Thrilling Combinations (Night's Black Agents)

 

Police Story (1984, Eng dub)

In Night's Black Agents main rules there's sections on Thrilling Chases, which later gets expanded to Thrilling (Any General Pool) in the Resource Book. There's enough high-octane action to keep anyone occupied. 

What happens if you try to combine two Thrilling possibilities?

Hong Kong action films are good for this. Last week I talked about Twilight of the Warriors, which has plenty of examples of Thrilling Combat combined in the same scene as a Thrilling Chase. Jackie Chan vehicle Police Story does much the same in this sequence, with a Chase mixed with Athletics and Hand-to-Hand plus a final Firearms confrontation - or Intimidate, depending on how you want to play that final showdown. 

If you, as Director, want a scene to flow like this, how would you go about it?

For starters, don't forget the existing Thriller Combat options like Feint, Evasive Maneuvers, Multiple Targets, Smashes and Throws. All these have their place in a Thrilling Sequence. If you want the players to make use of them, you may need to print out reminder cards with these rules printed out. It's easy to forget things like this in the heat of the moment. Players who're itching for Thrills may not need reminding but not every player lives for the moment when their agent get attacked by a machete gang.

The Raid: Redemption

Next, establish a Win condition for the scene.

This needs to be understood by all participants in the scene. With Police Story, the win condition for Jackie Chan is to capture the bad guys; the bad guys' win condition is to escape. In Raid, Rama's win condition is to escape; the machete gang's win condition is to kill Rama. It's easy to imagine a win condition of capture the McGuffin (a camera or hard drive with vital evidence, say), or survive until dawn (useful in a vampire game). Whatever that win condition is, everyone in the scene needs to know what it is. If it were me, I would state the win sequence right at the start.

There's a strong case for saying that the Players should have input on the win condition. The Players are responsible for Thrills; they should have a say in how those Thrills come about. Not all Players are confident enough to get involved at this stage. If yours aren't (and you know your players better than I do) you could state the win condition without their involvement. Still, you should ask. They're not going to get confident by constantly dodging their responsibilities. 

Next, establish which two Pools are going to be used.

I would stick with two. There's an argument to be made that more than two pools could be used, but then things get more complicated than they need to be and the folks at the table start losing track of who's doing what.

Take the Police Story scene. There are at least two pools in play: Athletics, and Martial Arts. Technically there's a very short Firearms sequence at the end, which could easily be replaced by Intimidation. Or the Raid sequence, where again the two abilities in play are Athletics and Martial Arts. 

There are some General Abilities which work well together. I can see a case for saying that Thrilling Infiltration and Thrilling Digital Intrusion go together like peanut butter and chocolate.  Or Thrilling Surveillance and Digital Intrusion. 

The Conversation Trailer

There are some scenes which aren't as immediately obvious, but which still work together. 

Let's say that a Network Contact with vital information turns up badly injured and close to death, and a hit team is on the Contact's trail. The agents bundle the Contact into a car (or steal an ambulance, or however you want this to work) and take off at high speed for the nearest hospital. In that case, the two likely pools are Driving and Medic, with the win condition being get the Contact to the hospital alive, or at least get the Contact to cough up the vital information before they die.

You could pull much the same thing with Driving and Shrink. In this example the Contact isn't physically injured but their mind is fried, and the agents aren't getting the Contact to a hospital but instead to the nearest location with Blocks to defend against vampires; a Catholic Church, say. The agents use Drive to keep one step ahead of the hit team and Shrink to get the Contact to cough up vital information before the end of the scene. 

Shooting and Infiltration: the Infiltration team are sneaking into an armed facility, and the team sniper is taking out opposition so the Infiltration team doesn't get spotted. 

Piloting and Driving: the agents are in hot pursuit, and the eye in the sky is keeping them updated as to the target's route. Or Surveillance and Piloting, same deal.

Now, there's a case to be made that Maneuvers do the same thing, and I would definitely agree. If a result of equivalent use can be achieved through a Maneuver, do that. However, I'm suggesting this be used on those occasions when the Thrilling option is more interesting to the group as a whole than boiling it down to one Maneuver and a die roll. 

