Notices - Color Coded For Your Convenience (Night's Black Agents)

We had an exercise at work that involved INTERPOL which meant I had to look up their Notice system. It's the kind of thing that spices up your day job, and I thought the Directors out there might find it interesting:

• Red Notice: To seek the location and arrest of persons wanted for prosecution or to serve a sentence.
• Yellow Notice: To help locate missing persons, often minors, or to help identify persons who are unable to identify themselves.
• Blue Notice: To collect additional information about a person’s identity, location or activities in relation to a criminal investigation.               
• Black Notice: To seek information on unidentified bodies.
• Green Notice: To provide warning about a person’s criminal activities, where the person is considered to be a possible threat to public safety.
• Orange Notice: To warn of an event, a person, an object or a process representing a serious and imminent threat to public safety.
• Purple Notice: To seek or provide information on modus operandi, objects, devices and concealment methods used by criminals.

The Red Notice stands out, obviously. Eye-catching. Very Bill Browder. But a Director may get more juice out of the Blue, Black and Yellow ones.

Blue Notices are the ones most likely to apply to player characters. All that Heat has to go somewhere. A Solace might reasonably become the subject of a Yellow Notice. Black Notices, though, that has potential. You might find almost anything hiding under that rock. 

Operation Identify Me is an example of a series of Black Notices and I wouldn't go clicking that link if murder upsets you as it's a sad, long list of dead women. Cold cases going back 40-odd years, for the most part. However, if you want to invent a Black Notice of your own it gives a pretty comprehensive means of doing so.

Case name: The woman with the artificial nails

Case code: 2023-BEL06

Very simple case name. The code is year of entry on the system, location (BEL - Belgium) and number in the case file. In this instance she's the sixth in the Belgium list.

I find myself drawn to that case name. It's almost poetic. It looks like the kind of thing you might find on the cover of an old detective novel. Not an Agatha Christie, but perhaps a Dashiell Hammett or a Raymond Chandler. Even a Steig Larsson 

There follows some facial reconstruction and pictures of items found with the body, then a series of relevant points:

Date of death (estimated): 

Date of discovery: 

Location: 

Sex: 

Estimated year of birth: 

Estimated age: 

Height: 

Skin tone: 

Hair colour: 

Eye colour: 

Clothing: 

Tattoos, birth marks, scars: 

Jewellery: 

This is followed by a brief description of the case itself, the circumstances under which the body was found, likely point of origin and so on.

Yellow Notices work in a broadly similar way, except without the colorful case name as the names of the missing are usually known. The notice would include a picture of the missing person and some relevant information:

Family name

Forename

Gender

Date of birth

Place of birth

Nationality

Place of disappearance

Date of disappearance

Countries likely visited

Issuing country

Details

Father's family name and forename

Mother's family name and forename

Language(s) spoken

The police would have a more detailed version of each Notice so agents may find Cop Talk or Law useful, but in practical game terms if you wanted to use these in a session this is likely all you'd need to give the agents. 

All that said, let’s gamify. 

Black Notice: The Burned Body of the Mauerpark 

The agents come across this Black Notice through Tradecraft, Law or similar, probably as part of a general sweep for information in Berlin. 

The burned body is an adult female approximately 20-30 years old, found on 28th April 1992. The body was found in the Mauerpark, a public park on the site of the old Berlin Wall where the heavily guarded Death Strip used to be. The Wall crumbled in 1989 and the spot was designated a green space; these days it’s a popular spot, with a Wall memorial, Karaoke amphitheater and flea market as well as the green space where the East German defenses used to be. 

That was all in the future, in 1992. 

The body was discovered in the early hours of 28th April, by garbage collectors who noticed a peculiar smell and alerted police. She was short, probably between 20-30 years old, red dyed hair (original color light brown) no clothing when found. It was believed by investigators at the time that she was killed in another spot and then dumped here. No sign of sexual molestation. Fingerprint analysis came up empty. 

This case is as cold as it gets.  

Or it would be, if someone in the British secret services wasn’t making enquiries. Discreet ones, but not discreet enough. There’s just enough Heat on this one to attract notice, particularly if the PC agent in question has Berlin as one of their Favored Cities. It doesn’t help that [the Investigative Journalist / Human Rights Activist / Mysterious Monseigneur] is also poking around, and not being that subtle about it. 

Who was the dead woman, and why is she attracting attention now? 

