Rivers of London - Campaign Design

Rivers is set within Ben Aaronovitch's magical London, where wizards working with the Police venture forth from the Folly to keep the King's peace. The book series has been in print since 2011, has expanded into graphic novel territory and, if we're all very good and keep Santa happy, may one day expand into other media. After all, if Slow Horses can become an international Apple TV hit, perhaps the British star is in the ascendant.

The RPG assumes that the characters are magical police working in London from the Folly. Potentially there are other options, but that's where the main book spends most of its time, so the implication is clear. The timeline is also a little vague, but roughly present day (ish) and the sections It's Not Gritty and It's Not Horror make it clear this isn't the Cthulhu-esque stuff Chaosium is famous for. Aaronovitch says it's Call of Cthulhu but with added hope, and that's broadly the feel of the RPG.

It doesn't allow much scope for alternatives, which ... I mean, the people coming here will be coming via the books, in a way that isn't often seen. Even the Tolkein-heads who went into the Middle Earth RPG or the Bond nuts who bought into the James Bond RPG didn't do it so they could recreate the stories or the movies. They wanted to play in that world. They didn't want to play alongside Frodo or Bond. Not all of them, anyway.

I'm not 100% convinced the same could be said for Rivers. I suspect a lot of the audience for this series came to it via the books and want the Folly, Molly, the yap-o-meter and all the other doo dahs that go with it. 

But.

Would I, as GM, want to run that kind of game as a campaign, as opposed to one-shots? I'm not sure.

See, one of the great things about Cthulhu as a setting is its elasticity. If I want to set it in 1890s Tokyo, not a problem. 1920s New York? Can do. 1990s First Gulf War? Got you covered. Gothic romance, nihilistic post-apocalypse, techno-horror, body horror, whatever your shriveled little heart desires, it can supply.  

I don't think you could say the same about Rivers. You can set in in the States (there's a whole book about that, you may have heard of it) but the main setting's still relentlessly modern London, and you're a copper. That feels limiting. There's damn near a century between the World War Two devastation that wiped out British wizardry and Peter Grant's recruitment by Nightingale to see off Mister Punch. All kinds of options.

One that leaps out at me straightaway: 

Life on Mars Trailer

The thing almost writes itself. 

Here's a copper from the present thrust into the 1970s through shenanigans that can only be magical. Thanks to those self-same shenanigans the copper picks up a guardian angel: Nightingale, who's still working through his war trauma and is, at this moment, the only official wizard in London.

Moreover, if Ashes to Ashes in in the mix then, mild spoiler warning, there is a very good reason why all those modern coppers are turning up in the 1970s & 80s and it's exactly the kind of thing that would interest Nightingale. 

OK, it's not a setting book Chaosium could publish, for obvious reasons, but at your gaming table you can do as you like, and this is just gagging for it (as Hunt might say).

To be honest, one of my qualms about running Rivers as written is, it feels as though the home team starts with all the advantages. The characters have the resources of the Folly at their disposal, with backup from Frank Caffrey and the Rivers, not to mention Nightingale himself, a Kipling-ish hero with superlative magical ability. 

Stalky & Co

Not always, of course. The Rivers in particular may have their own reasons for not getting involved, but the players are going to be looking for backup at some point, and after a while the GM's going to run out of reasons why, say, Caffrey can't turn up with the heavy mob to help the characters out of a fix.

In that respect it's not a million miles away from Ars Magica, which Aaronovitch has said is an inspiration for his series. You can have grogs and companions in the narrative but, sooner rather than later, all eyes will turn to the wiz-liards to handle the problem. Even if that problem is why the soup tastes funny. It's like putting candy on the table next to the hummus and raw carrots. Fingers will reach towards the chocolate, guaranteed.  

What other, non-Folly routes could be taken? Keeping the central concept of law versus disorder in the mix?

Well, there's always the private detective route. Given that there are foxes and other non-humans in the setting, this needn't be a human private detective route either. There's something appealing about a vulpine Sherlock Holmes who has to work through a human mouthpiece to get clients. Without a Clue, but with a fox in the Watson role. 

Or a ghost. Traditionally in this sort of narrative the ghost must Find Out Who Killed Them (boo, hiss) and stumble into other crimes that need solving along the way. Asian cinema is very good at this kind of story. Too good, honestly. I've been trying to remember the title of a particular film and Google led me to half a dozen others, plus TV series of one kind or another. The Haunted Cop Shop looks like fun, and a lot of the faces are ones I recognize from Mr. Vampire, a mark of quality.

Of course, for many British players, there's only one dead detective worth emulating.

Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) sourced from Umbrella Entertainment

 

Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) 2000

Another route would be to have the police in the center of the narrative but have a fae copper in the main role. Or someone from a different magical tradition. A main character with a supernatural past who doesn't want to be part of the Folly (for whatever reason) but feels drawn to the police as a career. The others in the group might realize there's something funny about their fellow copper but not twig as to the cause. This puts the Folly and Nightingale in a semi-antagonist role. Not that the Folly's about to go on a killing spree, but they don't appreciate non-Newtonians messing about in the doo-dah. This means the main character has to hide their identity both from the police and from the Folly, an additional challenge.

The great thing about both these options is you're not caught in the modern day. They could take place at any time. 1980s London, 1960s London, take your pick. So long as it's after the War, after the Ettersberg massacre of British wizardry, the setting's wide open. 

Of course, you could always have the characters come from a completely different magical tradition and not be police. The Society of the Rose, for instance. They might involve themselves in magical shenanigans without having the backing of the law behind them. 

Or run a game in which the central location, like a bookshop, is the source of the problem. Some of you may think I'm referring to Bookhounds, but there is a magically influenced shop in the Rivers setting which could be expanded on. A Lovejoy campaign but with actual magic, rather than a suggestion of talent, working behind the scenes. The genus loci in the basement provides the juice, but it's the human player characters who have to save the day. Or find that rare first edition. Whichever best resolves the plot.

Another alternative: a magically trained group, like Bock, Loupe and Stag, members of a [whatever best suits] drafted into the Folly on Peter's initiative. The point being, it's a bit more difficult to get up to nonsense if you're regulated. 

But nobody likes regulation, so this sets the Folly up as a not-quite-antagonist. Next door to frenemies. Nobody likes a grass, and the Folly are the prefects and teachers in this analogy. Your group has your own objectives, your own plans, and they might not go hand-in-hand with the Folly's mandate. So you carry on your bits and bobs under the noses of the best of the best of British wizardry, trying not to get caught. To carry the Kipling bit a little further, it's Stalky & Co all over again, except in this version the players are the boys and Nightingale is beloved headmaster Bates. Which presumably makes Peter, Prout. 

Or you could do a tour of the colonies.

If you take the Folly at its word, then it would have gone everywhere the Empire went. Once upon a time the Empire went rather a lot of places, which implies Folly-aligned establishments all over the world. The vast majority will be well and truly defunct. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away. However, as the famous Rose Jars of George Buckland prove, the colossal wreck hides forgotten treasures. 

Guernsey's a pretty good choice. One of the oldest British police forces, historical artifacts that go back to the dawn of civilization, right smack in the Channel along established smuggling routes. The Folly's bound to have established something out in Guernsey, and from the modern Folly's perspective a bit of historical research into old business might be just the low-stress test a trainee needs. Whether you could have a long-running campaign out there is debatable, but a run of four to six sessions is perfectly doable. The distance from the Folly proper means the characters can't lean on established characters, but they're close enough - not even two hours flight time - that they can't afford to get careless.

Same with Gibraltar. Again, the Folly's bound to have had something out there, especially during the War. Gib boasts the oldest British police service outside the UK. Spain's right next door, so you have plot options. Old British war installations begging to be explored. Again, probably difficult to have a full campaign out there but four to six sessions is doable, and they're close enough to London they can't afford to get careless. Plus on top of plus, Spain has been the British criminal getaway of choice through the 1970s and 1980s thanks to a (brief) lack of an extradition treaty, and Gibraltar is a pretty decent jump-off point for a Folly investigation into the Costa del Crime. 

That's it for this week. I hope it's given you some ideas!

Campaign Design Night's Black Agents: Burn Stakes

OK, last post for this series.

Let's talk about the opening scenario and what it means to play Burn Stakes.

I'm going to try to avoid scenario spoilers but I can't discuss without spoiling a little bit, so be warned.

One of the Agents has a contact, a fence who deals in rare books and stolen art, named Pierre Athanese; he’s an old scoundrel and a crook, but he knows the stakes. Athanese runs a small bookstore in the French city of Strasbourg, close to the German border, and the game begins as the Agents arrive there.

This scenario assumes the characters are after a particular letter allegedly written by Van Helsing, and that the McGuffin is also the target of at least one other faction. There are a couple of moments within the scenario where sound, and potentially music, are important parts of the narrative. One of the main plot devices is a church bell whose ringing affects the supernatural entity at the heart of the dilemma. All this works very well with the ongoing plot device of the Pentheus and Maenad; not much change needed to make it work with the campaign device.

