plot has little relevance to the main plot. It's a distraction, a thing the characters don't have to worry about too much, but can't entirely ignore since it does affect their lives and livelihood.

It could have been different, of course. Given the relationship between Lucy, Elanor, and anyone who pays any kind of attention to Eloise, a romance B plot is doable. The difficulty is how to involve the characters. Either they have to be the object of someone's affection, or they have to willingly pursue it. Willingly pursue is fun, if a player can be persuaded, but the Keeper can't rely on that every time. Alternatively Elanor - or possibly Lucy - might develop a fixation, but then you run the risk of it being short-lived if the player decides to negate the idea.

That, and ideally you want to involve all the players, otherwise one character's getting a lot of spotlight time for no other reason than that the plot says they must. You want to avoid 'the plot says, therefore you must' as often as you can, whether for B plots or any other reason.

One further possibility is to have an NPC be the lover and an NPC - presumably Elanor - be the object of affection. However that means two NPCs are basically having their own plot with no player input. Again, this is something to be avoided if at all possible.

Onward to C.

The C plot is the touch of evil plot. It needs to feature someone, or thing, that seems to be a threat but in fact is not. Since this is a horror game, that C plot probably needs to feature something supernatural-ish - heavy on the ish.

It also needs to be relevant to the main plot, unlike the B plot. The B plot can afford to be a little oddball, and so long as it affects the characters it doesn't matter if it isn't 100% plot relevant. In the same sense, the romance between Jane Grey and Norman Gale isn't 100% plot relevant, though the reader becomes invested anyway.

So we need a touch of evil character who is related to the A plot but not a central part of it. We already have a maddened werewolf and her trapped sister. We also have another sister, married, who lives in Kensington. We haven't specified who the sister married.

Let's say that the sister married Algernon Parker, a no-good snake in the grass who married sister Helen for her money. Thanks to unwise speculation that money's almost gone, though you'd never know it to look at their lifestyle. Algernon knows that Lucy and Elanor are still sitting on the bulk of their trust funds, and thinks that, if they wrote wills at all, they probably left everything to their sibling. After all, why wouldn't they?

Algernon's scheme is to get rid of Lucy and Elanor, so Helen can inherit the lot. However he wasn't counting on Lucy's unique condition. He has become aware of it, thanks to an unlucky encounter with Lucy on the Common, and is secretly worried he too might be infected after Lucy bit him. So he's resorting to magical means, and reading every grimoire and tome he can get his hands on - in part to find a cure, and in part to get rid of Lucy once and for all.

This may or may not bring him into the players' orbit, as he's bound to need Bookhounds. However so long as he keeps lurking in the background, possibly arranging fiendish traps to get rid of the Ainsworth sisters or chaining himself up at night to prevent disaster when he transforms, the players are bound to suspect him.

Which means they may not suspect Lucy - until it's too late.

Enjoy!

Faces in the Crowd: Monty Egg & Inspector Japp (Trail of Cthulhu)

From time to time it occurs to me that campaigns can benefit from borrowing fictional characters. Not the famous ones, necessarily; there's a danger of overkill if the protagonists suddenly realize they're dealing with Sherlock Holmes, for example. The non player character shouldn't overshadow the player characters, and someone of Holmes' reputation is bound to take up center stage. In my own scenarios I've borrowed real people, like Holmes' creator, but I've tried to keep them as advisers or background color. Anything else risks derailing the plot.

Yet there are times when a more obscure fiction could come in handy, and for this post I'm going to talk about two detectives: Dorothy Sayers' Monty Egg, and Agatha Christie's Inspector Japp.

Montague Egg is a commercial traveler, operating on behalf of wine merchants Plummet & Rose, Piccadilly. He's a young man, well mannered, and usually well - if not expensively - dressed. He served in the War, though there's no mention of any distinctions, and is unmarried. There's no suggestion of a romantic life; the closest Egg gets to that is in Maher-shalal-hasbaz, in which he comes to the rescue of a young woman. Like most fictional detectives, his personal life isn't nearly as important as his deductive ability, and Monty scores here by being both observant and, in his own field, very clever. In once case, Sleuths on the Scent, he picks out which, of all the people currently in the same pub as he, is the chemist suspect the police are looking for, because he knows how chemists will pour out small samples from a bottle. In The Poisoned Dow '08, he suspects the killer - a servant - from the start because the last time Egg called at the house the servant was rude to him, whereas on this occasion he's startlingly polite. He's the sort of person who knows a lot of little things, and is willing to put the work in. His characteristic habit is to quote from his favorite reading material, The Salesman's Handbook, which contains such gems as:

To serve the public is the aim of every salesman worth the name.

Don't trust to luck but be exact, and certify the smallest fact.

The salesman who will use his brains will spare himself a world of pains.

The salesman with the open eye sees commissions mount up high.