• Option One: One Of Ours. The British connection is the Boffin, and he’s looking for a former associate. Way, way back he sent one of his assistants, Dani Forester, on what ought to have been a milk run to collect some important material on the German Vampire Program, and she never came back. The Prince of the day assured the Boffin that everything had been done that could have been done, but the Boffin never believed that for a minute. Now he’s retired he feels the need to kick over his traces and find out what really happened to Dani. The Americans, who have a vampire program of their own, would rather he didn’t find out that Dani was the victim of one of their botched operations, disposed of to cover up their own vampire’s misdeeds. The Prince of the day, eager to cooperate with his American cousins, collaborated in their cover-up. Chickens are about to come home to roost. 

• Option Two: One of Theirs. The British connection is the current Hound and she’s after what she thinks is evidence of the Alraune, aka Dani Forester. Back in the day Edom was closing in on her, and Hound thinks the fiery death scene was a fake-out. The [Investigative Journalist / Human Rights Activist / Mysterious Monseigneur] isn’t after the dead woman; they’re after the Hound and think that linking them with an old scandal may be the perfect way to drag Edom into the spotlight. What none of them appreciate is that it really was Alraune back in 1992, who faked a death to cover their escape. Now they have a life in Berlin, but wouldn’t you know it, they never bothered to change their appearance all that much. Someone showing an interest in a woman with her face, whether burnt in 1992 or not, isn’t helping her Cover one bit. 

• Option Three: One of the Enemy. The British connection is Cushing, who’s memory isn't as confused as he pretends. He's pushing old contacts to find out whether there was any evidence of a people-trafficking Node operating out of Berlin. He believed at the time that his superiors were covering up a nasty little scandal because there were important members of Thatcher’s government who might have been caught with their hands in the till. The [Investigative Journalist / Human Rights Activist / Mysterious Monseigneur] is after a modern version of that same Node, and isn’t aware that it goes all the way back to 1992. If they only knew, it actually goes all the way back to 1942; the Conspiracy’s ‘man’ in Berlin has been busy all that while, and there are more than a dozen bodies disposed of with roughly the same MO throughout the 20th Century. It’s still involved in human trafficking, but it’s gotten cleverer about disposing of the unfortunate accidents. 

That’s it for this week! Enjoy. 

The Grey Man of Berlin (Night's Black Agents)

I'm going to draw on some information from the Dracula Dossier, Double Tap (ekimmu, the Babylonian possessing spirit p107-8) and this article about Beckett's Head, Berlin.

What came before: the German Vampire Project, pre-war, experimented with various necromantic techniques to create their supernatural crew and one of the less successful projects was Rattenfänger, which created one successful prototype but was unable to replicate its work. 

Its prototype, the Ekimmu that came to be known as Herr Flint, escaped the lab in the hectic last months of the Nazi regime. It survived the immediate inter-war years by making itself useful as a freelance operative serving the Americans, British and Russians; Herr Flint knew where the bodies were buried, literally and figuratively. It passed itself off as a low-level research assistant who just happened to know where the good stuff was kept, swapping information for security. Twice its cover was penetrated, and twice it faked its own death only to pop up again months or years later as an informant. 

When the Berlin Wall shot up Herr Flint saw an opportunity and, using the contacts it had made in the inter-war years, became an independent information broker between the living and the dead, whether Conspiracy dead or just regular. It wore out several bodies but accumulated a small fortune, as well as a significant amount of favors - currency, in the Cold War.

Recently Herr Flint decided to retire, after a close brush with permanent death thanks to the Mysterious Monseigneur. However, it's under pressure from a Conspiracy node, the Bankhaus Klingemann. Lisle wants Herr Flint to do one last favor for her, and as a substantial portion of Herr Flint's assets are held by the Bankhaus the Ekimmu finds Lisle's blandishments difficult to resist.

However, Herr Flint doesn't want to have anything to do with Lisle's schemes and has hit upon a solution: the Yojimbo option.

Enter the agents.

From the Guardian:

Beckett's Head is unmarked save for an eerily glowing photograph of Samuel Beckett in the window, so you'll need to ring a doorbell to gain access to this Prenzlauer Berg bar. Inside are two elegant, dimly lit rooms (one reserved for smokers) with low tables and chesterfield sofas. The comprehensive drinks list – ensconced between the pages of a Beckett tome – is divided into sections such as fresh and funky, and herbal and floral, and always features seasonal specials. The ice is hand-cut, and staff are happy to tailor-make drinks for the undecided. Absinthe fans may wish to sample the bar's take on the classic Monkey's Gland, made with English marmalade.