So far, so good. What about this Burn Stakes stuff?

Well:

BURN: In burn mode games, psychological damage is more intense; the actions Many of agents must take inevitably burn away their humanity. Your Stability is capped at 12 and degrades faster. Killing is never easy, and never free.

STAKES:  The characters derive their actions from a higher purpose than mere survival or “get the job done” ethics: patriotism, the search for knowledge, protection of the innocent, or even justified revenge. 

The obvious way to make the players keenly aware of Burn style games is to challenge their stability every chance you get. There are plenty of opportunities to do this in combat scenes. Or in scenes with emotional focus, such as those involving a Source of Stability or similarly important person.

Difficulty Numbers for Stability tests also change depending on the character’s attitude toward, or familiarity with, the destabilizing event. Characters who would logically be inured to a given event face a Difficulty of 3, while those especially susceptible face a 5. [main book p 82]

Seeing a fresh corpse, for example, is worth a 1-point potential loss. A grisly murder is potential 3. Seeing a Network contact killed is 5, and so on. All of which could become very relevant in the opening scene, when the characters' contact Pierre Athanese is threatened, and possibly killed, by Conspiracy goons. In my version, I had Athanese's shop on fire within about half an hour of scenario start. Your milage may vary, but as a rule the more physical damage you dish out to third parties like Athanese, the more emotional damage you cause the characters. 

That doesn't mean you want corpses every other page. Repetition blunts impact. You could as easily injure Athanese or let the agents watch Athanese's life's work go up in smoke as the bookstore burns. There are many ways to endure loss; death isn't the only stressor. For that matter, gruesome injuries to the opposition can be helpful too. Gouged out eyes and broken teeth can happen to anyone. Plus, having a human opponent attack is a potential 2 point and killing someone in a fight is a potential 3 point. So many options!

Never forget to layer those stressors. Yes, there's the potential for Stability loss in the opening scene. There's also a good chance to gain Heat. Car chase, involvement in a burglary or assault, all this in a tourist district too ... that Heat will be ticking up. I would advise you keep a list of potential uptick items close at hand so you can impose them as necessary, and have some Police on standby. Are they Conspiracy friendly? Who can say? They're definitely a pain in the ass, which should motivate the players. 

Even if you don't use the Police in the opening scene it should be obvious to everyone in that scene that you *could* have used them if you wanted to. Burn isn't just a mechanic. It's a way of life. You want the players to feel the same way about their Stability that a gambler feels about their dwindling stack of chips.

OK, that's Burn. What's Stakes?

It's described as a higher purpose, but honestly, it's a murky pool. Revenge is hardly a higher purpose, but it gets the job done. 

    Three Days of the Condor Trailer

This is the kind of mood you're striving for. Cut off, isolated, begging for help, not knowing which way to turn. Your enemy today may be your friend tomorrow. Because what matters isn't that the Station got hit, or who you're working with right now to get the job done. What matters is Why. Understand the Why, you appreciate the Stakes. Then you can act with purpose. Until then, you're flailing.

In Condor, the Why is information. What did the Station uncover to make it a worthy target for hired killers? In the scenario, the Why is also information, which you as Director can use to great effect. 

In this example, the McGuffin at the heart of the narrative is a letter from the vampire hunter Van Helsing. It can lead to a valuable artefact, Van Helsing's Case, complete with vampire hunting equipment. Acquiring that case is a turning point in the narrative. Until the agents retrieve it, their odds of success against the supernatural opponent are low. Not zero, but not good.

But the McGuffin also hints at other information: dead sons, dead relatives, tragedy, loss. It hints at the heart of the supernatural, while at the same time leading to a confrontation with the supernatural opponent.

The Why is with that supernatural opponent, and the information the players collect leads to that Why. The Why is the horror. Unless someone confronts it, many more might die. If the Conspiracy gets its way, thousands more may die. Dead sons, dead relatives, tragedy, loss. This is something you, as Director, need to make very clear. 

In Condor, this is made clear in two events. One is the opening moment when the Station gets hit. The other is when the Agency tries to bring Condor in, and it goes horribly wrong. Loss, followed by loss.

This is the essence of Stakes. Not so much that they exist, but that they are difficult to attain, and the cost is usually paid in blood. It's not enough that the agents are tough, experienced professionals. They need to lose and lose again. It's only through that loss they will begin to understand the Stakes. 

 

After all, without that motivator, what point is there in the game?

Twilight Zone

That's it for this week. Next week: something different!

Campaign Design Night's Black Agents - Stone Age Soundtracks

 

Stone Age Soundtracks (Channel 4, original concept Paul Deveraux)

The quality's not the best but I recommend watching the whole thing. I have mentioned this documentary before; it stuck with me.

Brief and inadequate summary: our ancestors discovered the power of ritual sound by accident, in ancient caves which they transformed into temples. They attempted to replicate the effect, with some success, in artificial environments - long barrows and similar megalithic sites. 

That's the core concept for the Node I contemplate coming up again and again in this campaign: the Ritual Site.

Before I said: 

This, ultimately, is location-based. In the earliest days it would have had sacred fanes high up on the mountain top, some grove or cave or other hidden place where the rituals are conducted. There the Omadios, eater of raw (human) flesh, awaits its portion, and in exchange grants a kind of extended life. Brings the dead back from the lands of Hades. At least, so goes some of the tales.

Omadios is a variant name for Dionysus, as in Dionysus the Raw-Eater. Sacrifices of flesh, usually thought to be human flesh. There's an old tale of Zagreus, son of Zeus, in which the child was butchered by Zeus' enemies and his flesh torn apart, devoured, some of it cooked. When Hermes discovered what had happened he informed Zeus, who destroyed the child's killers with divine thunderbolts. Zagreus' heart was the only thing that survived, and was later used to create Dionysus. 

From that myth our vampires are born, the Pentheus and the Maenad variants. They hear a sound, a song, that echoes through the ages. Some claim this sound is the echo of the Titans, the hideous creatures that tore apart infant Zagreus. That, if they can somehow make sense of it, the Titans will come again. Of course, this is coming from a group of creatures whose mental stability can best be described as Shaky, so take that with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, it is what some of them work towards, even if in an indirect way. They are constantly looking for old ritual sites, so they can examine the design and use it in their own projects. 

This has been going on for a very long time. It's likely that some of those old, abandoned castles mentioned in the Dracula Dossier were ritual sites with their own sound chambers, once upon a time. That locations like Carfax or HMS Prosperine might have sound chambers, or that someone's been working on an old orphanage run by Heal the Children to turn its concrete corridors into a ritual location. Opportunities abound.   

Mechanically, something similar already exists within the Dracula Dossier setting: the Red Room.

The Red Room was a place of power for Dracula in London. Magically (or tellurically) designed to focus and amplify vampiric energies and wavelengths, he used it (or planned to use it) in 1894 to cement his hold over the high-society degenerates he recruited to his faction. Since then, Edom might have taken it over for their own purposes, or Dracula may have created another, or both. [p187 DD]

In that text the Room is a singular area in a specific place, with a variable power set. I'm proposing multiple Rooms in many areas, with one known power set (create vampires, under specific ritual conditions) and any number of unknown power sets. Not all of the Rooms work. Many or most probably don't work, or, if they do, they work in unexpected ways. Not even the vampires understand them, though there are some within the Conspiracy who claim they do. 

The perennial McGuffin in this situation is something I'm going to call the Instruction Manual. It might be a crumbling set of texts held in some forgotten monastery, translations of some Greek histories that go all the way back to Herodotus. It might be a transcript from the researches of the magician John Dee or some similar occult experimenter. It might be research notes from a Silicon Valley tech bro relying on the previous researches of a former Nazi, but whatever it is, it represents the most likely means of finding out how the Ritual is supposed to work. 

Everyone wants it. Factions within the Conspiracy - all of them a Pentheus variant - want it because they think it will help them create more Pentheus. The Maenad want it because they think it will create more Maenad. Other occult factions want it because they believe it will help them do X, whatever X may be. Immortality is a popular choice, but you do you. 

Meanwhile the various factions continue with their occult traditions, experiments, what-have-you, relying on the broken version of the Ritual that they think they understand, in hopes of getting what they want. This broken version sometimes does what it's supposed to but there are nearly always side effects, and most of the time it doesn't work at all. This may be because the Ritual site is contaminated or broken in some way, or it may be for some other reason. 

Note that in this version the Conspiracy has factions within factions working against each other. Broadly speaking, this is true of any organization. Regardless of the united front it presents to the world anything, whether it is a business, political party or other collective organization, has factions within it that want to promote X, whatever X is. Point being that, in this fictionalized example, those factions are hyperviolent blood drinkers who may or may not be insane.

The important thing to bear in mind, from a Director's perspective, is that this Conspiracy has one defined Goal: understand, and replicate, the Ritual which creates Vampires. Regardless of who's doing it, this is what they are doing. That gives this Conspiracy an end goal, whether they're in Turkey examining Neolithic sites, in Ireland digging up a megalith long barrow, or in some secret underground bunker in, say, Texas, surrounded by technology of dubious origin.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!    