OK: you've established a win condition and the pools to be used to achieve that win condition. Next: use both those pools as needed in the scene. Let the players decide which pool is more useful at a given moment. That pool is the Primary pool for any given roll, and the Secondary pool is used either to establish a Raise, to Swerve, or is saved for the next moment it's useful.

Let's say this is that moment in the Raid where Rama is running from the machete gang. The Primary pool is Athletics. Martial Arts is the Secondary pool. Rama is the pursued, and the machete gang are the pursuers. In any given check, Athletics is the Primary, but Rama has the option of spending Martial Arts to Raise the difficulty in the chase. Or Rama can save Martial Arts for a later moment in the same scene, where Martial Arts becomes the Primary pool and Rama can use Athletics to Raise the difficulty.

The win condition is for Rama to escape, so the mechanics are the same lead/chase mechanics used in any Thrilling Chase scene. With the difference that Rama can spend Martial Arts to Raise or Swerve, and has the option of switching at any time to make Martial Arts the Primary and Athletics the Secondary pool. 

The obvious caveat is that this gives the agents a larger pool to draw on, which in turn means the agents may be more likely to win any given Thrilling sequence. That's not a huge problem. The players should be expected to win most of the time. A story is no story if the hero fumbles at the first hurdle. 

Where this becomes interesting is towards the midpoint or the end of any given story arc, because at that point the agents have probably spent a fair number of points and taken advantage of any refreshes on offer. Now it's do or die time. They'll need all the help they can get. 

Time for some Thrills.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!  

 

A Race Against Time (GUMSHOE, RPG All)

Hitchcock is a cinematic genius, but one of my favorite Hitchcock moments is a little obscure.

In Torn Curtain Paul Newman plays actual honest-to-God rocket scientist Michael Armstrong, a man with a problem. He needs information that is trapped firmly in the head of another rocket scientist, a Russian, Gustav Lindt. In order to get that information Armstrong defects to the Soviets, and in a nail-biting confrontation with Lindt tries to lure the information out of the Russian in a race against the clock. 

The powers that be are on to Armstrong’s little game and are looking for him. The confrontation takes place at a university and the Soviets are searching room by room for the wily American. Meanwhile Armstrong tries the only gambit he has left; he engages Lindt in a mathematical challenge, trying to get Lindt to solve the problem that’s been haunting Armstrong for months by playing on Lindt’s intellectual arrogance.

It’s pretty much the only time I’ve seen a thrilling Physics equation.

But it brings me to my topic today. Plenty of settings have Chase rules of one kind or another. Those rules assume both actors in the scene are, well, actors. Intelligent creatures with a definite goal in mind. What happens when the race isn’t against a person, but the clock?

Night’s Black Agents solves a lot of problems by turning the situation into a Thrilling [whatever-it-may-be]. Infiltration, Interrogation, Digital Intrusion, you name it, you can Thrill with it. 7E CoC takes the position that you can solve most problems with challenges and dice mechanics. Other systems handle the chase in different ways, but the fundamental problem remains the same: while in other chases there is a tortoise and a hare, both of whom have goals and means of achieving them, in this situation it’s just the hare against inevitable doom, and doom lacks intelligence and motivation. It’s just doom. With a great big D. You can draw a silly mustache on it if you like, but it’s difficult to give faceless, voiceless Doom personality and without personality it’s difficult to really get invested.    

Puss In Boots: Last Wish. Doom with face & a voice.

Look at it this way. 

In an ordinary chase scene the character is competing with something or someone, and the end result is in doubt. That something or someone has personality, individuality, characteristics. Even if the chase is actually a race against the elements (skiing down a mountainside barely ahead of an avalanche, eg) the elements take on a form of personality precisely because the end result is in doubt. Humans assign human characteristics to things that directly affect or interest humans, and doubt is the element that creates the direct affect.

In a race against time the end result is not in doubt. 12 noon will arrive at 12 noon whether we want it to or not. We cannot make time go faster nor can we save a single second in a jar for future use. The question is not what the result will be. It’s whether or not a thing can be achieved before the time runs out. It’s the thing to be achieved, not time, which has personality and individuality.