From Double Tap:

The ekimmu was a spirit of an unburied (or improperly buried) man that wanders the earth (or the underworld) bringing bad luck, disease, or a supernatural curse to its victims. Most often, the ekimmu possesses or attaches itself to a living victim, but some ekimmu animate corpses ... the ekimmu spends most of its time attached to or possessing a human or corpse, not least because (barring necromancy) it requires a human voice to interact with its Conspiracy colleagues. If it remains in the corpse too long, the skin shrinks over the bones and becomes pale or gray ... 

A Quiet Night Out

Information through the grapevine (tradecraft, streetwise or similar) suggests that important information concerning a Conspiracy operative is going to be traded in Berlin. One half of the deal is the infamous Grey Man of Berlin, but nobody knows who the buyer is. It might be interesting to find out ...

Opening

The agents pick up the Grey Man on the underground or U-Bahn, on his way to the meet. Surveillance is needed to avoid being spotted, and Sense Trouble notices a pair of disguised Bodyguards (p69 main book) following his every move. Herr Flint pretends not to notice these two, but he makes sure that they're never far away. 

The bodyguards look like a pair of students on a night out. Herr Flint looks like a bag of bones wrapped in an expensive suit. People on the U-Bahn avoid sitting near him if they can help it; he seems unwell. He has an expensive-seeming leather suitcase chained to his wrist. Anyone who pays him close attention also notices the gun he has in a concealed holster under his armpit. Agents with Law know that guns are heavily regulated in Germany; he's taking a big risk carrying something like that.

If the agents are spotted, Herr Flint tries to lose them by switching trains repeatedly on the U-Bahn (Difficulty 4 to keep up). It's a busy night and there are plenty of people trying to get home or to go out for a good time; a big crowd scene. If the bodyguards get an opportunity, they try to block the agents' path without seeming to do so deliberately.  

However, Herr Flint wants the agents to keep up with him so, if it looks like his attempt is successful, he'll deliberately sabotage it with an act of seeming carelessness. Clever agents with Sense Trouble may pick up on this deception and wonder why.

Agents who make a Sense Trouble Difficulty 5 notice that they're not the only suspicious characters on the U-Bahn tonight. A duo with special forces training (the agents may recognize them as members of the Gendarmerie Corps of Vatican City State) are trailing Herr Flint and have identified the agents as potential threats. If the agents recognize them, it raises a question: what are the Vatican's people doing quite so far from their turf?

Agents who pay close attention to the Vatican's people see them conferring every so often with what can only be surveillance assistance somewhere off-site. So there are more of them out there somewhere.

Arrival at Beckett's Head.

This cosy high-end cocktail bar is the sort of place anyone with High Society might start an entertaining evening, and tonight a group of execs from Bankhaus Klingemann are enjoying the finer things in life. Among the group is Lisle, the queen bee, holding court. They're in the smoking section, which (tonight only) is marked off for a private party.

Agents with Vampirology or Occult may notice that Herr Flint reacts badly to Lisle's bright red dress; the color red is a Dread for his kind.

Herr Flint takes up a spot at one end of the non-smoking section, enjoying a herbal cocktail. His bodyguards, who saunter in after him if they're still in it, are not far away. 

The Vatican group take up observation outside the Beckett's Head. The agents may notice a nondescript van parked not far away; the Mysterious Monseigneur or one of his senior henchmen is paying close attention from that observation post. Meanwhile the two special ops types the agents may have seen from before work their way around to a back entrance; they expect Herr Flint to make his way there and are planning to hit him when he does. 

Herr Flint is toying with a chess problem and using a board in the bar to play it out. He's paying it close attention. What he's not paying attention to is his leather case, which is by his side, unchained. 

Lisle saunters over and pretends to be interested in the problem as well, as is one of her inebriated colleagues. Though Herr Flint isn't too happy about her choice of costume he accepts her interest with polite decorum.

The inebriated colleague wanders off in search of the bathroom, but not before picking up the leather case. His instructions are to check the goods and, if satisfactory, leave Beckett's Head. If unsatisfactory, he rejoins the party.