 

Campaign Design Night's Black Agents Burn Stakes II

 ... I see this kind of vampire as something that arises from a shared delusion, created less by a Sire and more by a Circumstance. At the back of it all might be a Dionysus figure but, ultimately, these vampires arise from supernatural occurrences and places and are drawn together by that shared experience, by the madness that propels them forward, always forward, in search of that elusive melody that lingers in the back of what is left of their mind ...

OK, no storms forecast for this weekend so with a bit of luck I can finish this thought.

Duckman

I see this vampire divided into two types. 

The Pentheus is the planner, the organizer, the one trying to make sense of it all. They're the backbone of the Conspiracy. They accept their condition but are trying to prevent themselves sinking into madness. They don't really grasp the true nature of their condition because, if they did, they'd stop functioning. They see the others as a kind of Awful Warning. In a Dracula Dossier game, Dracula is the ultimate Pentheus, hanging onto sanity by the atoms on the tips of their fingernails.

The Maenads, on the other hand, are children of madness. They fulfil the commands of Dionysus, or at least that is what they say they do. They carry on a ritual whose purposes have long been forgotten. They have no idea if what they're doing is what they are supposed to do. They see themselves as driven by a higher power. Think of them as you would the Cthulhu Cult, except there is no Cthulhu, no promise of anything divine or beyond mortal understanding. Where they go, bloodshed follows. 

At the heart of it all is the Ritual, which is how you get more vampires. 

This, ultimately, is location-based. In the earliest days it would have had sacred fanes high up on the mountain top, some grove or cave or other hidden place where the rituals are conducted. There the Omadios, eater of raw (human) flesh, awaits its portion, and in exchange grants a kind of extended life. Brings the dead back from the lands of Hades. At least, so goes some of the tales. 

Now, in this degraded modern life, a sacred fane might as easily be a site of mass murder. A place where blood soaks the soil, perhaps because of a terrorist attack, or some other hideous deed. From this horror madness springs eternal, and a corpse left in this place, treated appropriately, might come to life once more. It might help if that corpse, in life, committed some atrocities, or shed their brother's blood, or, or, or ...

Because that is the horror of the Pentheus. They don't know how it works. They serve the Ritual in hope of getting more Pentheus to carry on the tradition, but when it comes right to it the vampires don't understand the whatever-it-is that made them so there's no way for them to reliably make more. Instead, they flock to places where tragedies happen, sometimes engineering events so that a tragedy happens, and all the while it could be a colossal flop. All that effort, and no vampire to show for it. Or, which is slightly worse from the Pentheus' POV, all that effort and only a Maenad to show for it. 

Meanwhile the Maenads flutter off like exploding butterflies. They have absolutely no self-control. They do not care what happens to them and they definitely do not care about other people. At all. A Maenad is driven by the song. They can hear it at the back of their minds. They might constantly hum it, or tunelessly sing it. A Maenad with some musical ability might perform it, but never perfectly, never the way they know it ought to be performed.

These creatures die off, but not before doing tremendous damage.

This kind of Conspiracy best resembles a terrorist organization. We think of these the same way we do organized armies. They have generals, officers, troops, a mission; they work towards a defined goal. This absolutely is not how these groups work in practice. Yes, there may well be a guiding brain - the Pentheus - out there somewhere, trying to make sense of all this. There may be schemes. There may be long-term plans. But the organization itself is as loosely structured as it is possible to be, because that's the only way it can survive and recruit. Everyone's hand is against it. It cannot afford the kind of structure an army has, because armies can be identified and met on the battlefield. This is, at its heart, a civilian organization. Destructured. Disorganized. 

Lethal.  

Next time: an RPG exploration of numinous sound and ritual locations, with a view to creating a new kind of Node.

Campaign Design - Night's Black Agents Burn Stakes

The mob has spoken!

BURN: In burn mode games, psychological damage is more intense; the actions Many of agents must take inevitably burn away their humanity. Your Stability is capped at 12 and degrades faster. Killing is never easy, and never free.

STAKES:  The characters derive their actions from a higher purpose than mere survival or “get the job done” ethics: patriotism, the search for knowledge, protection of the innocent, or even justified revenge. 

SUPERNATURAL: Their markers are strange superstitions, often surrounding childbirth and burial customs; their emphasis is hunger. 

With an additional call for drunken Dionysiac vampires. Well. 

In a long-ago post about the Crawling Chaos Nyarlathotep I said:

In game, the protagonists are effectively the sons and daughters of Pentheus [tragic hero of the Greek play Bacchae]. Like the King of Thebes and the narrator of Lovecraft's short piece they too seek out the inner workings of the mystery ... The Crawling Chaos represents the reward all seekers into the mysteries ultimately receive: ignominious and pitiless destruction, not just of them, but of all their future hopes. Snakes and forgotten tram cars are their only monuments. Or, in RPG terms, a crumpled piece of paper with hasty erasure marks and repeated notches along the dwindling Sanity bar. Moreover none of them can claim innocence; ultimately this was what they wanted. Else why start on the journey in the first place?

    Stranger: Ah! Would you like to see them in their gatherings upon the mountain?

    Pentheus: Very much. Ay, and pay uncounted gold for the pleasure.

    Stranger: Why have you conceived so strong a desire?

    Pentheus: Though it would pain me to see them drunk with wine-

    Stranger: Yet you would like to see them, pain and all.

Let's talk OPFOR. 

In a Dionysiac chronicle, the ultimate mystery is the Maenad itself. It's not clear who they were or what they were up to, historically speaking. They frolic. They are intoxicated by the Divine. They speak in tongues and commit atrocities. Devotees of frenzy. They might commit terrible deeds in their own right, or they might call on Dionysius to torment and destroy their enemies. Either way, where they go, trouble follows. 

Dionysus itself is a peculiar creature. Sometimes called "the raging one" and "the mad one" they are known for pulling apart their enemies and, sometimes, putting them back together again. They delight in transforming; in one set of tales, after driving their enemies mad they turn them into bats. Forcing women to kill their children or their loved ones is a common theme in Dionysus tales. The best-known Dionysus story has Pentheus, the tragic hero, murdered by his own mother and sisters. 

He touched the wild
Cheek, crying: "Mother, it is I, thy child,
Thy Pentheus, born thee in Echîon's hall!
Have mercy, Mother! Let it not befall
Through sin of mine, that thou shouldst slay thy son!"
  But she, with lips a-foam and eyes that run
Like leaping fire, with thoughts that ne'er should be
On earth, possessed by Bacchios utterly,
Stays not nor hears. Round his left arm she put
Both hands, set hard against his side her foot,
Drew . . . and the shoulder severed!—Not by might
Of arm, but easily, as the God made light
Her hand's essay. And at the other side
Was Ino rending; and the torn flesh cried,
And on Autonoë pressed, and all the crowd
Of ravening arms. Yea, all the air was loud
With groans that faded into sobbing breath

 A chronicle of this type ought run red with blood, gore shed by those least expected. 

The main book uses the vukodklak as a supernatural vampire example and, broadly speaking, I'm going to use that as a stats template. 

When an evildoer dies unpunished and lays undiscovered for 40 days, he rises again as a vukodlak ...

With a few modifications. 

I'm going to drop the following powers as being unhelpful to the narrative:  Blight Crops, Tunneling (in rat form), Turn to Creature (rat, black eagle). Also the Compulsion Count Seeds. 

I'm going to replace with: Compulsion Tear An Opponent Apart, Powers: Strength, Venom (hallucinogen, through song rather that spit - think of it as an entrancing technique that causes riots), Summoning (particularly those it shares blood with or has drained blood from). 

I see this kind of vampire as something that arises from a shared delusion, created less by a Sire and more by a Circumstance. At the back of it all might be a Dionysus figure but, ultimately, these vampires arise from supernatural occurrences and places and are drawn together by that shared experience, by the madness that propels them forward, always forward, in search of that elusive melody that lingers in the back of what is left of their mind. 

***

OK, I'm going to cut this week's post short. Apologies! We had another massive storm that knocked out power over the weekend. I'm playing catch-up and have no time to finish this thought. Let's return to it next week ...

Campaign Design: Night's Black Agents - Which Way?

OK! First post in February comes with some tooting of the horn. I'm writing material for Pelgrane's Page XX which will appear at some nebulous point in the future. To give you an idea of what I'm working on:

New Fun

A Trail of Cthulhu scenario in which the investigators are tasked with finding a new comic talent for the funny papers.

The Giffard Auction

A Trail of Cthulhu scenario set provisionally in Lovecraft Country, in which the investigators are hired as protection for an auction bid.

Blood Cocaine

I’ll grind your bones to make my bread. [folktale, Jack & the Beanstalk]

A Night’s Black Agents Node which distributes Blood Cocaine and is linked to several smaller criminal syndicates which may or may not be part of the Conspiracy proper.

That's enough of that. 

Now, back in the Before Times I asked whether there was a campaign setting you'd like me to sketch out. There were several votes for different things, and more than a few asked for Night's Black Agents. Fine. That's February's project. 