Let’s start with basic principles.

To make a race against the clock interesting you, as DM, need to establish stakes early on and they need to be pretty big stakes. Life or death. Victory or ruin. Salvation or damnation. No milksop middle ground for you, my friend: it’s time to get paid or die trying.

Example: your character needs to get to a doctor’s office and bring that doctor, or at least some medicine, back to the isolated little hut on the prairie where your sick daughter lies dying. If you get there before time runs out, your daughter lives. If not … 

The example Hitchcock uses in Torn Curtain is much the same. Armstrong knows that time is running out and if he takes too long getting the information from Lindt then Armstrong will be arrested. It’s not in doubt whether Armstrong will get the information. What’s in doubt is whether or not he’ll do it before he gets arrested.

A similar problem arises later in the movie, when the heroes are escaping on what amounts to a fake bus. In Soviet Russia all transport is scrutinized and movement regulated, so the network the heroes use to escape has faked up an entire bus, complete with passengers, in order to transport people across country under the noses of the apparat. However, the fake bus’ progress is delayed by unforeseen circumstances which means – o dear! – the real bus, which is just behind the fake one, might catch up. The problem isn’t whether or not the bus will get to its destination. The problem is whether it will get there before its fakeness is exposed by the real bus. A chase scene, but without the chase.

As Director, it may be prudent to let the player set the stakes (or wager). That gives the player something to fight for, to bargain for. However, you should be wary of mismatched risk and reward. If the player’s willing to make that bet, they’d better be willing to put up some stakes for the reward they want.

You as Director need to set the challenges and I’d recommend limiting the number to three. Any more than that and you risk boring the group or, worse yet, winning by attrition. It’s one thing for luck to play a role, something else to call for die roll after die roll until someone finally rolls a 1, or exhausts their pools. 

It may also be a good idea to determine a midway condition, something that is neither success nor failure. Say you arrive with the doctor an hour after midnight, when things are at their worst. Your daughter isn’t dead, yet, but is fading fast. While she lies in critical condition and the doctor is otherwise engaged, the Devil pops up from a fiddle contest in Georgia and says, ‘if you want this to have a successful outcome, boy, have I got a deal for you.’ 

Victory with a cost, in other words. The character lost the race but doesn’t have to lose their wager, so long as they’re willing to pay the price. It’s the equivalent of rolling a messy success (7-10); the player gets what they want but there’s conditions attached.

Let’s put this into an example.

Say this is a School of Night clock challenge. In School of Night the players are occult experimenters in the days of Queen Elizabeth, scholars using their esoteric knowledge for the good of the Crown. A magical challenge sounds interesting.

The scholar is deep in wild, forbidding territory and is there for a purpose. They are threatened by faerie powers but they have a ritual to complete, and they have to make sure it’s done by dawn. If cock-crow comes and it’s not finished, someone they care about will die of a faerie-inspired illness. 

The characters set up a magic ward around their cauldron/ritual site to keep the bad spirits away and get to work. The ward will keep pretty much anything from attacking them directly but that doesn’t mean they can’t be spiritually attacked or frightened.

So the stakes are: get this done before dawn, or someone dies. After some discussion, a midway condition is reached: if the character doesn’t get it done by dawn the threatened person may yet live, but only if the threatened person accepts a changeling in place of their daughter. The threatened person won’t know about the switch, but the player will. 

The director sets three challenges:

Fear. The faerie powers do their best to frighten the character into abandoning the ritual & leaving the protected space. 

Desire. The faerie powers do their best to tempt the character into abandoning the ritual & leaving the protected space. 

Exhaustion. After so many hours awake the character is using their last reserves to get the job done. Will it be enough?

The precise mechanics of those challenges will depend on the system used. This is Gumshoe which is a pool plus dice mechanic, probably Magic, probably Saturn, and if there are multiple casters then they can all add into the pool. Difficulty might increase from challenge to challenge. 

There might be other ways of doing it. Say that, rather than a magical ritual, the character had to Carouse with faerie folk and keep everyone drinking and merry until dawn. There would still be three challenges. You might want to vary them a bit; Fear doesn’t fit too well with a drinking challenge. But the basics still stand. 