That's what Herr Flint was hoping for. As an Ekimmu he has a special ability: when wounded his blood becomes an aerosol phantom that takes the shape of a predatory bird or storm cloud. He booby-trapped the case with a blood bomb; the colleague sets it off as soon as he opens the case. Herr Flint used 5 of his Health to make the phantom, which is one of the reasons why he looked so unhealthy tonight.

The first the agents may know about this is when the blood bomb goes off and the Bankhaus Klingemann exec comes stumbling out, drained dry by the blood phantom and breathing his last. While this distraction is going on, Herr Flint collapses. 

Except not really. Herr Flint has decided the time has come for a change of body. He had intended to take Lisle but she protected herself by wearing red. Now he has to choose someone else.

His options, in descending order: the agents, the Vatican agents, a Bankhaus employee at the party, some random civilian.

Meanwhile his bodyguards, not realizing his deception, leap to the defense of their principal. 

Thus starts a three-way melee. Herr Flint's bodyguards are almost innocent bystanders in all this and are armed with non-lethal weaponry, but they are a complicating factor. The blood phantom is immaterial and is partly controlled by Herr Flint, but it lacks a motivating force and is basically draining everything it can. The Vatican's people will intervene as soon as they realize what's going on, but that will take a few combat rounds. Meanwhile Lisle, who has a bodyguard of her own at the party who doesn't believe in non-lethal weaponry, will first try to get hold of the briefcase and then, when she realizes it's a scam, make her exit.

Herr Flint's objective is to find a new body and get out.

The Vatican's objective is to put an end to Herr Flint once and for all, and they have the Banes to do it but lack a target - at least until they find out which body Herr Flint now operates from. 

Lisle and Bankhaus' objective was to get hold of the data Herr Flint promised them. Once they realize the data is a sham, their next objective is to get hold of Herr Flint.

Once Herr Flint has a new body he'll move outside, where he has a fast motorcycle stashed not far from Beckett's Head. This may provoke a Chase scene, as Herr Flint makes his getaway. 

Herr Flint has a safe house luxury apartment in Berlin where he'll stay the night and, if he isn't tracked down, he'll leave Berlin soon after in his new body. The Grey Man lives to fight another day ...

Interesting footnote: Prenzlauer Berg has been a center of youth counterculture and squats that, today, is undergoing gentrification. The old hippies are being squeezed out, but it's still a youth-trending neighborhood. Added to that, there are any number of WWII era bunkers under Berlin, including Prenzlauer Berg. You're spoilt for choice: that safe house could be in one of the few bits of Prenzlauer Berg that hasn't succumbed to gentrification, daubed with Cold-War era graffiti, or it could be in a lost Nazi bunker beneath Prenzlauer Berg. Either way, an excellent and evocative spot for a final showdown!

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

   

The Clue Trail (GUMSHOE All)

GUMSHOE is a player-facing RPG that uses a clue-gathering system as its main mechanic. Find a core clue, and you uncover part of the mystery. Find a non-core clue, perhaps by spending points, and not only do you uncover part of the mystery you also gain some other advantage. The exact nature of this advantage will depend on the situation and the needs of both the player and Game Master. The player may want a specific advantage; the Game Master may find it prudent to slip the player an advantage that they don’t yet know they need. 

All of which begs the question: how many clues make a clue trail? 

As a very broad-brush approach I recommend the Rule of Four, spread across the various disciplines each system uses.  

Naturally you’re going to want to adapt this depending on the needs of your narrative and the situation you find yourself dealing with. However, GUMSHOE, unlike crunch-heavy systems, relies on an improvisational style. If this were Dungeons and Dragons you’d be doing a lot of advance planning, literally populating every room in the dungeon and giving a call-out box for descriptions. A system like, say, Night’s Black Agents is a little more fluid. The agents may decide to go to Paris to talk to the mysterious socialite, or to Berlin to track down the drug smuggling network, or to Rome to confront the crypto-terrorists. It’s not quite the same thing. No ten by ten, orc, chest, initiative, death saves, new PCs please, is what I’m getting at.  

As a reminder, the Rule of Four works like this: 

Whenever designing OPFOR - or for that matter anything else, whether it's the town the adventurers start in, the organization they work for, or the theatre which they notice as a potential adventure location, design four highlight points and no more than four. 

The average player's attention span is short, and yours is not any better. You could go deep in the weeds and design twenty different things about the OPFOR, but who apart from you will ever know it? Even you won't, not really; in the heat of play you'll forget half your notes and curse yourself later when you realize you could have used the Thing, dammit, the THING, and never did. 