It does lead to a question, though. Which flavor is your favorite?

As with most of the Gumshoe settings, NBA comes in several possible types and has the additional challenge of several possible adversaries. As a reminder:

BURN: In burn mode games, psychological damage is more intense; the actions Many of agents must take inevitably burn away their humanity. Your Stability is capped at 12 and degrades faster. Killing is never easy, and never free.

DUST: Recreate the gritty, lo-fi espionage world of Anthony Price or Charles McCarry, similar to the TV series The Sandbaggers or Rubicon, or films like Three Days of the Condor, by “de-powering” the game.  The vampires and their agents will be far more challenging and powerful in open combat.

MIRROR: In mirror mode games, your contacts and even your team are unreliable; your partners can help you with Trust or destroy you with Betrayal. Unlike the other modes, mirror mode games encourage player vs. player story lines or active conflict.

STAKES:  The characters derive their actions from a higher purpose than mere survival or “get the job done” ethics: patriotism, the search for knowledge, protection of the innocent, or even justified revenge. 

Meanwhile those pesky Vampires can be:

SUPERNATURAL: Their markers are strange superstitions, often surrounding childbirth and burial customs; their emphasis is hunger. 

DAMNED: Their markers are holy symbols and symbolism; their emphasis is seduction.

ALIEN: Their markers are various uncanny effects; their emphasis is invasion.

MUTANT: Their markers are medical symptoms; their emphasis is infection.

So! My question to the madding crowd: which, from this smorgasbord, would you like to see? Pick a setting type and an OPFOR type, and I shall go from there. 

To add to the mix, whichever campaign I sketch out will begin with this scenario from the Free RPG day collection: 

The Van Helsing Letter.   The player characters are about to obtain a letter from Van Helsing to the director of the hospital where his son died, a letter that hints at a (second) failed attempt by British intelligence to recruit Dracula as an intelligence asset. The clues in that century-old letter will lead the Agents to cross paths with modern-day minions of Dracula.

The weather's about to get very cold down here. Storms inspired by whatever-it-is happening in the States right now have impacted the island. If you'll excuse me, it's time to prepare for harsh weather and potential power outages. 

The Dark Side of the Shop (RPG All, Bookhounds, Campaign Design)

Hello! Happy New Year!

I'm going to start the year off by noodling with some campaign design notions and I thought I'd start with the Shop. 

I'm using Bookhounds as the primary example, but this concept can be used in any RPG setting where the characters have a home base of some description. It might be a clubhouse. It might be the police precinct they all work at. It might be a railway carriage on the Orient Express, speeding through the night, but whatever it is, it's home to the characters. It's the place they retreat to, the place they store stuff, the place they go to when they want to make plans or brainstorm their way to success. 

It's Home.

It has its dark side. 

In a previous post on campaign design I said:

Let's say you intend to start with a small shop at the edge of the City, in the East End but trying to pretend it isn't East End, not really. Nobody drops their haitches in this establishment. You'd want to leave a fair amount of shop design up to the players but that doesn't mean you leave everything else alone. What's on the same street? Who's the main rival? What's the trade like? Is there a secret hidden under the floorboards or up in the attic? Do the drains work and, if not, what makes up the fatberg that's blocking them?

I'm going to use this East End shop as an example, and this is where we start talking about secrets hidden under floorboards and blocked drains.

The home base is something I expect the players to help design. Each person at the table should contribute at least one thing. Think of it like an ideas potluck. That means, among other things, that you can never be sure what will be in the home base. Which suggests that the dark side, whatever it ends up being, will start life disconnected from the home base's main concepts. After all, you can't establish links to something that just doesn't exist yet. 

No, But what you can do is make sure that the dark side you design remains true to Rome and the basic principles of the setting, whatever those may be. That way, you can retro-engineer your Dark Side to fit whatever ideas the players come up with. 

I mention the basic principles of the setting because it's important to remember that all settings have their quirks. We're using Bookhounds as an example. That means we're talking about shops, trade, auctions, customers, London. It's a completely different vibe to, say, Night's Black Agents, or Cyberpunk. Even if your NBA game is still set in London - at the Bull, for instance - it's a very different vibe from a Bookhounds London. A Cyberpunk campaign can still begin in London - it can even begin at the Bull - and yet be totally different from both Bookhounds and Night's Black Agents. This will determine the basic principles of the setting, which you need to establish in the opening arc of the campaign.

OK. In this example it's Bookhounds, which means basic principles are shops, trade, auctions, customers, London. We're using the East End as a location, which in the main book is the Abyss:

Since mediaeval times, the East End has been where London put its blood, its stenches, and its death: tanneries, slaughterhouses, and fulling-yards. The docks and canals brought steady work, along with injury and ague; the ships brought crowds of foreign sailors and workmen, and crowds of British whores and thieves. Gin-houses and music-halls sprang up, as did radical politics and dissenting cults. Homes were small and streets were narrow even in Elizabethan times; with factories, gasworks, and workhouses rising in the Victorian era, things got even worse. The East End became “the Abyss.”

Further, we already know that this shop is near the divide between the East End and the City, and that it's trying to pretend to greater status than it deserves. All these things feed into basic principles, which will help you design the dark side. 

That being established, we're probably looking at something in East Smithfield near St. Katherine's Docks. Something like Tower Ward, or near as dammit to it. In fact, we're looking at Stepney, within spitting distance of Whitechapel. 

Ahh, Already I can see plot beginning to form. 

A quick look at the vicinity and at St Katherine's tells me it was ridden with plague back in the day, that thanks to its connection with the wharves and trade there's all kinds of overseas influences, immigration, new ideas, and that the construction of the Docks back in the early 19th century destroyed a historic part of London and forced a lot of people to move on.

Sometimes the plot fairy just hits you over the head with a great big stick.

OK, pick a street. Any street, really. Somewhere in Stepney not far from the Docks. Roundabout the border of Whitechapel South and St George in the East South.  That's where the shop is. As Keeper you could invent a street and that would be fine. God knows London has created and lost many little alleys, avenues, Mews and Courts over the years. However, it can also be handy to use a pre-existing location since that location will have a history and sometimes that can be useful for plot purposes.

Cartwright Street is right opposite Swan Lane Open Space, which in the 1920s was a disused gravel pit. Formerly Churchyard Alley, apparently. Or Cartridge Street in Rosemary Lane, presumably depending on which end of Cartwright you were standing in. The whole shebang gets reorganized in the later 1800s when London rebuilds to benefit industry and put up housing for workers. Cartwright sounds much nicer than Churchyard or Cartridge, which presumably is why someone picked it. But with all this stewing it sounds like the perfect place for the shop. Cartwright, aka Cartridge, with the gravel pits just opposite. Disused, of course. Filled with water, in some places. 

The plot fairy's stick, again.

OK, that's more than enough to be getting on with. Let's Dark Side this.

The Shop (Bare Bones)

Location: Cartwright Street, aka Cartridge Street, Stepney, East End, near Whitechapel.

Immediate area: Residential, with Industrial nearby (disused gravel pits).

Age of Building: Georgian (George III) built c 1800 as the town house of a well-to-do merchant. Somehow avoided being knocked down in the 1880s. Used as a boarding house from c. 1870 until 1908, when it fell derelict. The Hounds bought it cheap. 

Style of Building: 3 storey residential, with cellars and attic. 

This is all information the players should be given immediately. They will be expected to add to the bare bones. Name the shop. All that sort of thing. But they need something to build their hopes and dreams on. 

If you really wanted to add to the bare bones, you could include a sketch plan of the town house. I'm bad at drawing, so I shan't be doing that. At best, I'd steal something from the internet. As far as internal walls and rearrangements go, I'd keep them where they are and let the players decide which room gets used for what.

The next bit is something the Hounds don't know about their new home. It's the Dark Side of the building. 

Now, there's a temptation to make the Dark Side all Mythos and supernatural. This is a horror game, after all. I'd resist that temptation. The supernatural ought to be rare, unusual, out of the ordinary. That's what makes it interesting. If it becomes ordinary or, worse yet, mundane, that's a problem for the game as a whole. 

The Shop (Dark Side)

Bad Reputation (Murder). In the early 1900s the boarding house which is now the shop was the site of a grisly murder, which gave the place a bad reputation. This is why the boarding house eventually shut its doors in 1908. Some of the older residents in the area still remember the killing, and the story has only grown in the telling. Details of the killing can be left up to the players. Treat this as a 2-point pool Bad Reputation, which can be invoked by the Keeper at any time to create an effect that impacts Credit Rating or similar spends.

Gang Activity (Cartridge Street). Originally called Cartridge Street because of the gun manufacturing industries in the area, it's now called that because of the Rough Lads that hang around causing trouble. They mostly gather at The Gun public house on the corner, but at any time their actions can impact the shop. Treat as a 3-point pool Rough Lads, which can be invoked by the Keeper at any time to create an effect that impacts the shop or its customers as they come and go.