A commercial traveler, for those not familiar with the term, is a traveling salesman. He might own his own car, or travel by train; Egg has a car. He goes from place to place persuading customers to order his company's spirits, in an age long before the internet, and in Egg's case he usually targets individual buyers rather than trade orders. A commercial traveler, by necessity, knows everything there is to know about the roads, rails and pubs on his beat; he relies on them for his food and lodging.

In a Trail of Cthulhu game someone like Monty is both antagonist and potential ally. The characters are often up to no good, even if their intentions are noble; Monty, in his role as amateur sleuth, might work out what they've been up to. As an ally Monty has a wealth of information to offer, both about his clients and about his beat. He also knows a great many police officers, which might come in handy if the protagonists find themselves in need of official help.

Montague Egg

Abilities: Athletics 4, Conceal 4, Driving 5, Firearms 4, First Aid 3, Fleeing 5, Health 6, Scuffling 4, Weapons 5 [note: his combat scores reflect his Great War service; Egg never got into scuffles in any of his stories.]

Alertness: +1

Stealth: +0

Special: If he becomes an ally, he acts as a free 1 point pool Cop Talk, or Evidence Collection.

Inspector Japp is slightly more famous than Egg, but that's thanks to his association with world-famous detective Hercule Poirot. Japp has a career of his own, and the Keeper may find it useful to have a Scotland Yard policeman on call who everyone will recognize. Japp is a competent investigator in his own right, but Poirot deplores "his general lack of method," and Poirot's friend Hasting thinks Japp's "highest talent lay in the gentle art of seeking favors in the guise of conferring them!"

His television appearances are much more frequent than his fictional history would suggest. He appears in seven novels and a handful of short stories, whereas in Suchet's television series he's pretty much the only policeman Poirot knows. Christie spends very little time describing Japp - she spends very little time on any of her characters, really - but if we take Philip Jackson's Japp as a model then he's an older man, probably in his mid-to-late 30s or early 40s, in good physical condition. He doesn't often get into fights in the stories, but it's reasonable to think he can hold his own in a brawl. In the television series he's more of an action hero, and is often seen taking down a suspect or chasing after one. As an investigator he is thorough and has good instincts, though he will sometimes come to the wrong conclusion because, as Poirot would describe it, he accepts what he sees without question, when he ought to see with "the eyes of the mind" and work out what must have happened from the available facts.  He rises to the rank of Detective Chief Inspector, which means he ought to have significant authority, but it may be more sensible - from a game perspective - to keep him at lower rank, at least to start with.

As a policeman Japp's obvious use, to the Keeper, is as a potential antagonist. In The Many Deaths of Edward Bigsby, Detective Inspector Howard is a Japp-alike, capable of causing the protagonists a lot of trouble. But if they manage to win Howard over, he can be a tremendous help to them. At the same time, Japp isn't going to overshadow the protagonists. He's no deductive genius, nothing like as clever as Poirot. He's very energetic and determined, but if the protagonists try, they can out-think him. 

Detective Inspector James Harold Japp

Abilities: Athletics 6, Conceal 2, Disguise 2, Firearms 5, Fleeing 6, Health 8, Scuffling 8, Weapons 4

Alertness: +0

Stealth: +1


Special: If he becomes an ally, he acts as a free 1 point pool Cop Talk, or Forensics.

Trail of Cthulhu Sordid London: Fabian of the Yard

Detective Inspector Robert Fabian, ex-Scotland Yard, author, and TV personality, is one of those sources you have to treat with caution. His book, London After Dark, is in my collection, and it's an entertaining read.  The difficulty is, Fabian's a relentless self-publicist intent on creating his own mythology, and you have to be cautious about taking his word as gospel. That said, anyone seeking source material for a Bookhounds of London game would do well to seek out a copy, particularly if they want to create a Sordid London setting. Endless data mining can be had, provided you're prepared to hold your nose when Fabian goes off on another tangent.

Bob Fabian started his police career in the early 1920s, and rose through the ranks, eventually becoming Detective Superintendent, and head of the Vice Squad. He's the eponymous pipe-smoking British hero, the kind of brains-and-brawn policeman that wouldn't have been out of place in an Agatha Christie novel. If he ever failed, you wouldn't know it by London After Dark; time after time, he collars the crook he's after, often in spectacular fashion. After retirement he turned his career into a television series, Fabian of the Yard, drawn from episodes of his career, bookended by appearances by Fabian himself, describing what happened in the real-life case. And what a career it must have been; everything from dope king Eddie Manning right through to Satanist enclaves and perverts in the 1950s. Fabian's the sort of detective who'll casually describe blacks as having the "brains of children" while at the same time displaying pictures of himself having a pint with his "colored" friends; who'll describe marihuana and cocaine in the most lurid terms imaginable; who'll casually link homosexuality with perversion and child molestation. He's a man of his times, no error, and very fond of the spotlight to boot. It's not as if he was the only one publishing his memoirs - Edward Greeno's War On The Underworld's well worth looking at, among others - but there's something slightly off-putting about Fabian's eagerness to be in the center of things. As a reader, you're left with the impression he'd let nothing stand in the way of a good story, which can be very worrying if you're relying on your source for factual accuracy.