As luck would have it in GUMSHOE there are generally four different sets of Abilities, representing four different ways into the problem: Academic, Technical, Interpersonal, and General. General is a little different from the others in that it represents those moments when you do a whatsis and might suck at doing the whatsis, so you roll dice. However, General can also be used for clue-gathering, and when that happens it works in much the same way as other Abilities. Spend 1 point, get a reward. Spend 2 points, either get 2 rewards or 1 really good reward. 

How do you layer the clue trail to make it seem as if the agents are following an actual line of breadcrumbs to Granny’s gingerbread house? 

Rule of Four. There are Four ways in: Academic, Technical, Interpersonal, General. What you need is one clue for each of the ways in, so one Academic, one Technical, one Interpersonal, one General. 

Why do it this way? Well, apart from the usual benefits that come with the Rule of Four, you get one extra: split four ways among the four Ability lists, someone in the group will have at least one of those Abilities with points to spend. That means no matter how Scooby Doo it gets one of your dream team will find their way to the mystery. 

It might even give the spotlight to someone who usually doesn’t get a spotlight moment. The Bang-and-Burner, happy little pyromaniac that she is, might finally have a moment to use her Flattery skills. Or whoever use their whatever – point being someone is going to get the spotlight moment, and it might not be the usual spotlight-hogger. 

Let’s put this into practice.  

Let’s say the players went to Berlin and you want them to find their way to Teufelsberg. You weren’t expecting them to be in Berlin this week, but what the heck, they’re there, and that’s what matters. Now the agents are looking for adventure in all the unexpected places. You already have Teufelsberg prepped (or at least semi-prepped) as an adventure location. The question is, what clues will lead to Teufelsberg?    

Rule of Four: no more than four clues, of which one must be Academic, one Technical, one Interpersonal, one General, and no matter what each one has to lead to Teufelsberg. What’s more, because the agents might spend 2 points in their pool, you have to have at least some idea of what might happen if they spend that extra point.  

Academic – History. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus the idea that the NSA left behind some interesting artefacts, buried in the rubble. Two points gets that plus some background information on Operation TOADSTOOL, the dumping-ground for potentially dangerous Nazi artefacts back in the before times. Maybe there's a specific Nazi artefact you want to drop hints about - now's the moment.

Interpersonal – Tradecraft. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus some old NSA files, slipped to the agent by a friendly at the local CIA station. Two points gets all that plus a free Contact, an ex-Stasi agent from the Cold War days who’s now more of a free-thinking hippie type who likes to graffiti tag Teufelsberg. 

Technical – Urban Survival. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus some maps and design schematics from back in the day, giving the agent a free Architecture bonus should they want it. Two points gets all that plus a guaranteed location at Teufelsberg where they will find more stuff – if they’re brave enough to go get it. 

General – Sense Trouble. One point gets the agent a general recent history of Teufelsberg plus some spooky extras (unexplained deaths, criminal activity, ghost activity, whatever suits best). Two points gets the agent all that plus one very specific clue about the type of OPFOR they will find at Teufelsberg. 

See the process? The first clue is always a general history of the encounter location, which in this case is Teufelsberg. It could have been anything really, but the larger point is this: one point gets the agent enough information to go from point A to point B, with just enough extra juice (old NSA files, hints of ghost activity) to make spending a point become an exciting option for the player.  The only slight difference is General, which gives recent history as opposed to ancient history. General tests tend to be more active in-the-moment tests, so it makes sense that a General ability used as a clue-gatherer gets up-to-date intel. 

Without the extra juice the clue becomes a core clue, or a zero-point clue. It costs nothing and gets no extra benefit.

Two points gets all the value of the first point spend, plus something special on top. A free Contact, a guaranteed reward, valuable information about the OPFOR, what-have-you. Point being, that extra spend gives the agents something of definite benefit. It might be anything but whatever it is, it’s something the player will definitely want and therefore definitely want to pay extra for. Kinda like Kickstarter, but without that pesky shipping delay. 

By keeping to a standard you can allow yourself several options. It didn’t have to be Academic – History. It might have been Academic – Research, or Occult Studies. But if you know what you need the agent to find in the first instance then it doesn’t matter which way they choose to go in. What matters is what they find when they get there.  

So if they foozle you by going in a path you hadn’t anticipated, you can still make it look good. Plaster on your blandest Cheshire Cat smile and say, ‘Vampirology? Well, as it happens you do discover …’ 

Clue planted.  