Unpleasant Smells (cellars). There's something down there that stinks to high heaven. It isn't always evident. You can go for days, weeks, and not notice a thing. Then it creeps into your nose and will not go away. It's especially strong in the summer months, when sometimes the smell hangs round for days, even weeks. Treat as a 1-point pool Stink, which can be invoked by the Keeper at any time to create an effect that causes a Financial Reverse or prevents a Windfall.

Plague Pits (cellars, Mythos). Before the town house was built this was, during the time of the Great Plague, a spot where many of the dead were quickly buried. In the early 1700s it became notorious as a 'damned spot inhabited by the lost and Satan's servants' and in 1752 there was an exorcism that supposedly put an end to whatever it was that was troubling the place. When the town house was built, steps were taken to ensure that 'the holy place' was kept intact, marked with a magical symbol that Mythos experts know to be an Elder Sign. All this can be found with the appropriate Investigative spends, looking at old records or documents associated with the house. However, at some point since then the Sign was damaged, which is why, among other things, there is the Unpleasant Smell. There's just enough juice left in the damaged Sign to prevent the worst from happening, but if something should make the damage worse, well ... 

Now, of those four things, three can be dealt with. The Hounds can come up with clever ways to reduce the 2-point Bad Reputation pool, or the 3-point Rough Lads pool. That provides conflict and conflict breeds plot.

The Unpleasant Smell is more difficult and the Hounds will probably try various means to get past it. However, the effect can be nullified by point spends, if the Hounds prefer to ignore the problem.

That last one, though? That's a scenario's worth of adventure, right there. Waiting to be discovered.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Cyberpunk RED - I Listen

When I first asked for your input back in the Before Times there was a lone voice calling out for Cyberpunk content. I listen to lone voices, occasionally. 

Let's talk RED. 

Akira trailer 

What attracts me to Cyberpunk? Nostalgia, partly. I have a strong sentimental attachment to those 1980 sci-fi classics. Blade Runner. Tron. Escape From New York! Dead Zone. Le Dernier Combat. Last Starfighter. Night of the Comet! God, that one is fun. Terminator. RoboCop. Alien Nation! Akira, obviously. Lots of memories wrapped up in those hours. 

Then there's the hours, days, weeks playing the tabletop back in uni. You never really escape those early experiences. It's probably why Dungeons and Dragons still appeals, in spite of everything. I collected most of the books over the years. It's not difficult to whip up some old favorites with that kind of bait.

But mostly, it's the simplicity of it. Skill plus stat plus D10 randomizer. Sorted. Not like other games where there might be a dozen dice or more, rules for every possible contingency, and extra books with extra rules for all the other contingencies. It's probably the same thing that lures me into Gumshoe, honestly. D6 randomizer plus pool points, and you're off to the races. 

Tell you what I don't like. Save the World narratives. They're attractive, sure. But they keep coming back again, and again. Sometimes I just want the world to stay saved, you know? For ten minutes? I feel like the maid ...

With that in mind, let's talk about some campaign ideas. If you like the look of one, give me a shout. We can talk about expanding it.

To start with: 

Long Live The King 

Partially inspired by this recent article concerning gang crime in Canada. Briefly: the removal of senior leadership within the Quebec mafia results in increased gang crime, as control over the smaller groups disintegrates. 

Rome: the recent (and explosive) removal/retirement of senior crime figures causes a shift in power in the district. All the gangs come out to vie for control over the district’s lucrative enterprises. Everything from protection rackets to numbers running to narcotics is in flux, as younger gangs surge to prominence in a wave of shootouts and rumbles. Nobody knows who’ll come out on top; today’s Little Caesar is tomorrow's statistic. Meanwhile, nobody can get anything done and the cops are no help at all; they’re drowning in wave after wave of violence, unable to respond proactively to any of this. 

Our protagonists: a local security firm which has contracts for three conapts and, until recently, was trying to become a player in the market. They had a business relationship with the former mafia bosses and now must deal with the coming storm. Do they play kingmaker? Do they go bust in spectacular fashion? 

Main activities: diplomacy both corporate and street, fistfights and firefights.  

The Bloody Red Baron 

Royal Guardsmen

I have a soft spot for this tune. Blame a misspent youth.

Rome: The medical market is sewn up tight, but there’s always room for an independent in those districts where the corps fear to go. Rippers and medicos need someone with more guts than sense to get in and out of the combat zone. Sometimes it’s a body run, collecting spare parts. Other times it’s an extraction under fire. Runners need a proxy to get their wounded out of a tight spot, or some corporate finds themselves on the wrong side of the line. Meanwhile the poor and the desperate just want medical aid, and they don’t care much who provides it. 

Our protagonists: owner/operators of the Red Baron, a ramshackle meatwagon which has seen more firefights than anyone cares to think about. Their mission: to bring mobile healthcare to the desperate and those willing to pay. It’s up to the Baron whether they provide Robin Hood medical aid to the poor for free or at cost, or whether they seek to extract every penny from every customer. Whichever it may be, medical supplies and bodybags are best-sellers in today’s market. 

Main activities: thrilling chases and MASH-style medical action. 

Tournament of Champions 

Rome: People need entertainment. People crave nostalgia. Yes, there’s the Net; yes, there’s Elflines Online. But for the hardcore, the truly grok, there’s only one drug that works: collectible card games. Nobody’s been making those cards for decades. Many of them were destroyed, either in the big bang or what came after. But some survived. For the elite, the best of the best, the geek beyond geek, a Black Lotus is worth more than a mint condition Action Comics #1. Up until now, card collectors have battled in private matches, the backrooms of brick-and-mortar stores, but the dream’s always been to recreate the grand tournaments of old. 

Our protagonists: fixers, dealers, schemers, fakers, artists both bullshit and realshit. Sometimes they go out and Indiana Jones their way to a lost CCG collection buried deep in some forgotten pit. Or perhaps they liberate cards from those too gauche to own them. They might fake up whatever they need to make up. Whatever the case may be, they’re now in the enviable (well …) position of being the only ones in Night City with enough nerd clout to be able to organize a city-wide tournament. But how? Where? Who’ll be the judge? In a world without heroes, do these sad sacks have it in them to fake it till they make it? 

Main activities: treasure hunting, heists, wheeling-dealing. 

Big Fat Fraud (?) 

Mr Vampire

With apologies to KPop Demon Hunters, Encounters of the Spooky Kind and the Mr. Vampire series. 

Rome: People need to believe. Religion is the opiate of the masses, so they say. But is it bad to spread a little hope, even if you don’t believe in yourself? Those with faith, and those without, struggle with the day-to-day and their personal demons. They cry out. They act out. The faith bunco has kept fraudsters in bucks since time immemorial. What’s one more lie in a world that’s full of them? Except this time maybe it isn’t a lie; there might be a grain of truth in that teeming mass of misinformation. Not that anyone wants to believe that, mind you; the truth is so overrated … 

What happens if a fraudster finds faith? What happens if there really are demons out there? 

Our protagonists: fakers, exorcists for hire, occultists in over their head. Against them: Maybe nothing but guilty consciences. Or perhaps the heirs of MKUltra, Uncle Sam’s mind control program – or maybe there really is a Legion hiding inside that swine after all … 

Main Activities: seances, exorcisms, kung fu.  

Lights! Camera! Action!

Based in part on this amusing little side note in a longer wiki article: 

Founded in 1966, the NYPD Movie/TV Unit was the first of its kind in the country. Because of its relationship with the NYPD, the unit has the greatest knowledge on how to assist productions, particularly with complex shooting situations, in a city that is dense with vehicular and pedestrian traffic.

Whether it conducts filming on bridges, highways, or busy intersections, the unit controls traffic to ensure that companies can get shots that may otherwise be impossible. It also oversees staged "crime scenes" used in the filming of the city's many police-related shows, such as Law & Order and Third Watch. The unit's responsibilities do not end there; the unit also monitors child work permits, stunts, prop firearms, placement of equipment, pedestrian safety, and parking.

While filming on busy New York City streets presents countless challenges, the unit has, over the years, developed a strong working relationship with the film industry. The unit makes an effort to ensure that New York City remains a popular location for filming. Its based in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Until the election of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1994, the unit occasionally assisted with pornographic productions. But Giuliani put a stop to this as part of his effort to clean up the streets of New York City. In 1997, porn producer Michael Lucas filed a lawsuit against the Police Department and Giuliani citing discriminating practices used by the Movie/TV Unit against porn productions. The lawsuit was dismissed in September 1998 when a district judge granted a motion to dismiss on behalf of the NYPD.

Rome: Fame, fortune, glitz and glamour. It's a hero's life in the NCPD. All the world knows it. All the world sees the TV shows, the newsreels, the braindances. Someone's got to make sure all those shoots take place with as little drama as possible - well, unplanned drama, at least. Who is that lucky someone? Why, you! Yes, you will have to pull security duty on a porno from time to time (oh, the humanity) and yes, you will have to put up with every would-be Spielberg who happened to convince daddy to bankroll their student project. But the possibilities! You might be a background extra in Manic Slaughterhouse Four! You might get a fleeting appearance on the news! You might find out about the subliminal ... no, better not find out about that, it could be career-ending.