Point being, for all it doesn’t look like a chase, it’s still a chase. The difference being, in a traditional chase scene it’s you against a foe. 

Whereas in this chase it’s just the ticking clock against you.

Tick. Tick. Tick …

Enjoy!

Bond and the Chase Scene: Night's Black Agents

Let's tackle something a little different this time and talk about chase scenes.

In Night's Black Agents the main book points out that they 'require more attention and creativity than other contests' and should be considered a major set-piece event, packed with thrills. That means the Director needs to prepare in advance, or at the very least have some notes for potential chases given the locale the agents are likely to be in. To discuss what that might mean for the Director, I'm taking two Bond chase scenes as examples and dissecting them, from a pure rules perspective.

Starting with Moonraker, take a look at the canal scene.

First: yes, it's incredibly camp. All the Moore Bonds were camp. That's part of the fun!

Second: there's no real reason for Bond to be using a gondola in this scene, but it's a cool thing to do, and it's an iconic Venetian symbol. When in doubt always do the cool thing ought to be the agent's motto, and the Director's too. It's been a long time since I've seen this movie, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Bond's gondolier is introduced as agent Blankorelli of the British Secret Service. IMDB has not seen fit to preserve his character's name for posterity.

The scene kicks off with an ambush moment, a really fantastic reveal. True, there's no reason why he should be popping out of that coffin with throwing knives when a silenced pistol would be more efficient, but screw efficiency; knives are the better cinematic option. The chase hasn't officially begun yet, so the usual prohibition on Weapons during a chase doesn't apply. Note how the NPC gondolier is his first target, even though Bond's a sitting duck. Not only does this give Bond a chance to fight back, it also knocks the gondolier - who otherwise might have tried to pilot the gondola - out of the running straight away. Always leave the agent in the driver's seat.

Initial Lead is probably very short - no more than 2, given that Bond's caught flat footed and the mooks are right next to him - and the operative ability is Piloting. This is a cramped chase - all those narrow, twisting canals - and Bond is probably the more maneuverable participant, so the starting Lead is bumped by minimum +1, up to 3. It might be more, but without handy gondola stats it's simpler to opt for the minimum. Given how quickly Bond moves to the Sudden Escape, those mooks probably didn't start with a fantastic Piloting pool.

A mook immediately opens up with an SMG, peppering the scenery but otherwise doing no damage. Bond's Hit Threshold would be 4, bumped up to 5 since this is an Attack During Chase. The mook used 3 pool points just to attack, but for once the chase difficulty doesn't go up, since the boat opening fire isn't one of the ones chasing Bond. Not yet, anyway. Nevertheless there's a cinematic failure moment when the funeral barge cruises under a low bridge, but that doesn't affect the chase scene itself since, after the initial reveal, the barge was out of the running anyway.

By 1.13 the chase begins in earnest, Bond in his tricked-out gondola versus two mooks in a much more conventional speedboat. Bond's going to jump to Lead 10 fairly quickly, so by this point it's reasonable to assume the initial contested chase roll went Bond's way. Lead is now 5.

More shooting, and again with an SMG, probably not the optimal weapon under the circumstances but what the heck, they're only mooks. At Lead 5, Bond is at Near range for combat purposes. Again, the mooks are spending 3 pool points just to shoot, Bond's Hit Threshold goes from 4 to 5, and the difficulty of the mooks' chase test bumps up by 1. Bond opts for an Evasive Maneuver, turning a sharp corner and increasing his Hit Threshold from 5 to 6. That costs him 2 Piloting. Given that he's probably a Gear Devil, he may opt for a 3-point refresh at some stage. The gondola takes some dramatic splash damage, but otherwise things are going Bond's way.

Again, it's reasonable to assume he wins the contested chase roll this round, possibly because the mooks opted to shoot, thus increasing their chase difficulty number. Lead is now 7. If the mooks try to shoot again, it'll be at Long range. Which they do, of course; they're mooks, and by now the only hope they have of getting Bond at all is with a lucky shot. Again, Bond's Hit Threshold goes from 4 to 5, and the mooks' chase test difficulty goes up by 1, in addition to all the other modifiers that will apply.