Enjoy! 

Eyes and Ears: Stasi (Night's Black Agents)

There's a new coffee-table book out for lovers of spy lore: Der Blick der Staatssicherheit (The Gaze of State Security). It's German, but as it's mainly photographs those who can't read German will still get something out of it.

The Stasi were East Germany's version of the secret police. Whether or not you think it was effective probably depends on whether you were born in East Germany and had to live under its regime. Certainly there were a lot of them. Their job was to root out the class enemy, the traitors who betrayed the People's Republic. One of their tools was the humble camera.

As the book points out, camera technology was still relatively new in the 1950s. It took a certain specialist knowledge to use one. However, as time went by and the technology went mainstream the Stasi's cache of surveillance photos increased exponentially. Photos were great. They documented everything. You could prove you were doing a good job if you had a picture of it, whatever it was. It might be a picture of a lightbulb, the same type and manufacture as one which had been thrown onto the roof of a passing car. It might be the faces of three children who kicked their football over the Berlin Wall into East Germany.

It might be absolutely anything.

I would have sworn I'd written about Deutschland 83 before, but apparently not - which is criminal of me. There's meant to be a sequel, Deutschland 86, but I haven't seen it yet. There is a trailer on YouTube but without subtitles it'd only be interesting to the German speakers out there.

I highly and without reservation recommend Deutschland 83 to Night's Black Agents players and Directors, particularly those who enjoy Dust games and who aren't afraid of a little Burn. Just don't get too attached to any of the characters.

When the East German government fell the Stasi did its level best to shred all the records, but the obvious problem was obvious: they had just too many things to shred and not enough shredders. All that paperwork, all those photographs; there was never any chance it'd get done before protestors stormed the gates and took control. It's said that some of the protestors were actually ex-Stasi determined to get hold of their own records and destroy them before anyone could find out about their many crimes. Regardless, in the decades since much of the Stasi's records have been saved, catalogued and made available for research, which is how we end up with books like The Gaze of State Security.

Which brings me to a scenario in two parts:

The State's Last Gasp

The scenario takes place in two different time periods. The first, an extended Thrilling Scene, takes place outside the Stasi Headquarters on 15th January, 1990. This will most likely involve pre-generated characters, possibly based on existing NPCs within your campaign. Any agents' Network Contact, mentor, or nemesis could be involved. An agent can also be involved, provided they're of an age to be a spy in 1990. Their task is to get inside the building and recover the McGuffin - the files.

Precisely what these files are is up to the Director. Perhaps the Stasi had their own version of the Dracula Dossier; not nearly as complete or all-encompassing as Edom's files, but useful nonetheless. Perhaps it's information about Stasi cooperation with agents of the Conspiracy. Blackmail material, photographs of sites which may or may not have been Dracula's castle, personal files of former Stasi who now occupy trusted positions in unified Germany, or whose children are politically or economically significant. It's a McGuffin. It can be whatever you like.

The modern day scenario involves retrieving those files from whoever took them from Stasi Headquarters - assuming they were taken, of course. The files may have been digitized and put on a hard drive, or they may still be in crumbling paper form.

The intent is to play out the Thrilling Scene alongside the main game, so that at the start of the main game none of the players know whether the McGuffin they're chasing was actually taken from Stasi HQ. It might be completely worthless, but there's no way to be sure until after the conclusion of the Thrilling scene.

In a Thrilling chase the stakes are usually life & death, or at least capture or freedom. This time it's different. This time the victory condition is whether or not the players get to decide what happens to the McGuffin. If the 1990s characters succeed in their Thrilling section, then the players do get to decide. If not, then the Director does.

So the start moment would be outside Stasi HQ on 15th January. The protestors are getting out of control, and the guards outside HQ are beginning to panic. Appeals for calm aren't working. Historically the protestors first infiltrated the building at 5pm with tens of thousands getting in through police security. Success in this scene means the players get into the building without anyone getting hurt; failure means they still get in, but there's a scuffle with security and all the characters take -1 damage from the melee.

The target is still 10 - if the characters can build up their Lead to that point, they get the McGuffin. The start point is 3, and the Ability being tested is Infiltration. Unlike the usual Infiltration test this isn't about getting in quietly, unseen - it's more about blending into the crowd, and maneuvering so you can get to where you want to be without being stopped. Potential maneuvers include Intimidation (Death to the Stasi!) Negotiation (appeals for calm and non-violence), even Cop Talk (for dealing with the cops and soldiers).