Protagonists: NCPD, medias, rockers - anyone who might look good in a uniform and at least knows the rudiments of cinematography.

Main Activities: security, photoshoots, chases both fake and real, diplomacy both street and corporate.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Death Mask 4 - the First Arc

This will be the last in this series. I may come back to it later; we'll see.

OK, we have Rome, we have the Building, we have a reasonable idea of the OPFOR. The next step is to decide on the opening arc of the campaign, on the assumption this is, at minimum, a 3-act structure.

Let's go over the basics.

A CORE CONCEPT tree bears CORE CONCEPT fruit. So, for example, a DAMNED tree always bears DAMNED fruit. This is a little like Rome, in that every road leads to the same terminus, but it's worth bearing in mind that, if you start with X, you always want to finish at X. Tone is critical. It should remain constant. 

Establish the setting, the characters and the overall mood of the game. Always remember that, while you may have a clear idea of what's happening and why, the players do not. Or, they may have an idea that is wholly at odds with yours. The first act is critical in that it nails down expectations and gives everyone notice as to the kind of game this is.

Put in this way. There are worlds of difference between this film:

The Mummy (1932)

This film:

The Mummy (1999)

And this one:

The Mummy (2017)

But they're all basically the same film. I've only seen two of these, incidentally. Guess which two.

What you, as Keeper, need to do is decide which of these, or some other variant, lives in your Building. Then you need to communicate that to the players. To a certain extent this will happen in session zero, but a lot of this will take place in-game.

The purpose of the first arc is to nail down those expectations so you can explore more complex ideas in the next arc(s). You'll spend a lot of time describing and expanding on starting locations, important NPCs, McGuffins.

The characters don't have to encounter the Mythos, or anything supernatural, in the opening act, so long as the opening act is true to the overall mood. This may seem counter-intuitive but it's actually very important. Your job here is to establish setting and mood. That will be difficult to do if something really flashy and eye-catching gets the players' attention. It's like jangling keys in front of a cat. Useful, if you want the cat to pay attention to the keys. Less useful, if you want anything else to happen.

There's nothing wrong with having things go bump in the night. Bumping is what things do. But if you want the characters to pay attention to the Building and put their own ideas in, that will be difficult if their attention is always being caught by this eye-catching thing over here.

You already know what the Building is, what it consists of. The first arc should include all the important rooms within that Building. If the smuggling route to Cyprus is going to be critical to your game, then there needs to be a mission to Cyprus to establish it as a location. To seed it with important NPCs. Possibly to include a smuggling ship (also an important part of the Building) which will become important in later sessions.

That way, when you return to these parts of the Building for important moments in Act Two, the players already have expectations and will lean on those expectations when they make their own plots.  

Most important of all, the first arc should include the core activities of the setting. If this were Bookhounds, say, then the first arc ought to include at least one important Auction. Buying and selling books is what that setting is all about. You need that moment when player interacts with the core mechanic to achieve plot results, and in Bookhounds that core mechanic is the auction.

What's the core mechanic in Tomb-Hounds?

From the text:

... real opportunities have opened up. Those who know enough Egyptology to know where to dig, and who know enough shady dealers to know how to sell what they dig up, can name their own price for a spectacular item. Of course, there’s always that little matter of a curse – but no true tomb-hound lets the possibility of a curse interfere with the certainty of a profit. Wonderful things await - all you need is a map and a bullwhip.

At its heart, this is a treasure hunt. Core Drives back this up: Adventure, Antiquarianism, Curiosity, Follower, Scholarship, Thirst for Knowledge, In the Blood, Sudden Shock, Greed. These all suggest risk-takers, delvers into the unknown, people who want to find things either for the knowledge they contain, the value that can be put on them, or the fame that comes with being the One Who Found It.

With that in mind, the first arc should start with the players having already found something relatively minor, which hints at something profoundly more interesting.

Let's start at a Dig Site. The players have been working on a site connected with a minor royal or someone connected to royalty - a high priest, say, or an important civil servant like an architect. Through this they have obtained valuables that they need to dispose of, but also through this they have gained clues, or hints, to the much more valuable thing.

Let's further say that the players were minor scholars on this particular dig, that their sponsor or sponsoring agency hoovered up the really good stuff, and what they got away with were the scraps. Again, think of Bookhounds. The Hounds in that setting are motivated by economic drivers. The Tomb-Hounds setting is very similar. The Hounds want that spectacular item which they can bargain away for colossal sums. For that to have spice, it's a good idea to dangle a little bit of that wealth in front of them, then take it away.

Indiana Jones

This has several advantages.

First, it starts with action. The opening scene can be that moment where the archaeologists hover at the door of the tomb, just before they crack it open revealing the treasures hidden inside. They interpret the hieroglyphs: is there a curse? Maybe ... well, nuts to it! Crash, bang, whallop, loot.

Then, it establishes an initial adversary: that scholar or scholarly group which swoops in and takes all the really good stuff for itself. This adversary may or may not have cult links. That's not important right now. What is important is that they have what the players want. They have the shiny valuables. The temporary alliance which existed up till now has been shattered. It's all about the dollars from this point forward, or the academic recognition, or whatever it may be.

Then, it posits the initial question which the characters need to resolve: what is this other dig site that the clues found at this dig site hint at? Is it more important than the dig site they're working on? What's hidden there? 

Can the characters get enough financing behind them to establish their own dig site at that location, to find the really good stuff?

From this point forward it's a combination treasure hunt and race against time. The treasure hunt is finding enough clues to determine the exact location of this new site. Those clues are scattered among other sites, at libraries, in museums, in the memories of occult scholars, and the characters need to gather enough of these clues to find the dig site. The race against time is doing this before someone else does it.

Who this someone else is can be established in play. The likely opposition is the players' former allies, the scholar or scholarly group who worked with them on the first dig. That doesn't have to be so. The new OPFOR can establish their credentials by, say, eliminating that scholar or scholarly group in some spectacular fashion. That puts the new OPFOR on the map and establishes stakes.

Through all this the players are, incidentally, establishing which rooms, in the Building, are important to them. If they find Cyprus boring, say, then fine; the Keeper doesn't need to waste time putting new backstory elements or plot points in there. It would be like lavishing expensive furniture on a room you'll never use. If, on the other hand, they become deeply invested in Cyprus then it's time to flesh out that location for future scenes. 

This is why establishing expectations happens as much in-game as it does off-set, behind the scenes. You can't anticipate what players will find interesting. Don't waste too much time trying. Put a little bait out there and, if they nibble, then you hook them with something nasty. 

All this is leading to that final dig site, and this is where all your tools come out of the box. This is the concluding portion of the first Act. If you're going to use elaborate maps at all, puzzles, traps, this is where you use them. If you let the players find the fancy key somewhere at that first dig site, then this is where they find the door that key fits. If you want them to navigate past improbable traps to get to where they're going, this is where those traps are used.

Indiana Jones Last Crusade

This is also where something supernatural definitely lies sleeping. It might be a mummy, a pack of ghouls, something else, but whatever it is, it's down there. 

Finally, this is where the McGuffin is. The thing that everyone's going to be chasing in Act Two. For purposes of plot, I'm going to assume that the McGuffin is Perseus' adamantine sickle, that peculiar khopesh the cult seeks so they can stop someone from using it on the elder masks. However, your game is your game. If you want that McGuffin to be something else, go for it.

At the end of the first Act the characters will have found that dig site, looted it, come up with a bunch of valuables and the fate of the McGuffin has been determined. It might be with the players. It might be somewhere else. Wherever it is, chasing after that McGuffin will be the focus of the second Act.  

With that, finita! I hope you enjoyed this digression. 

A quick housekeeping note: in a few weeks I shall be off-island and this blog will go silent while I'm in the UK. Not to worry! I'll be back online soon.

Ciao!

 

Death Mask 3 Exploring Rome

Rome: Masks, hidden identities, hidden agendas, Gorgons, the shadowy influence of Egypt's past, the Pharaohs of old returning to take their rightful place.  

Let's dig a little deeper. 

The whole point behind the cult is that it's run by masks, whose main purpose in life is to make more masks, to extend their already lengthy existence. These masks derive their motivating force and their purpose from the old Gorgon cult, which fled to Egypt when the original cult bases in Greece were smashed. Now the cult promotes a return of the old Pharaonic ways, mainly to encourage new Egyptian recruits to join, but at its heart it's the same Gorgon cult it was many centuries ago.

It's probably worth remembering that when Perseus allegedly slew Medusa he did it using flying sandals, a cap of Hades that made him invisible, and an adamantine sickle. Those sound like useful cult-bashing relics to me. Some or all of these might have found their way to Egypt over the years and are now hidden in some tomb or other, or perhaps on the back shelf of one of the many, many curio shops in Cairo or Alexandria. 