As this is Trail of Cthulhu we're talking about, factual accuracy is the least of our worries. Let's get down to cases, and talk about two useful things to be drawn from Fabian's reminisces: night clubs, and young criminals.

"There are 295 registered clubs within one mile of Eros Statue in Piccadilly," says Fabian, "where music, dancing drinks and companions await the well-filled wallet. The job is to empty that wallet - whether they do it with pink champagne and satin-quilted walls; or by meth-and-ginger ale, marijuana cigarettes and tope-jumpy teenage girls who, for two pounds, would cuddle a baboon." Of course, if there are 295 registered clubs, there are bound to be plenty of unregistered ones too - Fabian claims to know of fifteen - none of them very expensive to set up or run. A single room, a few tables, some chairs, and girls; that's all a clubman needs. Then, much as now, a club could shut up in a week crushed by debt, or run for years with the efficiency and morals of a rat trap. Some were very inventive. "The Hell Club ... was installed with hidden lighting that changed color slowly, at a time when this was quite a novelty, and sank from pink to deep red and ghastly purple, and with various effects to make flickering shadows. I have no doubt that some of the patrons must have thought they had actually arrived!" Or there were the American clubs, like the 21 and the Be-Bop, with the exotic appeal of the foreign and unfamiliar. It was a toss-up which approach worked better, the no-expense-spared or the budget option; a club's appeal is ephemeral, and often depends as much on the mood of the moment as the decor or the head waiter.

From a Bookhounds point of view, the typical Club is in Westminster, and the contacts most often met there are barmen, bright young things, inspectors and bobbies (during a raid), prostitutes and gamblers. Gambling is illegal in London, as is prostitution, which - according to Fabian - led to a novel defense against the income tax brigade. Fabian alleged that, when asked, notorious women would declare without shame "I am a prostitute of London," at which point the income tax inspectors backed hurriedly away. The last thing they wanted to do was get involved. Gamblers had a different problem; when they lost, they were expected to pay up. Sometimes gamblers relied on the Gaming Act, which essentially said that debts arising from gambling were unenforceable. They hoped to brazen it out. But if their creditor has criminal connections, they might sell the debt on to a gang, which has its own means of debt collection.

 Now let's talk about criminals.

"'Pity you wasn't here last night, Mr. Fabian,' said the barman. 'You never seen such a mess as those villains made of that girl!'" They suspected her of being a nark, a police informant. The three walked into the bar, ordered three pints, and a bottle of brandy. They drank their beer, then poured the brandy into an empty pint pot. "'He goes across to this girl. Have a drink, Rabbit, he says, and tips it all over her. Face, hair, clothes - the lot! Ever get neat brandy in your eyes, Mr. Fabian? Well, she starts to scream, claws at her eyeballs. He just grins. He takes out his cigarette lighter and calmly sets her off like a Christmas pudding!"

 It's well known that the police and the criminals they chase, in period, seldom carry firearms. That doesn't stop violence; if anything, it becomes more inventive. Some of the worst offenders are children. They might wear makeshift armor, metal shields under their shirts that cover them from wrist to elbow, intended to protect their arms and wrists from knives, razors and chains. They always have some kind of sharp weapon, whether it's a set of rings with hooks embossed, or fish hooks sewn into their jacket sleeves and hat brims. If that sounds like something trivial, imagine having half a dozen fish hooks embedded in your face, then pulled out in one long scraping motion, just by a seeming casual brush-by. There isn't a criminal in London that goes unarmed, and the Keeper should assume each has the equivalent of a knife (-1) at the least. The only saving grace, when dealing with a professional crook, is that the pro is usually too careful to get mixed up in violence. They don't like prison, but it's never difficult to find an amateur - again, often children, or teens - willing to do something drastic for a nominal fee. "There are crazy young hoodlums of the underworld, hungry to make a reputation for being tough, who will slash your face for twenty five pounds, though they know they will be arrested within a very short time of doing it!"

But there are gunmen. "The true gunman is always slender, with agitated appearance, like a man who has been kept waiting. He is solitary. Also, he loves his gun. He cleans it frequently. When I arrested the gunman who did London's first daylight armed robbery of a jeweler's in Oxford Street, he was busy loading his gun in his bedroom. He had polished every cartridge until it glittered. If he hadn't been so particular his gun might have been loaded when we burst in." The true gunman always has grey eyes, according to Fabian; make of it what you will. The gunman knows that his natural prey - cashiers and clerks, perhaps carrying payroll - is also armed, but they couldn't hit a doorway at ten paces, and frequently don't bother to take care of their weapons. The true gunman doesn't fear them, but he'll be wary of shooting a policeman, not because he has a conscience but because he knows that, as soon as the deed's done, every single patrolman and officer - 16,000 men - will be after him, day and night. And after arrest, the hangman. 

I hope you found this useful! I may return to Fabian later; he's a fund of odd trivia, even if I wonder about his reliability as a source.