Then, after the initial Thrilling scene, action moves to the present day. The agents are briefed: their sponsor wants to retrieve the McGuffin from its current hiding place in Germany. A historian claims to have found important files within the Stasi archives, including never-before-seen information about [whatever the McGuffin is about]. Unfortunately, the historian's apartment was burgled and the historian battered into a coma. The agents are to find out who did it, and what happened to the McGuffin.

In order to do it the agents will need to find and talk to X, who is/are, of course, the character(s) in the Thrilling scene. They may also be established NPCs within the campaign; they may even be Network Contacts or mentors. Even if they're usually friendly, this time they aren't. They don't like being reminded of what happened in the bad old days, and especially of what happened back in January 1990.

Action moves back to the Thrilling scene. The characters are in the building now. They need to get past the crowds of rubbernecking protestors, dodging actual spies (did you think the CIA would pass up a chance like this? The Russians? Former Stasi?) and get to the records room. Failure in a test here leads either to a mook Hand-to-Hand combat, (where mooks = P+2, and have Thug stats) or a straight +1 damage to all characters in the scene, players choice as to which. Of course, if the players choose the mook combat they might actually lose the fight, which would terminate the Thrilling scene - which is why they have the option of taking straight damage. The Director is free to rule that losing the mook combat = a capture moment, which has the advantage of keeping the Thrilling action going.

Action moves back to the present day. The agents know a little more than they did before, and they have leads that indicate where the McGuffin is, or alternately, who the opposition are. X, it turns out, is just as interested in the McGuffin as the agents are, and is actively looking for it. Is this is double-bluff? Is X looking for the McGuffin because it's actually lost, or because X is pretending to look for it to confuse the issue? This would be a good time for an Antagonist Reaction, or possibly a straight-up vampire moment, as in 'someone got eaten by vampires! They must be closing in!'

Action moves back to the Thrilling scene. The characters, if they're still free, are on their way to the records room. If caught, they're being dragged to the records room by their captors, who don't dare let them out of sight. The final test is to get in there, get the stuff, and out again.

However, a lot now depends on where they are in the Thrilling moment. If the agents are close to 10, which means they're close to winning, then they're one step ahead of the opposition and have unfettered access to the records. So the only people between them and the McGuffin are a few frightened soon-to-be-ex Stasi spies in the records who are frantically shredding everything they can get their hands on. Treat these as mooks (Thugs) as above, except that any show of force (Intimidation) cows them. They'll beat feet if challenged.

If, on the other hand, the agents have been losing badly and have no hope of getting to 10 or pulling off some game-changing Maneuver, then the opposition in the records room is much tougher. Whoever's their main competition (the CIA? the Russians? Vampires?) got there first. Now the agents have to either brace themselves for a fight, or make a really difficult Infiltration check. If, in previous scenes, they took a lot of damage then fighting isn't going to appeal. Let's hope their Infiltration pools are up to it.

This is the capstone moment of the Thrilling scene, so play it for all its worth. If the Director's really feeling cruel, characters in the Thrilling scene could even be mesmerized or vampirized, which retrospectively means that Network contact or important NPC was always working with the enemy, either as a Renfield, or …

Cue the final scene in the present day. The agents close in on the McGuffin. Maybe they retrieve it or maybe they don't, but this is where everyone decides whether the McGuffin is real or not. If the Thrilling scene was a success, then the 1990 characters retained control of the McGuffin so the players can decide whether it's real or not. Their decision may depend on who has it now; if the agents have it they might prefer it to be real, but if the opposition carried it off then the players may rather it was fake. If the Director decides whether it's real, presumably because the Thrilling scene did not go well for the players, then pick whichever option hoses them the most.

Enjoy!

Playing with Real Toys: Teufelsberg, Berlin (Night's Black Agents, GUMSHOE)

In keeping with established tradition, here's another location for Night's Black Agents Directors to use as they see fit. As before, there is a brief description followed by thrilling elements, followed by a scene.

Teufelsberg is a man-made hill within the Grunewald, the largest wooded area in Berlin, and was built after the War in what was then the British Zone.. It's located on top of a Nazi military engineering college designed by Albert Speer, because burying the college under several thousand tons of rubble was easier than destroying Speer's remarkably well constructed college.