What if, for instance, that adamantine sickle is in fact a khopesh?  Ceremonial versions of those were found with Tutankhamun; if King Tut can have them then there's no reason why Perseus' old blade can't have found its way into some priest's tomb. What if those battered sandals are hanging up with the stock in some souk or other? 

The cap of night found its way into several different hands; Hermes had it, Athena had it, there's no telling where else it might have gone after Perseus used it. He may have dropped it in Mycenae, where he was King. If so, then the archaeologist Schliemann might have found it while digging for Trojan loot, in the later 1870s. If that happened then the cap would be in Berlin at the time of the campaign, but then the Great Museums of the world are part of the Building so there's no reason not to have a side trip off to Berlin. Nor, for that matter, is there a compelling reason why a German archaeologist might not sneak the thing away in their bags and baggage for a trip to Egypt. For ... research purposes. Not because they're a cult member seeking promotion. Or because they're a cult opponent trying to smash the new Pharaoh. Possibilities ... 

OK, so we have some Banes and possibly also treasures to be sought for in the first arc of the campaign. Fine. So who's the OPFOR?

Remember, all OPFOR have:

• Power, appropriate to their function within the narrative.
• Goals.
• Assets, to be used to achieve their goals.

What does the cult have?

Power: far-reaching political, social and quasi-military authority and influence within Egypt. Their spies and enforcers are everywhere. They can have people killed. They can deploy assassins, peculiar occult magics, ancient mummies - all within Egypt proper. Outside Egypt, their influence drops off dramatically. They can send agents to do their bidding, but they can't just snap their metaphorical fingers and have a man in, say, Berlin, drop dead that same moment. 

However, this power is basically illicit. They have no actual civil or legal authority. They exist behind the scenes. Everyone fears them, but it's not as if they have an office building, a flag, a government post. 

For the purposes of plot, it can be assumed that their power extends as far as Egypt extends. Which means, among other things, that it extends to all those museums and other places where Egypt mania is all the rage. Where the mysteries of Egypt - and, by extension, the cult - influence art and architecture.

Do the civil authorities in Egypt - at this point in time, the British military occupying forces and the Egyptian civil government - know about the cult? Probably. Inasmuch as the cult is active and does things, the authorities will know about those things. They may not have connected the dots and realized that this peculiar murder, or the rise of that politician, are all connected to a power-hungry pro-Pharaoh movement. They know something's up, but not what. Further, there will be some within the civil authority who have connected dots, who suspect much, and are either opposed to the cult or who seek alliance with it for their own ends.

That rival Power opposes the cult's own, and the cult will constantly be aware of it. This limits the cult's overt activities. It cannot expect to do whatever it wants whenever it wants, not without consequences. It can have a man killed, but if that killing is very troublesome for the civil authorities then the cult had better have someone to take the blame, go to trial and perhaps get executed. Otherwise, the political fallout from the killing may upset the cult's plans. 

Of course, all this is before the new Pharaoh steps forward and takes their rightful place on the throne temporarily occupied by Fuad I. The cult will probably be paying very close attention to the career of Mohammed Ali Tewfik, the heir presumptive, but he spends most of his life outside Egypt. Why? Who can say? But he does have a magnificent Cairo palace full of artefacts and practically swimming in history. It's very private, of course; it won't become a museum until after his death. But I'm sure that can be worked into the first story arc. Perhaps that's where the cap of night is now, or perhaps the person who has it seeks an audience with Mohammed Ali so they can sell it to the heir presumptive. Sounds like a job for some plausible go-betweens ...  

Goals: The cult has a hidden goal and an up-front goal.

The up-front is to restore Pharaonic rule. There will be a new golden age of such and so forth. Egypt will once more become the yadda yadda. This is the goal that all the cult members know about. It's the carrot that brings in new members. It's the lure that keeps radicals, Nationalists, Communists and the Muslim Brother hood on board. Work with us, and we'll help you get what you want. Those groups may not have everything in common with the cult but they have one common enemy: the British occupying forces. So long as the cult keeps playing the public game, and drumming up hatred for the British, the more likely it is the cult will get what it wants from those other groups.

There is another way to play this which could be just as interesting. Have the cult ally itself with the British. All the other groups - Communists, Radicals, Nationalists, Muslims - are against it now, but so long as it can keep them fighting each other they'll lack the resources to come at the cult direct. It does mean that player characters cooperating with the British will never know if the policeman, say, or the Colonel they ally themselves with is, in fact, a cult member. Or even a cult leader. 

That's the up-front. The hidden goal is simply this: survival.

The cult remembers all too well the bad old days after the initial collapse, when it was on the run, fearing for its existence. There were a number of times when it might have vanished altogether. Its final shrines vandalized, the last masks smashed or burnt. It has been surviving in the shadows in Egypt for centuries, eating scraps, gathering strength. The oldest among them remember the bad old days and want no more of that, thank you. They would sacrifice every single Pharaonic cult member, every dollar in its coffers, if that meant the cult would survive another day. It knows how to relocate and start fresh. It's done that before. 

That's the old guard, of course. The ancient among them. The newer masks? They quite like luxuries. They like ruling over men. The shadows are comforting, but also an irritant. Wouldn't it be grand to show off their true power? To take center stage? These are masks, after all; they don't feel they truly exist if they're not performing. These are the cult members who will take risks, who will execute the grand plays and come up with power schemes. They don't care as much about survival. They've been fed scraps for too long. Now they want what's on the center table. 

This is a bit different from the average cult in a Cthulhu-esque game. In the typical setting cult members are just a means. Everyone gets fed into the cosmic woodchipper in the end. In the meantime, they work to bring about the return of [insert squid-faced monstrosity here.] This cult is nothing like that. It exists to exist. If there ever was some deeper meaning in its rituals, that meaning is long forgotten. 

Except, perhaps, by the most ancient among them. 

Can you say gerontocracy? Bet you know what that feels like. The old guard might have believed in something once, when they first started out. Now they just believe in holding on to power, for as long as their cold, dead hands can grip.

Assets: at the street level, hundreds if not thousands of willing servants. Everyone from that knife-grinder in the souk to the policeman, the museum curator, the archaeologist, and more. 

They all have their reasons. Some buy into the return of the Pharaoh shtick. Some just like the idea of sticking it to the British (or, alternatively, to the King, the Muslims, the Communists, or whoever). Some join forces for professional advancement or knowledge. After all, who better to know where the best dig sites are than the cult which has been around since forever and who probably built most of those dig sites in the first place? Some just want loot. Whatever the desire, the cult can provide. 

At the not-quite-street level, the youngest of the masks and the mask-makers. The ones who look like Venetian carnival masks, or just Halloween fun times masks. These are the center of any immediate cult activity. If there's a bunch of cult members centered around the local dig workers, then there will be a mask at the heart of it, probably worn by the reis. If the museum curators are in league with the cult, then one of them will be wearing a Harlequin mask. If the staff at Shepheard's are being blackmailed into doing the cult's bidding, then the blackmailer will be wearing a mask.

These masks give some power to the persons wearing them. Think of these as Renfields, if this were a Night's Black Agents game. So long as the mask is on, the wearer gets that power. However, there is a price to be paid. The wearer either has to make a blood sacrifice to keep going, or to give up some of their own life energy to go on. This can mean the wearer dies with their mask on, in particularly dire circumstances. 

Above the street level are the advanced members. The ones who know what's really going on (or who think they do). The ones who are working to bring about the new Pharaonic dynasty. These are highly placed persons and high-powered masks. The masks themselves are probably quite old, if not ancient. At least a century's worth of experience. They might be original Commedia; they certainly date from that period. They were made in the time when the cult was just beginning to reinvigorate itself, to draw on new membership. They don't remember the bad old days, at least not first-hand, but they've heard the old stories time and time and time again. Their loyalty wavers. Perhaps, they mutter among themselves, the time has come for a new direction. 

The oldest among them, the original Gorgons, are ancient indeed. They remember the old days first-hand. These are the ones obsessed with recovering the artefacts that Perseus (whoever that may have been) used to destroy the cult the first time. They realize how fragile life can be. They exist in the shadows. So long as the cult keeps bringing them people to eat, they're happy. These are the only masks with the ability to annihilate a person just by looking at them - the turn-to-stone ability. If there is a whisper of some peculiar theatrical troupe that performs once every so often, for a select audience, this group of masks is at the heart of that rumor. The ancient Roman or Greek theatre, reborn. Except the audience never gets to go home ... 

This final group is the one with real power. They can kill; they have access to ancient knowledge; they can summon up spirits or command mummies to rise. They have in their possession the ancient texts sought after by so many occultists and Tombhounds. They know where the real dig sites are. All they want is to continue to exist. For that to happen, they need to get the relics of Perseus. For that matter, they also need anything else that might pose a threat to them. If it should turn out that some modern artefact, say, has the same potential as Perseus' adamantine sickle then they will want it in their possession, toot sweet. For that reason, they may be very interested in any surplus Great War weapons or sinister death rays that some mad scientist left lying around. If you want to turn the game towards a kind of superhero (or at least super-science) direction, that's the way to do it.  