The mooks aren't providing much challenge, so it's time for the Director to throw in a Hazard: Bond's rapidly approaching a traffic stop, and the lights are against him. There's a potential Crash at stake, with a vehicle roughly equivalent of a motorcycle for damage modifier purposes. Assume a Difficulty 5 for that test; with modifier -3 that means only 2 Damage is at stake, but given the relative fragility of Bond's gondola it could change the chase significantly if he crashes. He doesn't, so the next in line - the mooks - do, probably because they exhausted their Piloting pool a while back and are running on hope and prayer right about now. Not that 2 Damage is going to do the mooks any harm, but it makes for a fun moment as the lovers drift off in their own little world while their gondolier goes down with the ship.

By this point Bond has hit more than 7 Lead, so it's time for the Sudden Escape. The gondola is clearly Q issue, but its gadgets haven't been fully described, and while there's no reason why Q - practical man that he is - would design a gondola capable of going on land in Venice, the lure of that Sudden Escape is too good to pass up. No doubt Gear Devil Bond uses those refreshed Piloting pool points to make the roll. The mooks despair, Bond drives merrily through the most famous public square in Venice, and the chase is over.

None of this is particularly rules-heavy or difficult to pull off. In the final analysis, the chase was just a few contested rolls, some shooting, one hazard and a sudden escape. What makes it memorable is its location, its vehicles, and the cool set pieces; the knife-throwing coffin man, the oblivious lovers, and the blatant Up Yours of that sudden escape. A chase doesn't have to be packed with stuff to be a good chase, but it does need to have those images, those WTF moments, to work as a scene. 

Now consider the ski scene in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Bond is trying to escape Blofeld's mountaintop fortress, but the guards spot him before he gets too far and an Athletics chase ensues. Technically this is a three group chase; Bond, mook group A, and mook group Blofeld. Beginning Lead is probably quite good, since Bond is the instigator and has had some time to prepare; call it 5. This is a normal chase, all groups are traveling at about the same speed, and by the look of things everyone's equally as good at Athletics, so there's no bonus to be had there. Brilliant chase scene music, by the way; just goes to show getting a good soundtrack is worth the trouble.

Technically the first shots fired (about 0.30) aren't part of the chase sequence, but were I Director I might say that the agent's difficulty increases by 1 for the next contested chase roll if the agent is under fire.  That allows the agent to rush off in a hail of bullets, without the tedious dice rolling (and possible early termination of the chase) that might accompany an actual attack.

Much activity ensues, and Blofeld is informed. At this point no actual chase action has taken place. Earlier I divided the mooks into two groups; they could as easily be kept as one big pool, but with Blofeld in the mix it makes more sense to have two groups. That way the major villain is still a major threat, while the other group of mooks might be knocked out of the running. It gives Bond someone he can beat, while at the same time introducing an antagonist that the Director would rather Bond didn't beat at this point in the plot.

It's 1.50 and now the chase is on. Each mook group has at least one armed man in the group. Now, in the gondola scene, when shooting took place there had to be an increased Firearms pool spend, the target's Hit Threshold went up by 1, and the Difficulty of the attacker's chase test went up by 1 in the attacking round. It could be argued that, since there's only one shooter, the shooter and only the shooter suffers the penalties that come with shooting; the other mooks in the group don't have the same penalty. I'd argue against that. Giving each mook separate die rolls only draws out what should be a quick, action-packed scene, and goes against the game principle of multiple pursuers. What if there had been ten mooks in the group? Will ten separate die rolls really be necessary? No; it's more sensible to treat the group as a group, with a common pool and common penalties.