It was originally intended as a rubble disposal site, and was used as a dumping ground until 1972. However as time passed people began using this man-made hill for other things. A bold entrepreneur opened up a ski jump in 1955, and another ski jump - this one much longer - opened in 1962, but ski jumping ceased in 1969. The jumps remained, and were still on site as late as 1999, when they were finally demolished.

Teufelsberg began its life as an espionage asset as early as 1961, when the first listening posts began operations. The uneasy alliance between the Soviets and the West had broken down by this point, and the Americans wanted somewhere they could listen in on Soviet communications. Teufelsberg's 120 meter height seemed perfect, and over time the NSA developed a permanent installation, staffed round the clock by American troops who commuted daily to 'the Hill.'

This remained so until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism, at which point the NSA withdrew, leaving the buildings behind. Over time street artists moved in, decorating the place with layers of colorful graffiti. Some investors tried to turn the buildings into apartment blocks, with spy museum attached, but the plan proved economically unviable.

Teufelsberg remains an abandoned artefact of the Cold War to this day. Tours are given every week, but otherwise the site is kept locked up - though given the amount of graffiti, the locks and fences aren't much deterrent.

Rumor has it the Americans dug down to the abandoned military college at one point, or that there is a secret tunnel from the military buildings to a submarine base. Like all rumors these are likely false.

Thrilling elements:

• The Grunewald is home to wild boar, and a pair of them just wandered by. They're not friendly but they are curious - humans can be useful snack dispensers.
• A band of chattering tourists wander through the abandoned military installation.
• A grey-haired veteran and his more athletic daughter tour the site of the former's glory days.
• Some of the colorful street art has clear Vampirology connections, and perhaps can be interpreted for a non-Core clue.
• Dark, long-abandoned corridors that lead to long abandoned offices and observation stations.
• The ground is uneven, covered with rubble and broken glass, making running very dangerous. Also walking, if the agents happen to be wearing flimsy shoes.
• A torn and battered radome, now liberally decorated with rainbow graffiti.
• Magnificent view across the whole of Berlin, with only a rickety wall of wooden pallets between you and a neck-breaking tumble.
• Standing inside the remains of the dome at the top of the tower, with perfect acoustics catching the least hum.
• A wide-eyed entrepreneur films a video for his investor pitch, with the decaying buildings as backdrop.
• A small group of street artists add their next installation to the ever-growing collection of paintings.

Scene:

After the War the Allies found remnants of whatever passes for the Nazi Vampire Project in the campaign. After months of bombing and repeated info snatches by all sides, including the Soviets, there wasn't much left, and in the immediate aftermath of the War it seemed more sensible to bury it in Germany than cart potentially dangerous material back to Britain, or the US. In order to completely dispose of the material, including its biological waste, the British and Americans established a 'safe room' in Speer's Nazi engineering school and used the dumping ground as a cover-up for their secret installation, codename Operation TOADSTOOL.

However neither the British nor the Americans could make sense of the remains of the Nazi project, so when the NSA said it wanted to use Teufelsberg as a listening post, those few still interested in TOADSTOOL decided the listening post was as useful an excuse as any to bury the site for good. The Allies sealed up the tunnel that led down to the Nazi school, and that was that.

Or so they thought.

One of the local Nodes of the Conspiracy has been interested in this site for years, but despite rigorous searching the Node hasn't been able to find the secret tunnel. However the Node has its eye on visiting academic and former military man Noah Scopell, who's in Berlin to give a talk on the Teufelsberg installation. The Node intends to capture Scopell and make him talk; if anyone knows where the secret tunnel is, it's the Teufelsberg expert who spent most of his military career working there.

The agents are brought on board either by a Network contact or an old Cold Warrior who guesses what the kidnappers are up to, and wants to make sure Scopell doesn't talk. TOADSTOOL's better off buried, as far as this warhorse is concerned.

Naturally the most action-packed capstone to the scene is an exploration of the Nazi school buried under the Devil's Hill. What feral creatures lurk down there? Or is the biological material hazardous in other ways? A Dust game might suppose the material's actually pathogenic, kept in leaky containers or o-so-fragile glass tubes. Maybe old notebooks or blackboards covered in cryptic formulae, half-blotted with mold and rot, can be recovered.

Of course, the Node will stop at nothing to get all of this. Whatever resources at the Node's disposal, it will expend them; this is the bold stroke that will put it on top. Or so its leadership thinks ...

That's it for now. Enjoy!