So! Rome. This is where it's all heading. This cult with its desire to just keep on existing, who plays with making men into Gods. 

Next time, let's talk the first arc.

Death Mask 2 - Exploring the Building

The Building: Egypt in general, Cairo in particular, various dig sites scattered across the desert, Cyprus, smuggling ships, and the Museums of the World with a focus on the British Museum, the Louvre, and the Museo Egizio of Turin.

Let’s populate the Building.

All kinds of people and events might be in any Building. Some are plot relevant. Some are there to be there, and some are there because they have to be there.

Plot relevant is an obvious descriptor, and I shan’t go into detail about that group. I trust you to work that out for yourself.

What about the ones who are there to be there, and there because they have to be there?

Let’s say this is the opening scene of Casablanca. 

Casablanca sourced from Film Clips

In that scene we’re introduced to many people, almost none of whom are plot relevant. One or two of them have function within the narrative. They do things. They have lines. The majority are there to be seen.

These are the ones who are there to be there.

The street juggler, the hawkers, the foreigners being swept up (the usual suspects) the man with the Free France leaflets; they perform a necessary service, just by being seen. They set the stage for what’s to come. The pickpocket has a recurring role, has lines of dialogue, and draws the eye. He introduces the setting and gives the audience a taste of what’s on offer. The young couple seen briefly will appear later at Rick’s and provide what amounts to a side quest.

They exist within the narrative because someone has to. In any given scene, there will be people in the background. If this scene takes place in a bar, there will be other people in that bar. If in a market, then other people will be buying, other people will be selling. Any setting – any society – cannot exist without someone in there participating in the scene.

However, because player characters expect to be able to tinker with the bits and pieces of any scene, you as Keeper need to be able to pluck any of these otherwise faceless personalities out of the toybox and make them do things.

What makes them different from the ones who are there because they have to be there? 

Plot function.

The ones who are there to be there have no plot function. They might become plot relevant, through accident rather than design, but there’s nothing about them which makes them plot functional. They exist to be seen, not to do something nor to provide something.

However, there’s a class of character who’s there because they have to be there, and for that example in Casablanca’s opening scene, I point you to the French police.

After all, someone had to round up the usual suspects. Someone had to shoot that Free French fifth columnist with the leaflets. Someone had to provide tension within the narrative. If the police didn’t exist someone would have to invent them, because without their presence there’s nothing keeping the narrative together.

In any game setting there will be a class of characters within the Building who exist because without them the Building could not exist. They serve a vital plot function by making sure the whole shebang makes sense. They might be police, or government officials, or religious authorities, local politicians, street cleaners, bartenders, antique dealers – whatever makes best sense within your Building.

This is a specific Building, don’t forget. It involves smuggling, antiquities, occultism. That means the people who are there because they have to be there are probably smugglers, antique dealers, occultists. Some of them may even become plot relevant, but they don’t have to start that way.

They must exist because, without them, the whole conceit of the narrative falls apart.

How much detail need you lavish on these folks?

Well, probably not much, but you do need something more than a lick and a promise. For example:

• Merchant tall, always bends lower to appear shorter than they are, rapid talker, has four sons to assist them in their work, believes God will provide but, in the meantime, he must provide for himself. No combat skills, but the sons are combatative.
• Merchant A born gossip, this one lives for scandal and is always on the lookout for the latest news. They deal exclusively in expensive small things (eg. coins) and carry their wares with them in a leather bag. The merchant is an experienced knife fighter, for all their apparent helplessness.
• Merchant: A skilled tradesman, perhaps a stonecarver or a jeweler, or even a forger, who only deals with people that he knows. He has no time for riffraff or people who wander in off the street. He is very influential with the local authorities and can bring that influence to bear against people he dislikes.
• Merchant: This one sells supplies to expeditions and always has what an expedition needs to get going. He has been on several adventures himself as a young man and is more than willing to talk about his exciting past. Have you time for a coffee? Good! Now, this happened long ago ...

That’s the people, but why are they there? Partly for background, sure, but the players are going to want to interact with some of them and when that happens the players will want something in return. Clues, possibly. Stuff. Adventure hooks. 

These shouldn’t be specific to the NPC, whether they’re there to be there or there because they have to be. If you attach a specific clue to a specific character the only thing you achieve is an increased chance that the players will lose track of the plot, because they didn’t speak to X about The Thing. 

These are non-plot related, at least conceptually. None of them attach directly to any given scenario or plot seed. But there’s no reason why any of them shouldn’t attach to a scenario or plot seed. Let the players make that choice. If they want to follow up on that peculiar scarab they picked up from dear old so-and-so, then it makes not a scrap of difference whether that scarab was intended to lead to Rome. Now it definitely does.  

You probably don’t need too many of these, at least up-front. There are only so many shiny things any player can concentrate on at any one time. But you do need some, like so: 

• This character has a 1-point clue that leads to a Dig Site. 
• This character has a 1-point clue that leads to the location of a minor relic. 
• This character has a 1-point clue that can be developed into an important NPC relationship. 
• This character works with the Gorgon Cult and can be persuaded to turn against them. 
• This character has a minor relic (scarab, papyrus, mummy) that they’re prepared to sell. 
• This character has a fake relic that they’re prepared to sell. 
• This character works with a criminal organization and can make an introduction to that organization. 
• This character is actually undead and will lead the players into an ambush if given the opportunity. 

List of potential minor relics: 

• Granite stone inscribed with text. 
• Small amulet of a winged lion. 
• Small amulet of a cat. 
• Badly damaged mummy. 
• Incense burners with the head of Horus. 
• Bust of an important official, possibly Roman or Greek. 
• Papyrus with religious text. 
• Lapis Lazuli scarab. 

Again, you don’t want a lot of these but you need to have just enough on hand to be able to fling them out, when you need fresh meat for the lions.  

Now, remember what I also said about the Building:

When designing a setting, think about how people live and what they have to do in order to live well. Not just the big stuff, like which Camarilla faction holds political sway after dark, or whether ghosts are secretly controlling the police force. I mean the small stuff. What do people do for fun? How do they get their food? Do they have light when night falls, and if so how is that managed? What happens when it's hot? What happens in the rainy season? What happens when it snows? What happens to all the shit - literally, the shit - that your average city produces every day?

With that in mind, some events & locations:

• A funeral procession passes, the emaciated corpse on an open bier, carried by their friends and servants, only covered by a hastily flung shawl. Professional mourners follow behind, howling and bawling. The actual mourners, the spouse and children, are more restrained, but weep real tears. 
• A group of people argue over the acts of an efrit that supposedly haunts a nearby building. The efrit, they say, inhabits the bath, because a servant was murdered in that bath. There is much argument over what to do about it.  
• A group of locals and merchants discuss the Nile floods, and whether this years’ will be as bountiful as the one before. If it is too high a flood, they say, plague will surely follow. 
• The heat today is almost unbearable, making every surface and piece of furniture a furnace. It is almost impossible to move in the streets; even a stroll of a few hundred meters feels like an eternity in a hot griddle.  
• The call to prayer sings out from nearby minarets, bidding the faithful to worship. It is such a melody as would gladden the heart, but tonight there is a tinge of melancholy. Why? Who can say? 
• The flies today are particularly annoying. You cannot wipe them away fast enough; they return again and again, drinking your sweat.  
• A brightly colored lizard perches on a nearby windowsill. Its scales are the most magnificent; a little pharaoh on its throne. It has the most beatific expression, like a bishop welcoming guests into his home. 
• A darb, or by-street, about six or eight feet wide, a thoroughfare, with, at each end, a gateway, with a large wooden door, which is always closed at night. This darb is entirely shops, small recesses at the grand floor of a modest house.
• A hárat, or quarter, a district consisting of one or more streets or lanes with private houses, and but one entrance, with a wooden gate, which, like that of a darb, is closed at night.
• A Sook, or market, a short street, or short portions of streets, having shops on either side. These sooks are covered overhead by matting, extended upon rafters.

You may notice I nicked some of that direct from Gutenberg, with what is probably idiosyncratic spelling. When you're going to be reading it aloud anyway, spelling can slide. 

There's a lot more I could put in this Building. I still haven't mentioned what people do for fun, or whether there's street lighting and if so who manages it, who the civil authority is, who the street-level authority is, and a host of other factors. The point here isn't to be exhaustive. This is meant to point in the right direction for further detail later.

After all, any one of these could occupy a whole evening of play, in theory.  The born gossip with the 1-point clue that leads to a relic directs the characters towards that group arguing over the efrit in the bath, and it's off to the races. The players could practically invent the scenario on their own, by their reactions to those prompts.

Remember, this all sprang from that group of Building occupants who are there to be there. I never delved deep into that group who are there because they have to be there. I leave that to your imagination, except to say that in this situation there are probably two types: the first being the occultists and other esoteric experts who the players may turn to for guidance, and second, the ordinary cultists themselves, the ones not deeply involved in the Gorgon cult but who are cult-aware, and can be trusted to aid the cult when needed.

That's it for this week!