So far, though plenty of shots have been fired, Bond hasn't been hit, but neither has there been any real change in Lead, suggesting that both Bond and the mooks have been succeeding their Athletics tests. By 1.35 we have the first of several Hazards, a jump sequence at night in snow-covered rocky terrain. This is a Falling Hazard, probably with minimum Athletics Difficulty 5, at considerable speed and height. Without sitting down to work out the actual speed plus height - which would be tedious, and again, this is meant to be a quick, action-packed scene - assume +2 damage for speed and height and a further +1 for the terrain, with no other applicable modifiers, so in total there's 8 (Difficulty 5+2+1) damage at stake. Certainly enough to splash a mook, and it probably wouldn't do Bond any good either. That Falling Hazard is soon followed by another Falling Hazard, higher this time, so call it 9 damage at stake.

The mooks are holding fire, and with good reason; everyone must be burning through Athletics. Bond might be able to blag a refresh from his Director, but the mooks haven't got that option. At about 1.55 Bond slips into the treeline, probably still at Lead 5; there's no reason to think anyone's been able to extend or reduce Lead dramatically. The change in terrain alters the chase conditions from normal to cramped, but nobody's more maneuverable than anyone else. Bond is probably hoping to provoke a Raise in his opponent's Difficulty numbers.

Then the mooks stop to coordinate, with flares and rockets. Bond's in trouble. In game terminology, this is best represented by mook group Blofeld, which so far has hung back out of the action, adding points from its relevant pools to mook group A. Effectively this provides mook group A with Athletics - and possibly other abilities, like Firearms - refresh. It allows the Director to account for a major villain's presence - Blofeld giving orders to the troops and organizing the attack - without actually bringing the villain face to face with the agent.

Bond's best chance now is to get mook group A to crash out early, so it's time to start provoking Raises. Bond opts to increase Difficulty by 1, from 4 to 5; he could have gone higher, but he hasn't had the pool refresh that the mooks just enjoyed. In fact they enjoyed it so much that, at 2.36, they Raise with gunfire, upping their chase sequence Difficulty from 5 to 6, upping Bond's Hit Threshold from 4 to 5, and spending 3 points from those refreshed Firearms pools to do it.

Bond is hit, but not out. He fails the chase sequence Difficulty test, goes arse over teakettle, and busts a ski. He also takes some Damage, and may even be less than 0 Health. Remember, the agents can go below 0 Health; mooks can't. Bond's probably at Hurt, so his Difficulty numbers, including opponent's Hit Thresholds, go up by 1; an effect neatly illustrated by his having to get away on one ski. Lead is also reduced, from 5 to 3.

Now, if Bond continues to Raise by snaking in and out of the treeline, his Difficulty goes up to 6 - his Hurt penalty plus the Raise - while the mooks' Difficulty stays at 5. Bond clearly thinks this is worth the risk, and he probably has the Athletics pool to back that bet up. What's more, by 3.10 he's back in Falling Hazard territory again, so Bond's Difficulty is actually 7 while the mooks' Difficulty is at 6. That's too much for the mooks, who lose a man in the trees. However we're close to the end of the sequence and the mooks are going to win this one, so while Bond made the Falling Hazard Athletics test he must have flubbed a contested chase roll at some point, bringing Lead from 3 to 1.

Another Falling Hazard at about 3.30 reduces mook group A to one man, but Bond's running out of luck, and also, it turns out, room to maneuver. The chase ends at 3.45 at the precipice, with Bond unable to go any further. In game, that last contested chase roll must have either ended in a draw, with the mook having the better roll, or Bond must have lost it. In any case, Lead drops to 0 or below. Hurt, and with his back to the metaphorical wall, he turns on the surviving mook, and the scene goes from Chase to Combat.

Again, nothing about this scene is particularly rules-heavy. It's mostly contested Athletics, with some Firearms, and the agent's making some clever use of the Raise mechanic. While there is a Hazard, it's the same Hazard each time. That doesn't have to be a problem. Multiple use of the same Hazard is acceptable, provided it's in keeping with the scene, and serves to increase dramatic tension. Besides, it wasn't over-used; ten Falling Hazards in a row would have been tedious, but there weren't that many of them, and the ones that did exist were mixed in with other events to break up the sequence. Bond didn't win the chase, but he had enough points left in his pool to quickly finish the Combat sequence, even taking his Hurt status into account. All in all, a success!

I hope this is of some help to you Directors out there. Have a good one!